Billionaire gives free holidays to Israel's rocket town residents

[oberliner]

JERUSALEM (AFP) - An Israeli-Russian billionaire said he had offered a holiday in a Red Sea resort to nearly 2,000 residents of a desert town in southern Israel that regularly comes under Palestinian rocket fire.


"I decided to invite nearly 2,000 Sderot residents -- parents and their children -- to spend a week in Eilat as an expression of my solidarity with the community," businessman Arkady Gaydamak told AFP.

"The people of Sderot are in permanent danger from Qassam rocket fire, and if I can do something for their security or well-being I will do it. It's normal," he added.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061116/wl_mideast_afp/mideastisraelgaza_061116221424

[msmcghee]

1. That's nice but I'm afraid it would just . .

. . give Hamas and Fatah a couple of weeks to stock up on more rockets for their shooting gallery.

[Union Thug]

2. Russian billionaires (like many american ones) are generally criminals.

This guy is no different:

The French authorities examined Falcone's computer records after his arrest and, according to Agence France-Presse, issued an international warrant for the arrest of Arkady Gaydamak, a Russian-born businessman, on December 8, 2000.51 Gaydamak was said to have been one of Falcone's partners in the 1993 arms deal with the Angolan government.52 On December 29, 2000, Agence France-Presse reported that Gaydamak was then in Israel, and that he denied that he was guilty of tax fraud and arms dealing.53

http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/angola/index-04.htm