First Lady Gila Katzav, wife of Israeli President Moshe Katzav, gave her American counterpart, Laura Bush, a letter signed by 13 Members of Knesset demanding the release of Jonathan Pollard from federal prison.
Mrs. Bush, on a visit to the Middle East to support woman’s rights, narrowly averted being attacked by Arabs on a visit to the Temple Mount on Sunday. Israeli police were required to lock arms around the American First Lady in order to prevent an Arab mob from physically attacking her.
One Arab shouted at her, “How dare you come here, and why are you hassling our Moslems? How dare you come in here!”
A CNN broadcast showed an Israeli police officer holding back a man with a thick beard who was shouting at Bush’s entourage. Another guard needed to draw his gun on a boy who got dangerously close to the U.S. President's wife.
Mrs. Bush, who arrived in Israel from a visit to Jordan, has been urging Arab leaders to expand women’s rights in Arab society. "Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression," she said. "It's the right to speak and vote and worship freely."
Ironically, women studying inside the Dome of the Rock, the site of the First and Second Temples, were visibly upset at Bush’s presence in the mosque and waved their fingers disparagingly at her entourage.
Just prior to her visit to the Temple Mount, the two First Ladies spent a few moments together at the Western Wall. Mrs. Bush placed a note in a crevice of the holy site, an undisclosed message which she reportedly wrote on the plane on her way to Israel.
As she approached the Wall, Bush encountered a group of young female demonstrators calling for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Pollard is a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy who risked his career and freedom to pass sensitive security information to Israel. Since his conviction in a plea bargain arrangement in 1986, Pollard has been serving a life sentence in federal prison.
As she entered the wall area, the girls chanted, “Free Pollard Now.” At the same time, a group of men held a similar demonstration in the plaza opposite the Wall.
The letter demanding Pollard’s release that Gila Katzav gave to Laura Bush was initiated by MK Gila Finkelstein (National Religious Party). “We’re happy that Katzav did not act in the manner of [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, and did not forget to hand over the letter,” said Finkelstein.
Following her visit to the Temple Mount, Bush went sight-seeing at the ruins of Hisham’s palace in Jericho, where she reiterated her husband’s call for an independent Palestinian state.
“We're reminded again of what every one of us would want," she said. "What we all want is peace, and the chance that we have right now to have peace, to have a Palestinian state living by a secure state of Israel, both living in democracy, is as close as we've been in a really long time."
The Hamas terror organization, which is attempting to wrest power from the Fatah faction of the PLO in democratic elections for the Palestinian Authority scheduled for July 17, issued a statement condemning the Bush visit. “We see in the visit of Mrs. Bush an attempt to whitewash the face of the United States, after the crimes that the American interrogators had committed when they desecrated the Koran."
Hamas was referring to a discredited Newsweek report, which claimed that U.S. soldiers had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Despite denials of the report’s validity, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had submitted numerous reports to the Pentagon late last week that U.S. personnel had mishandled the Koran.
Mrs. Bush, on a visit to the Middle East to support woman’s rights, narrowly averted being attacked by Arabs on a visit to the Temple Mount on Sunday. Israeli police were required to lock arms around the American First Lady in order to prevent an Arab mob from physically attacking her.
One Arab shouted at her, “How dare you come here, and why are you hassling our Moslems? How dare you come in here!”
A CNN broadcast showed an Israeli police officer holding back a man with a thick beard who was shouting at Bush’s entourage. Another guard needed to draw his gun on a boy who got dangerously close to the U.S. President's wife.
Mrs. Bush, who arrived in Israel from a visit to Jordan, has been urging Arab leaders to expand women’s rights in Arab society. "Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression," she said. "It's the right to speak and vote and worship freely."
Ironically, women studying inside the Dome of the Rock, the site of the First and Second Temples, were visibly upset at Bush’s presence in the mosque and waved their fingers disparagingly at her entourage.
Just prior to her visit to the Temple Mount, the two First Ladies spent a few moments together at the Western Wall. Mrs. Bush placed a note in a crevice of the holy site, an undisclosed message which she reportedly wrote on the plane on her way to Israel.
As she approached the Wall, Bush encountered a group of young female demonstrators calling for the release of Jonathan Pollard. Pollard is a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Navy who risked his career and freedom to pass sensitive security information to Israel. Since his conviction in a plea bargain arrangement in 1986, Pollard has been serving a life sentence in federal prison.
As she entered the wall area, the girls chanted, “Free Pollard Now.” At the same time, a group of men held a similar demonstration in the plaza opposite the Wall.
The letter demanding Pollard’s release that Gila Katzav gave to Laura Bush was initiated by MK Gila Finkelstein (National Religious Party). “We’re happy that Katzav did not act in the manner of [Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon, and did not forget to hand over the letter,” said Finkelstein.
Following her visit to the Temple Mount, Bush went sight-seeing at the ruins of Hisham’s palace in Jericho, where she reiterated her husband’s call for an independent Palestinian state.
“We're reminded again of what every one of us would want," she said. "What we all want is peace, and the chance that we have right now to have peace, to have a Palestinian state living by a secure state of Israel, both living in democracy, is as close as we've been in a really long time."
The Hamas terror organization, which is attempting to wrest power from the Fatah faction of the PLO in democratic elections for the Palestinian Authority scheduled for July 17, issued a statement condemning the Bush visit. “We see in the visit of Mrs. Bush an attempt to whitewash the face of the United States, after the crimes that the American interrogators had committed when they desecrated the Koran."
Hamas was referring to a discredited Newsweek report, which claimed that U.S. soldiers had flushed a copy of the Koran down the toilet at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Despite denials of the report’s validity, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had submitted numerous reports to the Pentagon late last week that U.S. personnel had mishandled the Koran.