News Briefs

General Says Hamas Rocket Can Hit Tel Aviv

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Hamas has a missile that can reach Tel Aviv, according to an Israeli army official.

Gen. Amos Yadlin told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hamas recently test-fired a missile that can hit a target 37 miles away, which is enough to strike Tel Aviv.

The rocket is apparently Iranian-made, and may have been smuggled into the strip.

During last winter's war in Gaza, Hamas fired missiles with a 25-mile range that struck Beersheva.

Settler Arrested for Attacks

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- A West Bank settler was arrested last month for several hate crime attacks against Palestinians and Jews.

Yaakov Teitel, 37, is alleged to have killed two Palestinians.

He also allegedly assembled a package bomb that seriously injured the son of a messianic Jew and set up a pipe bomb near the home of left-wing professor Ze'ev Sternhell.

A Florida native, Teitel made aliyah in 2000, though he moved back and forth between Israel and the United States for the past 20 years, according to Ha'aretz.

A father of four, he resides in the Shvut Rachel outpost in the northern West Bank.

Police said that Teitel has confessed to the 1997 murders of a Palestinian cab driver and a Palestinian shepherd; planting several explosive devices in 2006 and 2007; sending the parcel bomb to the messianic family in Ariel last year; and planting the pipe bomb near the Sternhell home in September 2008.

He has also supported, through leaflets and posters, a shooting attack last summer on a gay and lesbian teen club in Tel Aviv that left two people dead.

But Shin Bet officials told Israeli media that they don't believe Teitel was the shooter.

Teitel was arrested in Jerusalem in a joint police-Shin Bet operation on Oct. 7.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a statement released Sunday evening, said: "There is still among us a minority that is not prepared to accept democracy and are not prepared to accept the rule of law. They do not represent the majority of the nation. They are a small and marginal group, but we have already seen the strength and damage of one murderer."

Hebrew Domains to Be Available

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- All Hebrew Internet domain names will be available next year for the first time.

Domain names will also be available in Mandarin Chinese, Cyrillic and Arabic, according to the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers.

Israeli domain names are written now in Latin script and end in .il.

There are 154,509 domains with that ending registered with the Internet Corporation.