Shorts: Mideast

Court upholds day of rest

jerusalem (jta) | Israel's Supreme Court upheld Saturday as the national day of rest.

A three-justice panel this week rejected a petition arguing that Israel's ban on routine Jewish labor from Friday night to Saturday night was unconstitutional because it clashes with the principle of freedom of employment.

The court ruled that setting a day of rest protects workers from exploitation.




Rabins' gravesite defaced again

jerusalem (jta) | Vandals defaced the graves of Yitzhak and Leah Rabin in Israel's most important cemetery.

The vandalism was the fourth such incident in the last several days, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Police appointed a task force last week to catch the vandal who scrawled "murderous dog" on the tomb of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister assassinated in 1995, in Mount Herzl Military Cemetery in Jerusalem.

In another attack assumed to be from the same hand, the name of Rabin's widow, Leah, was removed from her headstone. In a different section of Mount Herzl, vandals spray-painted Hebrew letters on the graves of fallen soldiers to form the phrase: "Hitler the brain." It was not clear if security cameras mounted in the cemetery captured the attacks on film.




Indian tribe accepted as Jews

jerusalem (jta) | Israel's chief Sephardic rabbi recognized a community living along the India-Myanmar border as Jewish. Shlomo Amar's ruling this week sets the stage for the wholesale immigration to Israel of the 7,000-strong B'nei Menashe community, part of the larger Kuki-Chin-Mizo tribe.

The discovery in the 19th century of the tribe, which adheres to some Jewish traditions, attracted interest from Christian missionaries and Jewish communities. Much of the tribe converted to Christianity but in recent decades some have returned to Judaism, forming the B'nei Menashe community.

Citing DNA evidence and certain customs, their supporters claim the B'nei Menashe are descended from the lost biblical tribe of Menashe. Some 800 members of the community have undergone formal conversions and moved to Israel in recent years. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews announced that it would fund the immigration to Israel of the entire community.




Minister: Israeli schools in crisis

jerusalem (jta) | Education in Israel is in crisis, Israel's deputy minister of education, culture and sport said.

"We have gone over the last 25 years into a deep crisis of the education situation in Israel," Rabbi Michael Melchior told a conference of the Jewish Funders Network this week in Baltimore. Israel ranked 28th out of 29 Western countries in the most recent Trends in International Math and Science Study, a study in which it ranked first in the 1970s, Melchior said.

In the Israeli army, only 32 percent of those tested earned satisfactory scores on reading comprehension exams in 2003, down from 60 percent in the 1980s. Melchior also said Israel has the largest gap between rich and poor students in the Western world. Melchior said the problem reflects a more violent Israeli society that is less concerned with collective problems.




Tank museum spared terror attack

jerusalem (ap) | Israel thwarted a terrorist attack planned against a military museum.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine planned to dispatch at least one suicide bomber to the Armored Corps Museum in Latrun in January and detonate an explosives-packed car there at the same time, the Shin Bet security service said this week.

According to the security agency, the plot was uncovered after the ringleaders were arrested in the West Bank town of Bir Zeit. Under interrogation, they reportedly confessed to planning to ambush an Israeli military vehicle and kidnap its passengers.






Plans call for remote-controlled Gaza patrol

jerusalem (ap) | Women soldiers will operate remote-controlled machine guns along a new fence around Gaza after Israel's withdrawal, according to a military publication.

The system, called "Lethal," combines cameras, sensors and automatic weapons to stop infiltrators, the current issue of the soldiers' weekly Bamahane reported.

Remote-controlled observation posts operated by women soldiers are already in use around Gaza. The operators, watching their section of the front on computer screens, can direct soldiers to a point of an attempted infiltration, the weekly said.

Several Israeli villages and towns are next to the Gaza-Israel fence, and the observation posts are meant to prevent terror attacks by armed infiltrators from Gaza.




Israel extends spousal law

jerusalem (jta) | Israel is extending a law that prevents Palestinian spouses of Israelis from automatically becoming Israeli citizens.

"There's no need to hide behind security arguments," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said at a meeting of top Israeli officials, according to Ha'aretz. "There is a need for the existence of a Jewish state."

Sharon's decision extends a temporary law from 2003 that prevents Palestinians from receiving automatic citizenship under family-unification laws. It also prevents foreign residents, including Palestinians, from automatically receiving legal resident or citizen status in Israel because they are married to Israelis.

Opponents of the law say it's racist, but backers say some Palestinians have exploited marriages to Israeli Arabs to carry out terrorist attacks in Israel, and to effect a creeping "Right of Return" that undermines the Jewish state's demographic balance.