Shorts: U.S.

Did AIPAC head receive classified info in July 2004?

washington (jta) | Two former AIPAC employees facing indictment on espionage charges shared allegedly classified information with their boss, JTA has learned.

Howard Kohr, executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, had no idea he was receiving classified information in a July 2004 conversation with Steve Rosen, AIPAC's then-policy director, and in an e-mail from Keith Weissman, an AIPAC Iran analyst at the time, sources said.

Weissman and Rosen, who were fired by AIPAC in March, also claim not to have known the information was classified. They face indictment this month or next, sources say. Larry Franklin, a Pentagon Iran analyst, allegedly told Weissman that Iranian agents planned to kidnap, torture and kill Israeli agents supposedly in northern Iraq, and sources say Weissman and Rosen relayed that information to Kohr, an Israeli Embassy official and a Washington Post reporter.

Franklin allegedly was acting as an FBI plant in a sting operation. The U.S. attorney's office prosecuting the case apparently plans to argue that relaying classified information to a foreign power is an act of espionage.




Subcommittee approves $150 million for Palestinians

washington (jta) | A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee approved funds for Israel and the Palestinians.

The powerful Appropriations Committee's foreign operations subcommittee approved standard levels of assistance for a number of Middle East countries last week and doubled assistance for the Palestinians, to $150 million, per President Bush's request.

That $150 million is in addition to the same amount approved earlier this year in emergency assistance to the Palestinians, and carries with it the same conditions prohibiting direct assistance to the Palestinian Authority and the same proviso allowing the president to waive those conditions. The subcommittee also approved the expected $2.28 billion in military assistance to Israel, as well as funds for Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.




Rice presses for full aid to Egypt

washington (jta) | The Bush administration wants Congress to maintain current levels of aid to Egypt.

"The United States believes that we have the right balance in the various forms of aid that we grant to Egypt," U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week in a talk at the American University of Cairo.

The levels of current aid are based on the 1979 Camp David peace accords with Egypt, and administration officials are concerned that tampering with the aid now would upset plans to get Egypt to facilitate Israel's August withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

"We would like the Congress to support the administration's proposal for aid to Egypt," she added, noting Egypt's contribution to the war on terrorism. A number of members of Congress, led by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-San Mateo), the ranking member on the House of Representatives International Relations Committee, want to shift some of the $1.3 billion in military aid Egypt now receives to economic aid and make it conditional on democratic reform.




Klan member convicted in civil rights murders

washington (jta) | A former Ku Klux Klan member was convicted in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, two of them Jewish.

The decision found Edgar Lee Killen guilty of three counts of manslaughter in the murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

The three had come to Mississippi to investigate the burning of a black church and register black voters. The American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League commended the decision, though the ADL called it long overdue.




Former Nazi guard deemed deportable

washington (jta) | Former Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk can be deported from the United States.

U.S. Judge Michael Creppy ruled late last week that Demjanjuk, 85, has until June 30 to appeal his deportation for having served as a guard at the Sobibor, Majdanek and Flossenburg camps, and having lied about his service when he applied to enter the United States in 1952.

Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian national who lives near Cleveland, was acquitted in Israel in 1993 of being "Ivan the Terrible," one of the most notorious Nazi guards.




Local profs help plan Israeli courses

waltham, mass. | The second annual Summer Institute for Israel Studies began this week at Brandeis University.

The institute brings together professors from around the world to develop new course content on Israel for college campuses. This year's participants include faculty from San Francisco State and U.C. Santa Cruz.

Bay Area support for the program includes the Lowenberg Family Supporting Foundation, the Koret Foundation and the Jewish Community Fund of San Francisco.