With 61 days to go for Israel's general election, at least two opinion polls position the right-of center opposition Likud ahead of its rivals with 32 Knesset seats (out of 120), tripling its present strength, whereas the ruling Kadima, led by foreign minister Tzipi Livni, would drop to 26, with two-thirds of its former voters dropping out.

Defense minister Ehud Barak is leading Labor, Israel's founding party, to virtual eclipse with no more than 8-10 Knesset seats predicted.

In an audio message released Wednesday, Nov. 19, Ayman al-Zahari, al Qaeda's No. 2, said US president-elect Barack Obama was not an ?honorable black American' like Malcolm X but a ?house negro' like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. He urged Muslims to keep up attacks on the ?criminal' US and criticized Obama for ?promising to back Israel.?

The final report of the International Atomic Energy Agency Wednesday, Nov. 19, says the Syrian complex bombed by Israel 14 months ago bore features resembling those of an undeclared nuclear reactor. ?Significant' amounts of man-made uranium particles were found in situ.

DEBKAfile?s military sources stress that the IAEA report attests to one of the most formidable feats of Israel's Mossad in conjunction with the CIA.

DEBKAfile?s military sources report that Israeli government leaders have misread the motives behind Hamas'two-week missile-rocket-mortar assault on Israel as jockeying for better terms when the six-month truce comes up for renewal next month. Their decision to mute Israel's military response to the ongoing violence stems from their misplaced expectation that the attacks will stop once the truce is in the bag.

Israeli intelligence circles challenge this perception.

Fighting poverty and improving public education are no easy tasks, but for young activists living in such a huge city as New York, finding kindred spirits to march with at the next rally can be a challenge in its own right. A group of politically progressive Jewish 20-somethings is trying to make it a little easier.