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Israel sun
IN A SHOW OF SOLIDARITY for missing lAF navigator Ron Arad, over 100 pilots flew over Hod Hasharon, where his family lives. Arad was captured in Lebanon over seven years ago. On the motorized parachute in photo Is written, "We are waiting for Ron."
PLANE BOIVIBING TIED TO TERROR WAVE
By SUSAN BIRNBAUM NEW YORK (JTA)
The Panamanian Jewish community and international law-enforcement officials now believe that last month's bombing of a Panamanian commuter plane, in which 21 people were killed, 12 of them Jewish, was in fact part of a wave of terrorist attacks targeting Jews around the world.
Earlier theories about the explosion linked the attack to the allegedly shady dealings of one of the Jewish passengers on board, Saul Schwartz.
Schwartz reportedly was under investigation by Italian authorities for links to the Colombian-based Med-ellin cocaine cartel.
Last year, Schwartz, a
gold dealer, was kidnapped and later released, according to sources familiar with the Panamanian community. The kidnapping was believed tied to the drug cartel, community sources said.
But "the Jewish community (of Panama) has largely been discounting the initial reports of some possible ties to a Colombian cartel because of the 12 Jews on the plane, including the three Israelis," said Warren Eisenberg, director of the International Council of B'nai B'rith.
Eisenberg, who has been in touch with the Panamanian branch of B'nai B'rith, noted that Schwartz had not been expected to be on that' plane, which was en route from Colon, a commercial free-trade centre, to Panama
City. The route is one commonly taken by Jewish business executives.
The other 11 Jewish pas-sengery^wcre daily commuters on that particular flight, said Eisenberg.
Israel Radio reported that Panamanian authorities had detained one Lebanese and two Iranians for suspected involvement in the July 19 downing of the plane. However, they were released for lack of evidence tying them to the bombing.
Among the other indications pointing to the involvement of Islamic terrorists, said Eisenberg, was the discovery of a body in the wreckage believed to be of Middle Eastern origin that was covered with more explosive material than any other body on the plane.
Eisenberg was among a number of Jewish leaders who attended meetings in Washington at the Organization of American States and at the House of Representatives on terrorist attacks in Latin America and Britain.
The Panamanian ambassador to the United States, Lawrence Chewling Fab-rega, "condemned the bombing" of the plane "and spoke of the loss of life, particularly the number of Jewish casualties," said Eisenberg.
The Panamanian explosion is "now being mentioned as part of a package of terrorist attacks that occurred in the last two weeks," Eisenberg said. He referred to the attacks on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires, and London,
The previous day; a bcJmb' exploded outside the Israeli Consulate in London, injuring 13 people. Early in the morning of July 27, another bomb exploded in front of a Jewish communal building in London, injuring another five people.
After the car was spotted at the consulate in Los Angeles, a stretch of Wil-shire Boulevard, the city's busiest thoroughfare, remained closed to traffic between 6 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Police checked out the car, as well as other cars parked near the Jewish Community Building, two blocks from the consulate.
Following the police investigation, the alert was lifted, said Ido Aharoni, consul for communications and public affairs, who noted that no threats had been received at the consulate or by Israelis living in Los Angeles. "We are alert and main-
taining full security, but otherwise we are conducting business as usual," said Aharoni.
In the second incident on the same day, a bomb threat was received by phone at |he University of Judaisi^^in West Los Angeles. The ina^in building was evacuated while police searched^the premises for about 90 mm-utes before giving the all-clear, said Warren Spry, the university's facilities director.
The following day, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and its adjoining Museum of Tolerance were evacuated for three hours, following two separate but almost simultaneous incidents, according to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the centre's associate dean.
Two oversized vans tried to enter the centre's parking lot around 3:30 p.m., but were turned back and the
L.A. ALERT — Page 6
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"Where are our sons?"
That was the simple question Miriam Baumel asked when she was in Vancouver recently.
Baumel is the mother of Sergeant Zachary Baumel of the Israel Defence Force. Along with First Sergeant Zvi Feldman and Corporal Yehuda Katz, the IDF soldier was reported missing-in-action after a battle in northeastern Lebanon between an Israeli tank unit and a Syrian armored unit.
Although nothing has been heard from the trio since that day — June 11,1982 — Baumel is convinced the young men are still alive.
She and Elli Kagan, an organizer with the Jerusalem-based International Coalition for the Missing Israeli Soldiers, visited Canada recently to generate support for the case.
In an interview with The Bulletin,
Baumel discussed why she believes her son and the two other members of his tank crew are still alive.
The first evidence she cited to JWB to support her contention is that later the same day as the tank battle, Israeli soldiers were seen on Syrian TV being paraded aboard their captured tank through the streets of Damascus, Syria's capital.
Then, in 1984, she and her husband, Yona, received a wax impression of their son's dog tag from an Israeli journalist. The newspaperman had, in turn, received it from the ex-wife of King Hussein of Jordan.
And just last December, the Baumels received one-half of Zachary's dog tag "after it had been delivered to Prime Mini.ster Yitzhak Rabin by a PLO emissary."
The Baumels, Feldmans and
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