Quick Takes: News From Israel You May Have Missed

A Palestinian university that receives U.S. funding counts among its students senior members of the Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror groups.

One Brigades leader currently enrolled at the college – Al-Najah University in the northern West Bank town of Nablus (Shechem) – described the school as a main jihad recruiting ground. Another terror leader told this column he was studying chemistry at the university to learn how to enhance the deadly effects of suicide bomb belts.

Since September 2004, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has provided $4 million to Arkan, a Palestinian program that funds law schools at several universities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including Al-Najah University. The Arkan program is entirely funded by USAID.

Last Sunday, the Arkan section of Al-Najah University hosted a law symposium at which the trial of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was deemed “illegitimate,” America’s war in Iraq was slammed as “illegal,” and Saddam was hailed for encouraging insurgents to “fight American occupation.”

Israeli security officials say Al-Najah University is one of the most important recruitment grounds for West Bank terror organizations. The Israel Defense Forces has repeatedly raided the college and arrested terror suspects. At least 15 Palestinians who carried out suicide bombings in the past six years attended the school.

According to the U.S. Foreign Operations Bill of 2006, it is illegal to fund universities which the secretary of state “knows or has reason to believe advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in, or has engaged in, terrorist activity.”

Iranian President Ahmadinejad should be assassinated or otherwise “made to disappear from the arena,” Meir Amit, a former chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, advocated in an exclusive interview with WorldNetDaily.

Amit, one of the most esteemed figures in the Israeli intelligence establishment, said that while he was director of the Mossad from 1963 to 1968 he regularly argued against the assassination of world leaders. But he said the case of Ahmadinejad is different.

“Ahmadinejad is the pusher of all the Muslim world toward fanaticism and extremism. In his case, he should be made to disappear from the arena. He has said he wants to become a shahid, a martyr, so I think he should get his wish and be sent to heaven,” Amit said.

Amit said he is intimately familiar with the political structure of Iran, having gone on special missions to the country during the 1960’s while Israel had a relationship with Iranian leaders.

He said he does not advocate an Israeli military attack against Iran’s suspected nuclear facilities. Instead he said Israel should adopt a defensive position, deploying a working anti-missile system to intercept possible Iranian missile attacks.

He said Israel and the U.S. should work with the international community to undermine Ahmadinejad’s regime and foster a popular uprising.

Marking its official public debut, a purported new Syrian terror group last week claimed it is holding a missing Israeli soldier and would free the captive in exchange for nine Syrians held in Israeli jails.

A group calling itself the Syrian Committees for the Liberation of the Golan Heights faxed a statement to reporters addressing “the Zionists” and offering a prisoner-swap deal for Israeli soldier Guy Hever, who has been missing since 1997 and who the group claimed is in its custody. Hever disappeared in the Golan Heights near the Syrian border.

The Syrian Committees for the Liberation of the Golan first announced its establishment in a widely-circulated exclusive interview with WND last June.

At the time, and again during a second, in-person interview with this column and American radio host Gordon Liddy in December, leaders for the Syrian group threatened that if Israel didn’t vacate the Golan Heights within months, the group would launch “resistance operations” against Israeli positions and Jewish communities in the Golan Heights.

The leaders said the group is modeling itself after the Syrian-backed Lebanese Hizbullah militia.

Twin bus bombings in Lebanon last week were a bid by anti-government elements to destabilize the country and part of a general campaign to intimidate Lebanon’s Christian population, Samy Gemayel, brother of assassinated Lebanese politician Pierre Gemayel told WND in an interview.

The bus bombings came on the eve of the second anniversary of the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, whose death has been widely blamed on Syria. The attacks occurred as the two buses passed through the Christian town of Ein Alaq, the ancestral home of Samy Gemayel’s father, former president Amin Gemayel, and his uncle Bashir, also a former president.

“These bombings are intimidating Christians and also Lebanese in general,” said Gemayel. “Ninety percent of all the assassinations the past two years and most of the bombings have occurred in Christian population centers.”

“You don’t hear this on the news too often, but I’m telling you, Christians are fleeing Lebanon. It’s a major problem,” Gemayel said.

A recent study in Lebanon found 30 percent of the country’s Christian population is working actively to emigrate. And according to several reports, nearly 600,000 Christians departed Lebanon over the past 16 years.

Christians made up the majority of Lebanon’s population as recently as the mid-20

Aaron Klein is Jerusalem bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.com. He appears throughout the week on leading U.S. radio programs.