A U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo reportedly notes that Gabriel Giffords is Jewish in describing the motives of the Arizona congresswoman’s alleged assailant.
The memo, obtained by Fox News Channel, says that Jared Lee Loughner mentioned American Renaissance, an extremist anti-immigrant group, in some of his own postings.
“The group’s ideology is anti-government, anti-immigration, anti-ZOG (Zionist Occupational Government), anti-Semitic,” says the memo sent to law enforcement, which also notes that Giffords, a Democrat, was the first Jewish congresswoman from Arizona.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was in critical condition after being shot in the head.
Giffords was outside one of her signature “Congress at your corner” events outside a Safeway in Tucson, the district she represented, when a gunman approached and shot her in the head.
The gunman, identified by media as Jared Lee Loughner, shot 17 people, killing six of them, including a 9-year old boy and a federal judge, John Roll. The gunman was tackled and arrested.
JERUSALEM – In a move that could bring down the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 this week that the so-called Tal Law, which allows yeshivah students to delay their military service, is unconstitutional. The court issued its ruling on Tuesday evening. The law is named for retired Supreme Court Justice Tzvi Tal. It was enacted in 2002, and allows full-time yeshivah students to delay their army service until age 23. At that time, students either can continue to study full time, or perform a shortened army service or a year of national service. Afterward, they may choose to join the workforce.
Last month, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu delayed a Cabinet vote on extending the law, which is set to expire in August. Ehud Barak, who was prime minister in 2002 and is now defense minister, welcomed Tuesday night’s verdict. He is on record as wanting to see the Tal Law replaced by a fairer system.
JERUSALEM – The Israeli teen injured in a Gaza rocket attack on a school bus has died a day after a weeklong cease-fire between Israel and Gaza terror groups was disrupted.
Israel Channel 2 reported Sunday evening that Daniel Viflic, 16, was declared dead at Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital, 10 days after arriving there with severe head trauma after a rocket fired from Gaza slammed into his school bus traveling outside of Kibbutz Sa’ad in southern Israel near the Gaza border. The bus driver, the only other occupant of the bus at the time of the attack, also was injured.
JERUSALEM – Two teenage Palestinians from a West Bank village have been arrested for the murders of five members of the Fogel family of Itamar.
The Israeli military announced Sunday that Israeli security services — including the Israel Defense Forces, the Shin Bet security service and police — had arrested two teens from the nearby village of Awarta in connection with the brutal Sabbath eve murder in March.
Amjad Awad, 19, who worked as a laborer in Israel and Hakim Awad 18, a high school student reportedly both admitted to committing the murders. They also staged a reconstruction of the crime, AFP reported, citing a Shin Bet briefing document. Amjad Awad reportedly said that he went to Itamar to “die a martyr’s death.”
ROME – An Italian pro-Palestinian activist was killed by Palestinian Islamic extremists who had kidnapped him in Gaza on Thursday.
Gaza police on Friday found the hanged body of Vittorio Arrigoni when they stormed an apartment in Gaza City where he was being held.
Hours earlier, his kidnappers, a group inspired by Al Qaida calling itself “Monotheism and Holy War,” had posted a video showing Arrigoni, 36, blindfolded and with cuts on his face.
His head was held up in front of the camera by a hand gripping his hair.
JERUSALEM – An Israeli teen was critically injured when a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip hit the school bus in which he was riding.
The driver of the bus, which had dropped off all the schoolchildren except for the injured teen, also was wounded by shrapnel in Thursday afternoon’s attack, Haaretz reported.
It is unclear whether the bus, traveling near Kibbutz Sa’ad, located next to the Gaza border, was struck by a mortar or an anti-tank missile.
JERUSALEM – The Palestinian reaction to the grisly killings of five Israeli family members in the Jewish settlement of Itamar, on the west bank, has prompted many Israelis to ask the same question of the Palestinians that the world often asks of the Israeli government: Are they really serious about peace?
On the one hand, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas went on Israel Radio on Monday to condemn the March 11 killings of the Fogel family members, including a 4-year-old boy and a 3-month-old girl, as “despicable, inhuman, and immoral.”
On the other hand, a day after the attack, members of Abbas’ Fatah faction participated in an official dedication ceremony in the west bank town of Al-Bireh for a town square dedicated to the memory of Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist involved in killing 37 Israelis in a 1978 bus hijacking on Israel’s coastal road. No PA government officials attended the ceremony, Reuters reported.
JERUSALEM – Demonstrations in solidarity with settlers and a Cabinet committee’s approval for new housing in the West Bank are among the Israeli responses to the suspected terrorist attack that killed five members of a West Bank Jewish family.
An estimated 20,000 people attended Sunday afternoon’s funeral at a cemetery in Jerusalem to mourn the deaths of Udi Fogel, 36, and Ruth Fogel, 35, and their children Yoav, 11; Elad, 4; and Hadas, 3 months.
Two sons — Roi, 8, and Yishai, 2 — were sleeping in a side bedroom and were spared in the Sabbath eve attack in Itamar on March 11. A daughter, Tamar, 12, returned home at midnight from a youth group program to discover the massacre.
