Shorts: Mideast

Palestinian 'proud' about donating son's organs

jerusalem (ap) | The father of a Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers said this week he believes his son's spirit is alive in "every Israeli" after donating the boy's organs to Israelis waiting for transplants. The boy, Ahmed Khatib, died of his wounds at Schneider's Children's Hospital. His kidneys, liver, lungs and heart were transplanted into recipients ranging in age from a 7-month-old baby to a 58-year-old woman and including Jews, Arabs and a Druze girl.

The father, Ismail Khatib, said he was extremely proud of his decision, even if some corners of Palestinian society might be upset with him.

"No one can tell me what to do," he said. "I feel very good that my son's organs are helping six Israelis. ... I feel that my son has entered the heart of every Israeli."

Khatib's son Ahmed, 12, was shot last week while Israeli troops conducted a raid in Jenin. The soldiers said the boy was carrying a toy rifle and they mistook him for a militant.




Yad Vashem hosts Rwanda survivors

jerusalem (jps) | Broadening its outlook on genocide, Yad Vashem hosted an international seminar dealing with the Rwanda genocide carried out a decade ago, effectively expanding its half-century old approach on dealing exclusively with the murder of European Jewry during the Holocaust, in an effort to reach out to a worldwide audience.

The unprecedented weeklong seminar on a non-Holocaust-related genocide was the initiative of a group of Tutsi survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide who looked to Israel, and Yad Vashem in particular, to learn how the Holocaust is memorialized in the Jewish state as a point of reference for their own remembrance.

The seminar is being carried out in conjunction with a Belgian- and Rwandan-based Tutsi nongovernmental organization as well as the French Memorial of the Shoah.




Petitioners want

to revoke Nobel for Israeli economist

jerusalem (jta) | A petition being circulated protests a Nobel Prize recently awarded to an Israeli academic.

The petition protests the 2005 Nobel in economics given to Robert Aumann because he "uses his analysis to justify Israel's occupation," according to the document.

Aumann is a specialist in game theory, the study of how rival groups — whether business colleagues or warring parties — interact to secure ideal outcomes. He has said he is pessimistic about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, believing the Arabs are not yet ready to accept a Jewish state in their midst.




Women elect ballroom Bibi

jerusalem (jta) | Israeli women voted for Benjamin Netanyahu as their ideal dance partner.

Israel's Channel 2 television this week released a poll in which 46 percent of women named the former prime minister as the political celebrity they most would like to dance with. Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres came in second with 30 percent, with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon trailing at 24 percent.

The survey, conducted as part of a promotion for the new show "Dancing with Celebrities," also found that the most popular dance in Israel is the tango, followed by the samba and waltz.




Will Sharon call early elections?

jerusalem (jta) | A Knesset defeat for Ariel Sharon raised the prospect of early Israeli elections.

The Knesset voted this week against three Cabinet appointments submitted by the prime minister, after opponents in his Likud Party joined forces with opposition factions.

Sharon finally managed to win ratification for one of the appointments — Ehud Olmert as finance minister — but the incident signaled the depth of ideological division in the Likud over the recent Gaza Strip withdrawal.

"There will be consequences," Sharon told the Knesset after the votes.

Political analysts said that the prime minister, who lacks a clear parliamentary majority, could bring forward elections currently scheduled for November 2006. "This is not the end of the Sharon government, but it is the beginning of the end," Yediot Achronot political analyst Nahum Barnea wrote.