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Prime Minister's Office: No Negotiations with Syria as Long as It Supports Terror
by Ronny Sofer
"There will be no negotiations, as long as Syria continues to support terror and to be involved in the axis of evil," a senior official in the Prime Minister's Office clarified last week. "Assad's deeds proves that it stands behind Damascus' crimes, including arms smuggling to Hizbullah in Lebanon, sheltering [Hamas leader] Khaled Mashaal, increasingly close connections with Tehran, and active involvement in terror attacks carried out in Iraq against the Americans. As long as the Syrians fail to change their deeds, we have no reason to start discussing the possibilities of negotiations," a diplomatic source in the Prime Minister's Office said. (Ynet News)
A Nuclear Iran Seen as ‘Dangerous’ for the World
by Sheldon Kirshner
 The possibility that Iran might acquire nuclear weapons has been described as a perilous prospect by Dennis Ross, the former chief American diplomat in the Middle East. “If Iran goes nuclear, the world will be a more dangerous and unpredictable place,” he warned UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Israel Emergency Campaign late last month in a keynote speech. Speaking at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, Ross said that Iran’s quest for a nuclear arsenal is “a truly existential question” for Israel and of great concern to Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. (Canadian Jewish News)
Israel Loses a Founding Father
by Richard Boudreaux
 Teddy Kollek, the courtly, cigar-chomping mayor whose 28-year tenure oversaw the reunification of Jerusalem after the 1967 Middle East War and championed coexistence of its Jewish and Arab populations, died Tuesday. He was 95 and was one of Israel's oldest remaining founding fathers. Kollek became mayor of Jewish West Jerusalem in 1965, when the city was divided between Israeli and Jordanian rule by a no-man's land of barbed wire and machine gun posts. After Israel captured and annexed Arab East Jerusalem two years later, he presided over the city's most ambitious string of building and restoration ventures in four centuries. (Los Angeles Times)
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Iran's Intelligence Campaign in Western Academia
by Neil Mackay
 Last month, Cpl. Daniel James, a British soldier of Iranian extraction, was charged under the Official Secrets Act with passing secrets to the enemy. He was a trusted aide and interpreter for Lt.-Gen. David Richards, head of NATO forces in Afghanistan. If the allegations are true, Iranian intelligence has penetrated the very heart of the British military. Clare Lopez, a former high-ranking CIA officer, says: "The Iranian regime deploys its intelligence agents and assets in a very sophisticated campaign to infiltrate and influence Western academia, media, non-governmental organizations, and policy-making structures. (Sunday Herald-UK/Persian Journal)
Maryland: Hanukkah at the White House: Students Meet Bush
by Eric Fingerhut
  Not only did University of Maryland senior Avi Mayer get to meet with the president on Monday, but he might have an impact on government policy. When Mayer, 22, told President George W. Bush that many college students were deterred from studying abroad in Israel because of the State Department warning on travel to the Jewish state, he said the president looked "troubled" to hear that, and "motioned to [White House Chief of Staff] Josh Bolten" to make sure he had heard Mayer's concern. "I wouldn't expect the president to be aware of everything," he said, but "I was particularly surprised that he was really taken aback by it....I hope something will come of it." (Washington Jewish Week)
The Philanthropist from Oklahoma
by Amiram Barkat
 Tulsa philanthropist Lynn Schusterman came to Israel last week with 550 Jewish young people from throughout the world, participants in the "Leading Up North" project. Groups of 50 Jewish young people will be sent to all the major locales in the North and will work as volunteers alongside Israeli students in renovating shelters and public buildings, planting trees and rehabilitating the scorched forests. In the U.S., Schusterman, one of the largest donors to the birthright project, is considered a "freak" for programs for young Jews. After the intifada broke out in Israel, and as a response to the alienation of Jewish students from Israel, she established the Israel on Campus Coalition, a n umbrella organization that sets a uniform information policy on the issue of Israel for about 30 Jewish organizations that are active on campuses. (Ha'aretz)
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