Tish'ah Be-Av (a Day of  Mourning) - The first nine days of Av are a sorrowful period culminating with Tish'ah be-Av, the Ninth of Av - Tish'ah be-Av is the most intensive day of mourning for the destruction of the Temple and the exile, and the only fast apart from Yom Kippur that lasts from sunset to the following evening. According to the sources, both the First and the Second Temples were destroyed on this date (in 586 BCE and 70 CE respectively).

ISRAEL AND THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION

Brussels —The European Commission said that it has reached a preliminary agreement with Israel to further liberalise trade in agricultural and processed agricultural products and fish and fishery products - ’The result is a balanced deal beneficial for both sides,’ the Commission said.

Once adopted, the agreement will create ’new trade opportunities for EU exporters in a large range of products that could not previously reach the Israeli market’.
Israel’s major export sectors, on the other hand, ’will benefit from further liberalisation and better market access’, the EU executive added.

GAZA

Jerusalem Post, July 28 - UN: Gaza poverty at unprecedented high - The number of households in the Gaza Strip below the poverty line has reached an unprecedented high of nearly 52 percent, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said in a report published recently.

"The number of households in Gaza below the consumption poverty line continued to grow, reaching 51.8% in 2007, despite significant amounts of emergency and humanitarian assistance," UNRWA said in a statement late last week. Meanwhile, poverty rates in the West Bank fell to just over 19%.

The report, based on figures provided by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), said that "the real average unemployment rate in the occupied Palestinian territory (as a whole) remained amongst the highest in the world at 29.5%," with Gaza reaching "an unprecedented high of 45.3%" during the second half of last year.

The report added that Palestinian youth was most affected by the fledgling economy, with members of the 15-24 age group "least likely to gain employment and the most prone to increased unemployment."
   
Daily Star-Lebanon, August 4 - Hamas and Fatah Are a Bigger Threat to the Palestinians than Israel - Editorial - It is a damning indication of how bad things have become in Hamas-ruled Gaza when Fatah militants there must look to Israel for protection from their Palestinian rivals.

The scenes of Israel coming to the rescue of Palestinians after a bout of Arab fratricide were reminiscent of the events of Black September, during which scores of Palestinians sought asylum in Israel to escape King Hussein's crackdown on the Palestine Liberation Organization. This time around Palestinians are fleeing from the murderous hands of their own Palestinian brothers.
   
We have seen Palestinians making war on other Palestinians while the Jewish state has come to the rescue of those who fear for their lives. Israel has never looked so good.

Sydney Morning Herald-Australia, August 4 - Violence Dashes Hopes for Palestinian State - Gabriel Motzkin, a professor of philosophy at Hebrew University, said the infighting had extinguished any chance of success in this round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

"It is beyond doubt that there are now two separate Palestinian territories, so who does Israel deal with? Mahmoud Abbas does not speak for Palestinians in Gaza. And Hamas is not interested in any negotiations with Israel at all. This civil war makes a permanent solution impossible to negotiate."

WEST  BANK
       
Jerusalem Post, August 5 - Left-wing activists say security forces trying to ban them from West Bank - Left-wing groups held an emergency meeting in Jerusalem on Tuesday afternoon to plan an offensive against recent moves by security forces to curtail their West Bank activities.

Sitting in a circle in the basement office of Peace Now, they complained that in a growing number of instances security forces had stopped them from either helping Palestinians in the West Bank or entering settlement areas such as Hebron, the South Hebron Hill and the area around the settlement of Yitzhar.

Security forces are kicking them out of the area, the activists complained, precisely at a time when they are most needed because violence between settlers and Palestinians is rising.

ANTI-SEMITISM

August 4, 2008  - News / Updates from our Communities / France - The old anti-Semitism is back… - French cartoonist fired for anti-Semitic remarks towards Sarkozy’s son - French Culture and Communication Minister Christine Albanel expressed support on Monday to the director of a satirical political magazine who fired a cartoonist -columnist for writing anti-Semitic remarks towards the son of French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Earlier this month, 79-year-old caricaturist Siné suggested in the weekly Charlie Hebdo magazine that 21-year-old Jean Sarkozy, who became engaged with Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the Jewish heiress of a family which owns the Darty group, the largest consumer electronics chain in France, intended to convert to Judaism before the marriage. The caricaturist suggested also that the President’s son was “an opportunist who would go far in life."

In the Charlie Hebdo column, which took the form of a "talking" cartoon in the cartoonist’s own hand-writing, Siné wrote : "Jean Sarkozy, worthy son of his father and already a UMP councillor, emerged almost to applause after his court case for not stopping after an accident on his scooter."

"The prosecutor even asked for him to be cleared. You have to remember that the plaintiff was an Arab. And that’s not all. He has just said that he wants to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, who is Jewish, and heir of the founders of Darty. He will go far in life, this boy !"

Jean Sarkozy had appeared in court last month, accused of running his scooter into the back of a car and driving away without giving his name.

The Sarkozy and Darty families threatened to sue the magazine for anti-Semitism.
Philippe Val, the magazine’s director, who criticised the cartoon/column as "peddling a falsehood," asked the cartoonist to retract. He reportedly replied :"I would rather cut off my balls."

Siné was then fired by Val on the ground that the column had "anti-semitic undertones" and could be interpreted as making a link between conversion to Judaism and social success.
“This is neither acceptable nor defendable before a court,” Val stressed.

The International League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA) as well as CRIF, the umbrella group of French Jewish Organizations, expressed their support to the director decision.

Culture Minister Christine Albanel declared that the caricaturist’s cartoon and remarks "echoed clichés and cartoons from another time that one would like to see disappear once for all.”

The cartoonist brought a legal action for defamation against Charlie Hebdo and, "anyone else who suggests that I am an anti-Semite and a shit.”

The staff and contributors of the magazine appeared to be split between those who support the editor, Philippe Val, and those who accuse him of selling out to the "Sarkozy clan."

Jean Sarkozy is the son of President Sarkozy and his Corsican-born first wife, Marie-Dominique Culioli. He has an older brother, Pierre, 23.

August 5, 2008 - News / Updates from our Communities / Ukraine  - Ukrainian Jews attacked - Anti-Semites attacked the local office of the Torah study program "Stars" in Lviv, Ukraine and beat up two teachers last week.

The assailants broke windows and beat the teachers with metal rods, screaming "Kikes, leave Ukraine !" and "Ukraine is occupied by Kikes !" according to the Union of Councils for Jews in the Former Soviet Union (U.C.S.J.).

U.C.J.S. spokesman Meylakh Sheykhet said, "There is no doubt that this is an act of anti-Semitism, and those attackers do not want to see observant Jews meeting at the building. It is possible because some Ukrainian leaders promote xenophobic and anti-Semitic ideas in society."

CULTURE
   
Infolive,tv, August 7 - Second Temple Treasure Discovered In the Hills of Jerusalem - Deep inside of the hills of Jerusalem rests the Kibbutz of Ramat Rachel.

Over the past 50 years many archaeologists have realized that hidden beneath this kibbutz are archaeological treasures beyond one’s imagination - the ruins of the palace of one of the king of Judah, along with relics from the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman era. At this site where space and time are mixed within the earth, another hidden treasure long buried underground has recently resurfaced. Just a few days ago, 15 silver coins dating from the Second Temple period were discovered inside of an ancient pot hidden in a columbarium.

Communicated by the Israel Antiquities Authority Spokesperson, August, 6 - Large olive press discovered in northern Israel - An ancient olive- oil production complex dating from the 6th-7th Centuries CE – one of the largest ever exposed in Israel – was discovered at Ahihud, in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority .   

August 5  - Russian writer, gulag survivor Solzhenitsyn dead at 89 - Moscow - Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author whose books chronicled the horrors of dictator Josef Stalin’s slave labor camps, has died of heart failure, his son said. He was 89.

Through unflinching accounts of the eight years he spent in the Soviet Gulag, Solzhenitsyn’s novels and non fiction works exposed the secret history of the vast prison system that enslaved millions. The accounts riveted his countrymen and earned him years of bitter exile, but international renown.

And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person’s courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire.

CHINA

Jewish World / Sports - Team Israel is primed and ready , August 8 - The opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics will take place on Friday night and five of Israel’s representatives will be competing in the first day of the Games on Saturday.

President Shimon Peres visited the delegation in the Olympic Village on Thursday.

Jerusalem Post - China taps Israeli firm's technology - Celltick Technologies, an Israeli developer of interactive broadcast technology for mobile networks, is providing its new mobile media service to China Unicom, for the broadcast of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.