Israel’s
Mideast Policy Strips Israelis of Security
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Israel’s
atrocities in Palestine deny Israelis security inside and
outside borders
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OCCUPIED
JERUSALEM, July 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – Israel’s
brutal Mideast policy has led the Israeli Philharmomic Orchestra to
cancel a planned tour of the U.S. because no U.S. insurance company is
prepared to cover the risk of a possible attack, news agencies
reported Monday, July 29.
"Last
Friday, the American organizer of the tour contacted us and informed
us that to his great regret he must cancel it as no insurance company
wanted to take the risk of providing cover for the concerts," the
director of the orchestra, Avi Shoshani, told the Israeli daily
newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, reported Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
The
orchestra was scheduled to leave August 23 for a week-long tour that
would have included stops in Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.
The
tour had even been planned for the last year and had been postponed,
the paper said.
The
cancellation of the trip follows a bloody Israeli attack Monday, July
22, on Gaza, in which 18 Palestinian civilians were killed and 176
were wounded.
A
U.S.-built Israeli F-16 warplane dropped a one-ton bomb on a building
in densely-populated Gaza City late Monday, killing 18 civilians,
eleven of them children, including a two-month-old infant. The target
for assassination, Hamas military chief Salah Shehada, was killed in
the attack, along with his wife and daughter.
The
raid triggered wide international condemnation, including from the
United States which described it as “heavy handed.”
Israel
came under a barrage of criticism for the raid. Palestinian President
Yasser Arafat accused right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
of continuing a "policy of massacres" and criticized the
world community for failing to speak out.
Sharon
personally approved the strike and congratulated his forces on
"one of the most successful operations, said AFP.
Several
European and Arab leaders condemned the attack, with U.N. human rights
chief Mary Robinson saying that under international law "the
reckless killing of civilians is absolutely prohibited."
Israel
braced for revenge attacks as Hamas and other Palestinian resistance
groups’ vowed retaliation for the deadly raid, which triggered
security concerns among the Israelis inside and outside Israel.
Martyr
operations will continue and Salah Shehada’s assassination will only
add to Hamas’s willpower, said Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual
leader of the Palestinian Islamic resistance group Thursday, July 25,
2002.
"This
massacre will not pass without a final punishment," warned the
Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the group's armed wing.
Israeli
atrocities and ensuing Palestinian resistance operations have had
their toll on Israeli life, particularly where it came to security
concerns.
Israel's
once lucrative tourism industry – to name but one example – has
been hard hit, with Ari Sommer, the tourism ministry's pointman,
describing the tourism crisis as “the longest crisis ever.”
Israel
has low expectations for the industry, once considered the third major
source of the state's revenue.
Now,
where a record two million people visited Israel in 2000, the
government hopes at best to attract between 900,000 and one million
people in 2002.
Likewise,
where Israel generated 4.5 billion dollars in tourism revenue last
year, now it is struggling to raise 1.5 billion dollars in 2002,
according to AFP.
The
numbers offer a bleak picture. Only 399,700 tourists visited Israel in
the first six months of this year, down 42 percent from the same
period in 2001.
Security
concerns have forced many to cancel trips to Israel, including
prominent U.S. biblical archaeologist Jim Strange who said Thursday,
July 25, he canceled an annual field trip to Israel for the first time
in 33 years because of ongoing violence, and said several of his
colleagues had taken similar measures.
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