DESTRUCTION OF THE HAZON DAVID SYNAGOGUE Posted by Hebron Press Office, March 31, 2004.

At about 4:00 this morning hundreds of police, soldiers and other security forces arrived at the Hazon David Synagogue outside Kiryat Arba. The gates to Kiryat Arba were locked and the road leading to Hebron was closed. At the time there were about 50 Hebron-Kiryat Arba youth at the site. It took only about 15 minutes until all of them had been forcibly evicted from the area. The security forces then emptied the synagogue of its books, Torah scroll and furniture. At about 5:00 AM an army D9 tractor began destroying the tent, which served as a synagogue for the past three years. (article: www.hebron.com/news/neverlosehope.htm) - (pictures before destruction: www.hebron.com/news/hazondavid.htm) (pictures of destruction: www.hebron.com/news/hdavid.htm) Within an hour the synagogue was gone. A short time later, after the gates were opened, furious Kiryat Arba - Hebron residents began rebuilding the synagogue, placing stone upon stone. Security forces attempted to stop the crowd, but failed. A group of men began worshiping morning prayers, and were surrounded by soldiers. However, the prayer service continued. Synagogue director, Rabbi Ya'akov Eichenstein, speaking to the crowd, promised that the synagogue would be rebuilt, bigger and stronger than the original tent. Hebron leader Noam Arnon, addressing remarks to the security forces who participated in eradicating the shul, asked, "what will you tell your children on Passover eve when they ask, Daddy, how could you destroy a synagogue? How will you explain the meaing of the Exodus from Egypt, allowing us to be a free people, when you are expelling Jews from their land?" You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com To Go To Top

BUILD A MONUMENT TO THE INQUISITION Posted by Michael Freund, March 31, 2004.

Today marks the anniversary of one of the most important events in Jewish history in the past one thousand years. It is an episode that forever altered the destiny of the Jewish people, as well as that of European civilization, giving rise to seismic shifts in spheres as varied as cartography, commerce and mysticism. Scholars are still grappling with its consequences, centuries after it occurred, tracing the effects that it had on the fate of empires and the relations among the world's three great monotheistic religions. And yet, for all of the turmoil it created and the far-reaching changes that came in its wake, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 does not receive the commemoration that it deserves. Jewish history, of course, is awash in tragedy, and if we were to mull over each and every disaster that befell us throughout the millennia, there would be little time left for anything else. But the deportation of the Jews from Spain was so cataclysmic, and its impact throughout the ages so great, that it cannot, and should not, be forgotten. It was over five hundred years ago, on March 31, 1492, that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella signed the infamous edict, giving the Jews of Castile and Aragon several months to make a dire choice: convert or leave. Most of Spain's Jews chose the latter. American historian Howard Morley Sachar has estimated the number of Spain's Jewish exiles at around 100,000, while Hebrew University's Haim Beinart has put the total at 200,000. Others have spoken of even more. The exiles left for Italy, North Africa, and elsewhere, creating illustrious Sephardic communities in places such as Salonika and the Ottoman Empire, with some even reaching the Land of Israel. They and their descendants left their mark on Jewish law and lore, producing some of the greatest codifiers of Judaism, whose rulings are studied and followed until today. Andres Bernaldez, a priest who lived at the time of the expulsion, wrote of the sorrowful manner in which the Jews were forced to leave. "They went out from the lands of their birth, boys and adults, old men and children, on foot and riding on donkeys and other beasts, and in wagons." "They went by the roads and fields," he wrote, "with much labor and misfortune, some collapsing, others getting up, some dying, others giving birth, and others falling ill... and so they went out of Castile." In the popular imagination, the expulsion from Spain is inevitably intertwined, and often confused, with the Spanish Inquisition, even though the latter began before 1492 and continued long afterwards. The Inquisitors, of course, were hunting down "secret Jews", those who clung to their Jewish faith in private even as they professed Catholicism in public. According to the late historian Cecil Roth, the Inquisition's henchmen murdered over 30,000 "secret Jews". Some were burned alive at the stake in front of cheering crowds, while countless others were condemned for heroically preserving Jewish practices. Their descendants now live throughout the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, with many still clinging to memories of a distant Jewish past. The events of the expulsion and the Inquisition were seared into the Jewish people's national consciousness, and yet they receive hardly any notice today. To a certain extent, that is hardly surprising, given the fact that we are living in the aftermath of the Holocaust. It is, perhaps, only natural that previous calamities, from the Crusades to the Chmielnicki massacres, would be overshadowed as a result. And yet, that in no way excuses us from our responsibility to recall the sufferings of our ancestors, and to pass the lessons on to future generations. Israel should build a national monument to the victims of the Inquisition and the Expulsion, one that would memorialize the agony they endured while celebrating their contributions to Jewish culture and tradition. The courage displayed by many of them in clinging to their faith, even under the most difficult and trying of circumstances, is a lesson that young people in this country would surely benefit from learning. It would also serve as an important reminder of the magnitude of the Sephardic contribution to Judaism, both past and present, providing young Israelis with a glimpse of the golden age of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry. And what better way to underline the importance of having a Jewish state, a place of refuge for Jews all over, than to recall the events of 1492? It was precisely because there was no State of Israel back then that the persecution of the Jews could be carried out so effortlessly. At a time of rising anti-Semitism abroad, and political turmoil at home, it might seem incongruous to be focusing on the events of so long ago. But much of our current predicament is the result of the fact that we have for too long ignored, or chosen to overlook, what history has to teach us. Erecting a monument to the victims of 1492, then, would be an act of historical justice not only towards Spain and Portugal's once-thriving Jews, but, ultimately, to ourselves as well. The writer serves as Director of Amishav, a Jerusalem-based group which reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people To Go To Top

CONFESSIONS OF AN ANTI-SEMITE Posted by Marion D.S. Dreyfus, March 31, 2004.

Just struck me that wow - after a decade or so of embarrassed women feeling sheepish that someone famous told women it would be easier to get hit by a terrorist than to get married over 40, it is suddenly very clear that with all the despicable stuff going on in the world courtesy these slime, it is now easier to get married after the cutoff than to get hit by the sh**heels who plague us all day and night. Take that, Gloria. This article was written by Amotz Asa-El and appeared in the Jerusalem Post, March 25, 2004. There was a time when the Jews, while greedy, manipulative, conniving, and stiff necked as ever, at least understood what we wanted from them. Yes, when we fingered them for rejecting our faith, they argued, and when we charged them with killing our savior they denied, but when--to make ourselves better understood--we drew our swords, they mumbled Shema, submitted their necks, and departed from this world to the next. When it came to what mattered--they did as they were told. Thus, when we slaughtered them by the thousands, whether as Crusaders, Cossacks, pogromchicks or Nazis, all the Jews did was pray, cry, and die. Otherwise--they did as they were told. And when we expelled them from places where they had lived for centuries, they might have done their usual numbers--... lobbying, begging, bribing--but at the end... they did as they were told, hastily collecting what belongings they could before moving on with their ringing coins and wretched lives until they would find yet another set of fools who would put up with their usury, blood sucking, and well poisoning. And why would they do otherwise? After all, that was also how they reacted when we enlisted that mother of all Jewish values--law--as a major weapon in our war against the Jews. When the newly Christian Roman Empire actually etched in stone the Jews' inferiority and discrimination... the Jews didn't even lobby, beg, or bribe; instead, they shrugged, said something like shoyn, humbly accepted their role as living proof of another religion's victory over theirs; and did as they were told? [T]here was a time when all this went without saying. Did Germany's Jews ever think of protesting the Nuremberg Laws, not to mention resort to violence as they were being squarely told what was and wasn't legal for them to do? Of course not. They did as they were told. Set against this backdrop, it is truly mind boggling that we, of all good people in the last 2,000 years, have to be the ones born into an era when the Jews suddenly refuse to accept their fate and be blamed, besieged, attacked, and generally do as they are told. How dare they not listen, even when told expressly that their killing of a fine man whose only crime was to kill Jewish kids, mothers, and geriatrics like himself--is "unlawful?" Clearly, the Jews we face are different. What crosses their minds when they ignore pontifications, reprimands, and instructions like those unleashed at them this week by?everyone, from the UN's secretary-general to Her Majesty's foreign secretary? Do they perhaps recall at such a moment how Britain helped trap the Jews in wartime Europe? Clearly, this era's Jews are different. In this era, if you produce a feature film about their betrayal of Jesus,?if you just whisper something against the Jews, a chorus of Abe Foxman types hollers at you from a plethora of Jewish-controlled media. And when you take the Jews to court for daring to raise a wall between them and the bullets everyone knows they deserve, they have the audacity to play melodramatic tricks aimed at stealing the judges' show. At first, when I saw the trial in the Hague I recalled how in 1348, when our ancestors were burying the Black Plague's victims, they put the Jews on trial for having carried out their rabbis' orders to poison our wells. Though the pope of the time protested that accusation, he was fortunately ignored and it did its thing: the mobs blamed, attacked, and slaughtered the Jews. The Jews, for their part, did as they were told. Wait a second: the plague! that's it! They tell us the Madrid Massacre was but the first of many, that terror will soon plague the entire world, that who knows how many more thousands it will kill in train stations, subways, malls, stadiums, airports, skyscrapers, and airplanes, that it will debilitate international traffic, trade, and sports, and that - just as in the 14th century - people will be at a loss to find the causes and cures for their misery. This is it. As they flee terror's knives, bullets and bombs in confusion, panic and despair, we'll pit the masses against the Jews, blaming it all on them, their ancestors, their faith, and their race. This--the people will buy. And once they do, even these stubborn, tricky, arrogant, arms-bearing New Jews, will finally do as they are told. Marion D. S. Dreyfus is a journalist, currently living in Wuchan, China, where she teaches at the University and does a radio talk show. To Go To Top

SAUDI ARABIA AND IRAN DECLARE ECONOMIC WAR ON BUSH ADMINISTRATION Posted by Leo Rennert, March 31, 2004.

What are we to make of OPEC's decision today to go ahead with a 1-million-barrel cut in daily crude production? Oil "experts" are guessing that it may not have much of an impact on motorists in the U.S. because some OPEC members are bound to cheat. But whatever the economic ripple effects of this OPEC move, politically and psychologically it aims a direct hit at the Bush White House. As a starter, take into account that oil prices already are at record peaks and moving higher. If OPEC were interested in stabilizing the oil market (its usual rationale when prices are low) or doing Bush a favor, it would open the spigots to attenuate or roll back price rises that are giving Bush's reelection campaign increasing heartburn. Saudi Arabia and Iran (the two OPEC behemoths) know very well the likely political fallout in the U.S. of their decision to constrict supplies. It's their way of sending a check to the Kerry campaign, which sniffs a big political dividend from skyrocketing gas prices. Since Bush has certified Iran as a member of the axis of evil and is a bit less chummy with the Saudis than previous presidents, they in turn apparently have made a political calculation that "regime change" in Washington is in their interest. So it matters less what OPEC's move will do to oil markets and prices; what matters more is the political intent behind OPEC's decision. They know that Bush's war on terrorism, support of Israel and push for democratic reforms throughout the Middle East threaten their authoritarian hold on power. So since he's not doing them any favors, why should they? Far better to deal themselves in as players in November's election. To Go To Top

ESTABLISHING A EUROPEAN COALITION FOR ISRAEL (ECI) TO COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM AND SUPPORT ISRAEL Posted by Unity Coalition For Israel, March 31, 2004.

Brussels - Christian organizations are preparing to meet the challenge of increased anti-Semitism abroad. Clarence Wagner spoke as liaison from the newly-formed European Coalition for Israel (ECI) to the U.S-based Unity Coalition for Israel. He stated, "It should not be up to the Jewish communities to defend themselves against the recent rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. After centuries of atrocities against the Jews in Europe, Christians should know better." After the recent wave of anti-Semitic violence and anti-Israel propaganda in Europe, leading Christian organizations have decided to coordinate their efforts on a European level. The new Christian initiative to support Israel was launched in Brussels in mid-march and is called ECI - European Coalition for Israel. Behind the new Coalition are the main Christian pro-Israel organizations with activities in Europe, among them Bridges for Peace, Christians for Israel, Christian Friends of Israel and International Christian Embassy Jerusalem. The new European Coalition will partner with the long-established National Unity Coalition for Israel, that combines these leading organizations with more than 200 other pro-Israel Christian and Jewish groups in the United States. Esther Levens, president and founder of the 13-year-old American based Unity Coalition, praised "this new Christian undertaking in Europe" and extended a warm welcome to "ECI, our new European counterpart in supporting Israel and defending Jews against reemerging Muslim inspired hatred. We look forward to continuing to work with all of the organizations involved and with Clarence Wagner, International Director of Bridges for Peace, who will now serve as coordinator between our two coalitions." "The time has come to work together," says the chairman of the new Coalition, Reverend Willem Glashouwer from Christians for Israel International. Last week the Coalition had its official launch in Brussels in connection with a conference organized together with the European Parliament and the European Jewish Congress. The initiative has been well received in Israel and in Jewish communities across Europe. Member of Knesset, Yuri Shtern, (National Union Party) believes "the new coalition could help change the political atmosphere in Europe." He came all the way from Jerusalem to be part of the official launch in Brussels where he was one of the main speakers. Shtern is the co-chairman of the newly formed Knesset Christian Allies Caucus with the same aim of working with Christian groups around the world, including Europe. As the Israeli Caucus started their work, they believed that they would first have to find all the right partner organizations; but to their su! ! rprise the Christians in Europe had already organized. Some would call this purely coincidence, but those who are people of faith would believe something else, says Caucus Director, Josh Reinstein, in Jerusalem. During the two-day conference in Brussels, the participants had the opportunity to watch video clips from the state-controlled Palestinian TV where incitement and hate speech against Jews flourish like never before. After the atrocities of the Holocaust became known to the greater public people seemed shocked as they assured that "they had no idea what had been going on behind their backs." Today we have no excuse. We have read our newspapers and we have seen the video clips where we are again hearing the all too familiar calls to "kill the Jews." This is not a time to keep silent but to speak out, says Glashouwer, making reference to the fact that last week marked the Feast of Purim commemorating the life of Queen Esther as she was called to take a stand with the Jewish people. The new Coalition will primarily work with informing the decision makers in Brussels about the complex realities of the conflict in the Middle East and the situation for the Jewish communities in Europe. A monthly newsletter has been sent out to all members of European Parliament since May of last year. After the newly elected Parliament is in place (elections to the European Parliament are held in June ), the Coalition plans to open up an office and have a full time representative in Brussels. When they do not listen to us anymore, your voice can still be heard, says Deputy Head of Mission Alon Roth-Shir from the Israeli Mission to the European Communities. The new coalition will work together with like-minded groups across Europe, but emphasises that the initiative is genuinely Christian. "No one ever asked us for any favour. We simply do this because we feel we have a moral and spiritual obligation to speak up when we see history repeating itself," says Tomas Sandell, Director of the Coalition. "We don't consider this a political initiative. We are neither rightwing nor leftwing but simply trying to be true to our Bible where we are called to bless the Jewish people and inform others to do the same. There should be no place for anti-Semitism in Europe." "For too long, the Church has remained silent. For too long the Jewish community has had to fight its battles alone. It is time Christian individuals and congregations speak up for the people who gave us the Bible," said Clarence Wagner, International Chairman of Bridges for Peace and Coalition board member. "The Christians of Europe are a sleeping giant who need to be awakened and rise up as a combined positive force for spiritual and moral change in Europe. That includes Europe's stand for Israel and the Jewish people and against anti-Semitism." The National Unity Coalition for Israel was founded in 1991. We are the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel. Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard! To Go To Top

A NEW LOW FOR U.N. COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS Posted by Leo Rennert, March 31, 2004.

This was Ambassador Yaakov Levy's statement On the Question of a Special Sitting concerning Ahmed Yassin, 60th Session of the Commission on Human Rights, March 23, 2004. Mr. Chairperson, distinguished delegates, If you vote to hold this special sitting, it will be the first time in the history of the United Nations that a session is dedicated to lauding, supporting, glorifying a major leader of a terrorist organization. A new low, the worst ever. Every man and woman of conscience, any objective follower of this debate will cringe in horror, recoil in disgust that a UN body devoted to upholding human rights would, in effect, support the terrible wrongs the Hamas, under sheik Yassin, has committed. When Maria Tagilchev, a 14 year old from Netanya, was assassinated by the orders of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the head of the Hamas, in the Dolphinarium bombing in Tel Aviv, 1 June 2001, together with 20 other young people, this Commission did not dedicate a special sitting to debate, resolve or denounce the slaughter of 21 innocent Israeli children. When Perla Hermele, a 79 year old woman from Sweden, was murdered together with 29 other innocent civilians and 140 were wounded while celebrating the religious Passover, seder feast, at the Park Hotel in Netanya on 27 March 2002, on the direct orders of Ahmed Yassin, the OIC did not move for a special sitting. When 11-year-old Galila Bugala was murdered, along with 18 other Israelis, while riding a bus in Jerusalem on 18 June 2002, again on the orders of Ahmed Yassin, the Arab League did not consider it worthy of a special sitting. When 30-year-old Maurice Tubul was blown to pieces along with 9 others in a double suicide bombing at the Ashdod port on 14 March 2004, no one called for a special sitting. When the former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Sergio Vieira de Mello, was assassinated, along with 17 others, by suicide bombers in Baghdad on 19 August 2003, member delegates in this hall did not clamour for a special sitting. When more than 140 people were killed during in sectarian attacks in Iraq on 2 March 2004, A'shura, the holiest day on the Shia calendar, no Arab delegation raised its voice and called for a special sitting of the Commission. The bias and distorted standards manifested in this Commission year after year, and in an increasing manner since the beginning of it deliberations last Friday, once again express themselves in a request for the third consecutive special sitting or session on human rights related to Israel since October 2000. Even though in this time span we have witnessed ghastly acts of brutal terrorism and indiscriminate attacks in which hundreds and thousands of innocents, not necessarily in our region, were slaughtered by terrorists, at no time did the OIC lobby for a special sitting. Distinguished delegates, I ask you to ponder the reason why is a special sitting demanded only in the case when some parties here, most of which are renowned for human rights violations, who can command a majority, constantly desire to place Israel in the dock under one pretext or another? Ahmed Yassin founded the Hamas and led this terrorist radical organization, a central element in the fabric of global terrorism, whose primary defined goal and ideological credo call for a violent Jihad for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of an Islamic Palestine "from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River" through violence, i.e. the elimination of the State of Israel. Yesterday, a Palestinian observer misquoted me as saying that the Palestinian goal was the destruction of Israel. I said nothing of the sort. Others did - like Ahmed Yassin. But why go outside this hall for evidence or take my word for it? Trust your own eyes. Just take a look at the heading on which the Palestinian observer's statement is printed and at the map of "Palestine". The map takes up all the land between Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. There is no place for Israel on a map distributed in this very hall. Yassin, this leading perpetrator of terrorist activity maintains a complex organizational, financial, and operational infrastructure as well as a military apparatus deployed not just in Gaza but throughout the world, supported financially and otherwise by two governments present in this hall, Iran and Syria. Ahmed Yassin personally approved dozens of major suicide bombings within the context of his personal responsibility for Hamas strategies-wholesale suicide terrorism in which hundreds of Israelis were killed, thousands injured. When Hamas, under the leadership of Ahmed Yassin recruited and trained women and young children, armed with suicide belts to be detonated either through their own will or through remote control, this body did not demand a special sitting to condemn the abuse of women and young children by their own people, nor the virulent incitement to hatred and death by Hamas leaders during sermons in mosques, and in children's schools and summer-camps. When Yassin and other leaders of the Hamas sent other children - other children, not their own children of course, and not members of their family - to commit suicide bombings, I didn't see a clamour in this hall to hold a special sitting. Hamas and Yassin produced and launched, sometimes on a daily basis, Kassam rockets against Israeli villages and towns. Nobody condemned them and asked for a special sitting. So Mr. Chairperson, distinguished delegates, When a prominent practitioner of international terrorism like Yassin, a chilling example of a cynical manipulator of the lives of his followers under the guise of a so-called "spiritual leader" distorts lofty religious principles in order to recruit suicide bombers including women and children to embark on so-called "holy war" missions and murder as many Israelis as possible, why is this the only occasion for asking for a special sitting? Distinguished delegates, I strongly urge you to vote against the holding of such a biased special sitting that only serves as another occasion for distorted standards, wild accusations, and inflammatory speech. Do not lend your voice and hand to further reducing and degradation of the credibility of this Commission and the UN as a whole. Thank you. To Go To Top

BETRAYAL IN EGYPT Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 31, 2004.

We are informed by DEBKAfile that, last month the U.S. delivered a packet of documents to Egypt which the U.S. army had seized in Iraq. These documents expose Saddam's deep penetration of Egypt's military by Egyptian traitors at the highest levels. (See (1) below.) This startling information can only be compared to Soviet penetration of West Germany and NATO, exposing all or most of American planning to defend Europe. This is more than damaging to Egypt, given that it also penetrates American communications and technology transferred over the years to Egypt. Keep in mind that the U.S. has furnished Egypt with America's most advanced weapons which would include frequency codes and methods which could defeat U.S. systems all over the globe. I have never believed in or trusted Egypt, no matter what the agreement she signed. I know that Egypt has been gifted $60 Billion in virtually free American military equipment. I have always opined the U.S. State Department looked to Egypt to replace the Shah of Iran and to protect U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia. Meaning that one day they would invade Saudi Arabia, take over the Saudi oil fields - supposedly in America's best interests. That was assuming that Egypt would not swing over to radical Islamic influence which it seems to be doing. The DEBKAfile report (attached) speaks of high ranking Egyptian generals and diplomats on Saddam's payroll. Extend that to mean that whatever Saddam knew, the Russians knew and perhaps the Chinese, North Koreans as well as well as the terrorist organizations he supported. Media people were also on his payroll which means that, not only the Egyptians but the French, Germans, English and even American journalists who would carry the Saddam propaganda line. (This starts to explain the Leftist Media tilt which will be a scandal of a separate nature when their names start to trickle out.) We are told that one Mrs. Abu Zayad handed to the Iraqis the Egyptian Ministry's secret computer codes which could then be downloaded by Iraqi Intel. That would include whatever Egypt knew about America's plans to invade Iraq. America ran war games called "Operation Bright Star" with the Egyptian military annually. Operation Bright Star (which opened the book on U.S. tactics, weapons and codes) was transferred to Saddam and onward to all the terrorist organizations. The attached DEBKAfile report is revealing but it, of course, only touches on the documents, the first set of which was transferred to Egypt - with more on the way. The documents speak of "trusted" Egyptian generals, diplomats, engineers sent to America where the secret doors were virtually opened to them by the State Department and the U.S. military. This also has grave implications for Israel, given that U.S. sources would have been informed about Israel's capabilities (plus or minus) and that information would have been leaked to Saddam. From Saddam it could have easily gone over to the Russians, Iran, Syria, and all the many terrorist groups who Saddam funded, armed, informed and lead. The Arab world is no place where a secret lasts too long. Egypt has been virtually stripped of her secrets and, unfortunately, many of those secrets were American in origin. Suddenly, we see all sorts of those secrets hemorrhaging out into the world. We find Iran is building nuclear weapons, denials notwithstanding. North Korea admits it is building nuclear weapons. Pakistan has admitted that their chief scientist proliferated nuclear technology to Libya, North Korea, Iran and probably to Egypt, Syria and elsewhere. Libya is discovered, based on Kadaffi's own admission that it had all three WMD (Weapons of Mass Death) including NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical) warfare projects in development and no one seemed to know - not even the Israelis. We find the U.N. with its Chairman, Kofi Anan, mired in a scandal during the years of oil for food amounting to Billions upon Billions of dollars in kickbacks, involving the U.N. staff, Saddam, Russia, France, etc. - all cheating, all embezzling, all crooked. Only now is the Media even beginning to give it the attention this horrific scandal deserves. Is this the time when, as in Noah's era, G-d decides that all mankind is too corrupt to live? The penetration of Egypt by Saddam is a breaking story of huge import, given today's arsenals. Given today's Media where lady news anchors knees and thighs seem aimed for centerfold notoriety, I hope they start getting serious about critical news reportage. In any case, there is more to follow (as I think) through the ripple affect of Egypt's hemorrhaging American secrets. If Egypt turns out to be a wide conduit of American secrets, imagine what Saudi Arabia has passed on to the terrorists it has funded. Is William Safire the last of the world's news breakers? Let's hear it from CNN, FOX NEWS, NBC, ABC, BBC, NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, WASHINGTON TIMES, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, et al. They have the funds to set investigative journalism back on its feet, so gents and ladies, let's get at it. ### "Clearing the Decks for Jimmy FROM DEBKA-Net-Weekly 150 Updated by DEBKAfile March 26, 2004, 3:55 PM (http://www.debka.com/doc/weekly.php}. The process of selecting Gemal Jimmy Mubarak to succeed his 76-year old father as Egyptian president is nearly over, notwithstanding Mubarak Sr.'s denials. A book just out in Cairo, "Gemal Mubarak - Revival of National Liberalism," performs an excellent PR job on the incoming president. The book, clearly written to order by Gahad Awda, a member of the ruling party's central committee, introduces young Mubarak's political agenda and his vision for the future of his country. Much less glossy reading matter was handed to President Hosni Mubarak earlier this month. It was put in his hands, gift-wrapped as a special package, ahead of his trip to Washington next month. On May 19, revealed its contents: a large stack of Iraqi intelligence documents that US forces seized in Baghdad and which expose the deep penetration of the Mubarak regime achieved by the deposed Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein. After opening his gift, Mubarak called an emergency session in the presidential palace of his key advisers, intelligence chiefs led by General Omar Suleiman and top military and police commanders. The documents spelled out in detail how Farhan Hassan, Iraq's deputy ambassador to the Arab League in Cairo, turned his office into a center of espionage and recruiting post for Iraqi agents in Egypt, the United States and the Gulf. At the end of the meeting, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly's intelligence sources, Mubarak ordered his security forces to start rounding up all the Egyptians listed in the documents as agents of Hassan's Iraqi network. Some 120 people were picked in the first wave. The package also contained Hassan's reports to Baghdad. Under the codename "Number 3" attested to his ranking in the Iraqi hierarchy, he filed directly to Saddam Hussein. Number 3 described in detail how he bought the loyalty of "several prominent Egyptian journalists", among them popular columnist Sayid Nasser, who were willing to publish articles shooting Saddam's propaganda line. One report outlined Hassan's steps for the recruitment of Shuwaike Abu Zayad, the wife of one of Egypt's top diplomats. She passed to Number 3 all the Egyptian foreign ministry's top-secret cables and documents. As expectations of a US invasion of Iraq mounted in 2002, Mrs. Abu Zayad handed the Iraqis the ministry's secret computer codes. Iraqi intelligence then tapped in from Baghdad and downloaded document after document, including the secrets of US-Egyptian military cooperation and transcripts of conversations between Mubarak and the past and present US defense secretaries, William Cohen and Donald Rumsfeld. The Iraqis also read all the secret reports and documents pertaining to the annual US-Egyptian "Bright Star" military maneuvers. Number 3 was particular fond of boasting to Saddam that he had recruited about 20 Egyptian generals who had been transferred to the reserves and farmed out to administrative jobs in Egypt's military industries. They positively gushed with information on their former units and new jobs. Hassan also enlisted engineers, industrialists and doctors, some of them personal physicians to Egypt's senior military officers and political leaders. Saddam placed extremely high value on information on the health of top Egyptians. Number 3 performed many more services for his master in Baghdad. They included: 1. Thwarting special operations mounted by the Iraqi opposition in Washington and London. In the US capital, according to one of the documents, Hassan recruited Najib Salhi, an Iraqi general and former commander of Iraq's 4th Division who defected to the United States. The general's people collected information in Washington on the activities of Iraqi opposition figures, including Mohammed Chalabi, now a senior member of the Iraqi Governing Council. 2. Using Iraq's Arab League office in Cairo to recruit agents from Eastern Europe. The documents are chock full of the names of Russian and Czech diplomats who served Iraqi intelligence. Number 3 was able to pass along to Baghdad volumes of secret cables and military reports that Moscow sent to or received from its embassies in the Middle East and Gulf. 3. Running a large number of import-export companies registered in Cairo. They were used as fronts for information, goods and money sought by Iraq. 4. Overseeing operations at the Qatar-based al-Jazeera, the biggest and most influential Arab satellite television in the world. Hassan got first look at intelligence gathered by the station and paid its staffers to tout the Iraqi line. This operation was a great success. Hassan's people managed to enlist the services of Faisal al-Qassam, one of the station's best-known broadcasters. Qassam, a Syrian, edits and moderates al Jazeera's popular daily phone-in show, "Counterpoint". Only a few of the dozens of callers who telephone from across the Arab world to discuss current events get on the air. But before every show, Number 3 or one of his minions decided with Qassam on the issue to be discussed and handed him a list of viewers who would call in with the questions they would ask. Those viewers were, of course, Iraqi intelligence agents from across the Arab world who read out the questions dictated from Baghdad. The Egyptian regime therefore has its hands full rolling up Hassan's pro-Saddam network. It is waiting for a second stack of secret Iraqi files to come in from Washington. The president will then be able to finish a thorough clearing-out in time to hand a sparkling clean administration over to his successor. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

GOLDEN CALVES Posted by David Wilder, March 31, 2004.

Last night, after a full night at the Hazon David Synagogue, I was unsure as to whether I should spend another night there. We knew it was only a matter of time until the troops showed up to evict us and obliterate the synagogue, but the exact time and date were still a question mark. I decided to sleep at home. At 4:30 in the morning the phone started ringing and I knew the time had come. Quickly dressing, I made my way downstairs to drive to the site, five minutes away. I met my neighbor, who is also an ambulance driver. Knowing the necessity for emergency medical crews and ambulances at such events, his presence was a necessity. I decided to accompany him, rather than drive myself. However, the road between Hebron and Kiryat Arba had been closed, with the synagogue site being blocked off by an army jeep, parked horizontally in the middle of the street. They wouldn't even let the ambulance through. So, I walked a couple of minutes to the site and arrived just in time to witness the huge army D9 bulldozer start to demolish the tent which housed the synagogue. The fifty or so youth spending the night at the synagogue had been expelled easily at about four o'clock, being forcibly and violently removed. They were taken to Kiryat Arba (across the street - maybe 50 meters away) and locked in. In other words, the gates to Kiryat Arba were closed and locked. The contents of the synagogue, the books, Torah Scroll and furniture, were removed. Then the D9 began its ugly work. And it didn't take too long. Within a few minutes the synagogue was plowed into the ground. A while later, when the gates to Kiryat Arba were opened, and others from Hebron were able to reach the site, everyone immediately started "rebuilding" the synagogue. Rocks which had formed the foundation of the structure were gathered and piled one on top of the other, the beginnings of a low wall, encompassing the area of the synagogue. This was too much for the security forces, which again went to work, attempting to finish what they had started. The goal: destroy the wall! The site was declared a "closed military zone" and all people were ordered to leave, or else? Of course, no one left. Everyone sat down where they were, and a group of men began early morning prayers. The security forces, police, and border police tried to move people out, without success. And then, off and on, for a good part of the day, violence would erupt when the police decided that enough was enough - the "rebuilding" had gone too far. As of this writing, at about 4:00 in the afternoon, the atmosphere has somewhat relaxed. The police know that they are not going to be able to evict everyone - people will just keep coming back, while the Hebron-Kiryat Arba residents know that they will not be able to totally restore the synagogue today, immediately. So, for the time being, everyone is sitting around, waiting to see what the "other side" plans to do. This is one of the sickest situations I have ever witnessed since coming to Israel some 30 years ago. If, in any other country in the world, a government decision brought about the violent annihilation of a synagogue, newspaper headlines would scream "Anti-Semitism" and "Racism." International Jewish organizations would demand immediate restoration and harsh measures to be brought against the perpetrators. Only in the State of Israel, under Ariel Sharon, can a synagogue, built in memory of two Jews murdered by terrorists in the midst of a war, be "justifiably" wiped off the face of the earth, having been declared an "illegal outpost." It is unfathomable. Despite the horror of today's actions, it is incumbent upon us to realize what is actually happening. Only hours ago the IDF Chief of Staff announced that other "illegal outposts" would be uprooted. The army is ready to "carry out what it's required to do." What does this mean? Understand - this does not just refer to "outposts," be they "legal" or "illegal." Ariel Sharon intends to implement such actions throughout all of Gaza and most of Judea and Samaria. He intends to give the orders and expects the army and other security forces to "carry out what it's required to do." To evict people from their homes. To bulldoze entire communities into the ground. To abandon Eretz Yisrael to our enemies - our blood- thirsty next-door neighbors whose only desire is the destruction of the state of Israel. Soldiers are supposed to obey orders. That's what "soldiering" is all about. This morning I saw different kinds of soldiers. I saw officers who were very unhappy with what they had been commanded to do, but had no alternative to carrying out their orders. Then, there were others, who showed little emotion, one way or the other. But there were those who were happy - they smiled, laughed, and enjoyed their evil deed - evicting men, women and children from their synagogue, a place of worship, and their land. They could joke about it, they could make fun of the women, weeping, trying to explain why they could not abandon the synagogue. "Don't you have a synagogue in your neighborhood," one of the women cried out to the soldiers who were dragging her away. These are the ones that really bother me. It is written, that while Moses was still on Mt. Sinai, after having received the Ten Commandments, the Jews far below began worshiping a golden calf. G-d ordered Moses to leave the mount and deal with the people. As Moses reached the bottom of Mt Sinai, he became furious. Not so much due to the fact that the people had built a golden calf and were using it for idol worship. Rather, because there were those who were joyously singing and dancing around the calf. To commit such a crime, that is one thing, but to be happy about it - that is unthinkable. Some commentators explain that this is the reason why Moses threw down and broke the first tablets of the law, because of the merriment expressed by some of the people. Such it is here too. The legitimacy of this morning's actions might be debated. It is a complicated political issue, to which there are different opinions. But to be happy about it? That is, in my opinion, equivalent to dancing around the golden calf. But in this case, there may be many more than one calf. There may be many golden calves. And if there are those who enjoy forcibly evicting people from their homes, we are in a very sad state. I hope and pray that the golden calves will be quickly melted down, and that all people will recognize the right of the Jewish people to their land - to Eretz Yisrael - to ALL of Eretz Yisrael. Then we will all have reason to be joyous - singing and dancing together, not around a golden calf, but in honor of our golden G-d-given land. With blessings from Hebron. David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron (http://www.hebron.org.il). To subscribe to the Hebron list, simply email: hebron_today-subscribe@hebron.org.il You can donate to the Jewish Community of Hebron on the internet: http://www.hebron.org.il/contrib.htm or to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB 105, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il or directly to the The Hebron Fund 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230 hebronfund@aol.com 718-677-6886 To Go To Top

PRESIDENT BUSH PROMOTES TOLERANCE OR WEAKNESS? Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 31, 2004.

The smoke had not yet cleared from the World Trade Center, when Pres. Bush flattered the Islamic Center in Washington, "Islam is a religion of peace." That is one of his themes. He "stresses the sanctity of Muslim lives and property and the innocence of the Muslim masses." He celebrates an Islamic holiday in the White House and quotes from the Qur'an. For another Muslim holiday, he sent greeting cards asserting that Islam promotes "justice, compassion, and personal responsibility." The networks work towards the same end, having kept off the air films of the P.A. Arabs celebrating the World Trade Center bombing spontaneously. On TV, academics implore us to see ourselves as "others" do (David Warren, Commentary, 4/2004, p.21). Corrections: (1) Religion of peace? The founder of Islam led the faithful in a series of wars; mosques all over the Arab world preach holy war; and Arafat's Arabs celebrated US casualties. (2) "Innocence of the Muslim masses?" Polls and demonstrations indicated that most Muslims were pleased with the bombing. (3) Compassion? Not for the victims of suicide bombing that the mosques call for. (4) Personal responsibility? Perhaps the religion does, but the Arabs are fatalistic, and avoid the shame of being wrong by blaming all their problems on others. (5) See ourselves as other do? The Muslims see the US as a society to destroy or seize. Pres. Bush has no business serving as a proselytizer for Islam. He lowers our guard against Islamism. All he should have done is warn Americans not to take out their anger for the World Trade Center attacks and other Arab terrorism on any Arab they see; they must not take the law into their own hands. He should have studied the subject, not misstated it. Hamas perpetrated 38 of the 51 murderers of Americans in Israel and Territories, since Oslo. The P.A. harbors the murderers, names streets after them, and calls them heroes and martyrs. When Israel liquidated the head of Hamas, that, the P.A. condemned! Conclusion: the P.A. considers Hamas as allies (Morton Klein of ZOA, NY Sun, 3/25, letter). Though the alliance has been proved before, it cannot logically be induced from these facts. The P.A. feels it has to express solidarity as against outsiders. It probably also feels it must not oppose Hamas when Hamas has popular support. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

WINNIE MANDELA ON THE KILLING OF SHEIKH YASSIN Posted by Israel Ben-Ami, March 31, 2004.

'Apartheid Israel can be defeated', says Winnie Madikizela-Mandela Mail Guardian, Johannesburg, South Africa, March 26, 2004. Apartheid Israel can be defeated, just as apartheid in South Africa was defeated," Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, former president of the African National Congress Women's League, said on Thursday. Madikizela-Mandela was addressing a meeting arranged by the Palestine Solidarity organisation in Lenasia, Johannesburg, to protest the recent assassination by the Israeli state of the leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. She described the killing of Yassin -- who inspired a campaign of suicide bombings in Israel -- as a "cowardly act that took the life of a brave hero". Madikizela-Mandela said the United States government's response to the killing was "wishy washy," and she criticised the US for not describing Israel as a terrorist state. The Palestinian ambassador to South Africa, Salman Eiherfi, greeted the crowd with a shout of "Viva, Palestine, viva!" Eiherfi said: "They kill our sons, but they will never kill the spirit of our people. Although they have killed Yassin other Yassins have been born." He said the security wall being built by Israel was aimed at "killing the spirit of the Palestinian people, and hope for an independent Palestinian state." He said the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, once described Ariel Sharon, the current prime minister who ordered the assassination of Yassin, as "thirsty for blood". Among the posters that were displayed read: "Ariel Sharon is a mass murderer", "Zionism equals to nazism", "Apartheid Israel has weapons of mass destruction", "What's wrong with the single state solution?" and "Expel Israel from South Africa". Palestine Solidarity chairperson Naazim Adam said the organisation strongly condemned the killing of Yassin. He urged the South African government to show more support for the Palestinians. He said many South African Muslims expected the government to understand the plight of the Palestinians because there were many similarities between apartheid and the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. He said Sharon had turned the Middle East issue into a religious one, but that it was about land. Ebrahim Fakude of Palestine Solidarity described Yassin as a humble man, who internationalised the struggle of the Palestine people. He told the crowd that those who belonged to Hamas did not need to be ashamed as the movement was not terrorist. "We need to be careful not to label Muslims organisations as terrorist because the United States has declared them terrorists." Palestine Solidarity will hold a vigil at the US consulate in Killarney, Johannesburg from noon to 11pm on Friday. - Sapa To Go To Top

THERE IS NEVER AN EXCUSE FOR TERRORISM Posted by Dafna Yee, March 31, 2004.

This is an excerpt from an article written by Patrick Chisholm that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor (www.csmonitor.com/2004/0323/p25s01-coop.html) and Front Page Magazine (FrontPageMag.com), March 24, 2004. It is entitled "An Anti-Semitic Left Hook". One finds pockets of anti-Semitism at anti-globalization rallies, and plenty of it at pro-Palestinian rallies... Palestinian hatred of Israelis, I suspect, is based on more than just land disputes and the policies of Israel. Much of it likely derives from envy. Jews as a whole are among the most able, hard-working, and intelligent people ever to inhabit the earth. Wherever they go they succeed. They turned Israel into an economic powerhouse for its size, and "made the desert bloom." Success breeds envy. Envy breeds hatred. Terrorism is the end result. (Christian Science Monitor) Frankly, this article is perpetrating stereotypes about Jews and "reasons" for anti-Semitism while appearing to be against that very thing. I'm sure the writer thought that he was being very pro-Jewish when he wrote this but that only points out how insidious this line of argument is. (However, let me make it clear that I am not accusing the writer of being an anti-Semite.) The fact is that the terror tactics that are being used against Israelis have nothing to do with either Jewish ethnic qualities (which don't really exist anyway!) or about Israel policies and land disputes. This "stereotype theory" has always been a useful excuse for propaganda but, regardless of whether you are using good or bad qualities, it is still untrue. This concept is also a dangerous argument because if you can believe that all, or even most, Jews share good qualities because of their ethnicity then you can believe with equal fervor that they all share the stereotypical bad ones -- greed, lying, vulgarity ... you name it. It is not an accident that the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" pamphlet has been used so successfully in the Arab countries in their hate campaign along with the "Blood Libel"; they are using the bad stereotypes to specify the targets for terror. But, that doesn't make the bad stereotypes the cause of terror, either. In addition, if the writer's analysis of the cause of terror had merit, why didn't he (or anyone else) try to find ethnic qualities or use poverty/failure as a reason to explain the terror used to kill Spaniards in the train explosion two weeks ago? Or apply the same reasoning to the train explosion in Japan last December if what happened was really the expression of envy leading to hatred leading to terror? People are using terror tactics against the Israelis (and now others as well) because the world has demonstrated very clearly that such tactics bring political dividends! Period! Also, the writer, like so many other people, in attempting to understand the motives of the terrorists, is condoning their use of terror, albeit unwittingly. There is NEVER a reasonable excuse for the use of terror. When you explain and find plausible reasons for terror, you help to perpetrate its use. The use of terror by Arabs (and now copycat groups) is directly related to the Muslim culture's goal of "conquest for Allah by any means at all" and the fact that their mentality has never left the 14th century when the Ottoman Empire was expanding. Modern democracy and concepts of international law are simply words; they have no reality in the feudal theocracies that exist in the Arab countries of the Middle East. The Arabs use anti-Semitic stereotypes (both their own and others -- Hitler's regime has supplied much of them) to gain supporters and to excuse their terror tactics because that has proved successful for aggressors over the centuries, but their hatred of Israel is not due to anything that the Israelis have done or not done. The Arabs want to destroy Israel because they can't rule it as a Muslim country. Very dog-in-the-mangerish ... They didn't want the land but they don't want the Jews to have it even if only the Jews made any good use of it. Use of terror tactics in their attempts to destroy Israel is the first step in their plan for world domination and Christians the world over would be wise not to dismiss it as merely the result of Jew-envy. The Arabs used terror originally because it fit their philosophy and they have escalated its use because they weren't stopped. The only ties that terror has to anti-Semitism in any form is that the world excuses (and too often supports) the use of terror against Jews. (Remember the FBI didn't even classify the explosion at LAX as a terror, just as a "possible hate or work crime" nor did they name the perpetrator a terrorist for nine months)! The same is true for other countries' "investigations" into barbaric acts that cause universal outrage when perpetrated against anyone other than Jews. Much of the money that is supposed to go for "peace" helps to finance terror because people are duped into believing the lie that the Arabs are acting this way because they are "oppressed by the wicked Jews". (In a similar way, many people who were against Fascist Spain supported Communist organizations whose propaganda line also talked about "globalization" and "human rights" to cover up their true political aims.) If terror was the end result of poverty and envy, then why does this explanation only get used in the case when Jews are being targeted? When the Blacks were rioting in the '60s, they did not blow themselves up along with as many White people as possible. (They also did not use their children as human bombs.) Where were the revolts of Black slaves against their White masters if poverty and envy caused people to adopt terror tactics? In South Africa, the most common crime during apartheid was arson and it was always used by the Whites against the Blacks, not the other way around. So, where did "envy and poverty" come in? The Irish have been fighting each other and the British for centuries and neither side ever deliberately targeted innocent civilians. There is not a single instance in history, other than this terror directed against Israel/Jews, where "envy" (or "humiliation") caused this cult atmosphere of hatred to the extent where the perpetrators taught their children that the greatest goal is to be a "martyr" by killing themselves and as many Jews as possible. And there is certainly no instance where so many people accept so many excuses for barbarism. Poverty and oppression do not cause people to revolt (though they are the most common excuse) and they are definitely not the reason that people adopt terror tactics. They are the explanations used by educated, often wealthy people who do not fight themselves, to convince people to fight for a "cause". Ironically, if poverty were the reason for terror, then the Arabs who live in Israel would have less reason for using terror than any others because their standard of living was the highest in the Middle East prior to the Oslo debacle! Claiming that terror comes from envy of the Jews because of their innate "superiority" is just another way of using stererotypes to blame the victim for being victimized. And that is always wrong, no matter how nicely it is phrased. Dafna Yee is director of JWD - Jewish Watch Dog - http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR STRATEGY Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, March 31, 2004.

This was written by Daniel Doron, president of The Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, an independent pro-market policy think tank (www.icsep.org.il). Despite its brilliant tactical victories, Israel has never truly won a war against the Arabs. In fact, Israel has habitually snatched diplomatic defeats out of the jaws of military victory. In part this was due to the lack of an overall strategy, as none of Israel's leaders defined goals for war or the means to achieve them, or to consistently pursue them. A similar fate may befall our present war against terrorism. Despite some great tactical achievements, Israel is not winning this war because it is failing - yet again - to articulate a winning strategy. Israel, with its powerful fighting forces, finds itself at the mercy of even relatively small groups such as Hizbullah, allowing them to seize the initiative and to dictate the terms of engagement. Even against Palestinian terrorism, Israel acts mostly in a haphazard manner, and from a defensive position. The lack of a determined and cohesive military strategy that would seriously damage terrorist organizations by eliminating most of their leadership in one fell swoop (rather than in dribs and drabs - as in the case of Ahmed Yassin and others - inviting continual condemnations and reaction) is hardly surprising. Lack of concerted action, acting only in response to near catastrophes is the typical modus operandi of all Israeli governments in all spheres of their activity. More than in most countries, most of the energies of Israeli politicians are devoted to jostling for power and for the considerable spoils offered by an extremely centralized, government-controlled economy. Little energy remains for what is supposed to be the business of government - the provision of security and other public good. In the case of the military, the problem is confounded not only by the innate difficulties of all huge bureaucratic organizations to quickly adapt to changing circumstances but also by a no-win ethos. Like other institutions, the IDF was subjected to a high degree of politicization stemming back to its Hagana days. Many army leaders, like many in the elite generally, are left of center. They have embraced the utopian assumptions of the peace camp. Many Israeli generals are convinced that terrorism cannot be vanquished by force. They do not bother to explain, to themselves or to others, what is the justification for the enormous outlays Israel spends on its military if it cannot solve military problems, or how their ideological position squares with the many instances where terrorist groups - from the 11th-century Assassins to the armed bands of the 1936-9 Great Arab Revolt - were totally vanquished by military force alone. ISRAEL'S FAILURE to curb terrorism is what makes an exhausted Israeli public grasp at any straw offered by its confused leadership, which believes that a defensive tactic, a wall, is a solution to terrorism. Walls have been and will continue to be breached. So while a wall may significantly reduce the number of terrorist incidents, it cannot prevent - as its supporters readily admit - all terrorist attacks. Worse, it cannot ensure against mega-attacks causing enormous damage and many casualties.Thus strategically, the security fence has very limited usefulness. More disturbingly, it may come at great cost and some unforeseeable consequences, and it might actually reduce Israel's ability to fight terrorism effectively. For the wall to function, it must not only be expensively constructed with sophisticated monitoring devices, but it must also be maintained, even defended, by mobile quick-response units - again, a costly proposition. Perhaps instead of investing heavily in a wall, it would be cheaper and more effective to construct a light fence and invest the savings in more mobile response units, probably achieving better results. A temporary fence would also reduce the objections raised against the wall that can be seen as a precursor of a permanent border. Walls have a tendency to produce a Maginot Line mentality. The Bar-Lev Line was first conceived as a series of outposts meant to serve as trip wires along the Suez Canal, alerting mobile units to repel an Egyptian crossing. Heavy Egyptian shelling forced the Israelis to turn them into heavily fortified strongholds whose protection required the creation of a line and a defensive strategy, which soon overshadowed the concept of mobile defense. This was an important factor in the disastrous beginning of the Yom Kippur War. But the greatest drawback is that the wall punishes the innocent along with the guilty. This is counterproductive. The wall will exacerbate the miserable conditions upon which terrorist organizations thrive. It will assign the Palestinian Arab population to the mercy of a corrupt irredentist leadership that has already proven its ability to transform the desperation it creates into terrorist acts against Israel. Extolling unilateral withdrawal and the separation wall, the writer A. B. Yehoshua explained, "From the moment we withdraw, I don't want to know their names. I do not want any personal relations with them I am not going to perpetrate war crimes for their own sake, but I will use all my force against them (if they attack us)." Apparently even this great liberal does not understand that you cannot lock terrorism behind a wall, threaten brutal responses, and expect quiet. Peace will only come when a new Palestinian leadership, emerging from a civil society, will replace the criminal Palestinian Authority and its terrorist leadership imposed by Oslo. Only then will the Palestinians be able to make some concessions for peace the way Israel is ready to do. Meanwhile, Israel's failure to systematically eliminate terrorism by destroying its organizations and its leadership is, paradoxically, a major obstacle to peace. It causes unnecessary massive loss of life and suffering, not only for Israelis but for the Palestinian Arabs too. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

CNN'S WHITEWASH OF HATE INDOCTRINATION Posted by CAMERA, March 30, 2004.

When Hussam Abdo, a young Palestinian teenager, was caught at an Israeli checkpoint with a suicide belt hidden under his sweater, the efforts of Israeli soldiers to help him safely cut off the belt were broadcast around the world, thanks to the chance presence of an AP cameraman. The New York Times published on its front page a five photo sequence taken from the video, and many other papers gave the story and photos similar prominence. CNN also covered the breaking story, and a few days later returned to the incident with a "spotlight" report ( http://tinyurl.com/2fgr5 ) on Palestinian "children as weapons of war," (Mar. 27, 2004), seeking to understand, as anchor Carol Lin put it, "... what convinces these children that they should strap a belt of explosives to themselves and risk their lives for whatever cause." (After clicking on the link, scroll down most of the way through the transcript to find the segment.) Unfortunately, the segment, reported by CNN's Cairo Bureau Chief, Ben Wedeman, succeeded only in obscuring the issue by never once mentioning the sustained campaign of hatred and incitement against Jews and Israelis that has been a staple of Palestinian newspapers, television, radio, mosques, summer camps and classrooms. Instead of exploring for viewers the horrifically effective Palestinian brainwashing campaign that has convinced so many Palestinians to kill and be killed, CNN in effect blamed Israel for the suicide bombings. Wedeman accomplished this by interviewing only one "expert" on the subject, Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj, who has made a specialty of claiming that Palestinian suicide bombers had been "traumatized" by Israeli occupation. According to Sarraj, who never mentions Palestinian hate indoctrination, the primary reason that children are drawn into suicide bombings is that: "... some of the children are so defiant of their own family because the father figure as a symbol of power, has been destroyed over the last few years, because he could not protect his children. " This, of course, makes it seem that Palestinian parents oppose suicide bombings, and that the bombers defy their parents. But the opposite is often true. For example, the mother of one teenage terrorist was recorded on film personally urging her son to "wage Jihad and come back only as a martyr." (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No. 673, Mar. 4, 2004 http://tinyurl.com/33xo3 ) With his mother's encouragement ringing in his ears, Mohammed Farhat attacked a Jewish seminary, killing five young students before he received his desired "martyrdom" at the hands of Israeli soldiers. His mother later stated in an interview that she "always longed to be the mother of a shahid (martyr) ... let all my sons be shahids." And, as The New York Times reported in covering the Abdo story, this is not an unusual sentiment: "Many Palestinian parents have praised their sons and daughters for carrying out suicide attacks, hailing them as heroes and martyrs." ( Mar. 25, 2004) In addition, Sarraj and CNN also ignore the fact that the prime "father figure" in Palestinian society, Yasir Arafat, extols "shahids," and that the Palestinian media and schools that he directly controls places such terrorists on a pedestal, as the ones "closest to Allah." In an interview on Palestinian television, for example, Arafat glorified child martyrs: "... this child who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a shahid? We are proud of them ..." (PATV, Jan. 15, 2002 cited in Ask for Death, Palestinian Media Watch http://tinyurl.com/2ne3n ) Rather than examining why and how the Palestinian Authority has succeeded in brainwashing parents and kids to hate Jews and Israelis, and to revel in a cult of death, CNN instead fed its viewers Palestinian propaganda, such as Carol Lin's claim that "There is a backlash going on now ... the family of this ... boy are coming out and telling the terrorists to let our children alone." Well, not quite. The boy's mother actually said that he was slightly too young; had those who sent him just waited a few years, everything would have been OK: "Mrs. Abdo, in a view echoed by many others, made clear that she opposed only those suicide attacks carried out by under age bombers. 'Maybe if he is 20, then perhaps I could understand,' she said of her own son. 'At that age, they know what they are doing, they are fighting for their homeland.' " (New York Times, Mar. 26, 2004) CNN does no one any favors by covering up the hate campaign that has so permeated and debased Palestinian society. By making excuses for Palestinian terrorism, CNN only prolongs the suffering of both Palestinians and Israelis. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) monitors the news media for fairness in reporting news about Israel. Their website address is http://www.camera.org To Go To Top

HOPE VERSUS DESPAIR Posted by Judy Lash Balint, March 30, 2004.

According to Israeli journalist Doron Rosenblum, Israel has plunged "into the depths of despair, bereavement and failure." We have, according to the Haaretz writer, deteriorated "willingly and with full awareness, down the slopes of the sewage (sic) of history." Further, he states, Israel is now "one of the most hated, most isolated and most miserable places to be on the planet." (Haaretz Magazine, March 26, 2004) Another prominent Israeli, Labor MK Avram Burg, decided to air his pique in the London Sunday Telegraph (March 28, 2004) in an op ed entitled The Zionist Dream is Doomed. Here, Burg, a former speaker of the Knesset, reiterates a theme he sounded first, last September in the International Herald Tribune. In his London piece, Burg writes: "The countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun." Incredibly, this member of Israel's elite goes on to justify homicide bombers by explaining to the Brits that, "They [Arabs] consign themselves to Allah in our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill their own blood in our restaurants, because they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated." Burg's late father, Yosef -- a long-serving Israeli Cabinet minister -- was my mother's teacher in Leipzig during the 1930s. Life for Jews there was indeed "torture," and our parents were "hungry and humiliated." No Jew resorted to blowing themselves up in restaurants or night clubs, did they Avram? The sheer ignorance and wilfull self delusion displayed by this member of our ruling elite is daunting. Even a cursory examination of some of the more notable bombers illustrates the fallacy of his claims. At least eight suicide bombers of the past three years were students at Al- Najah university in Nablus. Izzadin Masri, the 23-year-old who murdered 15 people at Jerusalem's Sbarro restaurant in 2002 was the son of a prosperous restaurant owner. Ayat Akhras, 18, a straight-A student, months away from graduation and then marriage killed two Israelis outside a supermarket in Kiryat Yovel. The two terrorists from upper middle class British backgrounds who killed three people at the Mike's Place disco on Tel Aviv's beachfront, had never even stepped foot in Israel before -- how could they have felt Israeli "oppression?" As Rohan Gunaratna, a terrorism specialist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland categorically states: "You hear people say that these are all desperate people, or poor people whose families need the money. This is nonsense." "These are rational people, not necessarily uneducated or impoverished," adds retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Todd Stewart, director of the Program for International and Homeland Security at Ohio State University in Columbus. "These operatives, typically men in their early 20s, came from diverse social, economic and work backgrounds. They have at least as much education as the general population where they grew up, and usually more. They are seldom fatherless, friendless, jobless or hopeless." Why does Burg have such trouble accepting the fact that the murderers are motivated by hatred, not humiliation? How have we arrived at the point where some leaders of Israeli society have bought into the propaganda of the enemy? It's a complex cocktail of pyschological and emotional factors on both the individual and national level. Still there's at least one group of Israelis who are actively fighting the culture of despair disseminated by the Burg and Rosenblum crowd. Some long-time immigrants from English-speaking countries are expressing optimism and even gratitude for being in the country. Caroline Glick, an American immigrant and columnist for The Jerusalem Post who served in the Israeli Army during her early years in the country, told a packed and attentive Jerusalem audience recently that there is cause for optimism about the future. Citing positive changes in the region -- from the overthrow and capture of Saddam Hussein to the US's new attitude toward Syria -- an upswing in the local Israeli economy and a history of astonishing achievement building a country in 55 years, Glick's prognosis was diamterically opposed to that of her Israeli journalist colleague. Barbara Scher, another veteran American immigrant and CEO of the Docustar Company, organized an upbeat event in Raanana, just north of Tel Aviv last week Celebrating Life in Israel. Along with the music and food, several immigrants rose to explain why they came and why they are still here. Miserable Rosenblum and despairing Burg should have been there. Judy Lash Balint is author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen), which is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com To Go To Top

ALLAH IS NOT GOD Posted by Jan Willem van der Hoeven, March 30, 2004.

Now we have the proof, and we should be thankful for Dr. Rantisi, Hamas new leader's clarity: that Allah - many times wrongly translated as 'God' - is not the God of the Bible, nor the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Allah is another deity, one who drinks blood as water, who loves jihad and terror, and promises virgins in his so-called paradise to those who kill Jews - the more the better. This Allah has nothing, nothing to do with the God of the Bible. And no matter how many times the muezzins shout out that Allah hu ahbar - 'our Allah is greater' - the God of Israel remains infinitely greater and is the only true and living God and Creator, a God of love to be worshiped as the Creator of us all. So Dr. Rantisi's declaration that Allah (not God!) has declared war on President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon, and thus on the U.S. and on Israel, is strangely revealing. Every intelligent believer already knows that this evil bloodthirsty 'god' has, like Amalek, a war for generations against the only true God and His chosen and elected people. What's new? But let no one, and I repeat - no one - from henceforth translate Allah into God. It's pure nonsense. Allah is the god of terrorists; Hizb'allah, the party of this god. So, if Allah were the same as the only true God, then He would be fighting His own people, the Jews who, in accordance with His eternal promise, He has brought back to His own land as He promised again and again in His word to do. Allah, if he was the only true God, is making war against a President who begins his day with prayer and the reading of the Bible, and who believes in and loves God. How ridiculous can one be? So now President Bush and the whole enlightened and believing western world knows. Allah and his jihad-centered and terrorist-championing religion has declared war on Israel and the U.S. In this fallen and decadent world, these nations are the last strongholds of the Judeo-Christian values inspired by the only true and living God. And these are the strongholds that need to be terrorized into submission to the teaching of ISLAM by the will of this bloodthirsty deity, Allah! When Christians earnestly prayed in England and elsewhere to be delivered during the second world war from the terrible scourge of Nazism - God used the U.S. led Allied forces to bring victory on the Continent over this beastly power. So too, now, we as believers need to earnestly pray that God will again deliver us from this equally dangerous power, and cause leaders to arise, especially in the West, who like Churchill and Roosevelt, will vanquish this Evil Force! May the true God - the God of Israel - have mercy upon us! Jan Willem van der Hoeven id director of the International Christian Zionist Center in Jerusalem. To Go To Top

PLEADING FOR MY LAND Posted by Communaute-Juive-France, March 30, 2004.

Herbet Pagani was a French/Italian poet and singer who was very popular in the 70's. He was communist and Jewish. He eventually became an enthusiastic Zionist and wrote the text below. He read this on November 11th, 1975 on the French radio station Europe 1, after the UN passed a resolution equating Zionism to Racism. I feel this text is as strong as it was in 1975 - Israel's right to exist is still denied and the same liberal left that abandoned Israel in the 70's is doing the same today. - appoline06@yahoo.fr Last Night, I was in the subway when I heard two ladies say: "Did you see these Jews with their stories at the U.N.? What jerks! " It's true. We are jerks. For centuries we have been the world's jerks. It's in our nature, what can you do? Abraham with his single God, Moses with his 10 Commandments, Jesus with his second cheek always available for a second slap, then Freud, Marx, Einstein, all were intruders, revolutionaries, enemies of the Order. Why? Because no order, whatever the century, could satisfy them - since they were always excluded. To call everything in question, to see further, changing the world to change their destiny, such was the destiny of my Ancestors. This is why the defenders of all established orders hate them. *  The anti-Semite of the right blames the Jews for having executed the Bolshevik revolution. It's true: there were many of them, in 1917. *  The anti-Semite of the left blames the Jews for owning Manhattan. It's true: there are many Jewish capitalists. The reason is simple: religion, culture, and the revolutionary ideal on the one hand, stocks and banks on the other, are the only transportable values, the only possible country for those that do not have a country. And now that there is a country, Anti-Semitism reappears from its ashes... - Sorry! From OUR ashes - and it's called anti-Zionism! It used to be applied only to individuals; it is now applied to a country. Israel is a ghetto - Jerusalem is Warsaw... The Nazis who besiege us speak Arabic! And if their crescent is sometimes disguised in a sickle, that's simply for better trapping the liberal leftists of the world. I, who am a Jew of the left, I don't care about a certain left that wants to free all men of the world at the expense of some of them - because I am precisely one of these! I support class struggle, but I also support the right to be different. If the left wants to count me among its members, it cannot exclude my problem. And my problem is that since the Roman deportations of the 1st century after Jesus-Christ, everywhere we went we were expelled, dishonoured, banished, tracked, denounced, crushed, burned and converted by force! Why? Because our religion - i.e. our culture was dangerous. Some examples: *  Judaism was the first to create the Shabbat, the day of God, i.e. the day of weekly mandatory rest. You imagine the joy of the Pharoes, always late in building the next pyramid. *  Judaism prohibits slavery. You can imagine the sympathy of the Romans, the most significant wholesalers of free labour of the Antiquity. * It is said in the Bible: "The earth does not belong to man, but to God." From this sentence a law is created, the automatic handing- over of real-estate every 49 years. You imagine the effect of such a law on the Popes of the Middle Ages and the builders of empires during the Renaissance. It was imperative that the people do not learn the truth. They started by banishing the Bible, then were the libels: walls of defamation that became walls of stone that were called ghettos. Then it was the Inquisition, the flames and later the yellow stars. Auschwitz is only an industrial example of genocide, but there were thousands of hand-made genocides. It would take me three days only to name all the pogroms of Spain, Russia, Poland and North Africa. By continuing to flee and to move, the Jew went everywhere. One extrapolates: he ends up being from nowhere. We are among the people like the welfare child. I don't want to be adopted any more. I don't want for my life to depend on my owners' mood any more. I don't want to be a "citizen-renter" any more. I have enough of knocking at History's doors and waiting until I'm told: "Enter". I enter and I yell! I am at home on earth and on earth I have my land: she was promised to me, she will be mine! What is Zionism? It's reduced to a simple sentence: "Next year in Jerusalem." No, it's not a slogan of the Club Med. It's written in the Bible, the book that has sold more copies and has been misunderstood more than any other book in the world. And this prayer became a roar, a roar that is over 2000 years old, and the fathers of Columbus, Kafka, Proust, Chagall, Marx, Einstein, and even Mr. Kissinger, repeated this sentence, this roar, at least once a year, on Passover. Then, is Zionism equal to Racism? Don't make me laugh! Is "Soft France, dear country of my childhood" ("Douce France, cher pays de mon enfance") a racist anthem? Zionism is the name of a struggle for freedom! In the world, everybody has its Jews. The French have theirs: they are the Breton, Occitans, Corsicans, and the immigrant workers. The Italians have Sicilians; the Americans have their Blacks; the Spaniards their Basques. We, we are EVERYBODY'S Jews. To those that tell me: "And the Palestinians?", I answer: "I am a 2000 year-old Palestinian. I am the oldest oppressed man in the world." I will negotiate with them, but I will not yield my place to them. There's enough space there for two people and two nations. The borders are to be determined together. But the existence of one country cannot in any case exclude the existence of the other. And the political options of a government never called into question the existence of a nation, whatever the nation. Then why Israel? When Israel is out of danger, I will choose among Jews and my Arab neighbours, those who are my brothers by ideas. Today, I must be united with all of my people, even those whom I hate, in the name of this insurmountable enemy: RACISM. Descartes was wrong: "I think, therefore I am" doesn't mean anything. We have been thinking for 5000 years, and we still don't exist! I defend myself, therefore I am! This was distributed by the Jewish Community of France (Communaute-Juive-France-owner@yahoogroupes.fr). Their website address is http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Communaute-Juive-France/ To Go To Top

NEVER LOSE HOPE Posted by David Wilder, March 30, 2004.

A few days ago, journalist David Bedin put out a press release that says as follows: "According to reliable sources, Sharon is preparing to announce in Washington his willingness to remain in three 'settlement blocks' only: Gush Etzion, the Ariel block, and Ma'ale Adumim. The significance of this is that Israel will abandon the rest of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, including the southern Hebron hills communities and Hebron." Yesterday Sharon declared that if his disengagement proposal should not pass a cabinet vote, he would reshuffle his government, forming an alternative government within one day. Today's Ma'ariv daily newspaper headline heralded, "Arbel (Prosecutor) leak torpedoed national unity government: PM reached agreement with Labor on a national unity government but talks were frozen when Arbel recommended indicting Sharon." The story (http://www.maarivinternational.com) revealed that Sharon offered Labor six ministerial posts, including the foreign ministry, (for Shimon Peres). Tonight, at the Likud convention, Sharon proposed a public referendum to determine the fate of his "disengagement plan," with the participants being 200,000 Likud members in Israel. In the meantime, preparations for the April 14 Bush-Sharon meeting in Washington continue. This week three top American diplomats, Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs William Burns, Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, and Eliot Abrams, a senior director of National Security Council who is responsible for Middle East affairs, are scheduled to arrive in Israel for top-level meetings concerning Sharon's proposals and continued "progress" of the "roadmap." Ariel Sharon is preparing them a hearty welcome. How better a way to greet them than by handing them the ruins of a destroyed "illegal outpost" on a silver platter. That is precisely what Sharon is planning on doing. On the outskirts of Kiryat Arba, just outside the west gate, which leads down into the city of Hebron, is a 20 square meter tent. This tent was pitched almost three years ago, following the murder of two men, David Cohen and Hezi Mualem. Cohen was killed while sitting in his car, next to the Kiryat Arba gate. That evening, the Kiryat Arba town council held a spontaneous demonstration not far from the site of the murder. Terrorists opened fire on the group, killing Mualem and injuring another man. Thus the name, Hazon David (which literally means "David's vision") - Hazon for Hezi Mualem and David for David Cohen. Since its inception the tent has served as a synagogue, a place of worship, and a place of Torah study. Classes are frequently conducted for youth and adults, in Hebrew and Russian. The tent is small, and bothers no one. Well, almost no one. No one, except the Americans and Ariel Sharon. Hazon David was declared to be "an illegal outpost" and orders were issued for its destruction. Over the past few months, numerous appeals to Israeli courts delayed execution of the decree. Recently Deputy Defense Minister Ze'ev Baum visited the site. Worshipers and others penned letters to various government ministers, including Defense minister Shaul Mufaz and the Prime Minister. Seemingly to no avail. Last week Supreme Court judge Moshe Heshin rejected a request for a second Supreme Court hearing before an extended panel. That ruling paved the way for implementation of Sharon's orders: Destroy the synagogue! Last night, following a farewell party for the Nahal Brigade officers and soldiers, who have served in Hebron for the past seven months, word leaked out that tonight's the night - the forces are on their way to demolish the tent synagogue. Emergency calls went out to Kiryat Arba-Hebron residents, and within a short time hundreds of people, adults and youth, were swarming towards Hazon David. There, they met some of the same officers they had only minutes before honored and thanked, at the farewell gathering. The long night-the long wait, began. Officers and soldiers, police and other security forces came and left. But the civilians didn't budge. "We are staying," they announced. "We will not abandon our synagogue, we will not abandon our city, we will not abandon our land." "And be well aware, even if you should succeed in knocking down this tent which has served us for the past three years, we will pitch it again, and next time it will be bigger and stronger. You will not defeat us!" Senior officers at the site were surprised. They obviously weren't prepared for such massive resistance, expecting to be able to tear down the tent without any effort. As a result of the hundreds of demonstrators, they backed down, and the eviction was postponed. For how long, we still don't know. People spent the entire night at the synagogue, and after a couple of hours sleep, returned to the site in the late morning. Rumors of impending expulsion brought hundreds out again, in the early afternoon. Most people will probably spend the night there tonight, and for as long as necessary, until Sharon announces an end to the madness. This is the beginning of the price Ariel Sharon is willing to pay. The question is, for what. According to most sources, George W. Bush opposes the unilateral disengagement from Gaza and several Samaria communities. Most probably Ariel Sharon is hoping that continued implementation of left-wing policies will delay his indictment for accepting bribes and other alleged crimes he is accused of. However, this will not help him. The decision to press charges against him, now in the hands of the new Israeli attorney general, is only weeks away. Ariel Sharon, the politician, will then be an item of the past. Hebron-Kiryat Arba residents are determined to stick it out, as long as it takes, to prevent destruction of the memorial synagogue, in memory of David Cohen and Hezi Mualem. Destruction of the site will be a victory for terror and the very opposite of "David's vision" the victory of Zionism, the triumph of good over evil. And should the worst come to pass, we will not give up. The synagogue will be rebuilt, an eternal remembrance to two brave men who were cut down there by Arab terrorists. We will never lose hope. With blessings from Hebron for a happy Passover. David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron (http://www.hebron.org.il). To subscribe to the Hebron list, simply email: hebron_today-subscribe@hebron.org.il You can donate to the Jewish Community of Hebron on the internet: http://www.hebron.org.il/contrib.htm or to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB 105, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il or directly to the The Hebron Fund 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230 hebronfund@aol.com 718-677-6886 To Go To Top

AZA, AZA, LET-US STAY Posted by Evelyn Hayes, March 30, 2004.

Written as I watched the youth of Aza arrive at PM's residence in Jerusalem, having marched from Aza, joined by ten thousand. Aza, Aza, in Judah's domain, a Jewish settled coastal plain where King Solomon reigned, Aza, Aza, attacked by Macedonians, palestinified by Romans, Imperialized by Hadrian, Napoleon, the British the Husseinis, The Egyptians including Egyptian Arafat al-Husseini. Aza, Aza, recaptured by Yochanan, rebuilt. Aza, Aza, largest Jewish community before Muslim invasion. Aza, Aza, largest producer of geraniums, tomatoes, cucumbers, pansies, mums, Azas tzaddiks enriched Jewish hearts and minds: Kol Ribbon Olem; Heshed L'Abraham. Aza, Aza, the palestinians were just passing through. We still sing your songs, Kol Ribbon Olem. We still study your midos, Heshed l'Abraham We still keep abandoned Yamit within a Magen David shaped house of prayer that marks the place- Jewish! Jewish Aza has survived swords and artillery; Jewish Azans have survived passing armies. Terrorist rockets miss their mark. Will Aza survive Jews who deny themselves and that there were Jews in Aza before there were Romans in Rome, Mohammed in Medina. Napoleon in France, Britain unilaterally dividing Balfour's Mandate for the Jews into another Arab state? Will Sharon unilaterally destroy what has survived because he has destroyed himself? Will the self-destruction destroy the Jewish state, the democratic state, morality, kindness, the Jews again? Aza, Aza, Eretz HaChodesh blessed with sunshine, sea breeze, a new fertility, an earnest utility where peace is in the plowshares, greenhouses, the barefoot smiling children. No more palestinians, invaders, Egyptians, Romans, war. A promised land restored and restoring. Lettuce, spinach, eggplants, onions, mushrooms. Aza. Aza, Jewish children at their play; Farmers at their work. Balmy sea. A southern boundary. Bedouins in their tents bent on staying safe in Aza, Israel. Let pan-jihad go away. The Azan Jews choose plowshares and would war no more. Spear the Gazan terrorists who war by tunnel, rocketing land, air and sea. Aza. Aza. So full of Jewish history; So replete with Jewish morality. In Aza, they know not a fear. Yet, the fearful liberal Jew would sacrifice their fate to fiends, disregarding that friendship with those who hate them has been deadly in Haifa and Tel Aviv, Afula and Rishon L'Tzion. . If you've been to Jewish Aza, you would know that there are cities, shopping centers, pizza shops, Alpha Romeros parked beside the IDF transports, a promising future that has survived the age old wraths of rampaging hordes. Without Aza, the jihad tunnels will reach Yad Mordechai, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beersheva, Tel Aviv. Spear the warlords. Spare Jewish Aza. It would be against the wisdom of Solomon and the best interests of Israel to chase Jews away again. It would unbounty beauty and feed the beast. Let our people stay. Evelyn Hayes is author of "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, us, because their hearts were softened for more." and just released sequel, "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." To Go To Top

DIVERTING THE BLAME FOR 9/11 Posted by Onkar Ghate, March 30, 2004.

The squabbling and finger-pointing surrounding the 9/11 commission only serve to obscure the fundamental lesson of that horrific day. Whatever errors or incompetence on the part of a particular individual or intelligence agency, what made September 11 possible was a failure of policy. Our government, whether controlled by Democrat or Republican, had for decades conducted an accommodating, range-of-the-moment, unprincipled foreign policy. September 11 was not the first time America was attacked by Islamic fundamentalists engaged in "holy war" against us. In 1979 theocratic Iran--which has spearheaded the "Islamic Revolution"--stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held 54 Americans hostage for over a year. In 1983 the Syrian- and Iranian-backed group Hezbollah bombed a U.S. marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 servicemen while they slept; the explosives came from Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. In 1998 al-Qaeda blew up the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 individuals. In 2000 al-Qaeda bombed the USS Cole in Yemen, killing 17 sailors. So we already knew that al-Qaeda was actively engaged in attacking Americans. We even had evidence that agents connected to al-Qaeda had been responsible for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. And we knew in 1996 that bin Laden had made an overt declaration of war against the "Satan" America. But how did America react? Did our government adopt a principled approach and identify the fact that we were faced with a deadly threat from an ideological foe? Did we launch systematic counterattacks to wipe out such enemy organizations as al-Qaeda, Hezbollah and Fatah? Did we seek to eliminate enemy states like Iran? No--our responses were short-sighted and self-contradictory. To cite only a few of depressingly many examples: we initially expelled Iranian diplomats--but later sought an appeasing rapprochement with that ayatollah-led government. We intermittently cut off trade with Iran--but secretly negotiated weapons-for-hostages deals. When Israel had the courage to enter Lebanon in 1982 to destroy the PLO, we refused to uncompromisingly support our ally and instead brokered the killers' release. And with respect to al-Qaeda, we dropped a perfunctory bomb or two on one of its suspected camps, while our compliant diplomats waited for al-Qaeda's terrorist attacks to fade from the headlines. At home we treated our attackers as if they were isolated criminals rather than soldiers engaged in battle against us. In 1941 we did not attempt to indict the Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor--we declared war on the source. Yet we spent millions trying to indict specific terrorists--while we ignored their masters. Despite emphatic pronouncements from Islamic leaders about a "jihad" against America, our political leaders failed to grasp the ideology that seeks our destruction. This left them unable to target that enemy's armed combatants--in Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia--and the governments that assist them. Is it any wonder then that, although our intelligence agencies prevented many planned attacks, they could not prevent them all? Tragically, little has changed since September 11. Our government's actions remain hopelessly unprincipled. Despite the Bush administration's rhetoric about ending states that sponsor terrorism, President Bush has left the most dangerous of these--Iran--untouched, while his officials periodically seek "rapprochement" and work with Iranian officials to foster "religious values" at U.N. conferences. The attack on Iraq, though capable of justification, was hardly a priority in our war against militant Islam. And because the war was waged with no view to the long term, Iraq is in danger of slipping into the hands of Shiite clerics and other militant Islamic leaders--and thus of becoming even more of a threat than it was. Moreover, when Bush does strike at a militant Islamic regime, he does so only haltingly. He stresses that the conflict is not ideological and, morally unsure of his right to protect American lives by force, cowers before any sign of world disapproval over civilian casualties. The result was that he reined in the military forces in Afghanistan and allowed numerous Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters to escape. Elsewhere in the Mideast, Bush continues to play by a double standard. His administration scolds Israel for killing its own bin Laden, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, while Bush pretends that the Palestinians and Islamic militants attacking Israel--and who have attacked Americans in the past and will no doubt try again in the future--are, somehow, different from al-Qaeda and deserving of a "peace" plan. And now, both Republicans and Democrats wage a domestic war, senselessly and desperately trying to find a fall guy for September 11. Thus, too unprincipled to identify the enemy and wage all-out war, but not yet completely blind to their own ineffectualness, leaders from both parties resignedly admit that we're in for a "long war" and that there will be more terrorists attacks on U.S. soil. The lesson to learn from September 11 is this. We must root out the amoral, pragmatic expediency that dominates our government's foreign policy and replace it with the principles of self-interest. Onkar Ghate, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a senior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead." Send comments to reaction@aynrand.org To Go To Top

THOMAS FRIEDMAN AND THE SIN OF HUMILIATION Posted by Naomi Ragen, March 30, 2004.

I wish I'd written the piece below, but I didn't. But it is certainly time someone pierced the incredibly bloated and undeserved reputation of this journalist who is respected despite his having been proved totally wrong in almost everything he's written and predicted. This was written by Samuel Z. Anvil. Thomas Friedman, one of the resident always-politically-correct pundits at the New York Times, has been chanting the mantra of "terrorism is a result of our humiliation of the Islamic world" for so long that it's become yet another of those liberal "truths" that are so convincing only until you actually think about them. The gist of Friedman's chant is this: we Westerners have been beating the Moslems at everything for these last centuries, and now we've left them to wallow in their utterly failed backward poverty-stricken dictatorships, seething in humiliation - is it any wonder they're crashing airliners into skyscrapers and blowing themselves (and us!) up in buses and trains? Wouldn't you do the same? Poor fellows. It's all our fault, you see, according to the sage from 42nd Street. We've embarrassed them by not being losers like they are, and now we're getting what we deserve. Well, there are two subtle points about humiliation that Thomas has missed. First, failure doesn't have to lead to humiliation. Take Thomas himself as an example. For years he's been analyzing the Middle East and the world situation, as respected liberal columnists tend to do, and he hasn't gotten anything right, ever. Remember that Saudi peace plan he more or less invented and waved around the world in 2001, assuring everybody that here, finally, his good friend Prince whatever-his-name-is had finally come to terms with the Jews' right to breathe the same air as everybody else? Do you remember too what happened next, on the very day of the Arab summit that was supposed to adopt that wonderful made-in-Manhattan peace plan? The Passover Seder Massacre, that's what happened. Some peace plan. And all of Tom's deep incisive commentary and analysis about the quagmire of Iraq, and the fighting spirit of the Taliban? And all of his reasoned, learned advice about how to wean North Korea and Iran from their nuclear toys? All nonsense, every column, every word. Events proved him wrong about everything, every time. And yet, despite being a total failure as an analyst, Thomas isn't feeling the least bit humiliated. No, he's still pounding away at his word processor, still going to cocktail parties and proudly pontificating to the wide-eyed cute little wannabe journalists and the oh-so sophisticated "cycle of violence" groupies. And second, did Thomas ever notice that the word "humiliation" is closely related to the world "humility?" That's what humiliation really means, the humiliated party humbly figures out that maybe he's not God's gift to humanity after all. Maybe he's just a pathetic little screw-up who should get his act together and start behaving like a human being. By that meaning, Moslems aren't humiliated at all. What they are is mad. Mad that their societies are still spinning their wheels in the third world mud. Mad that young men have nothing to look forward to except emigration. Mad that young women have nothing to look forward to but a life somewhere between a camel's and a donkey's. Mad that everybody else knows the truth. If there was any shred of humiliation among them, they would have the humility to admit that their societies' problems are of their own making and that they alone, Moslems, had better get cracking to fix what they themselves have screwed up. But they're not being at all humble. Instead, they're waving their swords over their heads, straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, pounding their chests like King Kong, making all sorts of awful noises and wild threats, demanding martyrdom for us all. And their cheerleaders, Thomas Friedman and his friends at CNN and BBC and Reuters, are dancing on the sidelines and waving the "Noble Savage" flag, urging them on and finding excuses for every atrocity they commit. Well, I for one have faith that one day they're going to run out of oil, and then there will be no more money to buy expensive cars and cheap journalists. Naomi Ragen is an American-born novelist and columnist, who has lived in Jerusalem since 1971. Her website address is http://www.NaomiRagen.com To Go To Top

JEWS WHO FLED ARAB LANDS NOW PRESS THEIR CAUSE Posted by CAMERA, March 29, 2004.

"In its zeal and need to address the plight of Palestinians, the world allowed the plight of the Jewish refugees to fall by the wayside," Stanley A. Urman of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries recently explained. "Jews who fled Arab lands now press their cause; Refugees' advocates link issue to Palestinians' claims on Israel" by San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Jack Epstein, highlights the much overlooked plight of Jewish refugees from Arab lands. Regina Bublil Waldman, a Libya-born Jew, still recalls the minute details of the day 37 years ago when her homeland turned against her. The ordeal began in June of 1967, after the then-19-year-old translator for a British engineering firm in Tripoli received a phone call at work from her frantic mother. "Don't come home. There's a mob outside the house," Waldman's mother told her. "Find a place to hide." Waldman, who now lives in San Rafael, is a Mizrahi Jew, one of nearly 856, 000 Jews who fled Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen in an exodus that began after the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 and ended about 1970. Today, only an estimated 5,000 Jews remain in Arab lands, most of them in Morocco. In recent months, independent Jewish groups have begun a concerted effort on behalf of these "forgotten refugees," who they say were ignored by the global community after being absorbed by other countries -- mostly Israel -- while Palestinian refugees captured worldwide sympathy for living in squalid camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip. According to the United Nations, 726,000 Palestinians were forced out or voluntarily left the new state of Israel. "In its zeal and need to address the plight of Palestinians, the world allowed the plight of the Jewish refugees to fall by the wayside," said Stanley A. Urman, executive director of Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, a New York-based coalition of 27 Jewish organizations. The campaign for justice for the Mizrahi Jews has strong support in Congress. On Monday, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., is scheduled to introduce a resolution that would instruct U.S. envoys to raise the Jewish refugee issue every time the Palestinian refugee issue is raised as "an integral part of any comprehensive peace." "The senator believes it's important to move forward in the peace negotiations by considering all refugees, whether Christian, Jewish or Palestinian," said Robert Traynham, Santorum's communications director. Last year, House Resolution 311 called on the international community to recognize Jewish refugees who "fled Arab countries because they faced a campaign of ethnic cleansing and were forced to leave behind land, private homes, personal effects, businesses, community assets and thousands of years of their Jewish heritage and history." The World Organization of Jews from Arab Countries, a group affiliated with Urman's coalition, estimates the value of the confiscated property at more than $100 billion. The attacks against Waldman's family -- her father's warehouse, where he sold equipment to oil companies, was torched -- and on Libya's estimated 3,750 to 6,000 Jews began soon after the opening salvo of what is known as the Six Day War in Israel and "the setback" in the Arab world. Synagogues, homes and businesses were looted and burned, and more than 100 Jews were killed. Waldman hid out for a month at her employer's home while her father maneuvered to get the family out of Libya -- tricky business for people without passports. Most Libyan Jews had been denied citizenship even though many could trace their descendants back to the third century B.C. A month later, the entire Jewish community -- including Waldman, her parents, grandparents, an uncle and a brother -- was expelled by King Idris I. After a harrowing ride to the Tripoli airport -- her British boss rescued the family when the bus driver tried to burn the vehicle -- the family flew to Italy, where most still live today. "We lost all our property," said Waldman, a longtime Bay Area human rights activist and member of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA), a San Francisco group that sends speakers throughout the United States to speak about the plight of Jews from Arab countries. "My father fell into a deep depression from not being the family breadwinner in Italy. He became suicidal." Both Waldman and Urman insist that the campaign for Jewish refugees is not about diminishing Palestinians' claim for redress, but about raising awareness that Arab governments drove them out of their homelands. Jews were stripped of their citizenship in Egypt, Iraq, Algeria and Libya; detained or arrested in Algeria, Yemen, Syria, Libya, Iraq and Egypt; deprived of employment by government decrees in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Algeria, and had their property confiscated in all of the Arab lands except Morocco, according to Justice for Jews from Arab Countries. Anti-Jewish riots were widespread. Emily Gottreich, vice chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley, considers the 1967 war between Israel and its Arab neighbors the "turning point" in sparking anti-Jewish sentiment, not the creation of Israel 19 years previously. "There was so much emotion at that time in the Arab world," she said. "That's when things became very untenable for Jews in the Middle East." Gottreich also argues that hostility toward Jews was a product of the community's close relationships to the region's then-colonial powers. "It's not an Arab-Jewish thing as much as what happened after the settling of the dust once the European powers left," she said. "In Algeria, for example, most Jews left en masse when the French pulled out." But Yitzhak Santis, director of Middle East Affairs of the San Francisco-based Jewish Community Relations Council, disagrees. He says there is proof of premeditated collusion among Arab governments to force Jews out of their countries once Israel was created. "We found minutes of a meeting of the political committee of the Arab League in 1948 where they discussed what to do with their Jewish populations if Israel was formed," Santis said. But like most historical events in the Middle East, there are divergent interpretations. "There is no evidence that there was a master plan on the part of Arab governments to expel Jews. There are no archives. Arab governments were all tyrannies that were closed," said Asad Abukalil, a Lebanon-born professor of political science at California State University at Stanislaus. "Hostility (against Jews) varied from state to state. In Morocco they could stay. In Iraq, they were stripped of their citizenship en masse. In Lebanon, where I grew up, there was no government program against Jews." While the debate rages, advocates for Jewish refugees are trying to push the issue on the agenda of a final Mideast peace agreement "as a matter of law and equity," said Urman, a former Canadian reporter. Some Palestinian activists find this troubling. "There should be no linkage of one refugee problem with another," said Jess Khanem, a member of the executive committee of the Palestinian Right to Return Coalition and president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in San Francisco. "It's not a Palestinian problem or issue. If any person feels wrongfully displaced, that needs to be addressed with their home country." Meanwhile, most Middle East observers agree that the fall of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and the recent transformation of Libya's Moammar Khadafy have boosted the cause of Jews from Arab countries. The U.S. occupation of Iraq led to an interim constitution this month that calls for the Iraqi government to make restitution to those who lost citizenship and property for "political, racial or sectarian reasons." Khadafy, who wants to restore diplomatic relations with the United States, sent emissaries to Vienna in January to discuss with Israeli officials the possibility of visits by Jews of Libyan descent, according to the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. Al-Siyasa, a Kuwaiti daily, reported that Khadafy is also considering compensation for Libyan Jews whose properties were confiscated. "After years of stonewalling, to have two Muslim countries say it is right to compensate is a tremendous change," said Urman. In Iraq, the estimated 135,000-member Jewish community was once one of the largest in the Arab world. But after the creation of Israel in 1948, government edicts removed Jews from public service, and barred them from entering universities, traveling abroad or buying and selling property. Such harsh laws caused more than 100,000 Jews to emigrate to Israel in 1951 in an airlift known as Operation Ezra and Nehemiah. That same year, the Iraqi parliament passed the Deprivation of Stateless Jews of Their Property Law aimed at Jews who had renounced their citizenship, a pre-condition for emigration. A series of bombings of Jewish institutions and more laws that limited their freedom persuaded the remaining 6,000 Iraqi Jews to leave in the early 1950s. As a result, an estimated 300,000 Iraqi Jews and their descendants now live in Israel and 40,000 elsewhere. One is Emeryville attorney Semha Alwaya, who left Baghdad with her parents in 1951 when she was just 6 months old. She is a member of a prominent Iraqi family -- her great-uncle was the finance minister, and her grandfather served as director of Bedouin affairs under the British mandate (1917 to 1932). After leaving Iraq, her family lived in transit camps in Israel for two years before moving to Iran for 12 years, where Alwaya's father sold insurance and her younger brother Albert was born. The family later settled in Israel. "We lost our home and our bank accounts and were sent out with just 20 dinars and the clothes on our back," said Alwaya, who is also a JIMENA member. Alwaya, who has taught Arabic at UC Berkeley and Stanford, says she has no plan to reclaim her family home in Iraq. "We are not interested in economics, but justice -- you can't put a price on that," she said. However, Iraqi Jews who do want to reclaim their properties may have a difficult time. In July, Ayatollah Kadim al-Haeri, a Shiite cleric who lives in Iran, issued a fatwa demanding death for Jews who buy property in Iraq. In Baghdad and Fallujah, reporters have seen signs that warn Iraqis not to "stab your fellow Iraqis in the heart" by selling land to "al Yahud" - "the Jews." "Credible or not, there has been a lot of press in the Arab world of Iraqi Jews returning on American tanks to buy up property," said Abukalil. "If they are seen as an appendage of the American occupation, it will hurt their cause." Perhaps that explains the language in the interim constitution that requires the Iraqi government to "restore residents to their homes and property, or, where this is unfeasible, provide just compensation (for) the injustice caused by the previous regime's practice." Jewish groups hope the wording isn't a device for limiting restitution to abuses committed only under Saddam Hussein. In Baghdad, Ibrahim Jaffari, one of nine rotating presidents of the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, tried to assuage those fears: "Religion does not matter in the new Iraq. Iraq now allows all people of Iraqi origin to return, be they Muslims, Jews or Christians." Hamid al-Kifaey, a spokesman for the Governing Council, insisted that future Iraqi governments will not amend the constitution to discriminate against Jews once U.S. occupation ends. "Whether or not (U.S. administrator of Iraq Paul) Bremer goes, this law will stand," he said. "We'll give them (Jews) their rights." Meanwhile, Waldman and Alwaya are waiting for other Arab governments to acknowledge that they too were human rights violators. "The Japanese apologized for the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Germans apologized for World War II, and Pope John Paul II apologized for Catholics who attacked Jews for murdering Jesus," said Alwaya. "It's time for Arab countries to acknowledge that Jews in the Middle East were kicked out of their homelands." Chronicle Foreign Service correspondent Borzou Daragahi contributed to this report from Baghdad. E-mail Jack Epstein at jepstein@sfchronicle.com. Jewish population in Arab countries* 1948-2001 1948 856,000 1958 475,050 1968 72,600 1976 32,190 2001 7,800 *Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen Source: American Sephardi Federation Chronicle Graphic The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) monitors the news media for fairness in reporting news about Israel. To Go To Top

OPERATION: JERUSALEM Posted by Mike Evans, March 29, 2004.

Twenty-five years ago, President Jimmy Carter smiled for the cameras as he proclaimed to the entire Middle East that peace had come. The Muslim world was well-aware that Mr. Carter's goals were much more ambitious than peace between Israel and Egypt. The date was March 26th. Just four days later on the 30th, an ayatollah by the name of Khomeini united 90 percent of the population of Iran - the Shiites - and birthed an Islamic state. Khomeini made his announcement on April 1 - April Fools' Day. He called it, "The first day of God's government." With Mr. Carter's support, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat addressed the European Common Market in Luxemburg, which had issued declarations to the effect that the PLO should be recognized in the negotiations with Israel, and the Palestinians right to self-determination was as valid as Israel's right to exist. From Luxemburg, Sadat moved to France, which agreed - in principal - to sell Egypt its first nuclear power reactor. Instead of Sadat realizing his goal of establishing a democratic nation in Egypt, he incurred the wrath of Khomeini-type Islamic fanatics, the Muslim Brotherhood. They were responsible for Sadat's assassination. To this day, the majority of the secular media report that an agreement between Mr. Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (thanks to President Jimmy Carter) was the basis for agreeing to a Palestinian state, the recognition of the PLO, and relinquishing Judea and Samaria. In a private meeting shortly after the Camp David Accords were signed, I asked Prime Minister Begin to speak to these media-promoted misconceptions. He responded, "We were in the Cabinet Room, and President Carter asked me a question. In that question, he made a statement that was very negative. He said that the settlements were illegal. I had prepared a counter-question I wanted to pose to him. It was a 'prepared improvisation'." Mr. Begin continued, "I asked our Israeli Embassy in Washington to prepare a list of American cities that were named after cities in the Bible, i.e., Bethlehem, Hebron, Shiloh, Bethel. I showed President Carter my very long list. The American people love the Bible, and I asked him if he could imagine the governor of Pennsylvania proclaiming that anyone could live in the city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, except Jews. President Carter agreed that if a man did such a thing, he would be guilty of racism. Why? Because Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is in the U.S., and the U.S. is a free country. So, I pointed out that I was the governor of a state in which the original Bethlehem, Jericho and Shiloh were located." "'Do you expect me," Mr. Begin asked, "to say that everyone could live in those cities except Jews?' Of course, he didn't; it would be absurd. Jews must have the right to settle in these places as much as anyone else. We have a right to Judea and Samaria, and we will live there. That does not mean we want to evict even one Arab from his village or town. Without Jewish settlements in those hills, the PLO could easily hide in them, and descend into the plain to kill our people, wherever they like. The Arabs have 21 states, why should they have 22, and the Jews have none?" Prime Minister Begin related, "President Carter told me he was opposed to a Palestinian state, but some European countries are so thirsty for oil and petro-dollars, they would rather surrender. It would not be the first time they surrendered to pressure. It happened in the '30's, and brought disaster to the world. Do we want to repeat that disaster? A Palestinian state is a moral danger to Israel, and a great peril to the free world. We never agreed to a Palestinian state at Camp David. We agreed to autonomy as a way to solve the problem of the Palestinian Arabs. Under no circumstances did we agree that the PLO could ever participate in the peace process or reside in Judea and Samaria. It is out of the question! If it happened, peace would be murdered, and there would be permanent bloodshed." Mr. Begin said, "When I came to Camp David, Jimmy Carter told me the government of the United States does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. I had to answer, 'Whether you do or don't, Jerusalem is still the capital of Israel.' On the 17th of March at Camp David, I wrote a letter to President Carter stating this fact: Since 1967, Jerusalem is one city, indivisible, the capital of Israel. I told him that if Jerusalem was not our capital, where is it?" On April 1, 1980, the Egyptian Peoples' Assembly (their parliament) issued a statement determining that "East Jerusalem was sovereign Arab territory, and that it was an integral part of the West Bank, which had been occupied by armed forces." All the steps that had been taken by Israel since the Six-day War were proclaimed "illegal, null and void, and non-binding." The Egyptian parliament called for an establishment of Jerusalem as the seat of the Palestinian autonomous authority. The fact is, no country in the world could fail to react in the strongest terms to such provocative interventions in its affairs. Israel was compelled to rise to the challenge, and to act to protect and clarify its rights. This is the reason for the Knesset's basic law of Jerusalem, which originated as a private members' bill submitted to the House for the first time on May 14, 1980. This was in the wake of, and as its reaction to, the anti-Jerusalem campaign that had been mounted in the preceding months. While Mr. Carter's passionate commitment to the Middle East peace process helped to surmount some roadblocks, he was liable for numerous problems. The lack of experience in the Carter White House created an air of hostility between Mr. Carter and Mr. Begin that resulted in a strained relationship, and could have resulted in complete failure. President Carter's inexperience in dealing with the demands of the PLO allowed him to think, erroneously, that he could be a major player in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. His naivete led him to speak openly of a Palestinian "homeland", and to press on this issue throughout the negotiations between Sadat and Begin. Sadly, Mr. Carter failed to understand Prime Minister Begin. He tried, rather simplistically, to compare his U.S. civil rights experiences with those of the Middle East Arab-Israeli struggles. Carter stressed what he defined as, "the deprivation of Palestinian rights, which was contrary to the basic moral and ethical principles of both our countries." Mr. Carter carried the comparison even further by viewing the key to peace as a form of civil rights for the Palestinians. This included, "the right to assembly and to debate the issues that affected their lives..." Based on Jimmy Carter's deep religious conviction, Prime Minister Begin assumed he would immediately comprehend the vulnerability of Israel, and the moral justice of her responses. Mr. Begin was convinced that Mr. Carter should be focused not on the Palestinian question, but rather on the suffering of the Jewish people in Israel. Palestinian self-determination under the leadership of the PLO and Yasser Arafat, in Mr. Begin's view, was equivalent to opening the door for the destruction of Israel's sovereignty, and the annihilation of the Jewish people. Mr. Begin tried time and again to explain to Mr. Carter that the Arab-Israeli conflict could never be compared to the U.S. civil rights movement, and the attempt to create comparisons was deceptive and morally wrong. Michael D. Evans is the founder of America's largest Christian coalition praying for the peace of Jerusalem, the www.JerusalemPrayerTeam.org. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller "Beyond Iraq: The Next Move." 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GIVE THE WAR ON TERRORISM A CHANCE Posted by Morris J. Amitay, March 29, 2004.

The completely justified surgical strike which took the miserable life of a self-proclaimed terrorist leader raises fundamental questions about how to conduct the "war on terrorism". If Israel and the United States are indeed at war, what should be the rules? If the widespread European condemnation of Israel's action is an indication of how its leaders view the threat of Islamic extremism, they had better start teaching the Koran in their own school systems. The official U.S. reaction which found Yassin's sudden demise "deeply troubling" was mitigated by our veto of yet another completely one-sided UN resolution. But can we really have it both ways? Why wouldn't the U.S. welcome the elimination of someone it listed in August 2003 as one of six Specially Designated Global Terrorists? One has to wonder if our own intelligence (and accuracy) was as precise as our Israeli friends, and resulted in sending Osama bin Laden to paradise, whether our government would also find it "deeply troubling?" But hypocrisy and a double standard applied to Israel aside, the question remains how serious is the United States in defeating this new kind of enemy. If the death of a terrorist mastermind, (a.k.a. a "spiritual leader") could cause such angst, imagine how much worse it would have been for Israel if it had leveled the Gaza soccer stadium where thousands gathered to mourn Yassin and shout demands for Israel's destruction. The number of casualties (all able-bodied males, incidentally) would have represented only a small fraction of the civilian lives taken in Dresden, much less Hiroshima, during World War II. Alas, however, the world has become a kinder and gentler place, even for Islamic terrorists. In the "good old days" of WWII, the Cold War and Vietnam, our foes could be identified as representing a sovereign power within defined boundaries. Today, our deadly adversaries are more amorphous, and defined more by ideology then geography. And while they are assisted in varying degrees by two nations, Iran and Saudi Arabia, these regimes operate on the assumption we will continue to play their diplomatic games. But being in a new ball game does not necessarily mean that we have to abandon all of the older rules. We must not only do much better in understanding the true nature of the threat, but act more forcefully to neutralize it. This means setting aside exaggerated concerns about international legality, forsaking criminal prosecutions as a deterrent, and acknowledging that we are, indeed, engaged in a fundamental clash of civilizations. The Islamic jihadists are fond of proclaiming - you ("the West") love life - but we love death. This is certainly demonstrated by their increasing use of suicide operations against the infidels, or non-believers. Their ultimate goal, of course, is the conversion of the entire world to their own extremist brand of Islam. And while they make no bones about it, too many gullible westerners repeat the mantra of Islam as a religion of peace. Unfortunately, not all Muslims adhere to this. In the Palestinian-controlled territories a whole generation of schoolchildren are taught to embrace death as shahids - martyrs. And this is not only within Yassin's Hamas, but also practiced by Arafat's so-called "Al-Aqsa Brigades". Reacting to criticism over the use of children suicide bombers, its leader humanely proclaimed "we don't use children under the age of 17". And displaying her deep maternal instincts, the mother of the diminutive 16-year old would-be suicide bomber apprehended at a roadblock, was quoted as stating "If he was over 18? I might even encourage him to do it." What compassion! It has been said that "for every human problem there is a solution which is neat, simple - and wrong". But in dealing with the phenomenon of the suicide bombers, their trainers, inciters, and funders, the desirability of a simple solution should be evident. On September 20th 2001, President Bush, addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress, stated that the war on terror "will not end until every terrorist group - has been found, stopped and defeated". While not necessarily being enamored with the smell of cordite, the only sure way to "stop" and "defeat" terrorists who seek martyrdom is to grant them their wish as quickly as possible. If we are indeed in the midst of a war you don't "do nuance". And you don't have the time to be overly concerned about eliminating the "root causes". Attributing the terrorists' acts to poverty, humiliation and frustration only serves as a means of ignoring the real source - the preaching of blind hatred and death in the name of religion. Ahmed al-Rantisi, the new head of Hamas, put it succinctly "God declared war against America, Bush and Sharon." Israel faces Jew-hatred and the U.S. faces hatred of our values and civilization. We do not have the time to redeem a generation whose "hearts and minds" have already been poisoned. In this regard one recalls President Lyndon Johnson's solution on how to win over your enemies. "If you've got them by the ____s (i.e. two particularly sensitive parts), their hearts and minds are sure to follow." What also follows from the Johnson dictum is that we are in a situation where the application of deadly force to terrorists is one answer, and the threat of armed force against nations aiding and abetting these terrorists is the other. At this juncture we must not hesitate to give war a chance. Our peace terms should be unconditional surrender. You simply cannot negotiate meaningfully with those who want you dead. You cannot pursue a "peace process" with those who want you to disappear. Unless both we and our Israeli friends are willing to face up to this harsh reality and act accordingly, the future we all face will be bleak indeed. Morrie Amitay is a former Executive Director of AIPAC and founder of the pro-Israel Washington PAC (www.washingtonpac.com). To Go To Top

FORD FOUNDATION'S GRANTEE - MIFTAH.ORG - PROMOTES INTIFADA Posted by Lise Rubin, March 29, 2004.

These are some recent grants given to Miftah by the Ford Foundation. Miftah: The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - For public debates, media-related activities, and workshops and to enhance the information dissemination capacity of its Web site. EAST JERUSALEM Peace and Social Justice Human Rights International Cooperation, $200,000 - 2002. Miftah: The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - Support for developing effective media response and articulating Palestinian views on the crisis situation, including online press briefings and opinion pieces. EAST JERUSALEM Peace and Social Justice Governance and Civil Society, $100,000 - 2001. Miftah: The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy - SUPPORT FOR CONVENING WORKSHOPS, PUBLISHING BRIEFING MATERIALS, AND DEVELOPING THE INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY UNIT TO ENHANCE THE INSTITUTE'S OUTREACH PROGRAM. EAST JERUSALEM Peace and Social Justice Governance and Civil Society Governance, $250,000 - 2000. This was a statement made by Miftah, March 27, 2004: "Enough Assassination, Enough of the Occupation, Stop the Bloodshed" by Palestinians from political, intellectual and social institutions (www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=3387&CategoryId=2). We, the undersigned, Palestinians from various political, intellectual and social institutions, united in our endurance and struggle for freedom, emphatically condemn and denounce Israel's blatant aggression on our people. The cold-blooded murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and his faithful companions by Sharon and his right-wing extremist government two days ago epitomizes Israel's criminal and insidious behavior. While we assert our people's rights, guaranteed by all international covenants, to defend themselves by all means available and despite the enormity of our pain at this horrific tragedy and its impact, we nevertheless call upon our people throughout Palestine, guided by the imperatives of national interest and the removal of the initiative from the hands of the criminal occupation gang, to repress their rage and rise once again in a widespread, popular and peaceful Intifada, based on clear objectives and forthright discourse, with the fate of our people steered by the masses. Such an Intifada would be conducted by our valiant people as a proactive approach to deny Sharon the pretext to continue escalating his aggression on our people and holy sites and would prevent him from finalizing his "security" plot. We call for this unified Intifada as a step towards the resurrection of constructive and disciplined popular action, with clear objectives as well as a binding program and political return. We reaffirm our commitment to our just and legal demands and to our people's inalienable rights. We call for uniting ranks on grounds of national unity and a unified leadership that can effectively resist the occupation. Ibrahim al-Hafi, Ibrahim Musalam, Ahmad Jubara (Abu al-Sukkar), Ahmad Haless (Abu Maher), Ahmad Fares, As'ad Odeh, Amin Maqboul, Buthayna Duqmaq, Jad Ishaq, Jamal Dar'awi, Jamal Zaqout, Jamil Rushdi, Jihad Abu Zuneid, George Hazboun, Hassan Dweik, Hanan Ashrawi, Hakam Taleb Thiab, Haidar Awadallah, Khader Ayesh, Khalil al-Ateeri, Dimitri Dilyani, Rihab al-Isawi, Radwan al-Sameri, Riyad al-Malki, Zahirah Kamal, Ziad Hamouri, Suri Nuseibeh, Said Zidani, Salman Jadallah, Sameer Shihadah, Siham Thabet, Suhail Salim Abdel Fatah Salman, Shaher Sa'd, Shafiq Zeidieh, Shukri al-Radaydeh, Salah Hikmat al-Masri, Abbas Zaki, Aballah Hijazi, Abdallah al-Kiwani, Abdallah al-Atiri, Abdel Fatah Hamayel, Abdel Qader Faisal al-Huseini, Arafat al-Hidmi, Azzam al-Ahmad, Izat al-Rasini, Ikrama Tabet, Imad Abu Kishk, Imad Awad, Ali Hasasneh, Anan Atiri, Ghazi Hananiah, Ghassan al-Harami, Ghassan Hananiah, Fathi Salim Yassin Abu Zeid, Fadel Tahboub, Fahed Abu al-Haj, Cairo Arafat, Lusi Nuseibeh, Lily Feidy, Muhammd al-Rimawi, Muhammad al-Sha'bi, Mahmoud al-Aloul, Mahmoud al-labadi, Nasser Yunis, Nayef Sweitat, Nur Eldin Ibrahim Shehadeh, Hashem Abu Lafi, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Yusef Harb, Yusef Aref. IMRA (Independent Media Review Analysis) notes that "the 'peaceful Intifada' that the signers wish to return to means mob attacks with firebombs and rocks. IMRA's website address is http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20235 To Go To Top

CERTIFIABLY ANTI-SEMITISM FREE Posted by Lori Lowenthal Marcus, March 29, 2004.

You've seen notices on food packages certifying a product "100% fat free." Perhaps you have also noticed another kind of certification. This one, issued by Jews, labels an act or entity "anti-Semitism free." This certification assures the world that something other Jews claim is anti-Semitic is not. The attacked action is pronounced "certifiably" anti-Semitism free. This pronouncement also implies claims to the contrary are driven by super-sensitivity and lack of proportionality. Here's how it works. Jews are trotted out to the public by organizations needing to rebut claims of anti-Semitism. The documented claims are erased by the rebuttal issued by a Jew. The organization then brandishes its anti-Semitism free certification, and the Jewish certifier becomes ever more valuable to the organization. The individual Jew or Jewish group issuing the certification is assuredly entitled to his or her or its opinion. The problem arises when that opinion is raised as a shield to thwart off legitimate claims of anti-Semitism directed towards the larger entity. Do the Jewish certifiers realize how much their value as a spokesperson is enhanced by their religion? And do those hearing the certifications realize the labels stick unless other authorities peel them off? The Philadelphia Free Library, a municipally funded institution, recently housed in its enormous lobby an editorial cartoon exhibit attacking the "US Patriot Act." The exhibit was cleverly promoted as "US Patriot Art." Most of the cartoons in the exhibit predictably depicted President Bush and his pals eviscerating the Bill of Rights and all good things American - but one cartoon stood out. In this cartoon, a grinning Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says to President Bush: "You don't know how much we rejoice when we fire a missile on Palestine and children die." Put aside its viciousness and total baselessness, what does this cartoon have to do with the US Patriot Act? Sharon is the only foreign leader portrayed in any of the exhibit cartoons. When asked why the Free Library chose to exhibit such a cartoon, the question was referred to a board member, Herman Mattleman. No surprise here, Mattleman is a Jewish lawyer. Mattleman agreed the cartoon was offensive, agreed that Sharon was the only foreign leader depicted in the exhibit, admitted that the cartoon had nothing to do with the Patriot Act, and admitted that it was displayed in the Free Library lobby, where schoolchildren and other patrons gather for extended periods. But his bottom line was, "who cares?" Mattleman was sneeringly unimpressed. He said, "Jews shouldn't waste their time on minor offenses." In other words, unless the trains are rattling down the tracks, it's a waste to sound the alarm. So, a vicious and patently false portrayal of the Israeli Prime Minister is not worth more than an annoyed snort. And behind that snort hides the Jewishly-christened squeaky clean players who made the grotesque decision to house the cartoon in its lobby. On to an example on a national level. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently exposed the Ford Foundation as the source of multimillions of dollars provided to non-governmental organizations that launched the foulest attacks on Israel and Jewry in recent history. Those NGOs relentlessly excoriated Israel as an apartheid, genocidal, colonialist monster during the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Shortly after the exposes ran in the JTA, the Ford Foundation awarded a grant of $20 million to the New Israel Fund (sounds good, sounds Jewish), thereby building on what Ford called "the Ford Foundation's long term commitment to funding in Israel." The New Israel Fund Board Chair Peter Edelman announced that the grant would "ensure continuity for Ford's long-standing commitment in [Israel]." About those many millions of dollars lavished on the Durban hate-festers screaming for the destruction of the Israel apartheid state? Nary a word. Maybe the New Israel Fund thought it was chosen because Ford just realized virtually none of the hundreds of millions of Foundation dollars pumped into the Middle East over the past several years had gone to Jewish or Israeli ventures. On an international level, close your eyes and conjure up those touching pictures of Adam Shapiro, holed up in the Mukata with his buddy the long-suffering Yasser Arafat. On video and in pictures shown around the world, Shapiro cuddled up with what Israel claims is a thieving, murdering, corrupt and heartless bastard. But the microphone and the cameras were placed in front of Adam, and his anti-Semitism-free certification bestowed upon Arafat the Imperial Margarine Crown of innocence and virtue. No surprise that the International Solidarity Movement placed front and center that Brooklyn-born boychick with the name of unmistakable origins. Mattleman, the New Israel Fund and Shapiro are entitled to their views and public positions. But why is it that Jews who support Israel are so loathe to publicly air their views? Why are we ashamed to stand up for ourselves, when so many of our own have no problem hoisting the microphone and wielding it against us? Anti-Semitism free or shame-free: It's our choice. Lori Lowenthal Marcus is President, Zionist Organization of America, Greater Philadelphia District, (Eastern PA, Southern NJ, Del.) To Go To Top

AN URGENT APPEAL TO SAVE OUR MOMMY'S LIFE Posted by Joel Silverberg, March 29, 2004.

Our mother is in desperate need of new lungs. She is 42 years old. We are five children, ages four through fourteen. She is being kept alive on a respirator in an intensive care unit. Her doctors tell us that she can not live without an immediate transplant. That would leave us without a mother! Do you know anyone with an irreversible injury or illness, whose lungs still function? If you do, please reach us through our friends at 1-800-SAVE -A -LIFE , 1- 800- 728-3254. E-mail: SaveMyMommysLife@aol.com Please Say Tehillim For: Naava bas Fruma Leah To Go To Top

WHY DID ISRAEL KILL YASSIN NOW? Posted by , March , 2004.

A vote of no-confidence was coming up. Opposition to PM Sharon's withdrawal scheme was strong. Many Israelis think it no coincidence that he chose this time to assassinate Yassin. Upon hearing of the assassination, Sharon's opponents thought it important to show solidarity with him in fighting terrorism. Sharon won the vote. Of course, the liquidation of Yassin does not compensate for the proposed liquidation of Zionism in Gaza and part of Judea-Samaria. It was just a cover for Sharon's long-range surrender to terrorism by means of withdrawals (Voice of Judea, 3/2). Many Israelis feel this way. They have some logic on their side. Ariel Sharon seems to operate as cynically as they fear. They may be right, but they don't know. Don't know, don't insist. There is a kind of simple-mindedness to alleging that coincidences are deliberate. On 3/24, the same kind of an allegation was answered on NPR by former US counter-terrorism chief Richard Clark. The Bush Administration had accused him of coming out with a book accusing Pres. Bush of having ignored the Al Qaeda threat, just when Sen. Kerry is running against Bush and has a friend of Clark's high on Kerry' s staff. The Administration supposes that Clark wants a job with a Kerry Administration. Don't know, don't assert. Clark points out that he finished drafting the book some time ago. He then let the White House review it for security breaches. That review took three months. If the review had been expedited, the book would have been published before Kerry became the apparent nominee. Clark asserts that he would refuse an offer from Kerry. Sometimes coincidences are coincidences. Terrorists take advantage of such coincidences to claim that certain terrorist acts, actually planned months or weeks earlier, were arranged in vengeance for some Israeli action of a few days earlier. The media accepts the terrorists' claim. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

THE MAN WITH THE COFFEE CUP Posted by Reuven A. Kossover, March 29, 2004.

In this country, you deal with people and you never really know who it is you deal with. In the Geula neighbourhood of Jerusalem, on Mea Shearim Street just a couple of meters from Kikar Shabbat [Sabbath Square], there sits a man with a coffee cup. He sits on a low stool with a long black coat and a kippa [yarmulka] on his head -- on cold days he covers his head with a thick hood. He has a thick beard and thin hair on his head. His eyes are always alert, but he is never intrusive in his attempts to obtain agorot and shekels from passers-by. He spends a good part of the day sitting on his stool on Mea Shearim Street gently shaking a coffee cup with small coins in it. In a city like St. Paul in the U.S., a cop with a snarl for a face would tell this man: "Move on, buddy!" Every bum, beggar and drunk is "buddy" to the cops in that city. But in Jerusalem, where it is a mitzvah (both a commandment and a good deed) to give charity to the needy, this almost never happens. So the man sits undisturbed on his stool on Mea Shearim Street. But he doesn't spend the entire day sitting on his stool. In the mornings, he attends Shacharit (dawn) prayers. And around 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon, every day from Sunday to Thursday, he leaves his stool and walks to an alleyway, turns left and turns left again into a bagel shop. "Aaron!" he roars in a booming voice as he sits down at a table in the bagel shop. Soon enough another bearded man with grey hair and a New York accent appears, grousing "what do you want this time?" The two banter back and forth in the near empty restaurant, feigning a hostility that neither of them feels or means. The man with the coffee cup does not hustle Aaron for money or for a bagel. Eventually, after enough banter back and forth, he asks Aaron how business has been that day and how can he help him. Aaron opens up the cash register and looks at the fellow with the coffee cup. "How are you doing on five shekel pieces?" "Eh, I'll see". He unzips the outer portion of his black bag and pulls out a bunch of five shekel coins and starts counting. When he has reached sixteen he stops "Do you have four twenties?" Aaron pulls out the twenties and walks over to the table with them. "You're lucky," he says. "By this time of the day, I'm usually out of twenties altogether. "You mean you're lucky", counters the man with the coffee cup. "I'm here to give you five shekel coins. Here I do a public service and I get no gratitude at all. What about one shekel coins?" "How many do you have?" asks Aaron. "Do you have a fifty shekel bill?" asks the man with the coffee cup. Aaron nods. "Go ahead, count it up, before someone comes in and I have to give it out in change". The man with the coffee cup counts up the fifty one-shekel coins. "Nu?" he says loudly. Aaron produces the fifty shekel note. "What about my half shekel coins and ten agorot pieces?" asks the man with the coffee cup with mock impatience. "I should have to walk around with small change all day? At my age, I'll get a hernia!" "Listen, don't start with me. Count 'em up already! You think I have all day for this nonsense?" Aaron says, checking what he has in the register. After all is said and done, the man with the coffee cup sells 180 shekels worth of small change to the bagel shop, pocketing paper money in the process. "So, what will it be today?" asks Aaron after all the money has been exchanged. "Give me some tea", says the man with the coffee cup. After he zips up the outer section of his bag, he looks at Aaron. "Did you know that the Herut (Freedom) Party used some of my material?" "Really", answers Aaron. His face glazes over just a bit. Politics is not Aaron's favorite subject. But the man with the coffee cup exploits the opening aggressively. He opens up the main section of his bag and pulls out some neatly typed sheets. Then he starts to read in Hebrew the party positions of the Herut Party, explaining as he goes along how he wants to stick it to the National Religious Party and the Agud?, two larger parties which compete for the same voters in Israeli politics. Aaron brings him his tea and sits down with him, looking over the typed Hebrew. "Not bad", he says after a few minutes. Looking over at a tall dark-skinned man sipping coffee a table away, he asks, "Yehuda, what do you think?" Yehuda, whose brother manages the Jerusalem campaign of the National Union Party, yet another party competing for the very same voters, just shrugs. "It sounds okay. But what is Herut going to do with only one seat in the Knesset?" The man with the coffee cup looks up at Yehuda angrily. "If all the people who say they like Herut vote Herut, there'll be more than one seat in the Knesset". Yehuda just shrugs again. "Good luck with the piece. Why don't you consider writing for a living?" The man with the coffee cup finishes up his tea. "I don't think so. That would mean work. Aaron, thank you. It was a pleasure doing business with you". He puts his papers back in his bag and zips it up. "Nu, I've got to get going. I have to make it to Mincha (afternoon prayers) and get back to schnorring (begging)". He gets up, picks up his bag and goes out into the street. I follow him down the alley and look up at the sky. Dark clouds rush in from the north, driven by a strong wind. The man with the coffee cup stops near his stool and puts his hand out for money. I drop a shekel into it and hurry on to the bus stop. I want to catch the bus before it rains. Shavua Tov (Happy New Week), Chodesh Tov (Happy New Month) and Chag Sameach (Happy Passover) from Liberated Yerushaliyim, This was distributed by the Root and Branch Information Services (www.rb.org.il). To Go To Top

A MAJOR VICTORY FOR FREE SPEECH IN ISRAEL Posted by Steven Plaut, March 29, 2004.

Israel's Hebrew University of Jerusalem has long been a bastion for leftist anti-Zionism, tenured treason, support for mutiny and insubordination by Israeli soldiers, support for "New History" (meaning Israel-bashing pseudo-history), and leftist extremism. Among the radical leftists at the Hebrew University, arguably the most extremist of all may be Moshe Zimmerman. Zimmerman is a Professor of German History and may be best known for his pronunciations that the children of Israeli Jewish settlers are "Hitlerjugend" (The Jerusalem Post April 30, 1995) and for repeatedly comparing Israeli soldiers and settlers to Nazis (http://israelvisit.co.il/cgi-bin/friendly.pl?url=Jan-17-03!gevalt5). When Benjamin Netanyahu ran for re-election on the campaign slogan, "A strong leader for a strong people," Zimmerman wrote in the Jerusalem Post that Israeli political candidates who use terms such as "strong leader" or "strong people" are employing language reminiscent of the Nazis (http://www.netaxs.com/home/q/afsi/OUTPOST/99MAR/mar12.htm). During Operation Defensive Wall, Zimmerman made the headlines when he decided to grant exemptions from exams and assignments to all students in jail for refusing to follow orders or serve in the military, but all students called up to serve in the reserves, to serve their country, would enjoy no such special consideration. He has been repeatedly accused of using his classroom as a bully pulpit to coerce his students to accept his extremist anti-Israel views (see below, from http://www.haaretzdaily.com) and is now even being investigated for this by the Ministry of Education, which funds most of the budgets for all Israeli universities. Zimmerman is so extreme that he sometimes shocks even the other ordinary leftist anti-Zionists on Israeli campuses with his radicalism. One of the more amusing distractions of recent months was the SLAPP suit Zimmerman filed against Haaretz and one of its writers. SLAPP refers to Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation and a SLAPP suit is a frivolous anti-democratic libel suit designed to harass one's critics for purposes of denying them free speech and silencing them. The very same Zimmerman filed a frivolous SLAPP suit against Anat Peri, a writer at Haaretz (and an ex-PHD student of Zimmerman's) and against Haaretz itself for writing there that Zimmerman regularly compares Israel to Nazi Germany at the same time that the German government has been financing his own research. Zimmerman decided to pull a Neve Gordon and tried to suppress his critic by filing a SLAPP suit. It is part of the current wave of SLAPP suits in Israel by leftist extremists trying to use the courts to suppress free speech for non-leftists. A few days ago Zimmerman lost his SLAPP suit and was ordered to pay a cool 75,000 shekels in court expenses. The judge went out of her way to express her disgust at Zimmerman's hubris and arrogance in the courtroom. She expressed astonishment that a professor, who is also a public figure who writes controversial things in the media, should attempt to silence his own critics using such a "libel" suit. Zimmerman himself was protected in the past from people trying to sue HIM for libel, on grounds of free speech, yet here he was trying to conscript the courts as bludgeons to silence his own critics, noted the judge. The judge also accepted as reasonable the assertion that Zimmerman was granted German government funding thanks to his own political opinions (Haaretz Mar 28). As you know, I am the target of a very similar harassment SLAPP suit by Ben Gurion extremist political science lecturer Neve Gordon. The similarities between the two trials are astounding. Like Zimmerman, Gordon publicly endorses mutiny and insubordination by Israeli soldiers who refuse to do service as long as Israel is not following the policies advocated by the country's most extremist leftists. Like Zimmerman, Gordon has enjoyed funding for his anti-Israel "research" from sources wishing to assist him in promoting his own political agenda. In Gordon's case, the source was the Kroc Institute, a "center" so radical that it also finances (according to the NY Sun) the activities of a Moslem French anti-Semite with ties to al-Qaida, and which financed a "research paper" by Gordon and a friend of his that "proved" that Israel is a terrorist state. Like Zimmerman, Gordon is trying to use the court as a bludgeon to silence his critic (me), because I dared criticize some of his political columns - and especially his columns prasing Holocaust Denier Norman Finkelstein and which compared Finkelstein ethically to the Prohpets in the Bible - and also because I publicly criticized the fact that Gordon entered Ramallah illegally in the middle of Operation Defensive Wall to show his solidarity with Arafat - exactly at the same time that Arafat was hiding the two murderers of an Israeli cabinet minister as well as other wanted terrorists in the same offices where Gordon affectionately clasped arms in solidarity with Arafat. Gordon is determined to try the same failed harassment tactic as Zimmerman and now has yet another legal precedent working against him. As you will see in the article below which singles out Zimmerman and also Ben Gurion University, the Minister of Education is starting to pressure Israeli universities to take action when faculty members engage in treason, use their classrooms to force their extremist views on their students, and otherwise use their positions for the purpose of battling against their own country. You will notice from the article how prominently Ben Gurion University figures in such activities. Please contact the Minister and encourage her to take serious action in this matter: Education, Culture & Sport: Limor Livnat, Tel 02-560-2330, Fax 02-560-2246, Email sar@education.gov.il Then please read the two important items below. After reading these, if you would like to express your opinion about the radicalization and extremist anti-Israel activities so common at Ben Gurion University, I suggest you make your opinions known to Officials at Ben Gurion University: Professor Avishay Braverman President, Ben-Gurion University Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer--Sheva 84105, Israel Fax: 972-8-647-2937 avishay@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Professor Jimmy Weinblatt Rector, Ben-Gurion University Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer--Sheva 84105, Israel Tel. 972-7-6461105 Fax: 972-7-6472945 weinb@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Professor Avishai Henik Dean of Social Sciences henik@bgumail.bgu.ac.il 972-8-6472945 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, P.O.B. 653 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Be'er-Sheva 84105, Israel. and also American Associates of Ben Gurion University: 1430 Broadway 8th Floor New York, NY 10018 phone 212-687-7721 fax 212-302-6443 email info@aabgu.org Lis Gaines President Vivien K. Marion Executive Vice President If you have already told them what you think of leftist extremism at Ben Gurion University, why not tell them again? 2. Haaretz is suddenly alarmed at "threats" to free speech: "Clipping the (lunatic) fringes of academic freedom" by Dalia Shehori, in Haaretz. A member of the Hebrew University's Law Faculty believes the dangers facing academic freedom are more serious today than ever before, 'due to the addition of trying events that are continuing longer than they ever have in the past.' Last March, a Hebrew University of Jerusalem professor lodged a complaint against his colleague, Prof. Moshe Zimmerman for venturing a remark in the classroom in support of Israel Defense Force soldiers who refuse to serve in the territories. A demand for disciplinary action against Zimmerman was reviewed - even after it was established that the complaint was factually unfounded - and that it would not have warranted censure even if true. At Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, lecturers demonstrated against conferring an honorary doctorate on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Others protested when Yossi Beilin was invited to lecture on campus. In recent months, Education Minister Limor Livnat has complained to University of Haifa Rector Prof. Aharon Ben-Ze'ev about political statements Prof. Avraham Oz from the theater department made in class. Livnat has also complained to Ben-Gurion University President Prof. Avishai Braverman over comments in an article published by the head of the university's Institute for Social Research, Prof. Lev Grinberg (Grinberg writes sometimes in Tikkun -- SP) and Livnat protested to the Hebrew University's President, Prof. Menachem Magidor about Zimmerman's statement. Responding to reports of Zimmerman's remarks, and also to a petition signed by some 40 Hebrew University lecturers (the document was later signed by 250 university teaching staff members) which expressed support for "students who refuse to serve in the conquered territories," Livnat knocked on the door of government attorney general Elyakim Rubinstein. She asked for his opinion as to how she should "act against lecturers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, since their activities encourage infraction of the law, and perhaps also sedition." Livnat's turn to Rubinstein set the stage for a Knesset Education and Culture Committee hearing on academic freedom sponsored by Zahava Gal-On, MK (Meretz). To her chagrin, Gal-On found that at the end of this meeting she was in a minority - most Knesset committee members supported Livnat's approach on the issue. It's worth mentioning that the Education and Culture Committee asked Prof. Magidor to submit as evidence the petition that dozens of Hebrew University staff members had signed. The Hebrew University President refused to cooperate with this request, even though he personally opposes refusal to serve in the territories. "I don't supervise what faculty members say and what they disseminate," Magidor told Ha'aretz. He insists that just as such matters are not for University administrators to monitor and censor, the Knesset Committee has no business dealing with it. Nonplussed, Livnat pushed on. She informed the Knesset Committee that she intends to turn to the University of Haifa Rector about another political statement made by Prof. Vered Krauss, during a lecture on statistics. Do the events outlined here pose a threat to academic freedom in Israel? According to Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, a member of the Hebrew University's Law Faculty, dangers facing academic freedom are more serious today than ever before. "This is due to the addition of trying events that are continuing longer than they ever have in the past. The events of the times have created an atmosphere of impatience toward ideas that are not part of the consensus. Worthy political leaders should have made a major effort to stem this wave [of intolerance], and send a message of openness and tolerance toward unorthodox opinions. I think that the leadership is doing the exact opposite." Prof. Shlomo Avineri, an expert on political thought from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, agrees that the mix of war-like events and grave social polarization creates circumstances that endanger academic freedom. "Without making any comparison, McCarthyism came to the fore in the U.S. at the peak of the Cold War." Avineri calls attention to efforts made in America after September 11, 2001 to curb the scope of academic freedom, at least with respect to the expression of criticism toward U.S. policy. Current circumstances in Israel, Avineri reflects, "enjoin great responsibility and restraint on the part of members of the academic community, and also considerable restraint on the part of state authorities." It appears the attorney general concurs. In a written response to Livnat, Rubinstein wrote that Zimmerman's statement and the petition "are an irresponsible outrage. However, demands involving criminal prosecution in a sphere outside of the IDF, in the public realm, have to be forwarded with extreme caution." The State Prosecutor's Office has "discussed the possibility of initiating criminal steps with respect to calls for refusal to serve; but in the end it was decided not to proceed with [these steps], not at this time," Rubinstein wrote. He added that when legal authorities consider taking action against the expression of opinions, "considerable weight is given to the crucial centrality of the principle of freedom of speech." Rubinstein notified Livnat that complaints about concrete statements made by lecturers will continue to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. In Avineri's view, "anyone who calls on soldiers to refuse to serve in the territories undoubtedly puts himself under fire; in moral terms, his action is an abomination." Nonetheless, the prestigious Hebrew University political scientist, says "I don't think that it's the business of the Education Minister to intervene" in Zimmerman's case. Surely, Livnat can state her view on any matter in cabinet meetings, Avineri says, "but as Education Minister, she lacks status and authority to deal with the enforcement of the universities' laws." Kremnitzer regrets that "instead of standing up for freedom of speech, which is currently endangered by a general public atmosphere of intolerance, [Livnat] is acting in the opposite direction, operating as a quasi-policewoman by monitoring statements made by academics. My expectation is that the Education Minister should uphold academic freedom rather than acting to curb it, and to intimidate the academic community." Kremnitzer points out that the petition did not include an explicit, illegal endorsement of refusal to serve. The letter, he says, was formulated in a "careful manner which approaches the legal limit, without transgressing it." He too opposes refusal to serve in the territories, but believes that public discussion of the subject is important. Prof. Magidor, who also chairs the committee of Israeli universities, says that whenever provocative statements are made nowadays on campus or in an academic context, "an atmosphere of hysteria" develops. He stresses that all the nation's universities, certainly the Hebrew University, "uphold the principle that any view which is not tantamount to incitement, and does not endorse violence or any reprehensible act, can be articulated." The root of the problem is apparently the lack of clarity inherent in the concept "academic freedom." Everyone agrees that freedom of expression, a staple element of civil liberties, applies to each citizen so long as he or she does not break the law and academic freedom is subsumed within this principle of free expression. But, beyond these basic precepts, there remain a number of questions. The answers to them are far from obvious. Does the principle of academic freedom apply to political statements made by university lecturers? If the answer to this question is "yes," does the principle also protect the expression of a lecturer's personal opinion in class? If the answer here is "no," what rules of conduct apply to an academic who teaches political science, history, sociology, philosophy or other subjects in which handling of current events is sometimes unavoidable? Testifying to the Knesset Education and Culture Committee, Livnat offered the following definition of academic freedom - the right is not unlimited, and it does not protect "any reprehensible" comment, and matters which do not pertain to research and professional treatment of a particular academic discipline. The Knesset Committee's majority decided that Livnat's appeal to the attorney general was "legitimate, and did not represent infringement of academic freedom." Livnat's definition and the Committee's decision are supported by Dr. Ron Breiman, chairman of the Professors for a Strong Israel (PSI) group who took part in the Knesset panel's meeting PSI has about 500 members, most of them academics from fields of sciences and medicine. Dr. Breiman, from Tel Aviv University, acknowledges that there is less occasion and prompting for a lecturer in the sciences to express a political opinion in class. Breiman views refusal to serve as an illegal form of "desertion." Encouragement of refusal to serve is also illegal, he believes. Such infractions are not protected by the rule of academic freedom, the PSI chairman maintains; they are subject to rule of law norms which govern freedom of speech. Anyone who advocates "desertion" should face criminal prosecution. Academic freedom, Breiman explains, has limits. A lecturer has no right to express his or her own opinion in class, he says, since such statements pressure students, since they are afraid to express a contrary view, wary that doing so might hurt their grades, or chances of advancement. He also believes that discussion of the extreme right in a class must also be balanced by treatment of the extreme left; otherwise, a lecture is tendentious, and illegitimate. Should the idea of the transfer of Arabs come up in a class, Breiman says (he himself opposes transfer), the transfer of Jews should be opposed in a manner analogous to the condemnation of the transfer of Arabs. Breiman says that it's hard to precisely demarcate the borders of the rule of academic freedom. Statements made by academics must be plausible and prudent; it is best, Breiman says, to leave these standards of prudence and good taste to the discretion of the lecturer. Prof. Zimmerman violated these standards, Breiman believes, but he does not argue that Zimmerman should face trial. The best course of action is for the academic community as a whole to prohibit such wrongful statements of personal opinion. Kremnitzer upholds a different conception of the essence of academic freedom. It is clear, he says, that academic freedom does not protect racist comments or remarks which can humiliate and flagrantly insult persons, and statements that incite violence have no place in academia. But racist or inciting expressions are banned by law. The specific meaning of academic freedom as part of the principle of free speech is that "persons from the academic community are allowed in in academic institutions to pursue thoughts to the fullest extent. That is the ethos of academic freedom." Academics are expected to examine consensus ideas critically, and not to accept them passively. An academic's vocation is to be critical and skeptical. In order to protect this role, "the rule of academic freedom has to be protected to the fullest extent permissible," Kremnitzer concludes. The principle of academic freedom is anchored in the law. Section 15 of the higher education law maintains that "a recognized [academic] institution is free to administer its academic matters under its budgetary framework as it sees fit." Yet a review of specific university regulations which hold sway at the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa, Ben-Gurion University and Bar-Ilan University indicates that the concept of academic freedom is not detailed. It appears that this absence of a definition is no academic. Kremnitzer explains that academic freedom is a complex concept, and "I am not sure that any specific formulation can describe it in a full, satisfactory fashion. So it's best to leave this as a matter of the general ethos." Avineri says that were attempts made to define academic freedom, each university would define the idea differently, and not standard, accepted formula would be reached. However, Avineri adds, this fact is not problematic. "The state enables universities to function economically, and it does not intervene in terms of the contents of what is taught in them; on the other hand, it upholds academic freedom in the sense that it allows academic to enforce its own limits." He adds: "The academic community and its members must relate to academic freedom as a cornerstone to be protected." The basic question remains: what is a lecturer allowed to say in class? Prof. Zimmerman represents the extreme approach. As a historian, he says: "History ends in the present. Thus, all these subjects, including refusal to serve or Israeli behavior in the conquered territories, or problems with Israel's political regime, are just as pertinent as any other historical topic." Avineri, in contrast, does not believe that "it is the role of a university lecturer to express his political view in class." A professor should "be cautious, and not digress toward current events, so as not to transform university study into a derivative model of a current events talk show." As to Zimmerman's contention that history ends in the present, Avineri replies: "That is the position of someone who wants to transform the universities from responsible research institutions into schools for political activity. That would be the end of the universities as we know them." Kremnitzer rejects the contention that a lecturer's expression of his or her personal view imposes pressure on students. For the same lecturer can write an article in a newspaper, and his or her views are known in public in any case. Students, Kremnitzer says, are not children, and a lecturer's views have no special influence upon them. He thinks it is acceptable if Prof. Zimmerman makes a comparative reference to current events during a lecture on the history of Germany - such current event comparisons are legitimate so long as students have the right to express contrasting views. Such current event references "make learning more challenging and real," says Kremnitzer. In any case, academics tend to prefer persons who disagree with their own views rather than ones who blindly agree with what they say. "It just isn't interesting when somebody duplicates [my views]," he says. "I'm looking for someone who will argue with me." Prof. Moshe Zimmerman teaches a course for first years students at the Hebrew University entitled "Introduction to the late modern period." Some 200 students were enrolled in the course this year. These included a group of 40 students who are officers from the IDF's Tactical Command Academy. In March, half an hour before the first class of the second semester, Zimmerman was notified that this group would not make it to the lecture since its members were deployed at roadblocks. Zimmerman related to this development at the start of his lecture. A review conducted by the Hebrew University in response to a complaint lodged about the incident established that Zimmerman said the following: "There is a group of students which cannot come today due to the excuse that its members are guarding at checkpoints, and the like. Such an excuse is not acceptable to me. Were they to be missing because they were serving in jail due to a refusal to serve in the territories, that would be satisfactory to me." Prof. Menahem Kahana, from the Hebrew University's Talmud Department, lodged the complaint against Zimmerman, based on a report of the incident in the Makor Rishon newspaper. Kahana noted that the report suggested that Zimmerman would discriminate against students who were absent from the university due to reserve service, and that he would give preferential treatment to those who refused to serve. Kahana withdrew his complaint after the University's review established what Zimmerman actually said - had he been aware of the precise contents of the remarks, he would not have lodged the complaint, even if Zimmerman's statement was unworthy, the Talmud scholar explains. In parallel, the head of the Tactical Command College, Colonel Danny Davidi, along with Brigadier General Yaakov Zigdon from the IDF's Command and Staff College, sent a harsh letter to the Hebrew University's Rector, Prof. Haim Rabinowitch. "The statements made by the professor are more damaging and dangerous than the sale of weapons and ammunition to the Palestinians," the letter declared. Zimmerman's comments, the two IDF officers objected, would furnish an unlimited supply of propaganda ammunition to the Palestinians. The letter's authors claimed that Zimmerman used a history lecture as a platform for his own views, and imposed his opinion about the officers on the class. The officers' anger continues to simmer. Recently they worked out an agreement with the Hebrew University's Dean of Humanities, Prof. Gabriel Motzkin by which the introduction to modern history course will be given to officers from the Tactical Command college in summer school, by a different lecturer. The IDF Spokesman and the Hebrew University Spokesman deny that this agreement constitutes a dictate imposed by the army, and that the university surrendered to IDF pressure. Both spokesmen present a number of specific, professional arguments to support the change in arrangements for the course. Prof. Kremnitzer says: "Had Zimmerman announced that `I will give bonus points to persons who refuse to serve,' I would say that his remark is unacceptable, and that it ought to be denounced. But if someone says, as a personal opinion, `the refuser is closer to my heart than one who serves,' I don't regard it an unacceptable remark." Kremnitzer also responded to the harsh language in the officers' castigation of Zimmerman: "The comparison drawn between Zimmerman's comments and the sale of guns to the enemy is insidious. To put him in the category of persons who commit clear acts of treason ... is the way of the witch hunt." WITCH HUNT: Officers said Prof. Zimmerman's support for refuseniks was "more dangerous than selling weapons to the enemy." (Rafi Kutz, Kol Ha'ir) 3. Subject: Maariv Takes on a Ben Gurion University anti-Israel Extremist, Oren Yiftahel. "Enemies of the 'Zionist enterprise': A response to Prof. Oren Yiftahel" by Ben Dror Yemini in Maariv. (www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=5276) A week ago I was subject to a hail of invective by Prof. Oren Yiftahel, after critiquing Yiftahel's political commentary, in the guise of academic analysis. I could answer Yiftahel line by line, and point out that despite the fact that we are talking about a senior member of Israeli academia, he suffers, I fear, from serious difficulties with reading comprehension. After all, I have published my views - in favor of a return to the '67 borders, against the settler enterprise, against the occupation and all its miseries, countless times. And if despite all that, I am still one who "spreads the neo-conservative right wing party line", then any further response on my part would be superfluous. Such that I will not waste time settling scores with Yiftahel, I will just get right to the point. Yiftahel fumes principally over the fact that I dare to criticize "important great thinkers" on the basis of their "attitude towards Zionism". Well, actually he's right, but let me be precise: I blame a group of several dozen of members of academia who spread lies and libels against Israel, while indirectly encouraging anti-Semitism. I blame this group of disregarding, even purposefully, the basic facts which contradict the demonic narrative that they try to lay on Israel. Most of the members of this group are ecstatic fans of the saint Edward Said, now deceased. Said is the father of the paradigm that blames the west and Zionism for all of the misfortunes and maladies of the Arab world. How so? The Arab world vacillates between two different approaches. In one approach: the oft-repeated chorus of how the Zionists are to blame, the west is to blame. In the other, arising from the reformist's camp, which says hating the west is simply self-deception, and that the key to change is to be found in the processes of democratization and secularization of the greater Arab nations. Said is the crown prince of the first approach. Despite paying lip service to criticism of Arab rulers, his greatest project is to place the blame on the west, and on Zionism. Said succeeded. The reformist camp, who despises this self-deception, has been left in the minority. The Arab world is now paying a terrible price for Said's success: Two reports issued over the past few years by Arab intellectuals indicate that social gaps are widening, and that a culture of oppression reigns. And enough already of always hearing about how it is because of Bush and the Americans and Zionism. In countries where there is no American influence, such as Sudan and Syria for example, oppression is far greater than anywhere else. Said's ignorant adherents disseminate their rabbi's bible wherever they can. For example, they circulate to the world the libel that "the Zionist enterprise" (Yiftahel's terminology) is the root of all evil. Al Qaida then claps its hands. Not that there are no injustices committed against the Palestinians, and not that there is no room for criticism of Israel. But they ignore, almost completely, the historical Arab refusal to accept any sort of arrangement, starting from the time of the British Mandate, continuing on to the offer of dividing up the territories between Jews and Arabs, and on to the famous "three No's" of Khartoum, and of course - rejecting Clinton's exaggerated offer, which would enable the end of the occupation and the rise of a Palestinian state. They ignore the fact that Arafat does not want a Palestinian state, nor does he want an end to the occupation. He wants the destruction of Israel. On the Saturday that Yiftahel published his diatribe against me, a program was broadcast on the official Palestinian Authority television channel asserting that Jews are the descendants of apes and pigs. And here's another official statement: Arafat's closest advisors have clearly said that as far as they are concerned, "the right of return for Palestinians is the key element to successfully bringing about the annihilation of Israel." But just as in the rest of the Arab world, there is a pragmatic element in the Palestinian camp. 135,000 people have already signed the Ayalon-Nusseibeh document, which includes renouncing the demand for the right of return. That's one of the realistic keys to a final arrangement. Rather than encouraging them, Yiftahel and his ilk publish articles against the "Zionist enterprise", and support, in one way or another, the Palestinian right of return. Some of them, like Said, and like the extreme right wing among us, support the idea of one big country here, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Some of them do pay lip service to the desired solution of two states, but only under certain conditions. According to Yiftahel, a Palestinian state will be free of all Jews, but the other state, must under no circumstances be a state with a Jewish national identity, rather it should be a state for all of its citizens. The hypocrisy of Yiftahel and his group reaches astounding new levels: The Palestinians will have the right of return, but the Jewish right of return will have to be nullified. So how exactly should a pragmatic Palestinian feel, one who wants to sign the Ayalon-Nusseibeh document, which subjects him not only to incitement against him from his own people, but also to Yiftahel's theses as well, who recommends the annihilation of the  Zionist enterprise?  This is how Yiftahel and his group ruin any chances of an agreement. This is how Yiftahel and his group encourage the insane demands of the Palestinians. This is how they help preserve the occupation. People like Yiftahel have good intentions. They want a better world. But that doesn't release them from their responsibilities. They aren't willing to let facts confuse them, they are blind to them. And so that is how a dangerous coalition is born: made up of the Hamas, Arafat, the extreme right and the extreme left. It's a coalition of delayers of the only realistic solution that is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian: A democratic Jewish state alongside a Palestinian one. And one more thing: according to the "forces of progress", America and the "Zionist enterprise" are the root of all evils. In the Ayatollah version they are referred to as "the Great Satan" (America), and "the Small Satan" (Israel). But despite all this, contrary to Yiftahel's claims, I never tried to shut these people's mouths up. I?m not so certain that history will be as forgiving of them. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

IN SUPPORT OF GUSH KATIF Posted by Dror Vanunu, March 29, 2004.

PLEASE SEND THIS MESSAGE ON TO YOUR ADDRESS LIST, JCC'S, SYNAGOGUES, ETC. Dear friends, For over three and a half years the villages of the Katif region have been subjected to an unprecedented terror offensive. More than 11,000 terror attacks have been launched in the region, including unending shooting on the villages and the army bases which defend them, attacks on the travel routes, the planting of bombs, attempts at infiltration and the shooting of thousands of Kassam missiles and mortar shells. Despite the pain and anguish that has been our lot during these years, the firm stand of the people of the Katif region is an outstanding example for the rest of the country.That firm stand of the residents of Gush Katif is now being tested in the face of another ordeal, this time coming from our own government. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's announcement about the disengagement plan, in which the 8000 Jewish residents in the twenty-one communities of Gush Katif (as well as an unspecified number of settlements in Judea and Samaria) will be expelled from their homes which will be turned over to Arab terrorists is a sign of defeatism and shortsightedness of the present leadership. This dangerous plan to give our enemies parts of the Holy Land undermines our right to the land, endangers our state and rewards terror, as we can well see by now. In the face of such weakness we have begun a great campaign, under the banner "UPROOTING SETTLEMENTS - A PRIZE TO TERROR" which will include the bringing of many people to Gush Katif from all over the country, and explaining the Biblical, historical, agricultural, financial, moral and cultural importance of Gush Katif through the distribution of hundreds of thousands of CD?s, flyers and stickers, initiating parlor meetings, and advertising in the press, radio, television, on billboards and more. We are determined to stay in our homes, on the land of our ancestors! We are sure that Sharon's plan will lead to a disaster for the entire country and we intend to prevent it from happening. In order to launch a campaign preventing the implementation of Sharon's transfer plan we need funds that presently are not available to us. Now more than ever we are calling on you to take part in the struggle for the Katif Region and for the unity of Eretz Israel. We ask you to participate in the efforts to prevent this dangerous plan, rather than to be forced later to deal with the dreadful consequence. :A detailed breakdown of the immediate needs for the first phase of the campaign. Production of a film on Gush Katif (with an English version): $36,000 Production and distribution of 150,000 CD-Roms, (30,000 in English): $130,000 Promotional material, stickers, signs for cities and crossroads: $70,000 Promotional material for television: $200,000 Package of radio broadcasts: $35,000 Newspaper advertisements: $55,000 Subsidized buses for the first 500 buses to visit Gush Katif: $72,000 Administration: Most of the work is done by volunteers but we have office and travel expenses, and salary for 2 supervisors: $42,000 Total: $635,000 You can help us by sending a tax deductible contribution, made out to Friends of Gush Katif, to Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI, 1623 Third Ave.,Suite 205, New York, N.Y. Sincerely, Dror Vanunu Dror Vanunu is Director of the Katif Region Development Fund. He can be reached in Israel at 972(67)775662 or write him at gkatif@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

ISLAM PLAYS FOR KEEPS Posted by Rachel Neuwirth, March 29, 2004.

President George W. Bush said: "We will bring freedom to others, and we will prevail." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested that terrorists are being created faster than we can arrest or kill them. One might wonder if they're fighting different wars. Bush suggests "reprogramming" his enemy; Rumsfeld wants to wipe them out. Daniel Pipes, a scholar specializing in militant Islam puts it correctly: "Ending terrorism requires more than targeting terrorists, their leaders, or their organizations. It requires recognizing and defeating the body of ideas known as militant Islam or Islamism. The war cannot be won until politicians and others focus on this ideology (taught in the madrassas, Islamic schools) rather than [just] on terrorism, which is merely its manifestation." (http://danielpipes.org/article/1624) Bush and Rumsfeld are indeed fighting the same war. Rumsfeld suggests the need to use invasive therapy to root out that enemy; Bush wants to "inoculate" Iraqi society with a healthy dose of preventative medicine: democracy. This two-pronged "war-and-peace" plan will not be easy to pull off. The medicine has had unexpected and unwelcome side-effects. The patient has not responded as we had hoped. One of the problems is that the patient did not request our services. Sure, he feels better now, but he still doesn't trust us. Also, the source of his illness is still there. That source is radical Islam. Specifically, Wahabbi Islam. Wahabbism embraces an inflexible doctrine responsible for sowing intolerance, sedition, violence, hatred and "holy" war in the Muslim world and elsewhere. This doctrine feeds radical Islamism. According to Daniel Pipes, ten to fifteen percent of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims adhere to militant Islam. That 10-15% translates into an "army" of 120-180 million... and some feel that Pipes' figures are an understatement. The West preaches freedom and equality - two notions in very short supply in Arab/Muslim culture - and this is why Islamists see the West as their enemy. Islamists have declared war on America, Israel, Spain and, indeed, the entire West. The West was never their enemy, but now we must recognize that radical Islamic fundamentalists are our enemy. Attempts to coddle them in the hope that they will finally "get it" and cut themselves free of Middle Age barbarism are naive. Instead of waiting for them to "get it", it is time to "give it to them". We must unapologetically take steps to counter the rise of the belligerent and ruthless juggernaut of radical Islamism. No efforts should be spared to "encourage" Arab/Muslim leaders to reduce significantly or totally remove the hostility toward the non-Muslim world expressed overtly in their nations' schoolbooks, in their mosques and in their government-controlled media. Target Israel (The Little Satan): Epicenter of Arab/Muslim Intolerance Some might argue that things are getting better vis-a-vis the Arab-Islamic world and Israel. Egypt and the Kingdom of Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel. Maybe other Arab states will follow. Is this a realistic expectation or simplistic naivete? Let's take a look at how these "moderates" relate to the "Great Satan's evil child", Israel. Here are some of the "calls for peace" coming from these sought-after "moderate" Arab voices: Saudi Sermon: "Time for Christians and Jews to convert to Islam." (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TV1 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government; carried on February 27, 2004 at 0945 GMT a live sermon from the mosque in Mecca) Another Saudi sermon: "Jewish paws"; "defeat the usurper Jews." (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TV2 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government, on February 6, 2004 at 0950 GMT carried a 22-minute live sermon from the mosque in Medina) Jordanian sermon: "O God, destroy your enemies, the Jewish and crusader enemies of Islam." (Amman, Jordan Television Channel 1 in Arabic, official television station of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on March 5, 2004 at 1002 GMT carried a 17-minute live sermon from Martyr King Abdallah mosque in Amman) Palestinian Authority-supervised sermon: "Palestine [including all of Israel] is an Islamic land that must not be relinquished." (West Bank, Ramallah, Voice of Palestine, official radio station of the Palestinian Authority, on February 6, 2004 at 1000 GMT carried a 24-minute live sermon from Al-Aqsa Mosque) PA-supervised sermon: "Jews, the sons of apes and pigs." (Gaza, Palestine Satellite TV Channel in Arabic, official television station of the Palestinian Authority, carried on March 13, 2004 at 0958 GMT, a live sermon from Zayid Bin-Sultan Mosque in Gaza) Yemeni sermon: "O God, destroy the aggressive Zionists and the tyrant Americans." (Sanaa, Republic of Yemen Television in Arabic, official television station of the Republic of Yemen, on February 6, 2004 at 0926 GMT carried a 21-minute live sermon from the Grand Mosque in Sanaa) Qatar sermon: "aggressor Jews and their wicked Crusader allies." (Doha, Qatar Television Service in Arabic, official television station of the State of Qatar, on 20 February 2004 at 0858 GMT carried a live 60-minute sermon from Umar Bin-Al-Khattab Mosque in Doha) Syrian sermon: "O God, deal with the criminal Zionists and those with them and behind them." (Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic radio in Arabic, official station of the Syrian Government, carried on February 27, 2004 at 1010 GMT, a live sermon from Al-Uthman Mosque in Damascus) So much for waiting for the Arab-Islamic leopard to change its spots. What Israel really needs is for that leopard to change into a totally different animal - one that is not such an aggressive carnivore. Fast-Forward to America: "The Great Satan" The Bush Administration is in "hot pursuit" of Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network. America is also trying to create a stable post-Saddam Iraq even as it continues to neutralize both indigenous Arab-Muslim terrorism and terrorism imported from "Greater Arabia." Sadly, yet predictably, America is beginning to feel the utter frustration that Israel has felt for years: full-throttle Arab violence, fueled by an Islamic engine that never quits. There is also some hypocrisy here. While America aggressively fights terrorists, she denies Israel the right to fight her own war against these same savages. This sends a message to the Arab-Islamic terrorists that America's war on terror is not completely sincere, nor is her heart totally in it. For if America were truly committed to "root out terrorists," she would turn the Israel Defense Forces loose on Yasser Arafat and his so-called Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Al-Aqsa Brigades, Hizbullah, Tanzim, PFLP, etc. And if Israel were unable or unwilling to do this, then America would do it for Israel. So why is there a double standard vis-a-vis Israel in the war on terrorism? President Bush should be asking (perhaps demanding) that Prime Minister Sharon launch an all-out attack on the terrorist organizations surrounding Israel. These areas are the breeding grounds that fuel anti-Western sentiment and send jihadists against Israel and against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These killers of Jews in Israel are indistinguishable from killers of Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan and downtown New York City. Israel's enemies are America's enemies, and Israel's enemies are also enemies of the shrinking civilized world. Are you listening, Spain? France? Germany? Italy? England? Sweden? One should never dialogue with terrorists. When the bombs went off in Madrid on March 11, the Spanish electorate indeed decided not to dialogue with the Arab-Muslim murderers who perpetrated the act. They simply took the cowardly route of appeasement. The Spanish matador took a goring and the crowd yelled, "Ole!" That same Arab-Islamic bull is on the loose elsewhere. How will others react to setbacks in our war against these savages? Stay tuned. If the Madrid response is any indication, you ain't seen nothing yet. Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles-based analyst on the board of directors of the West Coast Region of the American Jewish Congress and the chairperson of the organization's Middle East committee. To Go To Top

LET MY PEOPLE STAY! Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, March 29, 2004.

Passover is with us again. Only this time we are in the Land of our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and are not slaves in the Land of Egypt. We are in the Promised Land. The Land of Milk and Honey. The Land which the Lord of the Universe Himself promised in the Bible to our ancestors thousands of years ago. We literally have come from the four corners of this earth, back to our Holy Land. A true miracle for all to see, and ponder. A clear proof that life has purpose, meaning and fulfillment. There is an awesome message in this turn of events. Despite Arab and Moslem terror, the Jews have come home, and are here to stay. Despite the vicissitudes, and imponderables, there is a clear message coming out of Israel, whereas, heretofore the message of freedom called out to Egypt to: Let my People Go!, the message for our generation is: Let My People Stay! There may be skeptics, and those who wish to rewrite history, but one thing is crystal clear, the Jews are proof positive that there is an Almighty. Their miraculous survival throughout the ages, and their return from whence they originated almost two thousand years, raises the spirits and provides hope to all of the downtrodden of this earth. For if the Jews can make wastelands in Israel bloom, and make their barren land fertile once again, they have a vital and inspiring message for everyone. Moreover, the sanctification of life, should be the important concept rather than the Moslem emphasis on death and sexual rewards in the hereafter. Furthermore, we must concentrate on the eradication of Arab terror from the Holy Land. Terror is an unacceptable solution for solving societal problems. However, what the world craves desperately is a spiritual center. Jerusalem, and particularly the Temple Mount, fulfills this need. Out of Zion will come forth the law, and the word of G-d from Jerusalem, is no idle phrase. It can and should become our moral guide for a richer and more meaningful life. Above all else, this Passover should mark the beginning of a new era with regard to Israel. Let the Jewish People Stay and flourish in all of the Land of Israel, should become the catchwords for all freedom loving peoples. May it be His Will, that the upcoming Passover, be special for the People of Israel; that their Land be blessed with peace and prosperity; and that Arab terror be finally eradicated from the Holy Land forever. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

MUSLIM CULTURE HAS CONTRIBUTED LITTLE FOR CENTURIES, SAYS CAREY Posted by Leo Rennert, March 28, 2004.

This was a news item in the Telegraph in England. It is by Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent, and is is archived at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main. jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/26/narch26.xml It was written by Jonathan Petre, their Religious Correspondent. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, launched a trenchant attack on Islamic culture last night, saying it was ls authoritarian, inflexible and under-achieving. In a speech that will upset sensitive relations between the faiths, he denounced moderate Muslims for failing unequivocally to condemn the "evil" of suicide bombers. Dr Carey acknowledged most Muslims are peaceful people He attacked the "glaring absence" of democracy in Muslim countries, suggested that they had contributed little of major significance to world culture for centuries and criticised the Islamic faith. Dr Carey's comments, in a lecture in Rome, are the most forthright by a senior Church leader. He was speaking on the eve of a seminar of Christian and Muslim scholars in New York, led by his successor as archbishop, Dr Rowan Williams. He acknowledged that most Muslims were peaceful people who should not be demonised. But he said that terrorist acts such as the September 11 attacks on America and the Madrid bombings raised difficult questions. Contrasting western democracy with Islamic societies, he said: "Throughout the Middle East and North Africa we find authoritarian regimes with deeply entrenched leadership, some of which rose to power at the point of a gun and are retained in power by massive investment in security forces. "Whether they are military dictatorships or traditional sovereignties, each ruler seems committed to retaining power and privilege." Dr Carey said he was not convinced by arguments that Islam and democracy were incompatible, citing the example of Turkey. He urged Europeans and Americans to resist claims that Islamic states were morally, spiritually and culturally superior. "Although we owe much to Islam handing on to the West many of the treasures of Greek thought, the beginnings of calculus, Aristotelian thought during the period known in the West as the dark ages, it is sad to relate that no great invention has come for many hundred years from Muslim countries," he said. "This is a puzzle, because Muslim peoples are not bereft of brilliant minds. They have much to contribute to the human family and we look forward to the close co-operation that might make this possible. "Yes, the West has still much to be proud of and we should say so strongly. We should also encourage Muslims living in the West to be proud of it and say so to their brothers and sisters living elsewhere." Dr Carey said that, while Christianity and Judaism had a long history of often painful critical scholarship, Islamic theology was only now being challenged to become more open to examination. "In the case of Islam, Mohammed, acknowledged by all in spite of his religious greatness to be an illiterate man, is said to have received God's word direct, word by word from angels, and scribes recorded them later. "Thus believers are told, because they have come direct from Allah, they are not to be questioned or revised. "In the first few centuries of the Islamic era, Islamic theologians sought to meet the challenge this implied, but during the past 500 years critical scholarship has declined, leading to strong resistance to modernity." Dr Carey said that moderate Muslims must "resist strongly" the taking over of Islam by radical activists "and to express strongly, on behalf of the many millions of their co-religionists, their abhorrence of violence done in the name of Allah". He said: "We look to them to condemn suicide bombers and terrorists who use Islam as a weapon to destabilise and destroy innocent lives. Sadly, apart from a few courageous examples, very few Muslim leaders condemn clearly and unconditionally the evil of suicide bombers who kill innocent people. "We need to hear outright condemnation of theologies that state that suicide bombers are martyrs and enter a martyr's reward." Christians, who shared many values with Muslims, such as respect for the family, must speak out against the persecution they often encountered in Muslim countries. "During my time as archbishop, this was my constant refrain: that the welcome we have given to Muslims in the West, with the accompanying freedom to worship freely and build their mosques, should be reciprocated in Muslim lands," he said. Dr Carey, who initiated several top-level meetings between Christian and Islamic leaders during his time at Lambeth Palace, urged the West to tackle the Palestinian problem and other inequalities in the Muslim world. "It will do us little good if the West simply believes that the answer is to put an end to Osama bin Laden. Rather, we must put an end to conditions, distortions and misinformation that create him and his many emulators." Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that Dr Carey's comments "saddened" him. "He should be well aware that mainstream Muslim organisations have consistently condemned terrorist acts but their statements are often ignored by the media," he said. "Dr Carey is trampling on a very sensitive area by referring to the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet." To Go To Top

DON'T WORRY AMERICA, HAMAS IS AT WAR WITH ISRAEL TOO Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, March 28, 2004.

Admittedly, Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi - the new head of Hamas - has a gripe. Israel has tried twice to kill him, and just after the recent "targeted killing" of his boss, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin by Israel, Israeli officials announced that Rantisi was still on their "hit" list. Of course, when you think about what Rantisi has said in the past, "We will continue with our holy war and resistance until every last criminal Zionist is evicted from this land. By G-D we will not leave one Jew alive in Palestine. We will fight them with all the strength we have. This is our land, not the Jews." You can understand why Israel would want to eliminate the terrorist leader. Immediately after the Israeli missile strike that killed Sheikh Yassin, Rantisi and other Hamas leaders threatened to retaliate against America, blaming it for supporting Israel. But a few days later, Rantisi backed down from the threat, saying Hamas would only be active in the West Bank - Judea and Samaria - the Gaza Strip, and Israel. Now he's decided to enlarge the war. It's not good enough to wipe out Israel; he's after America too. In a recent speech at the Islamic University in Gaza City, Rantisi said he was not surprised that the US had vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel's assassination of Hamas "spiritual leader" Sheikh Yassin. "Bush is an enemy of God, an enemy of Islam, an enemy of Muslims," Rantisi explained. "America has announced a war against Allah, Sharon has announced a war against Allah. Allah announces a war against America, Bush and Sharon," he told the crowd of more than 5,000. The rally was the first public appearance by Rantisi, since the end of a three-day official mourning period for Yassin. Rantisi seems to be following the line developed by his "spiritual leader" Yassin, who in the weeks and months before Israel's assassination of him, had increasingly begun speaking publicly about the "Global Jihad" in Bin Laden and al-Qaeda type terms. Although this wasn't new to Yassin, who back in February 2002 - before the war in Iraq - called on the international Islamic community to combat "American influence" on their countries via "Jihad". "The war of God goes on against them and I see the beginning of victory starting from here in Palestine in the hands of the Izzedin al-Kassam Brigades - Hamas's military wing - and the Hamas movement," Rantisi said. In the past, after a previous attempt on his life, Rantisi threatened that, "Now no one is immune, Hamas will target every man, woman, and child in Israel." As if they weren't already trying to kill everyone, with their indiscriminant suicide bombings? Now he's adding America to his list. Dr. Rantisi also suggested the Arab world is letting down the Palestinians. "I want to tell the Arab leaders, you will be asked by God...about the blood of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin," he said. Rantisi told the Arab states, "The blood of Sheikh Yassin calls on you to close the [Israeli] embassies, the consulates, commercial offices. Boycott them, commercially, diplomatically and culturally and in security [contacts], and stop meeting killers like Sharon," he said. Rantisi said they only looked weak following the weekend postponement of an Arab League summit in a dispute over democratic reform proposals. "The time has come to be strong in facing America and the Zionists," Rantisi demanded. The crowds, mostly dressed in the green colors of Hamas, cheered Rantisi's every word and pledged their support for him. Let's not forget that Dr. Rantisi first came to public attention in December 1992, when then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin "exiled" 400 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists to Marj az-Zuhour in Southern Lebanon. The international media at the time, portrayed their daily struggles, trying to drum up sympathy for their plight - combating the grueling cold, stranded with not sufficient food or medical supplies, etc - when in fact, they had gotten hold of cell phones, and made contact with Hezbollah operatives. For almost a year they got continuous Jihadist indoctrination, bomb making lessons, and practice in guerrilla warfare techniques - don't forget the unreported vacations to Beirut - thanks to Hezbollah. Dr. Abdel Aziz Rantisi - then political head of Hamas - gained international prominence at that time, as the group's spokesman. So, no one can doubt Rantisi's "Jihadist credentials". Hezbollah - sponsored by Iran and Syria - has been involved in attacks worldwide against Jewish and Israeli targets. I might add, that they bombed the US Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, and have sent many fighters to Iraq, as well. Then you have the more recent case - in October 2003 - of three American security personnel killed in an American diplomatic convoy in Gaza. Anonymous callers to the media at the time claimed that an unknown group - the Popular Resistance Committees - was behind the attack. But, Israeli intelligence sources have discounted the calls and placed the blame on members of Arafat's Fatah. Though the Palestinian Authority officially condemned the attack, the Palestine Satellite TV Channel - an official television station of the Palestinian Authority - carried a weekly live sermon from Sheikh Zaid Bin-Sultan Al Nuhayyan Mosque in Gaza. The imam told his audience, "The world will never enjoy security unless our children enjoy it here in Palestine. We hear statements by the little US President. We hear unfair and tyrannical statements in which he says Israel has the right to defend itself. These statements carry destruction for the United States itself. From here, we warn the American people that this President is dragging them to the abyss." He concluded, "O Lord, take vengeance on the Jews and their supporters. O Lord, take vengeance on the Jews and their allies..." The Palestinian Authority hasn't yet adequately investigated the bombing. And if you thought it was only Hamas who promotes anti-American Jihadist rhetoric, think again. The Palestinian Authority's highly controlled official media persistently incites hatred and violence against America and the West, besides Israel. They tell the Palestinian public, that several of the conflicts around the world - that involve Muslims and Arabs - are part of a war between civilizations, that the western world led by the United States is fighting against the Arab world and Islam. They inflame their people to support terror, because America "runs a dirty war against all that is Arab and Muslim." The Palestinians are repeatedly told they must lead the war against the West. The official PA newspaper al-Hayyat al-Jadida, echoing Bin Laden terminology, insists there exists an "American-European-Russian alliance," pursuing Muslim/Arab subjugation. The Palestinians are at the forefront of the war that will, "shake the earth under the feet of the blood and oil sucking neo-imperialists, the thieves of natural resources, murderers of nations." US President Bush, in this "Global Jihad," is depicted not only as a leader of the "enemy United States," but also as the enemy of all civilization, the "Fuhrer of the globalization era." He's called a greater danger than Hitler, leading the world to destruction. "The new Fuhrer [Bush] will return the world to the Stone Age," while Hitler only left "tens of millions of dead." So there you have it, the true "Axis of Evil": Iran, Syria, "Palestine", Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Arafat, Rantisi and Hamas. With the Palestinian Authority housing several terror gangs, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Arafat's own Fatah sponsored al-Aksa Brigades and Tanzim, the DFLP, the PFLP, and others, "Palestine" has become another Afghanistan. Imagine what full Palestinian independence would mean for the world? But, don't worry America, Hamas is at war with Israel too... Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations and Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko To Go To Top

POWER, PERVERSION, PASSION AND PALESTINIANISM Posted by Evelyn Hayes, March 28, 2004.

They ask why an adolescent "palestinian" boy can blow himself up and why he didn't. They say he did not accept the perverse semantics that proposes that when you die your passion is satisfied. They say he was too slow, therefore, had time to think, even at a limited capacity and realize he wanted to live. He also gave the world time to stop and think, perhaps something very wrong is going on with palestinianism, as if they didn't have time and reminders again, such as, Twin Buddhas and Twin Towers and Twin Attacks killing innocents worldwide How wrong is palestinianism and who is taking the evil by the horns? Power is the passion of evil. Power killed J.C. This was the power of the Roman invaders. They were the first palestinians. Yes, they named Israel, the land of the Biblical Jews, "Palestine" and they named Jerusalem Aitola Capitolina. They did it to pervert the identity of the Jews, to disassociate them from their holy land. As they infused passion and herd mentality into their subjects, "pan-demon-ianism" was the rule. Perversion is replacing identity. Palestianism associates all Arabs, Muslims, Black Muslim, converts and sympathizers with an agenda against the Jews. Palestinianism would associate all against the Jews for their cause which is against all dhimmis. Palestinianism ignores that it was the Jews who suffered from the Philistines, Goliath, the Babylonians, the Inquisition, the diaspora, the pogroms and the Holocaust. It was the Jew for 2000 years who dreamed of Jerusalem, Palestine, Israel, the Jewish homeland. Rich benefactors throughout time supported Torah learning in the cities of Gaza, Acco, Tiberias, Safed, Hebron, Jerusalem, more. Rich benefactors bought land from the Ottoman Empire and started new self supporting settlements in the Galilee, Judea, Gaza, Jerusalem and enticed Jews to come from behind the walls and use their hands instead of hand-outs. Israel started to bloom and Arabs fled their homelands and warlords to work for the Jews. The power of the warlords was reduced, their extortion money dwindled. The warlords of Egypt and Syria began to invade Israel. According to British Occupation documents, 30,000 Syrians tried to flee back to Syria because they thought they would be punished because they massacred Jews in 1936. Perversion is using lies to excite passionate and prime-evil responses to rally herds for warlords. Arab neighbors killed their Jewish friends and pharmicists when the Temple Mount blood libel spread from the mosques to Musrawa to Hebron and throughout Israel in 1929. Humans became beasts, disembowling their neighbors and their neighbors babies as the mosques blasted hate against the Jews. Mass pogroms in Israel began when a perverted leader used lies to ignite the savage passions of normal men, intellectual as well as illiterate. Few were brave enough and honest enough to stand back. But there were heroes, The heroes who chose not to follow the perversions of Hitler in his power war against the Jews and mankind were not faithful to Aryanism, a semantics of creating a people against individuals and the basics of civilization. How the hordes thirsted for the incinerated Jews' gold teeth and household belongings. How murder and theft and brutality was the other face of the German kind to his own children. How the imported PA walk past Jewish built houses and ancient settlements and have a passion to unselttle more to reap the rewards that the peaceful Jews will throw to them to sedate their passion ignoring the reality that abusers abuse more when their tirades are rewarded. Thank G-d that sanity survived the brutality of the power-monger and his immorality. Thank G-d the Enron Immorality is over. However, the suffering of the victims continues. Further embezzlements by the powermongers are curtailed by a less healthy backlash. The power of pocketing whats not yours doesn't care if hardship and death of others is an outcome. The power of pocketing whats not yours doesn't care if hardship and death of others is an outcome. Once guilty, the guilty pervert on, covering up their evil by inducing passion into the pathways of herds who want what appears to be the rewards of the respectable but in reality is bankruptcy. Who is the scapegoat to keep judge off the war lord? Scapegoating the Jews keeps the media and the judges occupied. How precise was the Aryan army? What castles have the palestinian warlords? Who dares dismantle the perversion of palestinianism? Who dares connect the dots of their Forbes status and their subjects' woes? Who dares confront the passion of the killer who condems his victim, portraying as his own the victims sympathy traits and disqualifying the victim by portraying his immorality as theirs. How many believe that the Egyptian Arafat al-Husseini is a palestinian without association to the mufti who supported Hitler in his genocidal imperialism in World War II? Who supports pan-palestinianism in its suicidal war against the crusaders: Jews, the West, Buddhists, Hindus, black Africans, Christians, Coptics, and anyone else who would hinder their power thrusts? Stop. When the power is in the Creator's hands, all men are equal. When there are supernatural gods controlling the word, man is still not on the pedestal. Stop, when man is warlord, men are their suicide serfs. Who endangers the world? Remember the statues of Hadrian, the blow-ups of Stalin and Hitler, the all- hovering Arafat, Saddam Hussein? The enslaved of the Taliban rejoiced when America intervened. The abused of Saddam Hussein were emancipated when his statue fell. Who will take down the remnants of Arafasician a la Haj al-Husseini who has perverted Arab reality, religion, morality and created a suicide race? Arafascism is Nazism is Roman palestinianism, is imperialism, not to rule but to ruthlessly rob. It is not liberating to be a liberal who sees the side of the warlord with a face of the victim, who cries for the heartless and heartwrenching and not the heartbroken. Perverted power-lords have substituted normalcy with lusting passion in the hearts and heads of their subjects with a Mein Kampf semantics. The Diapora Jew, with only 14 million survivors controls the world? How do they control Saudi Arabia when they were dispossessed from Medina after they accepted Mohammed's Big Lie 1400 years ago and are not welcome at all? How do they control Europe when they are a remnant of aged survivors? How do they control the media when it's Arab oil money that buys into all corporations and gets plusses when they minus? Power has perverted the senses of free men too passionate to use their minds and microfilm, too political to be individuals, too socialistic to be sociable, too liberal to be accepting of freedom for Jews in Judea. Palestinianism has been imperialism since the Goliath (not a Jew) was against the Jews, since Hellenism would disorder the world for its own select order, since Rome invaded Israel and called it Palestine, since Hitler worked with the mufti to solve the Jewish problem that included Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Poland, Russia, Africa, since jihad is spreading across the globe and revolutioninzing peace into slavery. President Franklin Roosevelt said, "There is nothing to fear but fear itself." I believe it is fearful to accept the fierce and be passive, appeasing, self-denying and accepting evil as morally equivalent. The greatest thing to fear is power, perverion, passion and pan-palestinianism. Let's substitute the Durban hatefest with a unity of individuals for truth, justice and freedom for all, even the endangered species of just 14 million Jews who walked away from slavery with the help of the Holy One Blessed Be He. Let's not forget the Bible of the Jews because it is truly the master guide to disempower evil, to rectify perversion, to control passion, to end all tyranny, imperialism, slavery. Big Lies make truth little. The truth is the palestinian boy was man enough to say no. Saying no to power, perversion, passion and palestinianism is saying yes to truth and life. Am Yisrael Chai. Evelyn Hayes is author of "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, because their hearts are softened to accept the unacceptable" and "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." To Go To Top

ALABAMA SUPPORTS ISRAEL Posted by Mordechai Ben Menachem, March 28, 2004.

This is a news item from today's Arutz-7 (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com) Alabama State Representative Jim Carns (Republican from Birmingham) sponsored the following joint resolution (House and Senate of Alabama) expressing solidarity with Israel in its fight against terrorism. Rep. Carns has thus followed in the footsteps of the 1943 joint resolution, adopted by both chambers in Alabama, in support of the establishment of a Jewish State. Local pro-Israel activists note that Jim and Judy Carns have been committed to the enhancement of Alabama-Israel ties in the areas of commerce and industry. The resolution states, in part: "WHEREAS, Palestinian organizations are engaging in an organized, systematic, and deliberate campaign of terror aimed at inflicting as many casualties as possible on the Israeli population, including through the use of homicide terrorist attacks; and "WHEREAS, Israel has lost nearly 700 innocent lives, which as a percentage of population is commensurate with America losing over 30,000 lives in the terrorist attacks on New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington on September 11, 2001; and "WHEREAS, the continued terrorism and incitement committed, supported, and coordinated by official arms of the Palestinian Authority are a direct violation of [prior commitments]... "[The] State of Alabama: (1) Stands in solidarity with Israel as it takes necessary steps to provide security to its people by dismantling the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas. (2) Remains committed to Israel's right to self-defense and supports additional United States assistance to help Israel defend itself. (3) Condemns Palestinian homicide bombings. (4) Condemns the ongoing support and coordination of terror by Yasser Arafat and other members of the Palestinian leadership. (5) Demands that the Palestinian Authority at last fulfill its commitment to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian areas, including any such infrastructure associated with PLO and Palestinian Authority entities tied directly to Yasser Arafat. (6) Is gravely concerned that Arafat's actions are not those of a viable partner for peace. (7) Urges all Arab states to declare their unqualified opposition to all forms of terrorism, particularly homicide bombing. (8) Commends the President for his leadership in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, particularly the efforts of the administration to engage countries throughout the region to condemn and prevent terrorism and to prevent a widening of the conflict. (9) Urges all parties in the region to pursue vigorously efforts to establish a just, lasting, and comprehensive peace in the Middle East. (10) Declares that it will work as an elected body to promote tourism, economic trade, and cultural exchange with the State of Israel, keeping relations healthy now and into the future for the benefit of the State of Alabama and Israel." To Go To Top

RABIN'S FORGOTTEN PROGRAM: NO PALESTINIAN STATE, NO SETTLEMENT FREEZE, GUSH KATIF AS MODEL Posted by IsrAlert, March 28, 2004.

These are excerpts from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin speech: Ratification of the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement The Knesset, October 5, 1995 (www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1990_1999/1995/10/ PM%20Rabin%20in%20Knesset- %20Ratification%20of%20Interim%20Agree). * No Palestinian State: "We view the permanent solution in the framework of State of Israel which will include most of the area of the Land of Israel as it was under the rule of the British Mandate, and alongside it a Palestinian entity which will be a home to most of the Palestinian residents living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. We would like this to be an entity which is less than a state, and which will independently run the lives of the Palestinians under its authority." * No return to '67 borders: "The borders of the State of Israel, during the permanent solution, will be beyond the lines which existed before the Six Day War. We will not return to the 4 June 1967 lines." * Control of Jordan Valley: "The security border of the State of Israel will be located in the Jordan Valley, in the broadest meaning of that term." * Gush Katif as model: "The establishment of blocs of settlements in Judea and Samaria, like the one in Gush Katif." * All settlements remain intact dring interim period: "I want to remind you: we committed ourselves, that is, we came to an agreement, and committed ourselves before the Knesset, not to uproot a single settlement in the framework of the interim agreement, and not to hinder building for natural growth." * (During interim period) "The responsibility for external security along the borders with Egypt and Jordan, as well as control over the airspace above all of the territories and Gaza Strip maritime zone, remains in our hands." Read PM Rabin's complete presentation to the Knesset at: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFAArchive/1990_1999/1995/10/PM% 20Rabin%20in%20Knesset- %20Ratification%20of%20Interim%20Agree IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

HAMAS PLOTS KNOCKOUT BLOW WITH 800 SUICIDE BOMBERS Posted by Ken Heller, March 28, 2004.

This is a DEBKAfile Special Report. This wouldn't have been able to be achieved had Israel "taken out" all the mourners at Yassin's "funeral" with helicopter gunships! No sooner had the tens of thousands of mourners dispersed after the ceremonies and demonstrations of strength marking the death of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last Tuesday, March 22, in an Israeli missile attack, when a thousand Hamas top and middle-ranking activists dived underground. This is reported by DEBKAfile's counter-terror sources. Since then, known Hamas operatives have maintained perfect telephone silence, their relatives are in the dark about their whereabouts and contacts are maintained only through trusted couriers. This situation presented the Hamas command center in Damascus with the problem of communicating urgent instructions to the men on the ground in the Gaza Strip - urgent for two reasons: 1. Although Adel Aziz Rantisi made a show of bending the knee to Khaled Mashaal, head of the Hamas Damascus command center, Mashaal knows he must assert his authority without delay and set the pace of coming in events in the Gaza Strip before the local leadership grabs the initiative. 2. Hamas, Hizballah and al Qaeda agents maintain day-to-day exchanges based on a delicately balanced intelligence and logistical give and take. Mashaal and company will not allow anyone in the Hamas Gaza command to upset the balance of this relationship. A way therefore had to be found for Hamas, Damascus, to impose its will on Hamas, Gaza. The method finally hit on was to take to the airwaves. Friday, March 26, therefore, the Hamas liaison man in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, who managed the Mishaal-Rantisi compromise, was interviewed on Hizballah Radio Nur. On the assumption that the Gaza contingent in hiding were listening in case of coded messages, Hamdan addressed the Hamas "military" wing, the Izz el-Deen al-Qasseem Brigades, directly - not in code but in plain language. DEBKAfile monitored his statement, as follows: "The lone suicide martyr method has scored great achievements, but now, as we stand at the threshold of a decisive stage, we must resort to a tactic that brings us the desired results. Ideally, we would round up 70,000 to 80,000 martyrs and have them blow themselves up simultaneously in the enemy's urban centers and so finally vanquish him. But that is not realistic. One tenth or even one hundredth part of that number should suffice to inflict a shock on a strategic scale. I therefore tell you not to hurry to exact revenge. We have to be sure our assault is concerted and perfectly orchestrated. Don't waste resources and manpower on small operations. No one is pushing you. Take all the time you need and then pick a date and hour that are most advantageous to our project." Hamdan's words freely translated are a directive from Damascus HQ to Muhammed Deif, commander of the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam, to muster an army of several hundred suicide killers to reach the hubs of Israeli cities and blow themselves up at the same moment. The Damascus Hamas command reckons that, even if not all the massacres come off, Israel will not be able to withstand a shock and casualties of the magnitude projected This escalation fits in well with the intelligence gathered by Americans and Israelis on the spreading base of anti-Israeli terror from the double suicide attack carried out in Ashdod shortly before the assassination of Sheikh Yassin which caused the deaths of 10 Israeli port workers. Their experts conclude the attack was the work of Hizballah aided and abetted by al Qaeda. A senior US intelligence official is quoted as saying: "The soldiers were members of Hamas. But the overall planning, the way the ship's container was prepared, the weapons used and the level of advance intelligence invested in the attack all bear the marks of the two Islamic terrorist groups. We can expect many more combined terrorist assaults of this kind in the future." The Ashdod attack posed a grave challenge to the Sharon government's security and counter-terror policies. Last December, before handing over a large number of prisoners in an uneven swap deal with Hizballah, Israel issued a sharp public warning to the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group against further aggression. Less than three months later, the Hizballah, not satisfied with the Ashdod operation, battered IDF for nearly three hours last Sunday, March 21, its missiles and mortars hitting road junctions on the Golan and coming close to the town of Kiryat Shmoneh inside the Green Line. Israel's response, confined to an air-artillery raid on Hizballah firing positions, bespoke diluted deterrence, a signal certainly picked up by Hizballah and al Qaeda as well as the Hamas and its fellow Palestinian terrorist organizations. Many Israelis, including some at decision-making levels, prefer not to see the international terrorist coalition functioning in Palestinian-controlled territory - and even among Israeli Arabs in the form of Al Qaeda sleeper cells. The phenomenon is not even new. Al Qaeda shoe bomber Richard Reid who failed to blow up an American airliner on December 22, 2001, learned how to pack explosives in his shoes while visiting Hamas activist Nabil Aqal at his home in the Jebaliya refugee camp of the Gaza Strip. This fact was not brought out in the US court that sentenced him to life imprisonment. Israel too kept quiet about this connection, mainly so as not to embarrass Mohammed Dahlan, then head of the Palestinian Gaza Strip preventive security apparatus, who could not have avoided knowing about the al Qaeda visitor. He was not the last, the two British Muslim bombers, Assif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, who bombed Mike's Place on the Tel Aviv promenade on April 30, 2003, also spent time with Hamas hosts in the Gaza Strip prior to their hit. Their real assignment was to bomb the US embassy a few doors away from the bar but they found it too well protected. American, British and Israeli security forces have conspired to keep this quiet. But, unlike the Israelis, who bury their heads in the sand, the British heeded the Tel Aviv attack as a danger signal warning them that al Qaeda had planted cells in Briton s large Muslim population. Since the Madrid train attacks, London's top security and police officials have reiterated that an al Qaeda strike in the British capital is inevitable. To Go To Top

MUSLIM SHEIKH SHARES ANTI-TERRORIST VIEWS Posted by Root and Branch Association, March 28, 2004.

This article was written by Ms Arlene Fine of the Cleveland Jewish News and appeared March 10, 2004. It is archived at http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/ 2004/03/10/features/profile/muslim0305.txt "It is well-known that members of the Saudi royal family are funding worldwide terrorism, but because of fear of economic reprisals, the United States and its allies look the other way", says the Italian-born sheikh, Professor Abdul Hadi Palazzi. In an hour long address at the Mandel Jewish Community Center recently, Palazzi touched on the Oslo Accords, Islam, the Middle East and the current Arab-Israeli conflict. The sheikh's talk was sponsored by the Alvin, Lottie & Rachel Gray Center for Jewish Life and Learning, The American Jewish Committee, Zionist Organization of America, Betar and Cleveland Hillel. Palazzi, who is an imam and secretary-general of the Italian Muslim Association, has long been outspoken in his criticism of Muslim political extremists including the P.L.O., Yasir Arafat and the Al Aqsa Brigade. For the past few years, he has been a keynote speaker at interfaith dialogues and conferences around the world. Tracing the current conflict between the Arabs and Israelis to events that occurred right after World War I, Palazzi says, with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, there were no Islamic states. The British allowed the Wahabi, a strict fundamentalist Muslim sect which profoundly influenced the Taliban of Afghanistan, to set up a kingdom that later became Saudi Arabia. Members of the Saudi royal family were part of the Wahabi and over the years "systematically exported their views of Islam in a convincing and often lethal manner". Many Saudi leaders were also members of the Wahabi-influenced Muslim Brotherhood, which was "behind most of the terror in the world", says Palazzi. "They found a kindred spirit with Yasir Arafat and a dangerous partnership was established". According to Palazzi, the Muslim Brotherhood has had a worldwide influence far in excess of their small numbers owing to their financial clout. Beginning in the mid-'60s, the Brotherhood made a concerted effort to fund all the Islamic mosques in the U.S., says Palazzi. "By controlling 99% of these Islamic religious centers they claim to represent millions of Muslims, which is not true. Meanwhile, this clever arrangement allows them to fund terror through religious means and charities. A representative for an Islamic charity could very easily be a Hamas member". The Brotherhood's current method of promoting anti-Israel sentiment is to flood their schools and mosques with classic European anti-semitic literature, explains the sheikh. This includes the Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Nazi-fascist literature, and books by revisionist authors like Roger Garaudy or David Irving. Palazzi says he is not alone in his feelings. "There are many good Muslims who value life on earth and the sanctity of their families. Israel should make every effort to support the growth of a pro-Israel movement among these Muslims". Sadly, says Palazzi, the Muslims who live in Israel and want to be considered Israelis were emotionally and morally defeated by the Oslo Accords. "They felt that Israel was selling them out to Arafat. They need to be supported and encouraged to speak out in defense of Israel without fear of being assassinated by the P.L.O. or Hamas". But the damaging effects of Oslo still reverberate, says Palazzi. "Oslo signaled to many of us that Israel was ready to accept peace at any price, and make incredible concessions to ruthless criminals". Calling the U.S.-sponsored road map to peace a very bad move, Palazzi believes the more you give in to terrorists' demands, the more they will ask. "The Palestinians will never be happy until they have the whole state of Israel under their rule". Further, he adds, a Palestinian state "will not be a democracy, but rather a haven for terrorist rule; and that defies all logic". Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi is resident Professor of Middle East Studies at the Research Institute for Anthropological Sciences in Rome, Italy as well as a commentator on the Middle East for Italy's public television station. He has written numerous articles on Muslim-Jewish relations and has denounced the P.L.O., Yasir Arafat and Hamas as perverting authentic, traditional Islam. To Go To Top

FIND THE DIFFERENCES: PA and Hamas Ideology Converge Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, March 28, 2004.

The Western world sees Hamas as a terrorist organization seeking Israel's destruction, but treats the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a peace partner, either actual or potential, for Israel. The fact that Israel continues to seek contact with PA leaders heightens the clear distinction made between the PA and Hamas. But the distance between Hamas and the PA has been shrinking for years. And the way the PA has responded to the killing of Yassin shows just how close the two groups actually are. The PA has gone far beyond its expected level of condemnation of the killing, and has eulogized Yassin as a leader representing all the Palestinian Authority. PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, for example, told PA TV that just as "Yassin united the Palestinians in his life he united them again in his death." Yasser Arafat's official daily, Al Hayat Al Jadida, published a cartoon of a wheelchair shaped as a map of what the PA calls "Palestine" (which erases all of Israel) thereby stating graphically that Yassin and "Palestine" are one and the same. In an unprecedented move, PA television ceased all regular programming for days, and except for brief news reports broadcast only slides of the Koran sung to mournful tunes. In the Arab world, this Koran broadcasting is usually reserved for the deaths of heads of state, as was done on Syrian TV after the death of Hafez Assad. That PA TV treated Yassin in this fashion demonstrates his elevated stature among PA leadership and PA society. Anyone listening to PA leaders' pronouncements in Arabic over the years has recognized that there never was a meaningful ideological divide between the PA and Hamas. It is well understood, for example, that Hamas believes Islam demands Israel's destruction. As the Hamas charter states, "Palestine is an Islamic Wakf the liberation of Palestine is an individual duty binding on all Muslims everywhere." Less noted is that PA religious leaders have repeatedly made identical rulings. Even when the Oslo Accord appeared to be in its heyday, Yousuf Abu Sneinah, preacher of Al-Aksa Mosque, issued this ruling on PA TV: "The land of Palestine is a Wakf for all The liberation of Palestine is an obligation for the entire Islamic nation " (April 30, 1999). The perception is that a difference between Hamas and the PA is that the latter, at least in principle, had given up using violence to reach its political goals. Yet it was Arafat who said in 1999, literally anticipating the current terror war: "The agreements won't liberate the land. Every centimeter needs struggle, and the land needs blood" (Al Hayat Al Jadida, January 25, 1999). When Hamas started using suicide terrorists to kill Israelis in 1996, the PA condemned the killings in English. But in Arabic, PA leaders made it clear that there was no difference in attitude, only a division of labor. Muhammad Dahlan, then head of Preventive Security in Gaza, said that the presence of Hamas "is important and essential in the cooperation in the building." Hani Alhasan, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, explained the role of Hamas: "Unity is in the nature of construction, and it is incumbent upon us to divide the work among the builders." (Al Ayyam, August 31, 1997). As long ago as 1997, after the bombing at Tel Aviv's Apropos cafe, a member of the PA Legislative Council expressed his condolences to the family of the suicide bomber during a session of the Legislature, and "his words were interrupted by the applause of the members of the [PA Legislative] Council" (Al Hayat Al Jadida March 27, 1997). It should be stressed that all this cooperation was openly expressed in PA society long before the current terror war began in October 2000. After starting the terror war, the PA completely erased any differences between the "builders" by creating its own suicide terror unit, the "Aksa Martyrs Brigade," which has committed numerous suicide terror attacks identical to those of Hamas. IF THERE is any difference today between Hamas and the PA, it's in their attitudes toward temporary agreements with Israel. While the Hamas charter states, "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad," the PA has argued that temporary agreements can be used to gain strategic territory from which to fight more easily for Israel's destruction. Then PA minister Abdel Aziz Shahin explained this just months before the PA started the terror war: "The Oslo agreements [were] a foothold and not a permanent settlement, since war and struggle on the land is more efficient than a struggle from a distant land... The Palestinian people will continue the revolution until they achieve the goals of the '65 revolution..." that is, the destruction of Israel (Al-Ayyam, May 30 2000). Faisal Husseini called the Oslo Accords a "Trojan Horse... the Oslo agreement, or any other agreement, is just a temporary procedure... according to the higher strategy [Palestine is] 'from the river to the sea.'" (Al-Arabi Egypt, June 24, 2001). Today, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas both embrace the use of terror to fight Israel. The only meaningful difference between them is the acceptance or rejection of political process as a vehicle to destroy Israel. Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -Palestinian Media Watch - (http://www.pmw.org.il). Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's North American representative. This article appeared as a Op-Ed piece in the Jerusalem Post today. To subscribe to PMW's reports, send an empty e-mail to reports-subscribe@pmw.org.il To Go To Top

WHY ARE JEWS LENDING LEGITIMACY TO DANGEROUS MUSLIM GROUPS? WILL WE NEVER LEARN? Posted by IsrAlert, March 27, 2004.

This article was written by Joel Mowbray. It appeared in Jewish World Review (http://www.jewishworldreview.com). Sometimes, partnering with ostensibly moderate Muslim organizations in holding interfaith events can lead to a lot of trouble and controversy if proper homework isn't done in advance. Just ask two Jewish groups in New Jersey. The UJA Federation of Bergen County and North Hudson and the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish Federation of New Jersey had both signed on to co-sponsor an interfaith brunch scheduled for this Sunday, March 28th, which was organized by the various members of a longstanding interfaith coalition. When a large number of members of the two Jewish groups complained, the interfaith coalition uninvited the American Muslim Union (AMU), which was one of two Muslim co-sponsors and jointly listed along with the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center as the event's only two hosts. But appearances can be deceiving. According to officials at both the mosque and AMU, AMU is very still very much a part of the interfaith brunch. Both organizations, in fact, maintain that their respective levels of participation remain exactly the same as before. And the featured speaker, who was selected by the two groups (and has her own set of problems relating to radicalism), has not changed either. Given the histories of people involved with AMU and Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center, it's not difficult to see why so many in the local Jewish community were concerned. Though the American Muslim Union appears moderate in its official literature - saying it is "dedicated to serving the American Muslim community and its unique needs" - the organization has interlocking leadership with a group that has allegedly raised funds for Hamas and hosted as a guest speaker last year an alleged Hamas member. Four current and former AMU directors and executives have held or currently hold leadership positions with the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC), a mosque located in Paterson, New Jersey. ICPC was founded in 1989 by, among others, Mohamed el-Mezain, who was the Chairman of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLFRD), which the Treasury Department designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in December 2001. According to a November 2001 FBI report that served as a basis for Treasury's decision to shut down HLFRD, a "reliable" FBI informant "reported that during a speech at the Islamic Center of Passaic County (ICPC) in November, 1994, Mohammad El-Mezain... admitted that some of the money collected by the ICPC and the HLFRD goes to HAMAS or HAMAS activities in Israel. El-Mezain also defended HAMAS and the activities carried out by HAMAS." Just last February, ICPC hosted a speech by Abdelhaleem Ashqar (http://www.icpc.com/icpcv2/lectures/ lectures.icpc?directory=Friday_Lectures), who is identified by several FBI informants cited in the memo as a prominent Hamas member. Ashqar was jailed for two months last fall for his refusal to testify before a federal grand jury probing Hamas. Although the ties to Hamas are allegations - El-Mezain nor anyone else affiliated with AMU or ICPC has been arrested - AMU has co-sponsored several rallies that any genuinely moderate groups would not associate themselves with. Chief among these rallies is one held in Times Square in April 2002, which called for, among other things, an end to the Israeli "massacres" of Palestinians. The headline of a flyer promoting the event says "Stop Palestinian Genocide" and the poster features an obviously forged photo of a baby lying in a pool of blood in a hospital bed. There may be many legitimate debates among reasonable, moderate people about Israel's treatment of Palestinians, but there are no widespread "massacres," nor is there any "genocide" of Palestinians. It is wildly false to claim either. (See http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/amu_flyer.jpg to see the poster.) So when UJA issued a four-paragraph statement, which was read to this columnist over the phone by a UJA official, announcing that AMU was no longer a co-sponsor of the interfaith brunch, many members were relieved and considered the matter closed. What Bergen County's interfaith coalition did, according to UJA's statement, was that it "determined that in the spirit of brotherhood, the faith communities rather than any organization will be the official sponsors of the Brunch." In other words, since AMU couldn't be called a co-sponsor, nobody else could either. To put it another way: Nothing's changed, other than the elimination of the label "co-sponsor." Although a UJA official angrily denied that AMU had ever been involved with the interfaith brunch - this person declared that an invitation listing AMU was a "mistake" - officials from both AMU and Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center maintain that neither group's role in the event has changed. On the dais, in fact, will be the chairman of AMU's Bergen County chapter, Waheed Khalid, who was the co-founder of Dar-ul-Islah and was, until recently, its president. A UJA official brusquely dismissed this as inconsequential, but it appears that Khalid will be the only Muslim on the dais and will be the one introducing the featured speaker, Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the vice-president of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). Several people at the mosque labeled Khalid - it seems correctly - as the event's emcee. UJA's four-paragraph statement noted that it "will not participate in any organization whose members advocate... anti-Semitism in any form" or express a "reluctance to condemn terrorism without qualification," yet Khalid himself has defended Hamas and has called a miniseries based on the virulently anti-Semitic "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" both "interesting" and "news." When asked by the Bergen County Record in May 1998 about Hamas' terrorist attacks, Khalid responded, "They are trying to get the occupiers out of their home." And in November 2002, Khalid made a startling comment to the New Jersey Jewish Standard about Egyptian television's 40-part miniseries based on the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a book first published by Russia in 1897 that purports to show a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. Apparently without a hint of irony, Khalid told the paper, "I think it is news and it is quite interesting to know what it says." Several officials at UJA acknowledge that they know about Khalid's comments. Yet he remains the sole Muslim on the dais, making him the de facto representative of the Muslim community at the event. But even if neither AMU nor Dar-ul-Islah were participants in the interfaith brunch, the event would still be problematic because of the featured speaker, who was selected by the two Muslim groups. Though Dr. Ingrid Mattson appears moderate, she is insidious precisely because she maintains that facade while steadfastly refusing to criticize radical Islamists, claiming that there is no such thing as Wahhabism and that the term "Islamic terrorism" should not be used in the media. Most shocking of all, though, is how little concern she expressed about suicide bombings in an essay she wrote shortly after 9/11. At a CNN-sponsored "town hall" forum in October 2001, Mattson - with a straight face - claimed that the radical, Saudi-sponsored form of Islam known as Wahhabism was akin to the Protestant movement in Christianity. Wahhabism "really was analogous to the European protestant reformation," she explained. This wasn't an isolated use of the analogy. At a November 2003 roundtable sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies Conference, Mattson said the Wahhabist movement in Islam is "a very old struggle... between the more theologically austere Muslims who like Protestant Christianity believe that there should be no saints there should be no intervention between you and G-d." Mattson takes a similar "see no evil" approach to the idea of Islamic terrorism. Mattson was one of several Muslim "scholars" quoted in a Washington Times article shortly after 9/11 who claimed that the media should not use the term "Islamic terrorism." Mattson took this stance despite the fact, as the Times paraphrased her, that "Islamic terrorists themselves use this term." The reason Mattson is able to pass herself off as a moderate is probably because she clears the low bar set for most Muslims: the ability to explicitly condemn suicide bombings. But she hasn't done so for very long. In a remarkably revealing essay Mattson penned for Beliefnet.com in October 2001, she wrote that, until then, Palestinian suicide bombings "simply did not cross my mind as a priority among the many issues I felt needed to be addressed." She stated it as matter-of-factly and inconsequentially as someone who apologizes for forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning because it "simply did not cross my mind as a priority." There seems little doubt that Mattson's statements would violate UJA's own standard of refusing to participate in an event with someone who expresses a "reluctance to condemn terrorism without qualification." But still she remains the featured speaker of this weekend's interfaith brunch. It's true that no one connected with either the American Muslim Union or the Dar-ul-Islah Islamic Center has been arrested, let alone convicted. And in America, everyone is - and should be - free to hold any belief, no matter how repugnant. But have we set the standard for "moderate" Islam so low that organizations like AMU and Dar-ul-Islah can gain much-needed legitimacy by hosting interfaith events endorsed by Jewish groups? Because whenever AMU or Dar-ul-Islah is attacked in the future for espousing unseemly propaganda - and given their histories, it will happen - they can point to events like this Sunday's interfaith brunch and say, "If Jewish groups are able to accepts us, why can't you?" It's understandable that the two Jewish groups in Bergen County don't want to disrupt an interfaith coalition that's been around since the 1980's, but shouldn't they be more concerned about the cover they're providing to groups that clearly don't deserve it? To Go To Top

SENATORS, JEWISH LEADERS DEDICATE TORAH SCROLL TO VICTIMS Posted by Menachem Kovacs, March 27, 2004.

FYI: Mayer and I participated in last Thursday's OU Advocacy Day in Washington. In the morning OU people from Baltimore's Shomrei Emunah and from around the country were briefed at the Justice Department on pending legislation to better protect Jews in the US and abroad. We then attended a luncheon in the Senate Office Building where we heard speeches by a number of Jewish Senators (Coleman of Minnesota, Lautenberg of New Jersey, Spector of Pennsylvania) who stressed their Jewish identity, roots and commitments and others like Hillary and impressive Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennslvania. Mayer and I both posed questions to the Senators. Mine was on the importance of US efforts to save the Jewish communities in Gush Katif and Mayer's was about the importance of the US Government getting on the same page as Israel in fighting the common enemy. Mayer then proceeded to lobbying Rep. Ben Cardin and he attended the Congressional Sefer Torah dedication described below. We found it very interesting. This article was written by Melissa Radler and was a news item today in the Jerusalem Post Online. When it comes to Israel's war on terrorism, concern over Iranian nuclear capabilities, and support for the Syria Accountability Act, Israel enjoys broad-based, bipartisan support on Capitol Hill, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said Thursday after meetings with more than 40 senators in Washington. In a series of meetings that culminated in the dedication of a Torah scroll in memory of Jewish victims of Palestinian terrorism and those who perished in the September 11 attacks in the US, senators from dozens of states reiterated their support on issues of concern to Israel and the Jewish community. "The Republicans and Democrats, despite all the political differences and some of the election year innuendo, the fact is they share an agenda," said the Presidents Conference's executive vice chairman, Malcolm Hoenlein. He noted senators on both sides voiced support for the killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Israel's right to build the security fence. In a meeting with Senate Republicans, Rick Santorum (R-PA), chairman of the meeting, announced plans to introduce legislation requiring US officials to mention Jewish refugees from Arab lands whenever Palestinian refugees are mentioned in a diplomatic context, while George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said he will propose a bill that would require the State Department to issue a report on anti-Semitism, a Presidents Conference official noted. Senate Democrats, whose meeting was chaired by Hillary Clinton (D-NY), discussed the need to implement the Syrian Accountability Act, exert pressure on the Saudis to shut down charities that support terrorism, and address growing European anti-Semitism. Clinton noted her support for the High-Risk Non-Profit Security Enhancement Act of 2004, a bill providing federal assistance to high-risk non-profits, including those benefiting the Jewish community. The legislation is cosponsored by Senators Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). Following the meetings, a ceremony marking the completion of a Torah scroll memorializing American and Israeli victims of terrorism was held in an unprecedented gathering in the Capitol Building. The Torah, the brainchild of four young Brooklynites - Carolyn Roiter, Simon Jacobson, and Esther and Leibel Montal - who raised funds through private donations, includes the names of more than 1,000 Jewish victims of terrorism in Israel embroidered in gold thread on a red velvet cover, and a breastplate dedicated to the victims of the September 11 attacks. "We felt we had to do something, we felt we had to make a statement and not just let these people turn into numbers," said Roiter before the ceremony. "When you see how many names are on this cover, it's overwhelming, but the only way to give each individual the memory each deserves is by memorializing them for eternity," she said. During the ceremony, elected officials were invited to have a letter inscribed in the scroll on their behalf as they watched, and according to Hoenlein, the line was an hour long. In the coming weeks, the scroll will be sent to Jerusalem, where it will be housed permanently at the Western Wall, said Roiter. Rabbi Menachem Kovacs is Director of the Jewish Roots Center of Baltimore, an education and research center on Torah and social science topics. He is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Montgomery College in Maryland. To Go To Top

TREASON Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, March 27, 2004.

Notice: Anyone who is politically correct and/or suicidal Jews better not read this any further. Hear that Yossi Beilin? Shimon? Webster's Collegiate Dictionary defines treason as "...the violation of the allegiance owed to one's sovereign or state; betrayal of one's country" and, specifically in the United States, "...consisting only in levying war against the U.S. or in giving aid and comfort to its enemies." Recently, Arab students attending Hebrew University demonstrated against the visit of Prime Minister Sharon, screaming - among other things - "we are all Ahmed Yassins." This was nothing new. The late Rabbi Meir Kahane reported of such things decades ago and was branded a racist for coming to the subsequent logical conclusions...if truth be told. But why worry about that? Let's pretend that one fifth of Israel's growing Arab population - with a higher birth rate than that of the Jews - are all loyal citizens...Ostriches with heads in the sand. Look, Israel must realize that most of the world will always have a double standard when it comes to Israel. Call it looking through Jew-colored lenses or whatever. So Israel must do what needs to be done and not wait to act, on matters of vital interest in particular, until obtaining the world's approval. I will be named the next pope before that occurs. Arab legislators in the Knesset typically behave as the above-mentioned students do. Let's get something straight here. We're not talking about American students at Kent State protesting the war in Viet Nam. We're talking about Arabs calling for the destruction of the very state in which they live. In any Arab country, anyone engaging in such activity would not long be of this world. Indeed, in any other nation - including America - jail would likely be the minimum fate. It's time for Israel to act in its own crucial interests the way all other nations would act. Those Arabs who display such treachery must be, preferably, expelled from the country. Jail time only costs Israeli taxpayers money that there's much less of in Israel these days due to Arab rejectionist actions and attitudes - on both sides of the Green Line. Arabs could have had their 23rd state long ago if that's all that they wanted. Any fair assessment of the facts would show this. There's no need to rehash all the proposals yet again. The reality is that Arabs want their second state in mandatory "Palestine" (Jordan created in 1922 on 80% of the original territory mandated to Britain on April 25, 1920) to exist in place of - not along side of - Israel. A visit to the PA or Hamas websites, textbooks, etc. quickly confirms this as does a look at the polls which show that even if Israel withdrew to its pre-'67, nine-mile wide, UN-imposed armistice line existence, Arabs would still reject its right to exist. Kick those who articulate and exhibit such behaviors out of the country. And tell the protesting hypocrites that Israel, like all nations, must have its lines in the sand which cannot be crossed in terms of acceptable behavior by those wishing to live within its borders. Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. To Go To Top

WILL WE SAY 'NEVER AGAIN' YET AGAIN? Posted by Mordechai ben-Menachem, March 27, 2004.

This article was written by Nicholas D. Kristof and appeared in the New York Times today. ALONG THE CHAD-SUDAN BORDER - For decades, whenever the topic of genocide has come up, the refrain has been, "Never again." Yet right now, the government of Sudan is engaging in genocide against three large African tribes in its Darfur region here. Some 1,000 people are being killed a week, tribeswomen are being systematically raped, 700,000 people have been driven from their homes, and Sudan's Army is even bombing the survivors. And the world yawns. So what do we tell refugees like Muhammad Yakob Hussein, who lives in the open desert here because his home was burned and his family members killed in Sudan? He now risks being shot whenever he goes to a well to fetch water. Do we advise such refugees that "never again" meant nothing more than that a Fuhrer named Hitler will never again construct death camps in Germany? Interviews with refugees like Mr. Hussein - as well as with aid workers and U.N. officials - leave no doubt that attacks in Darfur are not simply random atrocities. Rather, as a senior U.N. official, Mukesh Kapila, put it, "It is an organized attempt to do away with a group of people." "All I have left is this jalabiya," or cloak, said Mr. Hussein, who claimed to be 70 but looked younger (ages here tend to be vague aspirations, and they usually emerge in multiples of 10). Mr. Hussein said he'd fled three days earlier after an attack in which his three brothers were killed and all his livestock stolen: "Everything is lost. They burned everything." Another man, Khamis Muhammad Issa, a strapping 21-year-old, was left with something more than his clothes - a bullet in the back. He showed me the bulge of the bullet under the skin. The bullet wiggled under my touch. "They came in the night and burned my village," he said. "I was running away and they fired. I fell, and they thought I was dead." In my last column, I called these actions "ethnic cleansing." But let's be blunt: Sudan's behavior also easily meets the definition of genocide in Article 2 of the 1948 convention against genocide. That convention not only authorizes but also obligates the nations ratifying it - including the U.S. - to stand up to genocide. The killings are being orchestrated by the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, partly through the Janjaweed militia, made up of Arab raiders armed by the government. The victims are non-Arabs: blacks in the Zaghawa, Massaliet and Fur tribes. "The Arabs want to get rid of anyone with black skin," Youssef Yakob Abdullah said. In the area of Darfur that he fled, "there are no blacks left," he said. In Darfur, the fighting is not over religion, for the victims as well as the killers are Muslims. It is more ethnic and racial, reflecting some of the ancient tension between herdsmen (the Arabs in Darfur) and farmers (the black Africans, although they herd as well). The Arabs and non-Arabs compete for water and forage, made scarce by environmental degradation and the spread of the desert. In her superb book on the history of genocide, "A Problem from Hell," Samantha Power focuses on the astonishing fact that U.S. leaders always denounce massacres in the abstract or after they are over - but, until Kosovo, never intervened in the 20th century to stop genocide and "rarely even made a point of condemning it as it occurred." The U.S. excuses now are the same ones we used when Armenians were killed in 1915 and Bosnians and Rwandans died in the 1990's: the bloodshed is in a remote area; we have other priorities; standing up for the victims may compromise other foreign policy interests. I'm not arguing that we should invade Sudan. But one of the lessons of history is that very modest efforts can save large numbers of lives. Nothing is so effective in curbing ethnic cleansing as calling attention to it. President Bush could mention Darfur or meet a refugee. The deputy secretary of state could visit the border areas here in Chad. We could raise the issue before the U.N. And the onus is not just on the U.S.: it's shameful that African and Muslim countries don't offer at least a whisper of protest at the slaughter of fellow Africans and Muslims. Are the world's pledges of "never again" really going to ring hollow one more time? To Go To Top

FACE SMASH; BACKLASH Posted by Evelyn Hayes, March 26, 2004.

History keeps repeating itself and nobody gets it. In March 2003, senior Hamas terrorist Ibrahim Makadme was eliminated following a week of terrorist attacks; 15 were incinerated aboard a Haifa Bus; husband, wife and soldier were killed in Kiryat Arba. Dead Chai. There was a feared escalation of the war! In March 2004, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was eliminated There is feared escalation of the war. History keeps repeating itself and nobody gets it, while Richard Clarke blames those who don't get it and not those who ignore it, placing the blame on the victim not the victimizer, the innocent, not the lawless, attacking the attacked and wondering why there wasn't enough effort fighting terrorism. In 1993, Oslo was initiated to make friends with enemies. Gaza and Jericho were to be first "tests". Terrorism failed the test! Haj al-Husseini also failed Sir Herbert Samuels. Thus, pan-palestinianism/"We Are All Herzb'allah" became an international magnet for warlords and their partners in the wealth of spoiling security worldwide. Jihad warlords have made a fortune in stopping humanity and spreading humanicide Jihad friends like Shimon Peres and Kojo Annan have cashed in. Who supported Richard Clarke's book and will it cash in, too? Since 1995, all the handshakes have led to breaks without brake in killing Jews and blaming them, in robbing them of life, cash, human rights and land. Since the Armada, breaking the Jewish stake in Oslo II and trashing the Tomb of Joseph, over 1000 Jews have been eliminated by pre-meditated mass murder and 10,000 injured not including the victims who endure the loss of loved ones. So, as we question, in 2004, and Sharon suggests "More Gaza for More Terrorists, Less Jews", and would unilaterally deny Jews the right of their vote and to remain where Jews were relocated after Yamit, where they have returned, plow and plant, feed the nation, stabilize the GNP, pray, love and where there are separate secluded beaches for men and women. In Oslo II, the solution was Arab self-rule, and the backlash was Arab unruliness to the beats of even killing themselves. In General Sharon's solution, Jewish dissolution follows from face smash, incineration and self-discrimination to backlash. Mr. Sharon, the Jews have suffered enough, only merit respect when they respect themselves. Hitting Israel when it's being attacked is smacking the smacked. No More Juddenrid, even if it would be by Jews. Don't you get it? Each redeployment released evil. Another evacuation of Jews will release double evil and validate the Big Lie. It will reward the attack on Bus #19, Bus #14 and on Ashdod Port. Aren't you worried that Ashdod was Palestine before David killed Goliath? Rewarding a worse Goliath, the suicide warrior who hates Jews more than he loves himself, is suicide, too. Get rid of all the Jihad Goliaths and keep the kingdom of David, the Jewish Estate willed by The L-rd, Blessed Be He. Don't you get it; David is not Goliath and the beast Goliath won't stop jihad unless he is stopped not by appeasement alone but by Jews reclaiming their rights, Bible, Balfour, Beit Hamigdash and beauty. Jews planting in Gaza is beautiful. It's time the Arabs think suicide war is ugly and accept their neighbors. Remember, Gaza was a Jewish city before Tel Aviv. Jewish Gaza survived Hadrian, Mohammed, the French, the British, the Arab/Egyptian wars. Let the Jews not dash themselves out of Gaza because their enemies have not won. Let Lebanon trashed not be Aza Jews self-bashed. Remember most Jews had fled from Lebanon. Let the re-Jewvenation of Gaza support the re-Jewvenation of all Eretz HaChodesh. And let the enemies see Israel's might and depart from their history of hate to accept the light of Torah and civilization. Wake up, Sharon, if you would have kept that second Shabbos after the first your kept for Chaya, orphaned by Sbarro Attack in 2001, so many Jewish lives may have been saved. The Torah is a Book of Life and Love. Let our people stay in Gaza, all Yesha. No more appeasement. It's time to recoup and end the Oslo Wars, not reward warlords and spread the plagues. History keeps repeating itself; As Israel gets it face smashed with lies and hate, stones and blood the backlash is by accepting their lies and being mistaken for Goliath the Philistine. Tell the truth: Arafat al Husseini is an Egyptian of the infamous mufti Husseini clan connected to Saddam Hussein who supported Hitler in the Final Solution against the Jews and world in WWII. Israel has a right to exist in Israel. Jews have rights to Jew-dea. Palestine was a Roman invention re-invented by an Egyptian terrorist imported from exile in Tunisia for another dissolution of Jews again. Let Israel be. Let our people stay. Zachor. Evelyn Hayes is author of "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, us, because their hearts were softened for more." and just released sequel, "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." To Go To Top

UNACCEPTABLE. UNJUST Posted by Daniel Gordis, March 26, 2004.

A couple of years ago, our office started using a new driver. The previous one, it turns out, couldn't make a living when the tourists abandoned the country, and left for the States. My secretary told me about Shlomo, the new driver, right before I was to get picked up for a drive to a meeting, and I didn't think much of the news. I got in the cab, sat in the back, introduced myself to Shlomo (who appeared to be in his mid-fifties) and told him where I was going. We set out on our way, and as we made our way across the city, I noticed a photograph on the dashboard. A young woman, probably in her twenties. An informal photo, in a Plexiglas frame glued to the dashboard. You don't often see things glued to the dashboards of luxury Mercedes cars, so I was curious. I leaned forward a little, and read the words at the bottom of the frame. "Limor, HYD." Limor -- May God Avenge Her Blood. Now I was even more curious. This was clearly going to be a sensitive subject, but this is Israel, and subtlety has never been a strong suit of this society. So I just asked. "Is that your daughter?" "Limor. She was twenty-seven. And beautiful." "I'm sorry." "She was killed at Moment Cafe." I had no idea what to say. So for a moment, I said nothing, and then he continued. "You know, they keep telling me that it will get easier with time. I'm still waiting." He turned up the volume on the classical music station a bit, maybe to drown out the rest of the world. I don't know. He stared out the windshield, and I stared out the window, certain that anything I said would be absurdly trite. And, of course, I'd only met him a few minutes earlier. Even had I had anything to say, this probably wasn't the time. We still have the same driver. Sometimes it's Shlomo who picks me up, but usually, it's Nir, his son, probably in his mid-twenties, too. Between the two of them, they keep the cab running almost 24 hours a day, or so it seems. Because most of my trips to the airport are late at night, it's Nir I usually see. It's Nir who picks me up from the airport, too. And each time we wind our way back into Jerusalem, he takes the same route to my house. A left at the Wolfson towers, up into the middle of Rechavia, following the narrow roads until the car is alongside Moment Cafe, now rebuilt, opened, better guarded, and full. There are sometimes faster ways to get to Bakk'a, days when the traffic in Rechavia is ridiculous. But he never varies his route. We always go by Moment. He never says anything, and I don't ask. Limor's picture is there, looking out at both of us, almost as if to remind us that we're really not in a hurry. So what if the traffic is a little thicker in Rechavia? The five minute difference isn't that significant, compared with everything he lives with and thinks about each time he looks at his dashboard. It was Nir that I thought of when I first woke up on Monday morning. The radio had gone off at 6:15, and the news was prattling on. Helicopter. Missile. Killed. Sounded like a regular morning newscast. Until I was awake enough to get the name. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Strange, but I thought of Nir. Before anyone else. And I wondered if he'd heard yet. I wondered how he'd feel knowing that we got the guy who killed his sister. I wonder if this provides any comfort whatsoever. I doubt it. Certain things we don't have to wonder about. Like whether Yassin deserved to die. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw can lecture us about the killing being "unacceptable, unjust." I don't mind. For when I think about the British, I still think about the shores of Palestine closed to Jewish refugees from the Nazis, desperate and starving human beings being turned away, sometimes forced to return to the Europe from which they'd fled, sometimes sent to worse fates. As a Brit, Straw should, indeed, know a thing or two about "unacceptable, unjust." "Unacceptable," I think, is a mild way of describing Yassin's resume. Yassin was crystal clear. This conflict is not about the territories. It's about the whole thing. There can be no "Zionist" entity in the Middle East, which is a Muslim part of the world. There can be no compromise, no negotiation. The Jews must go. Got to give him credit for clarity. And for persistence. Under Yassin, Hamas was responsible, in the last few years, for 425 bombings, resulting in 377 deaths, and 2076 injured. "Unjust"? The Sbarro Pizza parlor. The Dolphinarium, packed with teenagers. The Moment Cafe. The #37 bus. Cafe Hillel. The #19 bus. Many, many others. And now, the port at Ashdod, a strategic target that ultimately resulted in the cabinet decision to get rid of him and let Hamas know that we've had enough. And that we have no intention of leaving. Very few Israelis that I know are terribly worried about the "justice" of the decision to kill him. If he didn't deserve to die, no one does. And some people do deserve to die. No one I know shed any tears that he's gone. But no one I know went out into the street to fire assault rifles into the air in celebration. Or gave candy to children to mark the joy of the event. That, most of us know, would be "unacceptable." Was killing Yassin smart? That's the only question. The morality of the killing is, to my mind, not an issue. And for the wisdom, who knows? Whether it ultimately weakens Hamas and makes it possible for the Palestinian Authority to take over when we pull out, as Sharon says he plans to, remains to be seen. What we've got in the meantime, is a stalemate of dread. On their side, the Hamas leadership has gone underground. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, Yassin's successor in the Gaza strip, is threatening unprecedented reprisals and ultimate "liberation of the homeland." The IDF, undoubtedly, is now aiming for him. One assumes that Rantisi knows there's not much point in his buying green bananas. But Rantisi's threats have not gone unheeded in Israel's cities. People here believe him. There are security checkpoints virtually everywhere, and now, they're really checking. I had breakfast yesterday at Cafe Hillel, another reminder of Yassin. My secretary, actually, asked me to change the location. "Don't eat there this week," she pleaded. "It's not a good idea." But the point is that we're not leaving. That's exactly why Yassin had to go. So I didn't change the venue and went to Cafe Hillel. The cafe, like Moment, is completely rebuilt, and is usually packed. It can be hard to find a table at breakfast. Not yesterday. There were six of us in the whole restaurant, plus the waitress, and the very alert guard outside the door. On the way to the cafe, walking to the cafe, I looked into the buses making their way down Emek Refa'im. Almost empty. Five or ten people on a bus, in rush hour. When I finally got to the office, a colleague told me that on the way home on Wednesday, he was driving past one of the open air markets of Jerusalem, when an elderly women knocked on the window of his car. She had sacks of food from the market, she showed him, and she lived a few blocks away, too far for her to walk. But she was afraid to get on the bus. Would he drive her home? A couple of days ago, the Editorial Page of HaAretz carried its daily political cartoon, this one of a Domino's Pizza guy (yup, Dominos and Office Depot have made it here) on a motorcycle, delivering a pizza to a family. Only the family is behind sandbags, barely willing to stretch out an arm to take the pizza. That pretty much summed it up. But the cartoon missed one thing -- why we're in this mess. Yes, for the moment, things are a bit edgy, but we've been here before. What Israelis need to remember, and what the rest of the world needs to understand is why Yassin hated us. Simply because we're here. And why we had to get rid of him. Because he had pledged to keep killing us until we left. But we're not leaving. Where would we possibly go? Even if we agreed to go, where would we go? As if Europe wants us back. Or as if it worked out very well last time we were there. Or as if the French have learned very much since 1943. Last Sunday night, Elisheva and I went to a lecture by Aharon Applefeld, one of Israeli's preeminent novelists. Tali and Avi were out, so we left Micha by himself. He was lying on the living room coach, reading some enormous 700+ page book that he was determined to finish, and was fairly oblivious to our imminent departure. We told him that we had our cell phones if he needed us, and he should go to bed by 8:30. He barely looked up, but muttered, "OK." We knew he wouldn't go to bed on time, but we also couldn't exactly complain that a fifth grader wanted to stay up late because he was busy reading a novel. Applefeld told his story. Of an idyllic eight years in a completely assimilated, wealthy, Jewish European home. Of his mother being shot by the Germans. Of him and his father being taken to a slave labor camp. And of his decision to flee the camp, because he knew he wouldn't survive it. And so, at the age of eight and a half, he found himself alone, in the forests of Europe, masquerading as a Christian, struggling to survive. He worked in the home of a prostitute, buying her groceries and cleaning her house, until one of her drunken clients called him a Jew. He fled. He worked for horse thieves, who would have him drop into the stables from the skylight, land in whatever he landed in and then open the door to the stable so they could steal the horses. He told of the nights he slept alone on the forest floor, of the days when he ate the moss off of trees. At the age of ten. And I thought about Micha, exactly that age now. I wondered. If he were alone in the forest tomorrow, would he know to do that? Would he have the presence of mind to work for a prostitute, for horse thieves? Would he figure out that he could eat moss off of trees if he was starving? I doubted it. Which means we can't let that happen to him. In the days since Yassin's death, since the palpable sense of dread has pervaded every nook and cranny of life here, I've thought of Applefeld at ten. Of Micha at ten. And then I thought of Abdallah Quran, the ten year old boy from the Balata refugee camp who was given, apparently unbeknownst to him, a bomb to carry across a checkpoint. A ten year old who tries to make a living for his family after school by transporting packages across the checkpoint, he had no idea who put the bag on his cart. The explosive had a remote control apparatus. Someone who gave him the bomb was going to use a cell phone to set it off. And presumably blow Abdallah to high heaven, too. And people compare the two sides of this conflict? That incident didn't make it to much of the international press. But when Hussam Abdo, the sixteen year old who tried to walk an explosive belt through a checkpoint two days ago, got caught by soldiers, there happened to be a camera crew on hand. And the whole thing was filmed. Turns out, Hussam was given 100 shekel to carry the explosive and blow it up. He was also promised 70 virgins in heaven, he said. The good news, I first thought, was that the Palestinian community was outraged. Tamam Abdo, his mother, said to the press, "It is forbidden to send him to fight. He is young, he is small, he should be in school. Someone pressured him." Finally. But then, I read the rest of the interview. "If he was over 18, I wouldn't feel so angry ... then it is his decision,'' she said. Ah, another beautiful humanist sentiment. Or her neighbor, Sadia Abdel Rahman -- "We have to carry out serious attacks. This is not a children's game. This is an embarrassment." I guess we all get embarrassed by different things. When Israel sent an F-16 in July 2002 to drop a one ton bomb on the home of Salah Shehadeh, then the military chief of Hamas in Gaza, we got him. Israelis were pleased about that. But a one ton bomb is an enormously powerful weapon, and in killing Shehadeh, we killed fourteen other people, including nine children. Israelis were outraged, and mortified. Shehadeh, like Yassin, deserved to die. But Israeli society was in an uproar. Not like that, people said, on the left and on the right. We can't begin to be like them. That's the whole idea of living here; that's an important part of having a country to call our own. If we're not going to be different, even better, what's the point? Eventually, the government apologized. And the IDF changed its policy. So last September 6, when the IDF decided to get Yassin, we sent an F-16 again, but this time, with a quarter-ton bomb. The bomb worked perfectly, and the pilot hit his target. But the building was only damaged, and Yassin was scarcely wounded. And what was the reaction of the typical Israeli? Satisfaction. We'd learned something. We missed, true, but at least we were different. I'm struck by the fact that very little coverage of the killing of Yassin has made any mention of the missed attempt on his life in September. It's because, I think, the reason that we missed reveals a dimension of this conflict that most of the world doesn't want to see. It upends the moral equivalence that the international press broadcasts. It suggests that some people in this conflict still do think about what's "acceptable" and "just." It reminds the world that there's more than one people in this region that has needed to be liberated. We're just days away from Passover. Already the stores are filling with Passover products. Israelis are cleaning. Buying. Inviting. And remembering. Remembering Pesach two years ago, and the bloodbath called the Park Hotel. And remembering that Hamas, and Yassin, did that one, too. Will this Pesach be quieter? Hard to know. One hopes so. Prays, in fact. But no matter what happens, there will be a certain satisfaction, even if a sad one, in knowing that people who blow up our Seder can't do so with impunity. That's the difference between life now and life when Aharon Applefeld foraged for his food in the forest. Appelfeld grew up in the world in which people could shoot his mother and send him to die, and there was no one to fend for him. That's what's changed. That's the bottom line. I can't imagine a decent human being feeling joy at the death of another. Not joy, no. But satisfaction? Yes. Because there has to be a price to pay for the wholesale murder of Jews. There simply must be. Anything else, Mr. Straw needs to understand, is what's truly "unacceptable." Rabbi Gordis writes Dispatches to an email list. You can subscribe to the list at www.danielgordis.org (see the box on the top left of the screen) or at www.topica.com/lists/gordis. You can also subscribe by sending a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. To Go To Top

ISRAEL GIVES THE APPEARANCE OF LOYALTY TO POLLARD Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 26, 2004.

Jonathan Pollard drafted a bill to lead to his release. The politicians rewrote it so as NOT to help him. The revision would provide a slush fund so they could get credit for efforts seemingly in his behalf but that would not get him released. The bill would substitute public "activities" for effective government action. The Pollards oppose that bill. Mr. Pollard counter-proposes: (1) Formalizing a clear government policy in his behalf as its agent; (2) Formalizing his captivity status; and (3) Then having the Israeli Ambassador visit him, to show that the government's new policy is not mere formality. Israel never has asserted a policy of freeing him, as it does for Azzam Azzam. The government never takes up his case. It doesn't want him free. It has something to hide or US officials to fear. By formalizing his captive status, the government could demand urgently needed medical care and humane conditions. Legal and financial assistance to its agent would be rendered. Israel did give such assistance for that confessed criminal, Tennenbaum, who was not an Israeli agent. It even financially supported not only his legal family but his mistress and their child (IMRA, 3/21). People unfairly criticize the ethics of Israel over its treatment of the Arab enemy, which is too benign for national security. They should be criticizing the ethics of Israel over its mistreatment of loyal citizens, which is too malign for national security. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

REVENGE Posted by Steven Plaut, March 26, 2004.

One of the stranger semantic twists in recent days concern use of the term "revenge" in the media. As in: "The Hamas is now going to "avenge" the fact that Israel recycled the Sheikh Yassin." Such a use of the word "revenge" may be one of the most Orwellian of the distortions by the Anti-Semantites who operate the Western media. Many of them are also anti-Semites by the way. So in order to show you how to express yourself in terms of this Orwellian use of "revenge" we thought we would add some other examples of the politically correct use of the term: 1. Germany is considering taking revenge on Czechoslovakia for the 1939 invasion of its lands. 2. Japan is threatening to take revenge against the United States for Pearl Harbor. 3. France is thinking of taking revenge against Russia for its having allowed Napoleon to invade its territory. 4. Lee Harvey Oswald is thinking of taking revenge against John F. Kennedy, and Sirhan Sirhan against Bobby Kennedy. 5. Saddam Hussein is threatening to take revenge against Kuwait for the 1991 invasion of its territory. 6. George W. Bush is threatening to take revenge against Al Gore for having won the 2000 election and wants a recount. 7. Osama bin Ladan wants revenge against the aggressors who were inside the World Trade Center in 2001 attacking his people. 8. The bulldozer demands revenge against Rachel Corrie. 9. Abu Abbas's people want compensation from Leon Klinghoffer's family or else they want revenge. 10. The hijackers of the plane to Entebbe want Israel to compensate them for the wasted fuel or else they want revenge. 11. Tim Veigh wants Oklahoma City to pay for his fertilizer costs or else he wants revenge against them for the crime against him. You get the idea.... Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

ARABS RUNNING SCARED Posted by Voice of Judea, March 26, 2004.

1. ARABS RUNNING SCARED According to headlines in today's Maariv, the Israeli assassination of Hamas leader Yassin has Arafat and other terrorist leaders running scared. Maariv claims that U.S. officials refused to guarantee Arafat's safety, after frightened PLO leaders requested of the Americans that they hold Israel back from launching a potential attack against Arafat. Arafat has reportedly taken unprecedented security precautions, after the Yassin assassination. Halad Mishal the Director of the Foreign desk of the Hamas has reaffirmed his organization's commitment not to strike at Jewish targets outside of Israel. Military pundits believe that Mishal is also running scared and wishes to send a message to Israel, that it is in Israel's interest to refrain from liquidating him. Israel was caught off-guard by the lack of Arab response to the assassinations. The Arabs did not even fully observe the 3 day mourning strike. Voice of Judea Commentary: The message is loud and clear. Israel need not refrain from taking necessary action. There is no reason to be scared. The Arabs are very brave when Israel allows them to kill Jews with impunity. Whenever Israel finally decides to fight back, they win decisive victories. If Israel would stop going half way and finish the job, they would restore peace and security to the land. Israel might suffer U.N. or U.S. condemnation. But better to live than to be loved. And Israeli restraint will never buy love anyhow. Israel must show faith in G-d and unleash their full military might to crush the enemy. The terrorists need to live in fear and crawl back into their holes. This could only be achieved by Israel keeping the battle in the backyards of the Hamas and PLO and out of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Jewish towns. The only way to achieve this is by declaring war on the terrorists and everyone that supports them. It is not enough to kill one terrorist leader. 2. ISRAELI DIPLOMATS LIVE IN FEAR ABROAD Yediot Achronot reports on heightened alerts in Israeli embassies and consulates around the world. Voice of Judea Commentary It is definitely recommended for Jews to consider coming back to Israel. Eventually, the Hamas and Hizbullah will attack at Israel's soft spot, namely Jewish targets abroad. That coupled by existing Jew hatred by white and black haters will make America the same living hell Europe has become for Jews. In Israel, as bad as it gets, Israel will eventually drive the enemy population out. Also, there are a million Jewish policemen, guards and soldiers on hand to protect Jews in Israel. Who will protect the vulnerable Jews abroad. 3. PRESIDENT KAZAV SHOCKED BY ARAB ISRAELI HATRED According to today's Yediot Achronot, President Kazav told a group of Arab Israeli correspondents that he was in shock after viewing Arab Israelis who protested wearing and holding Hamas symbols and flags. Voice of Judea Commentary: We are shocked that the president of Israel is shocked to see Arab Israeli hatred. Good morning Mr. President! Why do Israelis continue to live in a dream world of illusions and delusions? Arab Israelis are caught daily plotting to kill Jews. They are not loyal to the Jews. Why should they be more loyal to the Jews than to their brothers and sisters? Why should they celebrate their defeat and support the Jews, who "stole their land." 4. FIRST PIG ENLISTED TO GEDUD HAIVRI The Gedud HaIvri, a voluntary guard association that deploys volunteer guards in Israeli yishuvim has bought their first pig that is presently being trained in the Negev to bomb-sniff and attack terrorists, according to an article that appeared in Maariv last week. The Gedud HaIvri will be holding a special course to train regular guards to help man observation posts in yishuvim throughout the Pesach break. Yeshiva students and others who are interested in receiving the free training and in volunteering over the Pesach vacation, can call 054 876 749 or from the states 718 874 2057. Visit www.defendIsrael.net The website address of Voice of Judea is http://www.voiceofjudea.com. Subscribe by writing listmaster@voiceofjudea.net To Go To Top

WHAT DID LILLY SHARON MEAN? Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, March 26, 2004.

First, let us congratulate the soldiers of the IDF for the splendid action against Ahmed Yassin, a lethal foe of the Jews. We pray that IDF soldiers will soon receive orders to eliminate another arch-murderer Yasser Arafat, and the band of murderers of Jews he harbors in Ramallah, and other leaders and personnel of terrorist organizations. A serious question remains. If Ariel Sharon sought to protect the Jewish People, why hadn't he eliminated Ahmed Yassin long ago? And why hasn't he added Yasser Arafat and other murderers of Jews to the elimination list. If Ariel Sharon truly desires to break the spirit of the enemy and eliminate, once and for all, the Hamas movement and the other Arab terrorist organizations, he would take these actions: 1. He would eliminate - every day - key individuals in these terrorist organizations. The daily elimination of such commanders and leaders would quickly squash the existing Arab intifada, and smash the Arab will to continue terrorism. 2. He would permanently put the IDF back in the Gaza Strip, clean up the area once and for all and rid it of the terror nests. That means: the elimination of every armed individual and the expulsion of their families, and restore Jewish control over all of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. It has already been proven that the only way to fight terror is when Israel controls the area. The moment that the IDF abandons the field - terror flourishes and develops. Since these steps were not taken by Sharon, and apparently will not be taken, we must ask: What is Ariel Sharon really doing? What is he striving to achieve? We might possibly receive the answer to this question from what Ariel Sharon's late wife, Lilly, of blessed memory, told an unimpeachable source in the Golan many years ago. A woman, G., who knew Lilly well, told me the following: A few years ago, when Rabin was in power, and when the sword of destruction hung over the Golan, Ariel Sharon and his wife came to Neveh Ativ for a solidarity visit. After a talk with the residents, the men went and talked with Sharon. Lilly remained with G. for a talk among women. G. told Lilly that she so greatly wanted Ariel Sharon to be Prime Minister. She even volunteered to act on his behalf and to bring others to act as well. When Lilly Sharon asked her why she so strongly wanted Ariel Sharon to be elected Prime Minister, G. replied that she was certain that he would know how to be a true and proud Jewish leader. Lilly Sharon asked the woman: "Do you know the parable of Jotham?" G. was not familiar with that parable, but Lilly did not attempt to further explain. The parable of Jotham appears in the ninth chapter of the book of Judges. After the death of Gideon, the Israelites enthroned his son Abimelech as their king - the same Abimelech who murdered seventy of his brothers, in order to ensure that only he would rule as king. One brother was not killed by Abimelech. This was Jotham, who managed to hide during the slaughter. When Jotham heard that the Israelites had proclaimed the wicked Abimelech king, he went to the top of Mount Gerizim and related the following parable, in order to warn the Israelites of the terrible mistake that they were making: "Once the trees went to anoint a king over themselves. They said to the olive tree, 'Reign over us.' But the olive tree replied, 'Have I, through whom God and men are honored, stopped yielding my rich oil, that I should go and wave above the trees?' So the trees said to the fig tree, 'You come and reign over us.' But the fig tree replied, 'Have I stopped yielding my sweetness, my delicious fruit, that I should go and wave above the trees?' So the trees said to the vine, 'You come and reign over us.' But the vine replied, 'Have I stopped yielding my new wine, which gladdens God and men, that I should go and wave above the trees?' Then all the trees said to the thornbush, 'You come and reign over us.' And the thornbush said to the trees, 'If you are acting honorably in anointing me king over you, come and take shelter in my shade; but if not, may fire issue from the thorn bush and consume the cedars of Lebanon!'" This is how Jotham ended his parable, warning that the encrowning of Abimelech would bring only fire and trouble. Lilly Sharon is not with us today to explain what she said. One thing, however, is clear. Lilly wanted to caution G. against the idea of Sharon as Prime Minister, just as Jotham had warned the Israelites. Indeed, a thorn bush can cause fires - not only among the enemy, but also among its own people, for all that interests it is its own survival and remaining in power. Yes, the elimination of Yassin is a blow to the Arab enemy. But we cannot deceive ourselves. To the same degree that Sharon delivered a blow to the enemy, Ariel Sharon is also capable - and apparently intends, as well - to unleash a "strange fire" against his own people, and even more forcefully promote the disengagement plan for the destruction of the settlement enterprise in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. It is within our power to stop the "strange fire" of Ariel Sharon. We, the national camp, also possess a fire, the perpetual fire of which we shall read in the Torah portions of the coming weeks. As Dr. Yisrael Eldad writes in Contemplations of the Bible: "The first fire in the Bible is that of the Covenant between the Pieces". This fire, the first that came down from heaven, sanctified the covenant of Abraham's offspring with this land. This is the fire of the great love that rivers shall not wash away, not the River of Egypt, not the Euphrates River, and not the mighty waters of the entire world. This fire shall not be extinguished. It shall not be consumed. An eternal flame, From the Covenant between the Pieces" to the burning bush, from the burning bush to the altar of the kohanim [priests], from the altar of the kohanim to the lips of the prophets, an eternal flame. The same fire. Eldad notes that in all generations foreigners have attempted to extinguish the eternal Jewish flame, but without success. The most dangerous, however, are specifically individuals such as Nadab and Abihu, who come from within our midst, who pretend to be "one of ours," but who hold in their hands a destructive "strange fire". We must be warier of them than of anyone else. Ariel Sharon pretends to be a leader who is "one of ours." He built the settlement enterprise in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. He embodies "security." He eliminated Ahmed Yassin. But he holds in his hands strange fire, the fire of the disengagement plan, the fire of the plan of destruction and expulsion of Jews. We must ensure that our positive fire, the fire of Judaism, the fire of love and loyalty to the people of Israel, the Torah of Israel, and all the Land of Israel, shall extinguish the strange and destructive fire of Ariel Sharon. Who knows, perhaps this is what Lilly Sharon meant by her laconic statement. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

POLICY PAPER OPPOSING A PALESTINIAN STATE Posted by Unity Coalition For Israel, March 26, 2004.

The Unity Coalition for Israel has isued a new Position Paper opposing a Palestinian state and the unilateral abandonment of Jewish communities in Gaza/Judea and Samaria. If you agree with our Position Paper opposing unilateral retreat in Gaza, Judea and Samaria leading to a Palestinian state, PLEASE CLICK HERE TO REGISTER YOUR AGREEMENT ON THIS CRITICAL ISSUE. It will be automatically forwarded to President Bush, PM Sharon and their Cabinet Members. You will be helping to send a strong message of US opposition to Israeli retreat in the face of Palestinian terrorism. As the International community continues to be engaged in a global effort against rising terror, our strategic ally, Israel, stands in the midst of this threat. Common sense and morality dictate that we side with the victims of terror. We must not reward the terrorists. We urge the Israeli government and the US Administration to adhere to President Bush's requirement to disarm and completely dismantle the Arab terrorist organizations in the Palestinian territories before any negotiations or territorial concessions take place. Concessions only embolden terrorists to continue their murderous policies and lead, inevitably, to further terrorism. When terrorism succeeds the results can have global consequences, such as the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq as a direct consequence of the Madrid terrorist massacre. On June 24, 2002, President Bush presented clear guidelines establishing pre-conditions to implementation of the "Road Map to Peace". The President said: "I call on the Palestinian people to... * elect new leaders... * build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty... * [establish] a new constitution which separates the powers of government... * [establish] a system of reliable justice to punish those who prey on the innocent... * [oppose] terrorism... * end incitement to violence in official media, and publicly denounce homicide bombings... * block the shipment of Iranian supplies to ...(Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah), and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq... "Leaders who want to be included in the peace process must show by their deeds an undivided support for peace. And as we move toward a peaceful solution, Arab states will be expected to build closer ties of diplomacy and commerce with Israel, leading to full normalization of relations between Israel and the entire Arab world." "Israel," the President noted, "has a right to a normal life, a right to security" and this is an opportunity "to show who is serious about peace and who is not". As part of America's "war on terror", the U.S. cannot submit to politically motivated murderous attacks, whether they be carried out at the World Trade Center, in Iraq, in Bali or in Israel. Until the Palestinians eradicate radical Islamic terrorism, dismantle their terrorist organizations and comply with all of President Bush's other demands, there must be no discussion of a 23rd Arab state west of the Jordan River. Israel must not succumb to terrorism by retreating from Gaza or Judea and Samaria. We applaud President Bush's latest statement on March 19, 2004, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq: "The war on terror is not a figure of speech. It is an inescapable calling of our generation. The terrorists are offended not merely by our policies - they are offended by our existence as free nations. No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands. Their ultimate ambitions are to control the peoples of the Middle East, and to blackmail the rest of the world with weapons of mass terror. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence, and invites more violence for all nations. The only certain way to protect our people is by early, united, and decisive action." We urge the Israelis to take these words of President Bush to heart and stand strong in defense of freedom - against terrorism. Unilateral retreat from the disputed territories, displacing Israeli communities, means abandonment of justice and morality as the basis for democratic government. We urge the Israelis, who have long been in the front lines of the threat from radical Islam, to continue to stand firm against this danger to the entire free world. Only by declaring all-out "war on Palestinian terror" can the infrastructures of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Al-Aksa Martyrs' Brigade, Tanzim 17 and the PLO be defeated. To bestow upon these terrorist organizations the legitimacy of statehood by providing them with a broader base for the total destruction of the nation of Israel is a betrayal of future generations. Not just Israel, but all of Western Civilization, is at stake. The National Unity Coalition for Israel was founded in 1991. We are the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel. Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard! To Go To Top

MR. TENET IN THE DOCK Posted by JINSA, March 25, 2004.

This is JINSA report #400. Richard Clarke, former NSC staffer to President Clinton (and disgruntled former Bush Administration Employee) offered a startling insight in his book: "Time was running out on the Clinton administration. There was going to be one last major national-security initiative and it was going to be a final try to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. I would like to have tried both, Camp David and blowing up the al Qaeda camps." By Mr. Clarke's logic, Mr. Clinton couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time - he had to choose between military pursuit of the enemy that had blown up a U.S. navy ship in Yemen, killing and wounding scores of American sailors, and the chimera of "Middle East peace." He chose badly, but not surprisingly. Israel-Palestinian "peace" is a periodic obsession of presidents and the Clinton people spent an inordinate amount of time currying favor with Yasser Arafat (the most often received foreign "leader" in the White House. And we'll never forget the sight of Dr. Albright chasing Yasser down the driveway of the U.S. embassy in Paris in high heels). Only after the failure at Camp David and the opening of the PA war against Israel in October 2000 did President Clinton acknowledge that Arafat didn't want peace at all. That may be historically interesting, but why bring it up now? Because NOW is when the Washington illuminati are dissecting who knew what when as regards both September 11, 2001 and the al-Qaeda threats that preceded it, and because Clarke is not the only holdover employee. George Tenet has been CIA Director since 1995, and during a crucial period in the Clinton Administration, was supervising the creation of a PLO army under the terms of the Wye River agreement, and later pursuing the "Tenet Plan" for peace in our time. We complained then that the job was political and the CIA should not arbitrate Israeli-PA differences. We didn't want the CIA training PA "police" at all because it was clear that they were involved in attacks on Israelis. We believed the political guidance the CIA would get would be to avoid finding problems that couldn't be resolved. We said: "The CIA's job is to gather and assess intelligence information. That's all. They are supposed to pass information along to the political authorities that make political policy for the U.S. - DOD, the President, the Congress. But the CIA doesn't even do that limited job all that well - this is the same CIA, after all, that was surprised by the Indian nuclear explosion in May and said of the three-stage North Korean ballistic missile shot over the Japanese mainland in August, "We didn't know they could do a third stage!'" We would now add that the CIA was then and remained - and maybe still remains - unable to coordinate disparate threads of information to make a clear picture of the al-Qaeda threat the U.S. faced right up to September 11th. Mr. Tenet has a great deal to answer for, both in what he did and what he failed to do. The JINSA Reports are published by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (http://www.jinsa.org). To subscribe, email info@jinsa.org To Go To Top

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY LIBEL: Israel encourages PA child terror for PR gain Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, March 25, 2004.

The standard policy of the official Palestinian Authority (PA) daily Al Hayat Al Jadida is to twist and distort news stories in order to portray the Palestinians as victims, regardless of the facts. Now, with the world's increased awareness of the role of Palestinian children in suicide terror, the PA has created a libel against Israel that again attempts to turn Palestinians into victims. Today's official daily described as a "lie" Israel's report on yesterday's suicide terror attempt by a 14 year old. The Israeli report, documented on TV and broadcast around the world, shows a young Palestinian boy wearing an explosive belt. Israeli soldiers guide the boy to safely remove the bomb belt. Last week Israeli soldiers stopped a 10 year old who carried a suicide belt planted by Palestinian terrorists without his knowledge. That, too, was called a lie by the PA daily. Most interesting, though, is the reason the Palestinian Authority has given for the Israeli "lie". According to the PA, Israel creates lies about PA child terror in order to encourage other Palestinian children to be involved in terror, which in turn helps Israeli PR. The following is the PA explanation of "Israel's lie" as it appeared in the PA daily: "The occupation, [Israel] in this situation and with this lie, is playing with its own blood, and it is like they are encouraging children to go from stone throwing to use of explosives, and involvement in actions which are beyond them. Israel's focusing accusations about children [in suicide terror] is in fact an open invitation to other children to imitate the accusations, because it is characteristic of children to blindly imitate. The occupation's [Israel's] public relations gain through this false accusation may come back as a boomerang, but it is clear in this case that the occupation is striving to plan public relations lies." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida March 18, 2004] In this way the PA is once again misrepresenting itself as victim instead of perpetrator. Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -Palestinian Media Watch - (http://www.pmw.org.il). Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's North American representative. To subscribe to PMW's reports, send an empty e-mail to reports-subscribe@pmw.org.il To Go To Top

KILL THE SHEIKH TO SAVE THE PRIME MINISTER Posted by Herb and Mikimia Sunshine, March 25, 2004.

A friend, who regretted voting for Mr. Sharon, sought to save face by seeking letters of support to Sharon for his execution of Sheikh Yassin. Ariel Sharon did not order the execution of the Sheikh in furtherance of victory in the War against Militant Islam. The cowardly lion ordered the execution because: 1. The timing averted the motion of no-confidence against him scheduled for that time. 2. Many Israelis, including my friend, re-found their mistaken belief that the sheep was still a lion. 3. The execution frightened the Arab murderers into thinking (for about an hour) that Israel was fleeing Gaza from strength not weakness. 4. It was an attempt to convince Sharon's American handlers that there would not be chaos in Gaza after the flight of the Jews. 5. It calmed with soothing oil the passions of those who otherwise might have considered active opposition to forcible transfer of Jews from their homes. 6. It threw up chaff, confounding the plans to indict Sharon for bribery and nepotism. The once Great General has not lost his cunning; only his direction. He has outfoxed the enemy, the enemy being the Jews of Israel, some of whom may now believe that surrender is victory. May we be spared from our (mis)leaders. With love of Israel. To Go To Top

AMERICAN BOARD OF RABBIS CALLS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF ALL TERRORIST HEADS Posted by Ken Heller, March 25, 2004.

New York (PRWEB) March 25, 2004 - Citing a Talmudic passage from Avoda Zora 18a, Rabbi Mordechai Friedman reads "Whoever has the ability to rebuke evil and does not rebuke evil will be punished," and takes it to heart. In a dramatic and unanimous vote of the American Board of Rabbis, the New York-based Rabbinic association agreed on a statement urging Israel and the United States to "Eliminate all Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and terrorist leaders immediately, including Sheik Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah), Ramadan Salah (Islamic Jihad), Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi (Hamas) and PLO's master terrorist Yassir Arafat, heads." The strong statement comes on the wake of Israel's killing of Hamas founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. In the United Nations Tuesday, the United States rejected a council statement condemning the killing. The statement had been put forward by Algeria, the lone Arab member of the 15-nation Council, at the request of the Palestinians. Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi, named as Hamas" new chief for the Gaza Strip, vowed that the Hamas terrorists group would take every opportunity to attack Israeli interests, local and abroad. In response, the US State Department issued a worldwide advisory to Americans overseas of increasing threats from terrorist organizations such as Hamas and al-Qaida. "We dare not tolerate the murder of Jewish children, women and men," states Rabbi Friedman. "Since the Holocaust, Jews have not been murdered as these terrorist Islamic factions are doing now." According to the Israeli government, Yassin's Hamas terrorists have carried out 425 attacks in Israel, including 52 suicide bombings, over the last three and a half years, killing 377 Israelis and wounding 2,076. Even US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, commented "Let's remember that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that Sheik Yassin has himself, personally, we believe, been involved in terrorist planning." Additionally, the American Board of Rabbis endorses "the relocation of all Arab occupiers out of the Jewish biblical territories, and the annexation of all liberated territories given by G-d to the Jewish people back into Israel." In the first book of the Bible, Genesis 15:18, it states "G-d made a covenant with Abram, saying, 'To your descendants I have given this land, from the Egyptian River as far as the great river, the Euphrates.'" "Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza all fall within these boundaries," declares Rabbi Friedman. Contact: Rabbi Mordechai Friedman (646) 996-4040 American Board of Rabbis 292 5th Avenue - 4th Floor New York, New York 10001 Tel (212) 714-3598 vaadharabbonim@yahoo.com To Go To Top

ISRAEL MUST NOT SURRENDER TO TERROR Posted by Paula Kaufman, March 25, 2004.

This article was written by Arieh Eldad and appeared on the World Net Daily website. It is archived at http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=37740 The proposed unilateral Israeli withdrawal of from the Gaza Strip is the newest (and arguably the most promising) victory awaiting the masters of terror. The fundamental tenet of the West's almost 3-year-old War on Terror is moral clarity - the courage of consistency. Such manifest principles shudder in humiliation by the anticipated Israeli pullout from Gaza. Once the sole battlefront in the Terror War, Israel has sorrowfully become only one of the many new war zones of this gruesome conflict. The Jewish state continues to suffer as no other - however, a number of nations have come to experience the horrors of indiscriminate murder, the fear of sudden and unreserved violence and the mourning of fallen innocents. Yet with no true examination, no attempt to look beyond the myth of rhetoric, the West continues to encourage Israeli capitulation to terror. This must end for, if no other reason, than the defense of democracies throughout the world. Sadly, Israel's greatest ally and the victim of one of the most depraved acts of terror, also seeks to have Israel give in to the terrorists in exchange for dreamy, tired and ill-conceived "peace plans" with the radicalized Arab-Islamic enemy. The "Bush Doctrine" defines capitulation to terror as a defeat, that those who aid the terrorists are as responsible and therefore as guilty as the terrorists. With this faultless cognition, moral clarity demands that Israel be forbidden to capitulate to terror. And, with the unanticipated outcome of the Spanish elections and the conceivable loss of a staunch U.S. coalition partner, President Bush stated unequivocally: "Any sign or weakness or retreat is a victory for the terrorists." The partnership of nations who seek to do battle against terror must re-evaluate their automatic, and frankly, illogical, reactions to the Israeli-Arab conflict and understand that in the face of the bombing in Madrid, their future many hinge upon yet another terrorist victory. Gaza In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. That war broke out after Egypt had poured large military forces into the Sinai, closed the Tiran Straits to Israeli shipping and concluded a joint plan, with Syria, for an attack on Israel. Twenty-two years later, as part of the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and following the Camp David talks between Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat under the auspices of President Carter, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. However, Egypt declined to re-assume control of the Gaza Strip, which remained in Israel's possession. After ruling Gaza for 37 years, Israel, in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords, handed over most of the area of the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. With all agreements signed, Israel held on to 20 flourishing communities in a small section of Gaza. Until recently, it was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who took the position that Israel must continue to maintain and develop these Jewish communities under Israeli rule in perpetuity. More importantly, the prime minister frequently expressed the view that the very existence of these Israeli communities in Gaza was essential to the prevention of a takeover of Gaza by extremist terrorist groups and the resultant creation there of the biggest terrorist base in the world. The Roadmap: Conditions unmet The "Roadmap," based on President Bush's vision requires, first and primarily, the cessation of terror. The plan was never implemented, very simply because the terror not only continued, but increased. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority was fleeting and Yasser Arafat remained the Authority's strongman who, to this day, continues to rule the PA as a terrorist organization. Israel rightfully continued to maintain that, unless and until there is a cessation to terror, the thought of territorial concessions was, in fact, out of the question and that action would be seen as a reward for violence. In all, nearly 1,000 Israelis have been killed in terror attacks over the past three years. Suicide-killers have indiscriminately taken the lives of women and children in the streets of Israeli towns and cities. Against this background of ongoing and ever increasing terror, came an astounding turnabout in the long-standing policy of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. In what is clearly an act of desperation, Mr. Sharon decided that Israel would unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and possibly from areas in Judea and Samaria. The prime minister's proposal has all the signs of a man brought to the brink, frustrated by the outrageous behavior of the Palestinian Authority, its blatant flaunting of all civilized norms, its disregard of any legal agreements and the refusal of the world community to disqualify the PA as an entity with any standing. The prime minister would capitulate to the terrorists through despair and fatigue, uprooting dozens of Jewish communities, transferring their inhabitants in the thousands and redeploying to a new and dangerous line of defense. Such matters should not be left to the tired and depressed. The lesson of Lebanon It was Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the extremist Lebanese Muslim terror organization Hezbollah, who described Israel as "a spider-web state." A few years ago, when Israel was fighting in Lebanon, Nasrallah believed that if he just kept up Hezbollah's terrorist strikes against the Jewish state, it would eventually break and retreat. This, indeed, is what happened and, in the year 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory. That retreat, and the hastiness in which it was carried out, represented a tremendous victory for the Hezbollah, and gave living proof of the truth of Nasrallah's theory - the theory of terror. The Palestinian Authority learned that lesson well Ariel Sharon's announcement of his intention to leave Gaza unilaterally in order to improve Israel's position and establish a new line of defense is decisive proof that terror pays. Such a move would indicate that Israel - at one time the very symbol of consistent refusal to surrender to terror and, in this sense, an example and model for the entire free world - was now signaling to all the terrorist organizations that terror pays. Israel, moreover, would become living proof that it is possible to overcome even a country enjoying overwhelming military superiority - if one simply persists in the mass killing of that country's citizens. Should the terrorists' victory in Spain be topped off with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the methodology will be set in stone. The threat to the lives of American and British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will increase substantially, because Islamic terror will then have incontrovertible proof that all it need do is redouble its efforts and step up the slaughter in order to defeat the Western democracies. Such a victory for the terrorists in Gaza would be the opening signal for a worldwide terrorist offensive of unprecedented proportions. The extremists will take over It may be safely assumed that if the Israel Defense Forces evacuate Gaza, the most extreme terrorist groups will seize control of the area. Hamas, and perhaps Hezbollah as well, will gain sharply in strength, which will be understood in one way only: that they have succeeded in driving the Israelis out. A shot in the arm of this kind for the extremist organizations will, in effect, put an end to any prospect that a moderate Arab regime would ever take hold, carry out reforms, fight terror and realize President Bush's vision and the Roadmap. Moreover, an Israeli surrender to terror, in the form of a unilateral retreat from the Gaza Strip, would deal a severe blow to the courageous American resolve to fight terror everywhere. The United States would be compelled to invest billions of dollars, and possibly send tens of thousands of additional armed forces to the Middle East, to avert defeat in the War on Terror. The bold and noble effort to recreate the Middle East based on a democratic Iraq will forever be damaged. If the U.S. experiment is able to survive the proposed terror victory, countless years will be added to the task, not to mention the added blood and treasure of the already put-upon American people. A new dimension has been added to the strategic alliance between Israel and the United States. In the world of fundamentalist Islam, Israel is called "the small Satan." In Muslim eyes, the small Satan's surrender to terror would surely pave the way for victory over "the great Satan" - the United States. For this reason, if for no other, the United States must to strengthen Israel's resolve and urge its leaders to stand firm against terror. The level heads in Washington must expose the defeatist policy proposed by Prime Minister Sharon as the ill-conceived byproduct of desperation and fatigue. Professor Arieh Eldad, a brigadier-general (Reserves), has served in the past as chief medical officer of the Israel Defense Forces, and is a member of Israel's Knesset. His party, the National Union, is part of the coalition making up the Sharon government. To Go To Top

ASSESSING THE IRAQ WAR Posted by Barry Rubin, March 25, 2004.

Nothing shows the complexity of international affairs' decisions than does the Iraq war. Most analysis tries to "prove" the war was an outstanding success or terrible failure. But what would be a balanced assessment? Any serious look at the issue must begin by understanding that U.S. leaders acted in good faith in accord with what they perceived to be the best interests of the United States. This does not necessarily mean they were right but does mean they are not the imperialist buffoons which are caricatured in much of the Arab world, Europe, and American "intellectual" circles. So what were their motives? - A new assessment. Crises continually flowed from the Middle East. U.S. attempts at appeasement, ignoring, and peace-making had failed. Seeking a new approach, they concluded that the real roadblock were the Arab world's dictatorial regimes using extremist ideologies to retain power. The September 11 events made strong action necessary to prevent it from happening again. - A new assumption. Arguing that Arabs and Muslims were like other people, they thought that challenging the dictatorships while offering democracy, higher living standards, and human/civil rights would appeal to them. They hoped this strategy would cut the roots of anti-Americanism, extremism, and terrorism. This is all classical liberal doctrine. Now, here's an irony which no one has ever noticed. Don't these concepts hold a striking familiarity to those motivating the Oslo agreements?) If the Bush administration had been Democratic and liberal, these ideas would have been hailed as tremendously progressive and beneficial Having this policy, it should be noted, did not necessitate attacking Iraq. That came about because of several Iraq-specific ideas in addition to this general assessment: - A new prescription. Just voicing such policies, they believed, would have little practical effect. Regimes would merely use force and demagoguery to retain power. In Iraq, at least, then, the regime must be removed in order to unleash moderation and democracy. - The threat assessment. As long as Saddam Hussein stayed in power, he would become a bigger danger to everyone, especially by developing Weapons of Mass Destruction. - Timing: The administration mistakenly believed that Saddam was on the verge of getting Weapons of Mass Destruction and getting itself into a position where it would lose credibility if it did not go to war, it argued that immediate action was necessary. - Pessimism about allies: Precisely because the U.S. government doubted the will of its allies, it assumed that sanctions on Iraq would steadily dwindle and Saddam would soon be free to do as he liked. Here is where the Europeans who opposed the war had a big responsibility in making it happen. Thus, the war had multiple causes: to transform the Middle East, reduce the threat to the region and America, and defeat terrorism and anti-Americanism at its roots. What was wrong with this assessment? As I wrote in my study of U.S.-Iran relations twenty-five years ago, the road to Hell is often paved with good intentions. The administration ignored serious problems in its analysis. Briefly: - The level of opposition in America and Europe was so high that this in itself became a factor. - While the Arab world will eventually be ready for democracy, the difficulty and time span for such a development was seriously underestimated. - Equally underestimated was the power of nationalism, Islamism, and ethnic conflict to shape reactions in Iraq and the region. The war's supporters were too quick to adapt the idea that Middle Eastern politicians would be rational actors and the masses would follow their material interests. - Intelligence failures about Weapons of Mass Destruction. - Poor planning after the fighting, especially dismantling the Iraqi army, slowness in sending relief supplies, and constant changes of strategy. So was the war a mistake or a triumph? That question can only be answered for Bush and his colleagues by the U.S. election, and for the situation as a whole in a year or two when Iraq's future course becomes clearer. At present, a very brief summary looks like this: Positive side: radical states intimidated; Saddam gone; Iraqis are freed from horrible repression. Negative side: terrorist forces revitalized by a new cause; violence in Iraq; deep split in U.S.-Europe relations. Either side can argue just these and other points showing the war was good or bad but the result is quite mixed. The ultimate issues that will determine everything remain: - Will Iraq be better off for the war's having happened or will it dissolve into violence and even civil war? - Will Iraq be the kind of state inspiring others to struggle for democracy or one more proof that this road leads to chaos, justifying the status quo in the Arab world? - Will Bush's general approach be vindicated or so totally delegitimized as to lead to new Western policies that repeat all the older mistakes? Professor Barry Rubin is the Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs Journal (MERIA) and Editor of Turkish Studies. To Go To Top

WE TRIED APPEASEMENT ONCE BEFORE Posted by IsrAlert, March 25, 2004.

This was written by Mark Steyn and appeared March 23, 2004 as an Opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph ( &sSheet=/opinion/2004/03/23/ixopinion.html) A neighbour of mine refuses to let her boy play with "militaristic" toys. So when a friend gave the l'il tyke a plastic sword and shield, mom mulled it over and then took away the former and allowed him to keep the latter. And for a while, on my drive down to town, I'd pass Junior in the yard playing with his shield, mastering the art of cowering more effectively against unseen blows. That's how the "peace" crowd thinks the West should fight terrorism: eschew the sword, but keep the shield if you absolutely have to. Yesterday, The Telegraph reported that two Greenpeace activists had climbed up to Big Ben to protest at the Iraq war. Don't ask me why Greenpeace is opposed to the liberation of Iraq. It's been marvellous for the eco-system: the marshlands of southern Iraq are now being restored after decades of Saddamite devastation. Nevertheless, the Greenpeace guys shinned up St Stephen's Tower, just as a couple of months before that a Mirror reporter blagged his way into a servants' gig at Buckingham Palace just in time for the Bush visit, and a couple of months before that an Osama lookalike gatecrashed Prince William's party. History repeats itself: farce, farce, farce, but sooner or later tragedy is bound to kick in. The inability of the state to secure even the three highest-profile targets in the realm - the Queen, her heir, her Parliament - should remind us that a defensive war against terrorism will ensure terrorism. Tony Blair understands that. Few other European leaders do. For more than a week now, American friends have asked me why 3/11 wasn't 9/11. I think it comes down to those two words you find on Holocaust memorials all over Europe: "Never again." Fine-sounding, but claptrap. The never-again scenario comes round again every year. This very minute in North Korea there are entire families interned in concentration camps. Concentration camps with gas chambers. Think Kim Jong-Il's worried that the civilised world might mean something by those two words? Ha-ha. How did a pledge to the memory of the dead decay into hollow moral preening? When an American Jew stands at the gates of a former concentration camp and sees the inscription "Never again", he assumes it's a commitment never again to tolerate genocide. Alain Finkielkraut, a French thinker, says that those two words to a European mean this: never again the fuhrers and duces who enabled such genocide. "Never again power politics. Never again nationalism. Never again Auschwitz" - a slightly different set of priorities. And over the years a revulsion against any kind of "power politics" has come to trump whatever revulsion post-Auschwitz Europe might feel about mass murder. That's why the EU let hundreds of thousands of Bosnians and Croats die on its borders until the Americans were permitted to step in. That's why the fact that thousands of Iraqis are no longer being murdered by their government is trivial when weighed against the use of Anglo-American military force required to effect their freedom. "Never again" has evolved to mean precisely the kind of passivity that enabled the Holocaust first time round. "Neville again" would be a better slogan. Among all the foolish apologists for the murderers of Madrid, it was the Reverend Mark Beach who happened to catch my eye. Preaching at St Andrew's Church, Rugby, nine days ago, Mr Beach said: "The people of Madrid are reaping the fruits of our intolerance towards those of different races and religions. The war in Iraq was never going to solve the problems of that region but instead inflamed Arab people all over the world to new heights of anger towards the West." God Almighty. The sooner the Potemkin Church of England is sold for scrap the better. Almost every word of Mr Beach's is false; there are mosques in the English Midlands, but no Christian churches in Saudi Arabia. Its official tourism commission lists among prohibited categories of visitor "Jewish persons". It is precisely because the West is so open to different races that Islamist bombers can blend in on Madrid commuter trains, and the Tube and the Paris Metro, in a way that, say, a team of blond, blue-eyed Aryan bombers certainly couldn't in Damascus. The war in Iraq has actually solved quite a few problems in that region, and Arab people all over the world aren't inflamed - the allegedly seething Arab street is as somnolent as ever. In 2002 and 2003, I took a couple of two-legged, mini fact-finding trips - first to western Europe, then on to the Middle East. And both times I was struck by the way the Muslims of Araby were far less inflamed than those in the alienated immigrant ghettoes around Paris and Amsterdam. Life in the West, exposure to the self-loathing platitudes of Anglican clerics, these are the sort of things that seem to inflame Muslims. Many of the wackiest Islamists from Richard Reid to Zacarias Moussaoui to Metin Kaplan are products of the enervated Europe symbolised by the Rev Mark Beach. A century ago, in The Riddle Of The Sands, the first great English spy novel, Erskine Childers has his yachtsman, Davies, try to persuade the Foreign Office wallah Carruthers to take seriously the possibility of German naval marauders in the Fresian Islands: "Follow the parallel of a war on land. People your mountains with a daring and resourceful race, who possess an intimate knowledge of every track and bridlepath, who operate in small bands, travel light, and move rapidly. See what an immense advantage such guerrillas possess over an enemy which clings to beaten tracks, moves in large bodies, slowly, and does not 'know the country'." Davies wants Carruthers to apply the old principles to new forms of warfare. The Islamists are doing that. Their most effective guerrillas aren't in the Hindu Kush, where it is the work of moments to drop a daisycutter on the mighty Pashtun warrior. They're travelling light on the bridle-paths of Europe - the small cells that operate in the nooks and crannies of a free society, while politicians cling to the beaten tracks - old ideas, multicultural pieties and a general hope that things will turn out for the best. That's the drawback of sticking with the "Neville again" routine: appeasement is even less effective when the faraway country of which you know little is your own. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

HISTORY IS WATCHING Posted by Boris Celser, March 25, 2004.

This was written by Jack Engelhard, author of the novel "Indecent Proposal" and the award-winning memoir "Escape From Mount Moriah". His novel "The Days of the Bitter End" is being prepared for movie production. This article appeared yesterday in Arutz-Sheva and is archived at(http://www.IsraelNN.com/author.php?id=18) They were on the wrong side of history, and today, and forever, their names live in infamy - Hitler, Goebbels, Mengele, Eichmann, and thousands, even millions more like them. You can run, but you can't hide, as per Joe Louis. Everything (to borrow a line from Pirke Avos) is recorded in a Book. Today, your words and deeds are also recorded by the memory of the Internet and television. If you are a believer, then say this: God is watching. If you are something otherwise, then say this: History is watching. Those who support and champion murderers are murderers themselves, and they will be recorded and remembered as such. The Book of History is being written for Kofi Annan, who runs the most (food for oil, anyone?) corrupt organization in the world, otherwise known as the United Nations. Kofi, who never met a Palestinian Arab terrorist he didn't like, was quick to condemn the very lawful and very justified assassination of Yassin, a mass murderer second only to Yasser (yes, sir, that's Kofi's baby) Arafat. History is watching the Human Stain, better known as the European Union, which came quickly out of the gate to bash Israel for Israel's first sign of a pulse. Here's Javier Solana, EU's foreign policy chief: "These types of actions do not contribute to dialogue and peace in the region. The actions of today are bad news for the peace process." Peace process, Mr. Solana? What rock have you been hiding under? Bad news? Sit down one day and I'll tell you bad news, beginning with (the gratefully dead) Yassin's thugs packing a 10-year-old kid, Abdullah Koran, with explosives to carry the world's daily dose of 9/11 into Israel. Canada, of dubious moral weight when it comes to the Jews and thus to Israel, has now spoken up against Israel's action. And here's a country that's been remembered in a book by Canadian authors Irving Abella and Harold Troper titled None Is Too Many. Where did that phrase come from? From a high Canadian official who was responding to this question: How many Jews fleeing Hitler will Canada accept? This was his answer: "None is too many." Previously, Prime Minister MacKenzie King spoke of Hitler as being "sweet" and perhaps "a savior of the world." This, too, is one for the books. As is the U.S. State Department, which is "troubled". But the U.S. State Department has always been so "troubled" by Israel that its "troubles" fill volumes, entire libraries. Perhaps, and this is just a guess, Israel had a right to be "troubled" by the man who invented suicide bombing, the most depraved form of warfare in the history of what we laughingly call Civilization. The Book of History has already recorded France, which handed over 72,000 Jews for Nazi extermination. But here's a new page, written by France's Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin: "France condemns the action against Sheik Yassin. Such acts only fuel the cycle of violence." Yes, Dominique, just like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a cycle of violence, and just like a knock on the door by a gendarme was a cycle of violence back in the 1940s. Those tens of thousands rioting in the streets of Gaza City may be Men With No Names to us, but Someone is watching and recording their four-year orgy of bloodshed. (Don't these people have jobs?) History is watching Egypt, whose leader, Hosni Mubarak, has called off "peace efforts" due to Israel's chutzpah in taking out Mr. Killing Field. Those Gaza tunnels that keep feeding Jihad bombs from out of Egypt to the likes of the still-in-business Yasser Arafat and the out-of-business Ahmed Yassin - is that what we mean these days by "peace efforts", Mr. Mubarak? Hanan Ashrawi is already in the books for her support of mass murder, as is her fellow traveler Abdul Rahman, so there isn't much more to add. Their deeds and actions are recorded for posterity alongside Haman's. But TV keeps coming up with new Talking Heads to fill the empty pages of history. Here's one of those new ones, and a young one at that, whose total ignorance is jaw-dropping. She goes by the name Randi Rhodes and here she is on CNN explaining to the world that all of terrorism, here, there, and everywhere, stems from Israel. It's Israel's fault. Young Ms. Rhodes is a talk show host for an up-and-coming "liberal" program. Enough said about Ms. Rhodes and the New Liberals, whose script is bypassing the Book and heading straight for TV movie-of-the-week under the title "Dumb and Dumber Part Two". In the aftermath, virtually all of our commentators had the same thought and the same fear. Will Arafat be next? From the mouth of (Yul Brynner's) Pharaoh: So let it be written, so let it be done. To Go To Top

THE ABUSE OF INNOCENCE Posted by David Frankfurter, March 25, 2004.

The use of children in the Arafat war of terror has reached an all time low. It would seem that a 14 year old, a little "slow" in his thinking and not well accepted by his peers, was so impressed by his teacher's description of the virgins awaiting him in heaven and the NIS 100 (about $US 22) that would be given to his mother, that he agreed to don a suicide belt and attempt to kill some Israelis. Alert soldiers managed to prevent a disaster. The actual arrest was broadcast on Israeli television. It was heart-wrenching to see the boy cut the suicide belt off himself with scissors that the soldiers sent him using a small robot. It was pathetic seeing how afraid he was that he would actually be killed. It was infuriating to think of the callous exploitation. This case comes hot on the heels of an attempt to use an 11 year old, who earned a living as a porter, helping the elderly and infirm carry parcels through a checkpoint, to carry a bomb past the guards. And when he was discovered, the brave terrorists tried to blow him and the surrounding soldiers up from their hiding place, using the cellular telphone they had attached to the bomb. This callous use of children is not new. The idea of using children as 'publicity suicide' can be traced directly to Arafat. When he urges children to "Jihad, Jihad" he holds up the ideal of a young Palestinian Arab poster boy killed while threatening Israeli troops with a sling-shot. Terrorists have been frequently photographed firing from a position surrounded by children. When the Israelis return fire, and children are killed, this helps the Palestinian Arab propaganda machine. Terrorists hide out and put their weapons factories in residential areas. Children have been sent on suicide missions, attempting to infiltrate Israeli settlements, throwing pipe-bombs...the list is as long as it is sad. For a short while there was a respite. During Abu Mazen's short Prime-Ministerial stint, he issued orders to stop using children in this way - and it stopped. Arafat continued the incitement, but in the field the wishes of the Prime Minister were honoured. Abu Mazen had long criticised the use of children in this callous manner. He complained in the Arab press (www.idf.il/english/announcements/2002/june/mazen.stm) - citing 40 cases of children having their arms blown off trying to throw pipe-bombs at Jewish targets - in exchange for $1. Nor is this phenomenon unique to the Palestinian Arabs. Last April, the Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml? xml=/news/2003/04/13/wbomb13.xml) reported of suicide belts being found in a Baghdad classroom. Sadly, human rights organisations are so busy focusing on the one and only world evil - Israel - that these basic abuses of human rights go unnoticed. And when the epithet of 'international law' is bandied around, no-one thinks of the Geneva conventions which protect civilians by demanding that combatants wear uniforms and keep the battle away from children and civilians. In fact, a joint statement by Physicians for Human Rights - Israel and Defence for Children International (Palestinian Section) and the Gaza Community Mental Health Program decried the use of children in the conflict... and then went on to focus on the breach of the child's rights perpetrated by the IDF and Israeli media in publishing details of the child who was used to smuggle bombs through the checkpoint. An interesting set of priorities. Given that nothing to date has shocked the world into forcing the Palestinian Arabs to keep children out of the conflict, wouldn't one expect them to encourage the only thing which seems to have prompted a reaction? I urge you to turn to human rights organisations, and ask them to stop blindly demonizing Israel, and start to focus on the rights of children - both Jewish and Arab - to grow up in an environment free from fear of the next terrorist attack, and free from the hate indoctrination that is prolonging this conflict. David Frankfurter is a writer on the Middle East conflict. He sends "Letters from Israel" emails to subscribers. Contact him at David.Frankfurter@iname.com To Go To Top

JOE MCCAIN ON JEWS Posted by Israel Ben-Ami, March 25, 2004.

The following is an essay written for a Jewish women's organizatiion by Joe McCain, brother of Senator John McCain. Senator John There is a lot of worry popping up in the media just now - "Can Israel Survive?" Don't worry about it. It relates to something that Palestinians, the Arabs, and perhaps most Americans don't realize - the Jews are never going quietly again. Never. And if the world doesn't come to understand that, then millions of Arabs are going to die. It's as simple as that. Throughout the history of the world, the most abused, kicked-around race of people have been the Jews. Not just during the holocaust of World War II, but for thousands of years. They have truly been "The Chosen People" in a terrible and tragic sense. The Bible story of Egypt's enslavement of the Jews is not just a story, it is history, if festooned with theological legend and heroic epics. In 70 A.D. the Romans, which had for a long time tolerated the Jews - even admired them as 'superior' to other vassals - tired of their truculent demands for independence and decided on an early "Solution" to the Jewish problem. Jerusalem was sacked and reduced to near rubble, Jewish resistance was pursued and crushed by the implacable Roman War Machine - see'Masada'. And thus began The Diaspora, the dispersal of Jews throughout the rest of the world. Their homeland destroyed, their culture crushed, they looked desperately for the few niches in a hostile world where they could be safe. That safety was fragile, and often subject to the whims of moody hosts. The words 'pogrom', 'ghetto', and 'anti-Semitism' come from this treatment of the first mono-theistic people. Throughout Europe, changing times meant sometimes tolerance, sometimes even warmth for the Jews, but eventually it meant hostility, then malevolence. There is not a country in Europe or Western Asia that at one time or another has not decided to lash out against the children of Moses, sometimes by whim, sometimes by manipulation. Winston Churchill calls Edward I one of England's very greatest kings. It was under his rule in the late 1200's that Wales and Cornwall were hammered into the British crown, and Scotland and Ireland were invaded and occupied. He was also the first European monarch to set up a really effective administrative bureaucracy, surveyed and censused his kingdom, established laws and political divisions. But he also embraced the Jews. Actually Edward didn't embrace Jews so much as he embraced their money. For the English Jews had acquired wealth - understandable, because this people that could not own land or office, could not join most of the trades and professions, soon found out that money was a very good thing to accumulate. Much harder to take away than land or a store, was a hidden sock of gold and silver coins. Ever resourceful, Edward found a way - he borrowed money from the Jews to finance imperial ambitions in Europe, especially France. The loans were almost certainly not made gladly, but how do you refuse your King? Especially when he is 'Edward the Hammer'. Then, rather than pay back the debt, Edward simply expelled the Jews. Edward was especially inventive - he did this twice. After a time, he invited the Jews back to their English homeland, borrowed more money, then expelled them again. Most people do not know that Spain was one of the early entrants into The Renaissance. People from all over the world came to Spain in the late medieval period. All were welcome - Arabs, Jews, other Europeans. The University of Salamanca was one of the great centers of learning in the world - scholars of all nations, all fields came to Salamanca to share their knowledge and their ideas. But in 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella, having driven the last of Moors from the Spanish Shield, were persuaded by the righteous fundamentalists of the time to announce "The Act of Purification". A series of steps were taken in which all Jews and Arabs and other non-Christians were expelled from the country, or would face the tools and the torches of The Inquisition. From this 'cleansing' come the Sephardic Jews - as opposed to the Ashkenazis of Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, the sporadic violence and brutality against Jews are common knowledge. 'Fiddler' without the music and the folksy humor. At times of fury, no accommodation by the Jew was good enough, no profile low enough, no village poor enough or distant enough. From these come the near-steady flow of Jews to the United States. And despite the disdain of the Jews by most 'American' Americans, they came to grab the American Dream with both hands, and contributed everything from new ideas of enterprise in retail and entertainment to becoming some of our finest physicians and lawyers. The modern United States, in spite of itself, IS The United States in part because of its Jewish blood. Then the Nazi Holocaust - the corralling, sorting, orderly eradication of millions of the people of Moses. Not something that other realms in other times didn't try to do, by the way, the Germans were just more organized and had better murder technology. I stood in the center of Dachau for an entire day, about 15 years ago, trying to comprehend how this could have happened. I had gone there on a side trip from Munich, vaguely curious about this Dachau. I soon became engulfed in the enormity of what had occurred there nestled in this middle and working class neighborhood. How could human beings do this to other human beings, hear their cries, their pleas, their terror, their pain, and continue without apparently even wincing? I no longer wonder. At some times, some places, ANY sect of the human race is capable of horrors against their fellow man, whether a member of the Waffen SS, a Serbian sniper, a Turkish policeman in 1920's Armenia, a Mississippi Klansman. Because even in the United States not all was a Rose Garden. For a long time Jews had quotas in our universities and graduate schools. Only so many Jews could be in a medical or law school at one time. Jews were disparaged widely. I remember as a kid Jewish jokes told without a wince - "Why do Jews have such big noses?" Well, now the Jews have a homeland again. A place that is theirs. And that's the point. It doesn't matter how many times the United States and European powers try to rein in Israel, if it comes down to survival of its nation, its people, they will fight like no lioness has ever fought to save her cubs. They will fight with a ferocity, a determination, and a skill, that will astound us. And many will die, mostly their attackers, I believe. If there were a macabre historical betting parlor, my money would be on the Israelis to be standing at the end. As we killed the kamikazes and the Wehrmacht soldaten of World War II, so will the Israelis kill their suicidal attackers, until there are not enough to torment them. The irony goes unnoticed - while we are hammering away to punish those who brought the horrors of last September here, we restrain the Israelis from the same retaliation. Not the same thing, of course - We are We, They are They. While we mourn and seethe at September 11th, we don't notice that Israel has a September 11th sometimes every day. We may not notice, but it doesn't make any difference. And it doesn't make any difference whether you are pro-Israeli or you think Israel is the bully of the Middle East. If it comes to where a new holocaust looms - with or without the concurrence of the United States and Europe - Israel will lash out without pause or restraint at those who would try to annihilate their country. The Jews will not go quietly again. To Go To Top

WHEN IS THE RIGHT  TIME TO KILL TERRORIST LEADERS? Posted by Steven Plaut, March 25, 2004.

The UN Human Rights Commission, which has never condemned the Palestinian nazis for their mass murders and suicide bombing atrocities, including when they mass murder children, has now taken a courageous decision and has condemned Israel for human rights violations because it assassinated the genocidal Sheikh Yassin with the blood of hundres of Israeli civilians on his paws. The usual apologists for terrorists and the anti-Israel mob are bellowing that even if killing the Nazi sheikh was ok, NOW was the wrong time to do so. WHy? Well, every time Israel actually uses its army half-heartedly against the nazis, the Left and the Bash-Israel mob insists that the Arab world was just on the brink of making peace with Israel but that Israel's armed action messed things up. I cannot recall a single case where Israel used armed might where the response was not the same. We were almost there, just on the brink of peace breaking out, but Israeli trigger-happy violence messed things up. Well, here is a nice piece. Its point is that there is NEVER a WRONG time to kill nazi terrorists: It was written by Michael Freund who served as Deputy Director of Communications and Policy Planning in the Prime Minister's Office under former premier Binyamin Netanyahu. It is entitled "The Long Sword of Jewish Justice" and it appeared yesterday in the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com). The world was made a whole lot safer this past Monday, when Israeli helicopters eliminated Hamas arch-terrorist Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in a pre-dawn strike in Gaza. The removal of this villain, whose warped ideology brought about the deaths of hundreds of innocents, was a heroic and just act, one that should be celebrated as an important milestone in the global war on terror. Despite his innocent demeanor, Yassin was a monster, an evil man hell-bent on sowing death and destruction. As head of Hamas, he spent the past decade disseminating hate, dispatching suicide bombers and targeting innocent Israeli men, women and children. Don't fall prey to the media's attempts to label him a "spiritual leader". There is nothing spiritual about a mass murderer of Jews and there is nothing holy about someone who sent Palestinian children to detonate themselves as human bombs. Yassin was a menace both to Israel and the West. Under his tutelage, Hamas carried out some 425 terror attacks in just the past three and a half years, killing 377 Israelis and injuring over 2,000 others. He brazenly declared that "all Israeli people are targets" (The Washington Times, June 12, 2003), and insisted that, "All of Israel, Tel Aviv included, is occupied Palestine. So we're not actually targeting civilians" (St. Petersburg Times, August 11, 2001). Yassin rejected Israel's right to exist and repeatedly called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Just three months ago, in a December 2003 interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, he denied the possibility of co-existence, telling his interviewer that if the Jews insisted on having a country of their own, "They could set up a state in Europe". Less than two years ago, shortly after Palestinian terrorists carried out a bomb attack at the Hebrew University, Yassin told the Italian daily Corriere Della Sera that, "Israel was born in violence and it will die in violence. The Jews have no right to the land of Palestine". Yassin was an equal-opportunity hater, directing his venom not only at Israel, but also at the West. Last year, after the US invasion of Iraq had begun, he repeatedly called on the Iraqi people to carry out suicide attacks against British and American forces. At a March 28, 2003 rally in Gaza, Yassin urged Iraqis to "continue their jihad, and to use all possible means to achieve victory against the British and American enemies". Though they would never admit it, the Palestinians themselves will also benefit from Yassin's demise, if only because he can no longer spread his poisonous and lethal philosophy among them. But despite his horrific record, much of the world was quick to condemn the killing of Yassin, with everyone from UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Kofi Annan to the Japanese government coming down hard on Israel for having the nerve to defend itself. But let them say what they wish, because it matters not one whit. The fact is that we can all take pride in this bold demonstration of sovereign Jewish power, in the ability of the State of Israel to hunt down and punish those who would follow in Hitler's footsteps. Israel's critics must finally realize that the era of pogroms is over, that the Jew will no longer cower in fear from his adversaries, or seek protection from others. We have returned to the world stage, we have every right to defend ourselves, and that is what we shall do. The long arm of Jewish justice took care of Sheikh Yassin, and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon deserves nothing but praise for having the courage and the good sense to do so. The elimination of Sheikh Yassin is on par with the capture of Saddam Hussein and the removal of Taliban leader Mullah Omar from power. It marks a turning point in the war on terror, the purging of yet another fanatical chieftain from the world stage. And it also signifies Israel's determination, like that of Washington, to confront its enemies and take the war to their own backyards, if need be. Let the cynics and naysayers grumble all they wish. There is never a "wrong" time to eliminate a killer of Jews, or to strike a forceful blow against terrorist thugs. Whatever the diplomatic or security fallout might be, Israel has done the right thing, at the right time, and to the right person. On Monday morning, shortly after Yassin was killed, his associate Ismail Haniyeh confirmed his death, telling reporters that he had always hoped to die as a "martyr". "This is the moment Sheikh Yassin dreamed about", he said. This is one case, at least, where we can all be grateful that the Hamas leader's dream has finally come true, courtesy of the IDF. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

EMERGENCY HELP FOR THE ARBEL FAMILY Posted by Moshe Feiglin, March 25, 2004.

Dear Friends, Pesach is rapidly approaching and families are busy cleaning and preparing for the holiday. Although this is a difficult task, MOST families do it with joy and anticipation since a WONDERFUL holiday is headed their way. I emphasize the word "MOST" since SOME families cannot experience this happiness. One of those families lives in the beautiful Israeli town called, Talmon. Their name is Arbel. On January 13th (the 20th of Tevet) - a little over 2 months ago - Ro'ee Arbel was brutally murdered by followers of Yassir Arafat and Sheikh Yassin. He was just 5 minutes from home... Ro'ee was a man of Torah and practice. He graduated a Hesder Yeshiva, was an IDF combat officer and had a B.S. degree in Engineering. Two months before his murder, his lovely wife Hagit (may she live to 120) gave birth to TRIPLETS (2 girls and a boy)! This was in addition to 2 children they already had. The triplets were born prematurely and have been watched carefully by doctors. Recently, the girls went home and thank G-d, Tal and Emunah are doing fine. The boy, named after his father - Chananel Ro'ee - is suffering from a medical problem in his digestive system and is scheduled to undergo a complex surgery very soon. Ro'ee's parents, David and Nechama, live in Kedumim and have been active in the "settlement" movement for 28 years! What a tragedy that BUILDERS of the land had to become BURIERS. Ro'ee was buried close to Talmon in the cemetery of Dolev. Every year, Manhigut Yehudit decides on ONE family to help before Pesach. Unfortunately, there are MANY horrific stories and SCORES of people that need assistance and we hope and pray that Hashem will help each and every one of them. Nevertheless, it has become our "custom" to find ONE family that we can directly impact with some serious assistance. Last year, we helped Livnat Ozeri whose husband, Nati, was brutally murdered on Tu B'Shevat and whose home on "Hilltop 26" was subsequently destroyed by the Sharon-Netanyahu government. This year we would very much like to help Hagit Arbel and her 5 children. Please mail your tax deductible checks ASAP to: Manhigut Yehudit PO Box 241 Cedarhurst, NY 11516-0241 IMPORTANT: Please write "ARBEL" in the check's memo section or on a note in the envelope. We don't want the money mixed up with anything else. Thank you. With love of Israel, Moshe Feiglin Shmuel Sackett Michael Fuah Motti Karpel and the entire Manhigut Yehudit team Moshe Feiglin established Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership), a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Feiglin has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To Go To Top

TERRORISM TO BE FOUGHT OR ENCOURAGED? Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 25, 2004.

The Israeli assassination of Sheikh Yassin has brought out all the phony cliches: "revenge," "moderate" Arabs, "peace process," and "oh but we all oppose terrorism." It is not that the pundits who reiterate these stock phrases are mentally incapable of realizing their falsity, but that these phrases are a convenient to lull the drive for survival in my fellow Jews, many of whom fail to realize their falsity. A country cannot proclaim itself a guardian of civilization while simultaneously appeasing the enemies of civilization. France considers itself the standard-bearer of civilization and the upholder of international political morality. It declares its opposition to terrorism. It also opposes Israeli counter-terrorism. What a contradiction! One cannot logically oppose both terrorism, which is the deliberate attacking of civilians, and simultaneously oppose counter-terrorism, which is the liquidating of terrorists such as Yassin, whose hunting down is a requirement of international law. French officials offer an ostensibly practical reason for opposing that Sheikh's assassination. They claim it hampers the "peace process." The theory of this "peace process" is that peace can be attained by a diplomatic agreement made during a temporary armistice by terrorists, after which, as the Arabs have vowed, the armed struggle would resume. The agreement would be for the Jews to give up their strong claims to Yesha, the heart of the Jewish homeland, and for the Arabs, to be granted their weak claims to Yesha. Since the Arabs claim the whole area, including Israel, a rational and honest person would not consider such diplomacy the end of the conflict but its stimulation. It would stimulate conflict by making the Arab aggressors stronger and the Israeli object of that aggression weaker. Should that be so difficult to understand that almost the whole world cannot fathom its logic? Are we to suppose that that terrorist chieftain and his two hundred thousand mourners are part of a peace process? Are we to suppose that his allies in the PLO and the millions of Palestinian Arabs who endorse his goals are part of a peace process? Who among them stands for peace? That is, which of them recognizes the Jewish people's right to keep their own state and to deny Islamic rule over it? None has ever come forward to make that proposition and lived to repeat it. It is difficult to imagine what France means by a peace process, while the Arabs are making war and conducting diplomatic efforts to deprive Israel of the strategic territory needed to resist this war. Is Israel supposed not to defend itself in this war, while the US defends itself in a similar war? Perhaps the real object of opposition to Israeli counter-terrorism is to appease the Arabs regardless of how many Jews are killed as a result. Alternatively, the real objective is to get Jews killed, their sovereignty destroyed, and their voice that may shame the moral pretensions of Europeans and the US, stilled. "Peace process" is a synonym for antisemitism. In order to pretend that there is a peace process, the West makes believe that there are "moderate" Arab states, by which is meant Arabs who believe in peaceful co-existence. Older readers may remember the Soviet profession of "peaceful co-existence." By that the Soviet aggressors meant to give the impression of being what they called themselves, "peace loving." "Peaceful co-existence" was a code phrase for getting the West to allow itself to be whittled down by diplomacy and revolution. The Soviets taught that trick to the Arabs. Egypt and Jordan are called "moderate" Arab states. Moderate? Egypt allows arms smuggling to Gaza. Both use diplomacy and UN membership to champion the terrorists against Israel. They don't want Israel to last. Their people hate Israel and the Jewish people. Government-controlled media and curriculum and the mosques see to that. Some commentators try to dissuade Israel from liquidating terrorist leaders by suggesting that Israel gets no safer from doing so. They cite Arab statements about taking "revenge." Their logic is that if terrorists get away with genocidal attacks, they may drop that successful method. That is not the way of the world. A corollary is that reducing the numbers of trained and organized terrorists would spur more attacks than those fulltime terrorists have already plotted. One would have thought that fewer trained terrorists and reduced infrastructure support would mean less terrorism. The concept of "revenge" is misrepresented. Every time the Arab aggressors suffer casualties, they threaten revenge. It is possible that some more freelancers might be propelled into attempting probably unsuccessful terrorism, motivated by the publicity that the media gave to the sheikh's execution. We need to hold the media accountable for encouraging radicalism. The impression is bruited that if not for the assassination, Hamas and its allies would not strive to murder Israelis. Nonsense, again! The terrorists constantly plot murder. That is what professional terrorists do. Hamas and Fatah constantly build weapons and attack. Few in the media made that clear. Journalism does not enlighten audiences. There is some sentiment for sparing terrorist leaders such as Yassin, because they are the leaders. The logic of that is that some immunity should be given to a mastermind of terrorism. Does a murderer's rise in a hierarchy of evil deserve a privilege from the victims? In the US, criminal lackeys my gain some immunity if they turn in their masterminds. The greater the font of evil, the less privileged it should be. Since Yassin was both skilled and inspiring in his plotting, he above all was a primary target. Terrorist leaders should have to spend more time hiding than conniving. The way for Israel (and the US) to become safer is to liquidate first all competent terrorist leaders and then liquidate or imprison for life all other terrorists. Israel should have executed Yassin when it had captured him long ago, certainly not released him, and at least have assassinated him a few years ago. There is speculation that Arafat is next. Good idea. It would bring some justice to this world. Let us call Arafat "an obstacle to peace." Hundreds of armed followers of Yassin marched in Gaza. They made a legitimate target. Could Israeli jets have strafed them? Those mourners complained about his death, but he lived by the sword. The Islamists can "dish it out but they can't take it." Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

FIGHTING TERROR: DO'S AND DON'TS FOR A SUPERPOWER Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 25, 2004.

This essay is Chapter III. of Ralph Peters' new book, "When Devils Walk the Earth." It is a must-read. 1. Be feared! 2. Identify the type of terrorists you face, and know your enemy as well as you possibly can. Although tactics may be similar, strategies for dealing with practical vs. apocalyptic terrorists can differ widely. Practical terrorists may have legitimate grievances that deserve consideration, although their methods cannot be tolerated. Apocalyptic terrorists, no matter their rhetoric, seek your destruction and must be killed to the last man. The apt metaphor is cancer: you cannot hope for success if you only cut out part of the tumor. For the apocalyptic terrorist, evading your efforts can easily be turned into a public triumph. Our bloodiest successes will create far fewer terrorists and sympathizers than our failures. 3. Do not be afraid to be powerful. Cold War-era gambits of proportionate response and dialog may have some utility in dealing with practical terrorists, but they are counter-productive in dealing with apocalyptic terrorists. Our great strengths are wealth and raw power. When we fail to bring those strengths to bear, we contribute to our own defeat. For a superpower to think small, which has been our habit across the last decade, at least, is self-defeating folly. Our responses to terrorist acts should make the world gasp! 4. Speak bluntly. Euphemisms are interpreted as weakness by our enemies and mislead the American people. Speak of killing terrorists and destroying their organizations. Timid speech leads to timid actions. Explain when necessary, but do not apologize. Expressions of regret are never seen as a mark of decency by terrorists or their supporters, but only as a sign that our will is faltering. Blame the terrorists as the root cause whenever operations have unintended negative consequences. Never go on the rhetorical defensive. 5. Concentrate on winning the propaganda war where it is winnable. Focus on keeping or enhancing the support from allies and well-disposed clients, but do not waste an inordinate amount of effort trying to win unwinnable hearts and minds. Convince hostile populations through victory. 6. Do not be drawn into a public dialog with terrorists, especially not with apocalyptic terrorists. You cannot win. You legitimize the terrorists by addressing them even through a third medium, and their extravagant claims will resound more successfully on their own home ground than anything you can say. Ignore absurd accusations, and never let the enemy's claims slow or sidetrack you. The terrorist wants you to react, and your best means of unbalancing him and his plan is to ignore his accusations. 7. Avoid planning creep. Within our vast bureaucratic system, too many voices compete for attention and innumerable agendas, often selfish and personal - intrude on any attempt to act decisively. Focus on the basic mission: the destruction of the terrorists with all the moral, intellectual and practical rigor you can bring to bear. All other issues, from future nation building, to alliance consensus, to humanitarian concerns are secondary. 8. Maintain resolve. Especially in the Middle East and Central Asia, experts and diplomats will always present you with a multitude of good reasons for doing nothing, or for doing too little (or for doing exactly the wrong thing). Fight as hard as you can within the system to prevent diplomats from gaining influence over the strategic campaign. Although their intentions are often good, our diplomats and their obsolete strategic views are the terrorist's unwitting allies and diplomats are extremely jealous of military success and military authority in their region (where their expertise is never as deep or subtle as they believe it to be). Beyond the problem with our diplomats, the broader forces of bureaucratic entropy are an internal threat. The counter-terrorist campaign must be not only resolute, but constantly self-rejuvenating in ideas, techniques, military and inter-agency combinations, and sheer energy. Old hands must be stimulated constantly by new ideas. 9. When in doubt, hit harder than you think necessary. Success will be forgiven. Even the best-intentioned failure will not. When military force is used against terrorist networks, it should be used with such power that it stuns even our allies. We must get over our cowardice in means. While small-scale raids and other knife point operations are useful against individual targets, broader operations should be overwhelming. Of course, targeting limitations may inhibit some efforts but whenever possible, maximum force should be used in simultaneous operations at the very beginning of a campaign. Do not hesitate to supplement initial target lists with extensive bombing attacks on nothing if they can increase the initial psychological impact. Demonstrate power whenever you can. Show; don't tell! 10. Whenever legal conditions permit, kill terrorists on the spot (do not give them a chance to surrender, if you can help it). Contrary to academic wisdom, the surest way to make a martyr of a terrorist is to capture, convict and imprison him, leading to endless efforts by sympathizers to stage kidnappings, hijacking and other events intended to liberate the imprisoned terrorist(s). This is war, not law enforcement. 11. Never listen to those who warn that ferocity on our part reduces us to the level of the terrorists. That is the argument of the campus, not of the battlefield, and it insults America's service members and the American people. Historically, we have proven, time after time, that we can do a tough, dirty job for our country without any damage to our nation's moral fabric (Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not interfere with American democracy, values or behavior). 12. Spare and protect innocent civilians whenever possible, but: do not let the prospect of civilian casualties interfere with ultimate mission accomplishment. This is a fight to protect the American people, and we must do so whatever the cost, or the price in American lives may be devastating. In a choice between them, and us the choice is always us. 13. Do not allow the terrorists to hide behind religion. Apocalyptic terrorists cite religion as a justification for attacking us; in turn, we cannot let them hide behind religious holidays, taboos, strictures or even sacred terrain. We must establish a consistent reputation for relentless pursuit and destruction of those who kill our citizens. Until we do this, our hesitation will continue to strengthen our enemy's ranks and his resolve. 14. Do not allow third parties to broker a peace, a truce, or any pause in operations. One of the most difficult challenges in fighting terrorism on a global scale is the drag produced by nervous allies. We must be single-minded. The best thing we can do for our allies in the long-term is to be so resolute and so strong that they value their alliance with us all the more. We must recognize the innate strength of our position and stop allowing regional leaders with counterproductive local agendas to subdue or dilute our efforts. 15. Don't flinch. If an operation goes awry and friendly casualties are unexpectedly high, immediately bolster morale and the military's image by striking back swiftly in a manner that inflicts the maximum possible number of casualties on the enemy and his supporters. Hit back as graphically as possible, to impress upon the local and regional players that you weren't badly hurt or deterred in the least. 16. Do not worry about alienating already-hostile populations. - (Added by EAW: "or anti-war senators aspiring to become president of ourq great nation.") 17. Whenever possible, humiliate your enemy in the eyes of his own people. Do not try to use reasonable arguments against him. Shame him publicly, in any way you can. Create doubt where you cannot excite support. Most apocalyptic terrorists, especially, come from cultures of male vanity. Disgrace them at every opportunity. Done successfully, this both degrades them in the eyes of their followers and supporters, and provokes the terrorist to respond, increasing his vulnerability. 18. If the terrorists hide, strike what they hold dear, using clandestine means and, whenever possible, foreign agents to provoke them to break cover and react. Do not be squeamish. Your enemy is not. Subtlety is not superpower strength but the raw power to do that, which is necessary, is our great advantage. We forget that, while the world may happily chide or accuse us-or complain of our inhumanity-no one can stop us if we maintain our strength of will. Much of the world will complain no matter what we do. Hatred of America is the default position of failed individuals and failing states around the world, in every civilization, and there is nothing we can do to change their minds. We refuse to understand how much of humanity will find excuses for evil, so long as the evil strikes those who are more successful than the apologists themselves. This is as true of American academics, whose eagerness to declare our military efforts a failure is unflagging, or European clerics, who still cannot forgive America's magnanimity at the end of World War II, as it is of unemployed Egyptians or Pakistanis. The psychologically marginalized are at least as dangerous as the physically deprived. 19. Do not allow the terrorists sanctuary in any country, at any time, under any circumstances. Counter-terrorist operations must, above all, be relentless. This does not necessarily mean that military operations will be constantly underway sometimes it will be surveillance efforts, or deception plans, or operations by other agencies. But the overall effort must never pause for breath. We must be faster, more resolute, more resourceful and, ultimately, even more uncompromising than our enemies. 20. Never declare victory. Announce successes and milestones. But never give the terrorists a chance to embarrass you after a public pronouncement that the war is over. 21. Impress upon the minds of terrorists and potential terrorists everywhere, and upon the populations and governments inclined to support them, that American retaliation will be powerful and uncompromising. You will never deter fanatics, but you can frighten those who might support, harbor or attempt to use terrorists for their own ends. Our basic task in the world today is to restore a sense of American power, capabilities and resolve. We must be hard, or we will be struck wherever we are soft. It is folly for charity to precede victory. First win, then unclench your fist. 22. Do everything possible to make terrorists and their active supporters live in terror themselves. Turn the tide psychologically and practically. While this will not deter hard-core apocalyptic terrorists, it will dissipate their energies as they try to defend themselves and fear will deter many less-committed supporters of terror. Do not be distracted by the baggage of the term assassination. This is a war. The enemy, whether a hijacker or a financier, violates the laws of war by his refusal to wear a uniform and by purposely targeting civilians. He is by definition a war criminal. On our soil, he is either a spy or a saboteur, and not entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution. Those who abet terrorists must grow afraid to turn out the lights to go to sleep. 23. Never accept the consensus of the Washington intelligentsia, which looks backward to past failures, not forward to future successes. 24. In dealing with Islamic apocalyptic terrorists, remember that their most cherished symbols are fewer and far more vulnerable than are the West's. Ultimately, no potential target can be regarded as off-limits when the United States is threatened with mass casualties. Worry less about offending foreign sensibilities and more about protecting Americans. 25. Do not look for answers in recent history, which is still unclear and subject to personal emotion. Begin with the study of the classical world, specifically Rome, which is the nearest model to the present-day United States. Mild with subject peoples, to whom they brought the rule of ethical law, the Romans in their rise and at their apogee were implacable with their enemies. The utter destruction of Carthage brought centuries of local peace, while the later empire's attempts to appease barbarians consistently failed! To Go To Top

DEAR HONORABLE MINISTER GRAHAM Posted by Edmond Silber, March 24, 2004.

This letter was sent to the Minister of foreigner affairs of Canada by an Israeli, following his statement concerning the elimination by Israel of the notorious terrorist leader and founder of Hamas, the sheik Ahmed Yassine. Dear Honourable Minister Graham, Perhaps if you lived in a country where your children have to worry when they go on busses, visit cafes and go on field trips and you pray that they will not be attacked, you might begin to understand what we live with on a daily basis. Yassin is no different than Bin Laden and everyone would admit that they want him killed. The difference is that we here in Israel are condemned for trying to protect ourselves. I am very, very disappointed that in my native country of Canada, that our right to exist and live in peace is being criticized and denied. I am wondering how you could possibly be against killing a terrorist who has taken the lives of well over 400 people and wounded thousands of others. We are a very civilized country and if for one minute we thought that we could seriously negotiate with a terrorist and our right to exist would be accepted and the horrific bombings would end, I can promise you, we would not have resorted to killing Yessin. However, that is not the case and if you lived with the daily bloodshed that we have lived with for 3 1/2 years, perhaps you too would have the opinion of those of us that live here. We have shown restraint long enough. When G-d forbid, the enemy comes into your home, I ask you Minister Graham would you truly show restraint? Tell me Minister Graham if he had been on your daughter's bus and in your son's bedroom and stood there with an explosive belt watching while your wife sat drinking a cup of coffee, would you still be able to look me in the eye and your wife in the eye and say, I think we should invite him to sit down and talk. I am ashamed to admit that my government does not for one minute understand the ravages of terrorism. Mr. Graham, I am a licensed clinical psychologist practicing here in Israel and previously in Canada. I invite you to sit down with me in my office where I work daily with those who have dealt with your friend Mr Yessin's friendly little games. May you never have to face what these people have faced. May you never know what we face here every day of the year. Until you walk in my shoes, Mr. Graham, you do not have the right to condemn a country for protecting itself in any way it has to. With the tremendous rise in anti-Semitism in Canada, terrorism will also be on your doorstep. It is just a matter of time. I am the author of the feature story in this week's Nova Scotia's Coast paper. I include the link and suggest strongly that you read it - http://www.thecoast.ns.ca/flash_archives/oldindex.html Perhaps you will be able to see that I am a very moderate individual. Perhaps you will also be able to see that you have made a grave mistake. Mr. Graham. There is a time for restraint, but this was not it. Dr. Batya L. Ludman Israel To Go To Top

YASSIN WAS OLD AND PARALYZED BUT NOT INNOCENT Posted by David Ben-Ariel, March 24, 2004.

This was written by Jo-ana D'Balcazar and was on Jewish Indy (http://www.jewishindy.com) yesterday. Was Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, as reported by most news, really a poor, old, and paralyzed victim killed by Israelis? Well, Yassin might have been old and paralyzed, but this does not mean he was innocent, because his brain was functioning just fine, and from his wheelchair was a terrorist mastermind and actively planning and giving orders for suicide bombers to attack. What about the innocent Israeli women and children who die almost daily on buses, Pizza parlors, restaurants and markets, blown up by suicide bombers sent by this "old and paralyzed man"? So, it is okay for terrorists to openly kill innocents everywhere but not to kill the killers? For instance, is it okay for Bin Laden to order the killing of innocent victims but not kill him as the leader of the terrorist group of Al-Qaeda? Nevertheless, Yassin being in a wheelchair since age 12 due to a sporting accident, that did not impede him to found the terrorist group of HAMAS in 1987, this openly pursues the destruction of Israel and the killing of all Jews. Was Israel supposed to stay still and waited for its final extermination? Whose idea was to promise these genocide bombers with 80 virgins? Moreover, whose evil idea was to load those bombs with nails and rat poison? Yassin's? Curiously, Yassin never sent his sons to commit genocide bombings; just as many terrorist leaders neither send their own kids. HAMAS has continually stated, including in its own chapter that their goal is the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in all of what is now known as Palestine. HAMAS struggles "for the liberation of all of Palestine" as a personal religious duty incumbent upon every Muslim. Yet, historically, there has never been a Palestinian state, neither a Palestinian culture nor a Palestinian language. Palestine was a political Roman invention from the 2nd century to eradicate Jewish identity. Nevertheless, Romans continued to refer to Jews as Palestinians, as the term alluded to Philistines, Israel's enemy. Certainly, Arab-Palestinians cry Yassin's death. The reason, mainly, is that although Yassin supported homicide bombings to exterminate Israel, he also provided Arab-Palestinians with basic assistance to ease their suffering, a duty supposedly, to be done with the billions of dollars received by the Palestinian Authority. Now, Yassin, is seen as a shahid, a martyr, as he declared many times, including on July 26, 1998 in Al-Quds, "the day in which I will die as a shahid will be the happiest day of my life." Therefore, it is likely that terrorist attacks may increase temporarily. However, Yassin's death also might eventually weaken HAMAS' leadership and their genocide bombings policy. Hence, it is not time for the International Community to stop cheering the shameful killing by genocide bombers of innocent Israelis, and unite to stop this open genocide by effectively fighting against terrorism and its leaders? The problem with the International Community, mainly Europe, and the inconsistency of U.S. Policy, stems from the fact that though the U.S considers HAMAS as a terrorist group, the EU simply divided HAMAS in two groups, the military and political wing. The EU, just as Syria, purposely calls them just "militants," and recognizes only the military wing as a terrorist group not the political wing, while Israel and the U.S. consider them responsible for many terrorist attacks in Israel as they proudly claim responsibility. Therefore, some of the EU citizens might consider Yassin a poor, old, and paralyzed victim. The question is how they consider the hundreds killed and thousands injured by Yassin's orders? Then, one can argue whether the International Community takes pleasure to see the brutal, vicious and continuing cycle of terrorism against Israelis, just as the Romans in ancient times watched many innocents viciously killed at the Coliseum for their own pleasure. How can the International Community protest when Israel or any other democratic country counterattacks terrorism? This silent attitude has only strengthened terrorist validating their philosophy that "genocide bombings" are their effective policy, since the world, including the UN does not even dare to call homicide bombings as criminal acts and punish them as such. On the contrary, instead of taking a united decision against these despicable acts, it condemns Israel for defending its citizens. Is not enough just to verbally condemn these attacks, or to hold vain diplomatic conferences, but to take effective actions. Will France, UK, Germany, or any other European country tolerate genocide bombings in their countries without retaliating? Truth is that freedom and terrorism can never coexist. It has to either be one or the other. The point is that diplomacy in the Arab world is not interpreted in the same way as in the West. For instance, it is not enough to have the signatures of Israelis and Arab-Palestinians leaders on a paper to think they are actually working towards peace. Do you remember last year infamous "Truce Trio" when Hamas and Islamic Jihad agreed to a three-month temporary cease fire after a long list of demands, while Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an off-shoot of Al-Fatah, agreed separately to a longer truce? Did this work? No. Just as I wrote in previous articles, it was only a period to rearm and plan new strategies. Violence and genocide bombings continued. Point blank is that Israel now learned its lesson. Last year "temporary peace period," by HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade was not a benevolent proposal but a suicidal pact. HAMAS demanded Israel to stop all targeted killings of Hamas members and the release of all terrorists from jail. But HAMAS never stopped genocide bombings? No. It was a major blow for the eradication of terrorism and a weakness for Israel's security. Israel fell into the terrorist trap, and under that false peace period it allowed HAMAS time to organize more attacks. Terrorism does not accept peace negotiations, many peace plans might come, and as they come they will disappear just as the Oslo Accords and the defunct Roadmap. Now, Israel is constrained to construct the "Security Fence" against terrorism coming from Judea and Samaria. The problem is that HAMAS not only openly calls for genocide bombings, but also takes public responsibility. Incredibly, some still consider Yassin, HAMAS's leader and founder, as a poor, old and innocent paralyzed man. Something is wrong. Are not Hamas leaders considered terrorists for their open declaration to destroy Israel by any means? Yet, in the past, Mihail Wehbe, Syrian ambassador to the UN, was influential for the passing of some Security Council resolutions that have condemned Israelis actions, as "war crimes, massacres or atrocities." Nevertheless, genocide bombings, the leading cause for Israeli reactions are not labeled as "war crimes, massacres or atrocities." Why not the UN, and the so-called International Community, then refer to Yassin's death as Israel's retaliation towards the terrorist leader who was commanding genocide bombings. If Hamas did not send genocide bombers, Israel would not retaliate. The Western world, including Israel, need to understand how most Arabs see and perceive the final settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Fact is that policies requiring Israel to make more concessions should be avoided until real actions from Arab-Palestinians are taken to stop promoting terrorism and teaching hatred towards Israel. This will include the immediate dismantling of the PA, HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, and all terrorist infrastructures in the disputed lands of Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Moreover, it is no secret that most Arab-Palestinians envision only one state with no Israel, as seen in their geography school books, where Israel does not exist, neither in HAMAS nor the Palestinian Authority official website. The question is whether the International Community and the Arab-Palestinians expect Israel to stand still and wait to be completely exterminated. Facts speak louder than words. Diplomacy is not always the right tool to settle peace with Arabs-Palestinians since it is not in their historical traditions. On March 22, the UN, gave a terse and strong condemnation of Israel for the attack on the Hamas leader. That is fine. However, we cannot find a single instance when the UN or the EU has ever sent this kind of strong condemnation of any Hamas or Hizbollah's brutal terrorist suicide attack, but only bluff diplomatic talk for public opinion. Fact is that the growing violence and the unleashing of homicide bombings indicate that terrorism is gaining momentum and legitimacy, while the U.S. and the West are losing momentum as effective peace negotiators. So, Yassin, as has proved throughout his acts, cannot be considered a poor man only because he was paralyzed, but as the mastermind leader of a terrorist group, who far from being a spiritual leader calling for peace, called for genocide bombings as a Muslim religious duty. Now, it is your turn to answer. Is it okay for the killers to openly kill innocents everywhere but not to kill the killers and become the untouchables? What do you think? Jo-anna D'Balcazar is an M.A. oolitical analyst in International Relations specializing in the Middle East crisis and the European Union. Send comments to: politics2see@hotmail.com. To Go To Top

PALESTINIAN BOY, 14, CAPTURED WEARING EXPLOSIVES VEST Posted by Leo Rennert, March 24, 2004.

This was written by Margot Dudkevitch and is archived at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ ShowFull&cid=1080108195675 The quick thinking of paratroopers at the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus prevented Husam Abdu, 14, who was wearing a belt of explosives, from blowing himself up on Wednesday. "He was fully aware of what he was to do and told us he received NIS 100 and was instructed to blow himself up near soldiers," battalion commander Lt.-Col. Guy told The Jerusalem Post. "The soldiers' quick action not only saved their lives but those of 200 Palestinian men, women, and children who were at the roadblock." The belt contained eight kilograms of explosives, plus bolts and screws. It was later blown up by sappers. "I wouldn't be surprised if the terrorists attempt to dispatch a pregnant woman wearing explosives next," Guy said. "It is hard to believe how low the terrorists are willing to stoop. They have no morals." "Someone forced him to do this," said Khalil Abdu, the boy's uncle in an interview with Channel 1. "They brainwashed him," he added. Asked whether Husam's actions were a result of incitement and martyrdom ideology taught to Palestinian children at West Bank schools, Khalil said: "No, they don't teach them that it is good to kill Israelis and become Shahids. If my hands fall on those who sent him, I swear to God I will kill them." "Husam is a normal boy. He went to school in the morning and didn't return home." Khalil added. It was the second time in 10 days the Fatah Tanzim in Nablus attempted to turn children into human bombs. On March 15, Abdullah Kuran, 11, was asked to carry several bags through the roadblock and hand them to a woman waiting on the other side for NIS 5. Unaware that one of the bags contained a 10-kilo bomb, he was stopped by soldiers who discovered it during a routine inspection. When Kuran's dispatchers saw he had been stopped, they attempted to detonate the bomb by cellphone, but failed. The following day security forces discovered a 10-kilo bomb hidden in a truckload of merchandise at a roadblock on the other side of Nablus. It had been buried among rolls of cloth, sweets, and other goods. "My soldiers spotted Abdu as he pushed through the line of Palestinians waiting to undergo inspection and began racing toward them," said Guy. "He was four or five meters from them. "Noticing that his shirt was padded, they called out to him to halt. They took cover, aimed their weapons at him, and told him to raise his hands. Then they asked him to lift his shirt and saw the belt of explosives. Seeing the soldiers' weapons, he became frightened and told the soldiers he was scared." Soldiers also moved the Palestinians at the roadblock away. Abdu stood in isolation with his hands raised until sappers dispatched a robot carrying scissors to him and instructed him to cut the shoulder straps holding up the belt and to slip it off. He was then told to strip to insure that no additional explosives were strapped to him. He cut off part of it and struggled with the rest. "I don't how to get this off," he said. "It is sad and tragic," said Guy. "He was fully aware of his actions and wanted to blow up, as he was promised 72 virgins in heaven and NIS 100," Guy said. Abdu, who lives in Nablus, told interrogators he was jeered at by his friends who made fun of him, and decided to take advantage of the offer. "Blowing myself up is the only chance I've got to have sex with 72 virgins in the Garden of Eden," Abdu said his handlers had told him. Security officials have not ruled out the possibility that the same cell is responsible for dispatching both would-be bombers and that Hizbullah instructed it to launch the attacks. Officials noted that terrorist organizations are encountering difficulties in launching attacks from the city and are using children, who they believe will be less likely to be inspected. Guy said that following the capture of Kuran, officials studied ways of enhancing security at roadblocks around the city, taking into account that terrorists might again attempt to use children. Thirty-one suicide bombers have been younger than 18, and more than 40 minors who were actively involved in planning suicide bombings have been arrested. Since May 2001, 22 shootings and bombings were perpetrated by minors. Israeli officials expressed shock at the second use of a young boy as a suicide bomber. "No matter how many times Israel learns of the use of children for suicide bombings, it is shocking on each occasion," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "Israelis do not understand how Palestinians are willing to sacrifice their own children in order to kill ours." Physicians for Human Rights also condemned the use of children, calling it "illegal and immoral." Abdu's family said the teenager was not affiliated with any group, but went to rallies and identified with whichever group had carried out the latest attack. They said he acted strangely Tuesday, giving out candy to his family and neighbors and refusing to explain why. He got his hair cut in the style his mother, Tamam, likes and told her he would do anything she wants. "You never are like this," she said "What happened?" "I just want you to be happy with me," he responded. He left his house Wednesday morning saying he was going to school, but never arrived there. Hosni Abdu said he was furious with whomever persuaded his brother to become a suicide bomber. "The ones who sent him are stupid, because the army will give him two slaps and he will tell them who sent him," he said. To Go To Top

ISRAEL, DON'T LISTEN TO THE CHIRPING HYPOCRITES Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, March 24, 2004.

When one listens to the chorus of hypocrites condemning Israel for killing Hamas top terrorist Sheikh Ahmed Yassin; one can fully understand the prophecy of Bilam about the Jewish People (Numbers 23:9), "Lo, it is a people that shall dwell alone, and shall not be counted among the nations." Which can also be rendered from the Hebrew, "It is a unique [in their history] people living apart, that doesn't consider [the opinions] of the nations." After listening to the hypocrisy of the nations lately, who can blame Israel for ignoring their criticism? Let's see, immediately or soon thereof, the Vatican condemned killing Yassin, saying that lasting peace can never be reached by a show of force. Very Christian...Now we know why the Vatican didn't forcefully oppose the Nazis in World War II. The European Union issued a statement condemning Israel's "extra-judicial" assassination of Yassin, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan condemned Israel's assassination of Sheikh Yassin, as against "International Law". So did the French Foreign Ministry who condemning Israel's violation of International Law said, "Violence is never the answer," in a statement from Paris. I didn't know that Yassin's terrorist behavior was law-abiding and legally protected. UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Israel was "not entitled going for this kind of unlawful killing." He called Israel's action "unjustified" and "very unlikely to achieve its objectives," a comment echoed by several other leading EU officials who gathered for a meeting of EU foreign ministers, to deal with the problem of terror in the post-Spanish train-bombing era. "I don't believe Israel will benefit from the fact that this morning an 80-year-old [he was 68] in a wheelchair was the target of their assassination," Straw said. Notice Straw nicely sidesteps the issue that Yassin was the head of a terrorist group. Straw spoke to reporters about "Israel's paramount need to defend itself" against terrorists but if it wants to have "the full support of the international community, it needs to do so within the boundaries set by international law." Doesn't International Law give a country the "Right to Self-Defense"? The Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller said the EU has long opposed "extra-judicial killings." He said that reviving the peace process wouldn't be any "easier when you have killings like that going on in Gaza." Equating Israeli self-defense to Hamas' activities he continued, "Terror and violence is not the way ahead." The German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer said he was "deeply concerned" about the possible repercussions of Yassin's assassination. I wish he would have been so concerned about the "repercussions" of 425 terrorist attacks Hamas carried out that killed at least 377 Israelis and wounded 2,076 in the last three and a half years, all of which were overseen by Sheikh Yassin. Poland's Foreign Minister, Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz - whose country will join the EU on May 1 - said he recognizes Israel's right to defend itself, but that this is not the way to do it. "I understand that Israel defends its own country. However the picture of a wheelchair-bound person who was killed with a rocket is probably not the best way of promoting Israeli security." Again the nations are ignoring the fact that this "wheelchair-bound person" was the leader of a bloody terrorist group. Brazil and Chile jumped at the opportunity to condemn Israel for the assassination of Yassin. So did New Zealand, who called it counterproductive to Middle East peace efforts. Japan condemned Israel's "reckless act" of killing Yassin, saying it "cannot be justified". And finally, Malaysia - home of the infamous Dr. Mahathir - said that Yassin's killing is Israeli "state terrorism" that will "only escalate further the cycle of deadly violence." Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid-Reza Asefi, condemned the attack, agreeing with Malaysia, that Israel engaged in "state terrorism." Asefi said the assassination, "would unveil the ugly and unpleasant face of them - the Israelis - before all the world's people." Our Arab "peace partners" Egypt and Jordan didn't miss the chance to condemn us either. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, in reaction to the assassination of Yassin, directed his country's representatives not to take part in activities in Israel, that the Knesset and Foreign Ministry planned, to mark 25 years since the signing of the peace agreement with Egypt. While the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher equated Israel with a "terror organization". And, Jordanian Prime Minister Faisal Al Fayez said this "is another crime that is added to the crimes committed by Israel against the Palestinian people, and forms a flagrant violation of all charters and norms." "We in the government," Al Fayez was quoted as saying, "condemn this ugly crime and affirm that such behavior would increase the cycle of violence and instability in the region, lead to more bloodshed and undermine the opportunities of achieving just and comprehensive peace that the region's peoples seek to achieve." So much for "peace" with our "partners". The Speaker of Kuwait's National Assembly, Jassem Al-Kharafi said, "the Arab and Islamic people would never forget the principles of struggle that Sheikh Yassin ingrained within the Palestinian ranks." Sheikh Yassin was a true Arab hero. Immediately after the killing, even the White House said it was "deeply troubled" by Israel's assassination of Yassin. But later, in US President George Bush's first public response to the assassination of Yassin, backtracking he said, "Israel has the right to defend herself from terror, and, as she does so, I hope she keeps consequences in mind." Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon justified the "targeted killing" of Sheikh Yassin. Yassin's ideology according to Sharon - speaking to the Likud Party parliamentary caucus - "was killing and murdering Jews, wherever they were, and the destruction of the State of Israel." Putting Yassin's assassination into a global context, Sharon said, "The war against terror has not ended and will continue day after day, everywhere. This is a difficult struggle that all the countries of the enlightened world must participate in. It is the natural right of the Jewish people, like that of all nations in the world that love life, to hunt down those who rise to destroy it." So, when the 15-member United Nations Security Council met to debate the killing of Yassin - Arab ambassadors and the United States failed to agree on a statement criticizing Israel - Israel's UN ambassador Danny Gillerman - whose disgust at the world's hypocrisy was palpable - said in a speech to the council, "Not one resolution, not one presidential statement has been adopted by this Council to specifically denounce the deliberate massacre of our innocent civilians." Gillerman said the council was coming to the defense of "a godfather of terrorism...it is the ultimate hypocrisy." He waved a 187-page dossier in exasperation, outlining the suicide bombings carried out by Hamas since September 2000. "These are not just pieces of paper. These are filled with names of real people, whose lives were cut short and extinguished by Sheikh Yassin and the followers of his murderous ideology," Gillerman said. While the UN Security Council couldn't come to an agreement about criticizing Israel, the United National Human Rights Commission did. Approved by 31 votes in favor, 2 against (United States and Australia) and with 18 abstentions (including most nations of the European Union), a resolution condemning the assassination of Sheikh Yassin was passed. The Organization of the Islamic Conference and Zimbabwe - a group of human rights abusers - presented the draft resolution. In the text, the resolution firmly condemned, "the continuous human rights violations in the occupied Palestinian Territories" and in particular "the assassination of the Sheikh Ahmad Yassin," "in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention." The document, which line after line assumes a level of Israeli violence, that lead western nations to abstain, also criticises "the liquidation and assassination of politicians by the Israeli occupation forces in occupied Palestinian territories." Israel, which is not part of the commission, criticized the special meeting, claiming through its Ambassador Yaakov Levy that for the first time in the history of the UN, a meeting was dedicated to the support and glorification of a leader of a terrorist organization. And, if you thought that Yassin's "targeted killing" was an exclusively Israeli-Palestinian issue, think again. An Islamist website - the al-Ansar forum - published a statement claiming to come from an al-Qaeda-linked group - the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigade - vowing revenge on the United States and its allies over Israel's assassination of the Hamas leader. "We tell Palestinians that Sheikh Yassin's blood was not spilt in vain and call on all legions of Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades to avenge him by attacking the tyrant of the age, America, and its allies," said the statement. The group, which aligns itself to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, claimed responsibility for the recent train bombings in Spain. That recent bombing sent all those condemnatory European Foreign Ministers into a tailspin, rushing to discuss how they can better protect their countries. Yet they deny the "right of self-defense" to Israel. I understand that if the Spanish government would have known who was planning the train attack, but wasn't able to arrest the leaders, they wouldn't have "taken them out" as Israel has been doing in it's "targeted killings" of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist leaders? Hypocrites...Hypocrites...Hypocrites... And, on the Pakistani-Indian border, Kashmiri Muslim terrorists belonging to the Lashkar e-Taiba - the Army of the Pure - reacted to the news of Yassin's assassination by threatening to attack Indians. The Lashkar e-Taiba communique explained, "It is known Jews and Hindus are two sides of the same coin." I guess they're referring to Israel's warming relations with India. Lashkar e-Taiba, part of the Markaz Dawa Wal-Irshad, is a Wahabbi organization based in Pakistan. The Indian government claims the Lashkar terrorists are responsible for a series of massacres, including August 1-2, 2000 attacks, in which more than 100 people, mostly unarmed civilians, were murdered. So, Jihadist elements worldwide are looking for excuses to attack their perceived enemies. They are using Israel's killing of Yassin to justify their war against the world. More hypocrisy... The hypocrites have made much - in the past - of how Dr. Baruch Goldstein "gunned down" 29 worshippers in a "mosque" - the Cave of Machpela - in Hebron. And now, many Arabs and Muslims complained that Israel hit Sheikh Yassin, as he was leaving his mosque after morning prayers. Yet not long after the assassination, a rocket from Hamas landed near the N’vei Dekalim Synagogue in Gaza. Although there were no injuries, the synagogue was full of community residents attending their afternoon prayer service. The "Palestinian" hypocrites have no problem trying to kill Jews in synagogue while praying. And what about the recent bombing of a synagogue in Turkey, during the Sabbath prayers, by Muslim terrorists, or, the ongoing Arab attacks against synagogues and Jewish community centers in France? Arab and Muslim hypocrites have no compunction in attacking Jewish houses of worship worldwide; there are too many examples to list. The day after the assassination, a poll - which included Israeli Arabs - conducted by Maariv newspaper and "The New Wave" polling service, found that 61% of Israelis support the killing of Yassin. Also, 43% believe Israel should assassinate the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat. But I think, a description of Gazan streets after news of the assassination hit reveals the true nature of the struggle between Israel and the "Palestinians". Cars drove through the streets blaring calls for revenge over loudspeakers. Some played recordings of Sheikh Yassin saying, "We chose this road, and will end with martyrdom or victory." During the funeral for Yassin, many chanted replies to a question. "What is your movement? Hamas. Who is your leader? Yassin. What is your aim? To be killed." I for one, pray, that they receive their wish as Yassin did, of "martyrdom". Israel hurry up and finish the job... Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations and Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko To Go To Top

ISLAM PLAYS FOR KEEPS Posted by Rachel Neuwirth, March 24, 2004.

This appeared in Arutz-Sheva and is archived at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=3481 President George W. Bush said: "We will bring freedom to others, and we will prevail." Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested that terrorists are being created faster than we can arrest or kill them. One might wonder if they're fighting different wars. Bush suggests "reprogramming" his enemy; Rumsfeld wants to wipe them out. Daniel Pipes, a scholar specializing in militant Islam puts it correctly: "Ending terrorism requires more than targeting terrorists, their leaders, or their organizations. It requires recognizing and defeating the body of ideas known as militant Islam or Islamism. The war cannot be won until politicians and others focus on this ideology (taught in the madrassas, Islamic schools) rather than [just] on terrorism, which is merely its manifestation." (http://danielpipes.org/article/1624) Bush and Rumsfeld are indeed fighting the same war. Rumsfeld suggests the need to use invasive therapy to root out that enemy; Bush wants to "inoculate" Iraqi society with a healthy dose of preventative medicine: democracy. This two-pronged "war-and-peace" plan will not be easy to pull off. The medicine has had unexpected and unwelcome side-effects. The patient has not responded as we had hoped. One of the problems is that the patient did not request our services. Sure, he feels better now, but he still doesn't trust us. Also, the source of his illness is still there. That source is radical Islam. Specifically, Wahabbi Islam. Wahabbism embraces an inflexible doctrine responsible for sowing intolerance, sedition, violence, hatred and "holy" war in the Muslim world and elsewhere. This doctrine feeds radical Islamism. According to Daniel Pipes, ten to fifteen percent of the world's 1.2 billion Muslims adhere to militant Islam. That 10-15% translates into an "army" of 120-180 million... and some feel that Pipes' figures are an understatement. The West preaches freedom and equality - two notions in very short supply in Arab/Muslim culture - and this is why Islamists see the West as their enemy. Islamists have declared war on America, Israel, Spain and, indeed, the entire West. The West was never their enemy, but now we must recognize that radical Islamic fundamentalists are our enemy. Attempts to coddle them in the hope that they will finally "get it" and cut themselves free of Middle Age barbarism are naive. Instead of waiting for them to "get it", it is time to "give it to them". We must unapologetically take steps to counter the rise of the belligerent and ruthless juggernaut of radical Islamism. No efforts should be spared to "encourage" Arab/Muslim leaders to reduce significantly or totally remove the hostility toward the non-Muslim world expressed overtly in their nations' schoolbooks, in their mosques and in their government-controlled media. Target Israel (The Little Satan): Epicenter of Arab/Muslim Intolerance Some might argue that things are getting better vis-a-vis the Arab-Islamic world and Israel. Egypt and the Kingdom of Jordan have both signed peace treaties with Israel. Maybe other Arab states will follow. Is this a realistic expectation or simplistic naivete? Let's take a look at how these "moderates" relate to the "Great Satan's evil child", Israel. Here are some of the "calls for peace" coming from these sought-after "moderate" Arab voices: Saudi Sermon: "Time for Christians and Jews to convert to Islam." (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TV1 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government; carried on February 27, 2004 at 0945 GMT a live sermon from the mosque in Mecca) Another Saudi sermon: "Jewish paws"; "defeat the usurper Jews." (Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia TV2 in Arabic, official television station of the Saudi Government, on February 6, 2004 at 0950 GMT carried a 22-minute live sermon from the mosque in Medina) Jordanian sermon: "O God, destroy your enemies, the Jewish and crusader enemies of Islam." (Amman, Jordan Television Channel 1 in Arabic, official television station of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on March 5, 2004 at 1002 GMT carried a 17-minute live sermon from Martyr King Abdallah mosque in Amman) Palestinian Authority-supervised sermon: "Palestine [including all of Israel] is an Islamic land that must not be relinquished." (West Bank, Ramallah, Voice of Palestine, official radio station of the Palestinian Authority, on February 6, 2004 at 1000 GMT carried a 24-minute live sermon from Al-Aqsa Mosque) PA-supervised sermon: "Jews, the sons of apes and pigs." (Gaza, Palestine Satellite TV Channel in Arabic, official television station of the Palestinian Authority, carried on March 13, 2004 at 0958 GMT, a live sermon from Zayid Bin-Sultan Mosque in Gaza) Yemeni sermon: "O God, destroy the aggressive Zionists and the tyrant Americans." (Sanaa, Republic of Yemen Television in Arabic, official television station of the Republic of Yemen, on February 6, 2004 at 0926 GMT carried a 21-minute live sermon from the Grand Mosque in Sanaa) Qatar sermon: "aggressor Jews and their wicked Crusader allies." (Doha, Qatar Television Service in Arabic, official television station of the State of Qatar, on 20 February 2004 at 0858 GMT carried a live 60-minute sermon from Umar Bin-Al-Khattab Mosque in Doha) Syrian sermon: "O God, deal with the criminal Zionists and those with them and behind them." (Damascus, Syrian Arab Republic radio in Arabic, official station of the Syrian Government, carried on February 27, 2004 at 1010 GMT, a live sermon from Al-Uthman Mosque in Damascus) So much for waiting for the Arab-Islamic leopard to change its spots. What Israel really needs is for that leopard to change into a totally different animal - one that is not such an aggressive carnivore. Fast-Forward to America: "The Great Satan" The Bush Administration is in "hot pursuit" of Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network. America is also trying to create a stable post-Saddam Iraq even as it continues to neutralize both indigenous Arab-Muslim terrorism and terrorism imported from "Greater Arabia." Sadly, yet predictably, America is beginning to feel the utter frustration that Israel has felt for years: full-throttle Arab violence, fueled by an Islamic engine that never quits. There is also some hypocrisy here. While America aggressively fights terrorists, she denies Israel the right to fight her own war against these same savages. This sends a message to the Arab-Islamic terrorists that America's war on terror is not completely sincere, nor is her heart totally in it. For if America were truly committed to "root out terrorists," she would turn the Israel Defense Forces loose on Yasser Arafat and his so-called Palestinian Authority, Hamas, Al-Aqsa Brigades, Hizbullah, Tanzim, PFLP, etc. And if Israel were unable or unwilling to do this, then America would do it for Israel. So why is there a double standard vis-a-vis Israel in the war on terrorism? President Bush should be asking (perhaps demanding) that Prime Minister Sharon launch an all-out attack on the terrorist organizations surrounding Israel. These areas are the breeding grounds that fuel anti-Western sentiment and send jihadists against Israel and against American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These killers of Jews in Israel are indistinguishable from killers of Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan and downtown New York City. Israel's enemies are America's enemies, and Israel's enemies are also enemies of the shrinking civilized world. Are you listening, Spain? France? Germany? Italy? England? Sweden? One should never dialogue with terrorists. When the bombs went off in Madrid on March 11, the Spanish electorate indeed decided not to dialogue with the Arab-Muslim murderers who perpetrated the act. They simply took the cowardly route of appeasement. The Spanish matador took a goring and the crowd yelled, "Ole!" That same Arab-Islamic bull is on the loose elsewhere. How will others react to setbacks in our war against these savages? Stay tuned. If the Madrid response is any indication, you ain't seen nothing yet. Rachel Neuwirth is a Los Angeles-based analyst on the board of directors of the West Coast Region of the American Jewish Congress and the chairperson of the organization's Middle East committee. To Go To Top

THE ASSASSINATION OF SHEIKH AHMED YASSIN: REPRISE Posted by David Ha'ivri, March 24, 2004.

This article was written by Daniel Pinner and it was distributed by the Jewish Community of France (Communaute-Juive-France-owner@yahoogroupes.fr). Their website address is http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Communaute-Juive-France/ Mi-shenichnas Adar, marbin be-simcha ("when the month of Adar begins, we increase our joy"), say the rabbis. "The death of the wicked is pleasant for them and pleasant for the world", says the Talmud. On the final day of Adar, the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin gave us all one more reason for rejoicing. - Well, not all of us. The ritual denunciations from Britain, France, the US State Department came in rapid-fire fashion. And, as could only be expected, Shimon Peres condemned the assassination. His opposition was due to his fear of the Arabs, of their reaction, of the world's reaction. Shimon Peres, with the rest of the Israeli left, is already laying the groundwork for blaming Israel - yet again! - for future Arab terrorism. The next terrorist attack that (chas ve-shalom) happens, the Israeli left will blame on this assassination, just as, for years, they blamed every suicide bombing on Baruch Goldstein. Let us define something here: the intifada, terrorism, suicide bombings, murders - these did not start after Baruch Goldstein was murdered. And the next terrorist attack (chas ve-shalom) will not be because of the assassination of Yassin. It will be because terrorism is what Arabs do. The Arab "street" supports terrorists as actively as possible. Yesterday's funeral procession saw over half a million Arabs actively identify with Yassin and the Hamas. No one forced them to attend (as their leftist apologists would have us believe); they went, because that is what they deeply, sincerely believe in. A few Vulcan missiles in the funeral procession would have lowered the number of active terrorists by a considerable amount. It would be hard to argue that there were any "innocent civilians" there: every single one was there because he actively identified with this most vicious terrorist. Yasser Arafat, speaking from the Muqata (governmental building) in Ramallah, condemned the "crime against the Palestinian people". He declined to leave the building, fearing that he might be the next in line. Unlikely - but we can live in hope. But if the IDF really is beginning to assassinate all of its enemies, including even the political leaders - well, maybe now we can understand why Shimon Peres opposed this action? To Go To Top

STOP SAUDI ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALIST SCHOOLS IN US Posted by Jules Hetzner, March 24, 2004.

It is vitally important that you sign the "Stop Saudi Islamic fundamentalist Madrassas in the US" petition to send our representatives in Congress a clear message that Islamic hate education must be stopped in America. WRITE TO JULES HETZNER at w3atn@juno.com FOR A COPY TO SIGN. We the people of the United States of America request that you, our elected officials, put an immediate stop to the Saudi Madrassas in the United States. The Saudi education is based on the teachings of Sheik Muhammad Ibn Abd-al-Wahhab. The cornerstone of education in Saudi Arabia consists of the most pervasive themes in Islam. The book, published by the Saudi Cultural Mission to the U.S., quotes a document published by the Higher Committee for Educational policy which contains 236 principles that explain how students should promote loyalty to Islam by denouncing any system or theory that conflicts with Islamic law. The students are also taught to understand Islam in a correct manner, how to plant and spread Islam throughout the world, and how "to fight spiritually and physically for the sake of Allah", with emphasis on early Islamic glories. HERE'S A SAMPLE FROM 8TH, AND 9TH GRADE BOOKS: Sharh Kitab Eltawhid, 8th grade, published 2001, PG 43, Jews and Christians - Cursed by Allah and Turned into Apes and Pigs- a textbook explains why Jews and Christians were cursed by Allah and turned into apes and pigs. Quoting Surat Al-Maida, verse 60, the lesson explains that Jews and Christians have sinned by accepting polytheism and therefore incurred Allah's wrath. To punish them, Allah has turned them into apes and pigs. Book of Abed, 9th grade, PG 123, A schoolbook for the 9th grade on Hadith introduces a famous narration known by the name, "The Promise of the Stone and the tree." It tells a story about Abu Hurayra, one of the Prophet's companions who quoted the Prophet as saying: "The hour (the day of Judgement) will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and Kill them. A Jew will hide behind a rock or a tree, and the rock or tree will call upon the Muslim: "O Muslim, O slave of Allah! There is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!-except for the gharqad tree, for it is one of the trees of the Jews". The Hadith is accompanied by a number of statements: 1. "It is Allah's wisdom that the struggle between Muslims and Jews shall continue until the Day of Judgment." 2. "The Hadith brings forth the glad tidings about the ultimate victory, with Allah's help, of Muslims over Jews." 3. "The Jews and the Christians are the enemies of the believers. They will not be favorably disposed toward Muslims and it is necessary to be cautious (in dealing with them)." The book offers these questions for class discussion: 1. "Who will be victorious in the day of Judgement?" 2. " With what types of weapons should Muslims arm themselves against the Jews?" 3. "Name four factors leading to the victory of Muslims over their enemies." This is just a small example of what is being taught. We the people of the United States request an immediate stop to Saudi Wahhabi hateful education especially post 911 tragedy where 15 out of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia and taught and raised on such education. WRITE TO JULES HETNER AT w3atn@juno.com FOR A COPY OF THE PETITION. PLEASE ASK YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY TO SIGN. It will be presented to our representatives in Congress. To Go To Top

OF WHEELCHAIRS AND TWISTED MINDS Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, March 24, 2004.

Based on the feedback I received from Jew and Gentile alike to my article, "Responses to Terror", alcohol consumption was up on Monday in reaction to the news that there is one less angel of death in this world. However, there were some rather nasty responses. Below is an example. (Use your imagination and fill in the blanks . Hint: the blank word is one of Hollywood's favorite and starts with a letter that falls between E and G)... Hi Ellen, So you cried from joy when you heard that Ahmmad yaseen had been killed? ______ you and ______ your husband. i hope the palestinians will kill you and your family you ____ing whore. he is an old disabled man. how dare you feel joy by killing an old man. I see why arabs hate you. you are damn blood suckers you damn jews. ---- To be honest, I do get my share of email with liberal sprinklings of the "F" word. That's not what bothers me (bless the inventor of the delete key). It's the disabled old man part that got to me. As always, the media bears an enormous responsibility for portraying the freak sheik as a victim. Note the following headlines from the BBC: Sheikh Yassin: Spiritual Figurehead Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, was a frail quadriplegic who could barely see. His voice was thin and quavering. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/middle_east/2001/ israel_and_the_palestinians/profiles/1695470.stm I received the abusive email, at about the same time that the body of Abu Abbas was on its way to Syria for burial. You remember Abbas? He was the terrorist responsible for shooting and dumping 69-year old wheelchair bound Leon Klinghoffer off a cruise ship off the coast of Egypt in 1985. It seems Abbas was caught in Iraq and died a rather mysterious death in U.S. custody. The body of Abbas was greeted with an entourage of Arabs carrying portraits of the very dead Sheik Yassin. Does anyone else see the wheelchairs of justice spinning here? I've got a distressing picture in my upcoming book of a twisted wheelchair among the devastation in the Park Hotel Passover massacre. We've all seen the aftermath of bombings with the tangled mess of bloodied baby strollers and baby dolls too. How many twisted bodies are coming to terms with their wheelchairs thanks to the Sheikh? Gruesome pictures of the mangled remains of Yassin and his exposed, twisted brains were circulated on the Internet this week. Seems that "what goes around, comes around." Let's put a PC spin on this shall we? Yassin was not disabled, he was physically challenged and rather than rise to the occasion, he sunk to incredible depths of depravity. If the post 9/11 world fears an upsurge in terror because Israel made a decision to defend herself then there is clearly something very wrong with the way in which the wheels of justice and the world is turning. We Jews in Israel are not required to lay down and die for the sins of mankind. On that note, I think it's worth noting that this week "The Passion" was replaced as America's number one box office hit with "Dawn of the Dead". It's a horror flick about a bunch of people holed-up in shopping mall which is plagued with flesh-eating zombies. Western culture's appetite for the hideous knows no bounds and what's appearing on screens across the modern world is indicative of the problem. Long ago, the Western world made oil and consumerism their top priorities. Security concerns, basic morality and America's best ally took the back seat. As a result, the entire "free" world is now, pardon the expression, being f----- by the Arab/Islamic world. This means that a lot of us are virtual slaves and not the free human beings that we thought we were. If European and American interests are being targeted, one can react in two ways. Either a) blame it on Israel and the Jews or b) get your priorities straight. My advice is that we all choose B. The mother of my Italian-American roommate in college also doled out some words of advice as she drove me to the airport when I decided to follow a dream and move to Israel. I would like to pass those words of wisdom onto the current leaders of America and Europe. She said, "You make your bed, you sleep in it." Thanks, Mrs Russillo. Regardless of what the future may bring, I'm so glad that I make my bed here in Israel (as disheveled as it may be). Ellen lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

FEEDING THE CROCODILE Posted by Jock L. Falkson, March 24, 2004.

While Yogi's short article on terrorism was written with the American situation in mind, it's compelling logic applies equally to our own position in Israel. It appeared in Trentino's Magazine (http://www.atrentino.cim) a few days before Israel delivered a well deserved coup de grace to the late and unlamented Yassir Yassin. Having obtained permission to distribute it, here it is for you. "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile - hoping it will eat him last." - Winston Churchill Until the bombings in Madrid on 3/11, I felt reasonably sure that the likelihood of a terror attack in the United States was fairly remote. It seemed reasonable to assume the terrorists believed such an incident would galvanize support for President Bush and in no way improve their circumstances. I am no longer confident in that assessment. The Spanish voters - in "sending a message" to the current government - sent a message that warmed the hearts of terrorists everywhere. Namely that terrorism works. Not just works, but works exceeding well. Not only did it bring a country to its knees, it influenced - no, make that changed - the outcome of a national election. A question often posed in the drug induced rhetoric of the 60's "make love not war" culture was, "Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?" If they can manage to rouse themselves from their LSD flashbacks for a moment; the answer has arrived. That terrorism has grown to the menace it currently is, is the answer to that question. World War III began years before the events of 9/11, and nobody came. Our reluctance to confront it then fostered its growth. The world's divisiveness in confronting it now, insures its survival. Still, in some amazing feat of logic, a majority of Spaniards have concluded the message the terrorists sent to them was their support of the United States in the Iraqi invasion was the reason they were targeted. But, the real and unstated message is - and always has been - oppose us and die. Be certain of one thing, if you live in a country that is not a pure Islamic one, you are on their list. It is only a matter of time. Spain may buy herself a little time through appeasement. But, in the process she has pushed others to the head of the line to feed the crocodile. Every free nation has a responsibility to stand united against terrorism as a method of waging war. There is no cause on God's green earth that can justify it. Spain has failed in her responsibility to her own people and to the world. While world leaders offered their sympathies to Spain in terms of condemnation and outrage, Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Manuel Durao Barroso summed it up best. "Terrorism is an absolute evil and before it there can only be one response: absolute determination, without doubts or hesitation." I am fully aware that the terms "absolute" and "evil" are an anathema to the Left; doubt and hesitation a way of life. But, they had better soon come to the realization that this is a fight to the death. Declining the invitation is not an option. The worst result of a terrorist attack is not the immediate loss of life and the grievous injuries to so many, bad they are. The worst result arises out of clinging to the irrational belief that safety may be found in surrender. Jock Falkson is an Israeli writer and translator. He can be reached by email at falkson@barak-online.net. To Go To Top

THE KILLING OF YASSIN - JUSTICE VERSUS PRAGMATISM Posted by Moshe Feiglin, March 24, 2004.

The great controversy surrounding the elimination of this vile person centered around the issue of whether it was worthwhile. Would the execution prevent or intensify the terror? Naturally the Left was opposed to the operation while the Right justified it, but both sides relied on the same criterion - whether it was of value. Although the arguments of the Right are more successful and logical than those of the Left, and even if reality repeatedly demonstrates their correctness, in this controversy the Right is bound to lose because it accepts the basic assumption of the Left as an axiom. The Left does not recognize the concept of justice. There is no such thing as right and wrong. Everything is subjective and the aspiration is only that "despair will be more comfortable". (Chava Alberstein, "Traveling to London"). The spokesmen of the Right who explain that Yassin's death will lead to a reduction of terror are right, but without noticing it they are voluntarily entering the Leftist cage of awareness. The idea that we could impose our existence on the Arabs by force alone, without roots of Jewish justice, was expressed best by Moshe Dayan after the Six Day War: "Sharm a-Sheikh without peace is better than peace without Sharm a-Sheikh". With these words he sowed the seeds of the destruction of Yamit, because basing the policy of the Jewish State on pragmatic considerations only is a two-edge sward. The Yom Kippur War destroyed the myth of Israeli invincibility, and the pragmatism in whose name we held on to Sinai (to force the Arabs to come to terms with us) now led to its being given to Egypt (for that same objective). The killing of Ahmed Yassin was necessary simply because it was just. Since Oslo, Israel has lost its most important weapon - justice. The slogan that in the last decade has led the citizens of Israel to unceasing blood-letting is: "Don't be right - be clever". We have been clever, we have abandoned justice, and we are paying the price every day. Just like nature, morality abhors a vacuum. The Hamas entered the space of justice that we abandoned. Justice is a tremendously powerful weapon, and when the Jews handed it over to "righteous" people such as Yassin and Arafat, the final result was the use of children as living bombs. Suicide bombers who blew themselves up next to a civilian population were unknown before Oslo. This is a crazy kind of motivation that burst out of the irresponsible experiment performed in the laboratory of the Left. These irresponsible Jews did not only seal their own fate, but also that of the Free World. The WTC twin towers would still be standing if the Islam Shuhada had not burst out of the test tubes. Yassin's execution is a breath of fresh air in the wilderness of justice in which we have found ourselves. If the execution is the first sign, and if considerations of justice continue to guide Israel's policy, we can be sure that the terror will be defeated. The person in the right wins, and pays the lowest price in the end. However, we know that this isn't Sharon's intention. The Sharon government will rapidly nullify this moral achievement by a series of concessions that will restore the enemy's confidence that he is in the right. Despite this, a just action has value in itself and deserves commendation. Moshe Feiglin established Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership), a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Feiglin has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To Go To Top

THE LEFT HAS ALWAYS HATED JEWS Posted by Steven Plaut, March 24, 2004.

So let me see if I have this straight. The US is holding hearing this week and the Western media is using this as an occasion to attack the US administration for NOT using military force to kill the arch-terrorist and the "spiritual leader" of the Islamofascist terror organization that had killed many of its civilians, claiming the US had not pursued him with enough determination and deadly force (e.g., http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0304/borowitz.html). And in the very same breath the very same media are attacking Israel because it DID use military force to kill the arch-terrorist and the "spiritual leader" of the Islamoofascist terror organization that had killed many of its civilians, claiming Israel had illegally pursued him and had used excessive deadly force. Is that clear now? This article was written by Patrick Chisholm and appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, March 24, 2004. It is archived at http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12713 Anti-Semitism traditionally has been associated with the extreme right. Now, it is becoming more common among the extreme left. Leftist president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe huffed that "Jews in South Africa, working in cahoots with their colleagues here, want our textile and clothing factories to close down." Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, who is no right-winger, lashed out against Jews who "rule the world by proxy." One finds pockets of anti-Semitism at anti-globalization rallies, and plenty of it at pro-Palestinian rallies. And in recent years anti-capitalist campaigners have been networking with radical Islamists and neo-Nazi groups via their websites, according to a draft report by the Technical University of Berlin's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism. (This was the same report commissioned by the European Union, which decided for who-knows-what-reason not to officially release it.) Contrary to what one would think, left- and right-wing extremists are, in major respects, ideological soul mates. Don't be fooled by labels; applying the simplistic terms of "right" and "left" to complex political realities naturally begets confusion. While ultra-rightists are generally thought of as racist and ultra-leftists as nonracist, the latter are by no means immune to such decrepitude. And both camps share these core attitudes: a readiness to buy into conspiracy theories, hatred of the rich, contempt for speculators and financiers, a deep suspicion of large corporate enterprises, and a conviction that the privileged few oppress the masses. These notions manifest themselves in the party platforms of radical groups. Here are excerpts from one such platform (courtesy of Australian writer John J. Ray): We demand that all unearned income, and all income that does not arise from work, be abolished. We demand the nationalization of businesses which have been organized into cartels. We demand the creation and maintenance of a healthy middle-class, the immediate communalization of department stores which will be rented cheaply to small businessmen.... We demand a land reform in accordance with our national requirements, and the enactment of a law to confiscate from the owners without compensation any land needed for the common purpose. The abolition of ground rents, and the prohibition of all speculation in land. And here is a quote from one such leader: "We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions." Karl Marx? No. Vladimir Lenin? No. Ho Chi Min? No. Adolf Hitler. And the above platform positions were those of his National Socialist party. Note the formal name of that party: the National Socialist German Workers Party. The far left scapegoats rich people for causing the world's ills. But what if you live in a society where most rich people happen to be members of a different religion or skin color? That makes them particularly easy to recognize and identify. In the popular psyche, the wealthy class becomes synonymous with members of that minority group. So if you're an envy-laden, paranoid conspiracy theorist, there's hardly a distinction between scapegoating the rich and scapegoating the minority group. That's how the Nazis viewed the Jews. It's how Stalinist Russia viewed the Jews. It's how Islamic militants view the Jews. And it's how many among today's far left view the Jews. Jews are by no means the only (relatively) affluent minority group that has suffered mass slaughter. The same has been true of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), Tutsis in Rwanda, Tamils in Sri Lanka, ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, and many others. Palestinian hatred of Israelis, I suspect, is based on more than just land disputes and the policies of the state of Israel. Much of it likely derives from envy. Jews as a whole are among the most able, hard-working, and intelligent people ever to inhabit the earth. Wherever they go they succeed. They turned Israel into an economic powerhouse for its size, and "made the desert bloom." Success breeds envy. Envy breeds hatred. Terrorism is the end result. So is an envy-driven economic philosophy best described as hard-left or socialist: Islamic radicals generally advocate government ownership of most sectors of the economy. They detest "middlemen" and the rich. They loathe "foreign exploiters." They're disgusted with materialism and consumerism. And they desire complete economic equality among all citizens (which, in practice, translates into everyone being equally poor). Obviously, a mutual dislike for Israel's policies is not the only thing that binds Islamic radicals and ultra-leftists together. Leftism is generally tolerant of different races and religions. But not always. Extremists are not going to let Jews off the hook just because they happen to be a different religion. When it comes to envy versus tolerance, envy very often wins out. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

WHY DOESN'T THE PA REFORM? WHY DOESN'T DENNIS ROSS? Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 23, 2004.

Dennis Ross does not hold the P.A. responsible for failing to reform. He blames Israeli "control." He asserts that such control angers the Arabs, thereby inhibiting the P.A. reform movement. He demands that Israel stop intruding on the Arabs' lives. Actually, Israel is out of their lives, in that they rule themselves except for foreign policy. There is no P.A. reform movement. Arab anger largely is from P.A. indoctrination in hatred and violence. This violence leads to Arab aggression, which he equates morally to Israeli self-defense. He ought to have a sufficient sense of justice to realize that aggression is improper and defense is a right. Ross' prescription, Israeli withdrawal, ignores the P.A. refusal to accept the legitimacy of Israel, which it wants to conquer. Although the Road Map requires P.A. anti-terrorism before Israeli withdrawal, Ross would not. After the P.A. has proved that donations to it do not encourage peace, Ross suggests giving more money to that corrupt society. That would throw good money after bad (IMRA, 3/7 from ZOA). It usually makes less sense to repeat a mistake than to originate one. To be fair, there is some partial Israeli control over the P.A., via roadblocks and curfews. Whenever Israel relaxes those measures, however, terrorists take advantage of it. Therefore the fault for such control is the terrorist P.A. regime's, not Israel's. Nobody has yet made the PLO/P.A. reform or meet its anti-terrorism commitments. Under Ross's concept of first Israel withdrawing, then P.A. reforming, the P.A. whose ideology is devoted to terrorist jihad, would have no incentive to reform. (I am arguing against Ross' logic. I do not contend that Israel should withdraw if the Arabs did reform. I think the Arabs should withdraw. Let the Arabs get out of Israeli lives!) Since foreign donations to the P.A. are largely stolen or diverted to war, the suggestion that more be donated to it indicates a misunderstanding of the conflict and an abuse of charitable resources. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

WE MUST SAVE THE THREATENED JEWS OF GAZA Posted by Ken Heller, March 23, 2004.

As you undoubtedly know Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that he will be unilaterally withdrawing from Gaza, forcing 8,000 Jews out of their homes, farms, synagogues and schools. There is no logical explanation for this handover to the terrorists, who would use Gaza as a staging ground to attack all of Israel more efficiently..which would result in more Jewish bloodshed. The twenty-one communities that make up Gush Katif have joined together to launch a campaign preventing the implementation of the Sharon transfer plan. They need funds in order to pay for free buses to bring Israelis to Gush Katif, so they can see for themselves the beauty and development of the area. The funds will pay for booklets that will be mailed to every Israeli home, pleading the cause of the Gaza Jews. A film, celebrating the beauty and Jewish life in Gush Katif is being made, to be distributed as widely as possible. You can help by sending a tax deductible contribution, made out to: "Friends of Gush Katif" To: Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205 New York, N.Y. 10128. 1-800-235-3658 The need is urgent. The campaign must be launched immediately. It cannot succeed without the help of Jews who want to be certain that "Never Again" will be the reality. Thank you for your genuine caring and concern ...and support!! Americans For A Safe Israel Ken Heller heads the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For A Safe Israel To Go To Top

RELIABLY UNRELIABLE Posted by Eric Rozenman, March 23, 2004.

Every three or four weeks The Baltimore Sun publishes an editorial on Arab-Israeli news. Predictable as they are wrong, these editorials virtually always deny if not ignore facts and sacrifice logic to prejudged opinion. "Unanswered questions" (March 22) fits the pattern and also typifies The Sun's single-minded focus on Palestinian grievances. The editorial questions Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's proposed unilateral withdrawal in the Gaza Strip. The Sun appears to be wholly concerned with how the potential withdrawal will affect the Palestinians, and not at all concerned with any potential repercussions for the Israelis. Since the unilateral withdrawal idea is also opposed by a significant number of Israelis, it's instructive that The Sun doesn't ask a single question related to their concerns about potentially rewarding terrorism or allowing weapons smuggling to go unfettered. Confused The Sun refers to "Israel's war with Palestinian militants." Clear thinking would have phrased it the "Palestinian terrorists' war against Israel's existence." The editorial mentions "Israel's occupation of lands intended for a Palestinian state." No lands have been so designated. Israel legally occupies the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a result of self-defense in the 1967 Six-Day and 1973 Yom Kippur wars. The territories are disputed, their status to be resolved in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 - the bases of, among other things, the 1993 Israeli-Palestinian Oslo Accords and last year's U.S. "road map." Sun editorials routinely ignore those parts of the diplomatic record - from the "road map" and Oslo back to Great Britain's League of Nations Mandate for Palestine - that recognize Israel's right to make claims in the territories. The Sun worries about "the Palestinian leadership" and the possibility that unilateral Israeli withdrawal could "further erode any authority Palestinian leaders hold there." The paper asks no questions about the "waiting for Godot" exercise Israel and the United States endured while Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority sabotaged the Oslo process and refused to begin implementing the diplomatic "road map" for peace. Instead of questioning the Palestinians, this editorial follows the Sun's habit of urging U.S. pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The editorial refers to Arafat's "paltry" security force. Early in the current violence, Arafat oversaw 40,000-plus authorized "police" (organized into numerous paramilitary "security" agencies) and tens of thousands more armed men in illegal militias -- not counting those in Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This gave the PA a high ratio of "police" to civilians. It's not that the forces available to Arafat were paltry, but rather that he used them to continue his shoot-talk-shoot strategy. Hence U.S. consideration of potential unilateral Israeli action. Confusion Compounded The Sun claims Israel's unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon in 2000 "saved lives on both sides of the border and removed the primary reason for the Islamic military group Hezbollah's attacks." In fact, many Israeli and Palestinian commentators and officials agree that Israel's precipitous evacuation from Lebanon helped inspire Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade to emulate Hezbollah in the current Palestinian terror war. Any Lebanese lives saved have been offset many times by deaths among Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. Hezbollah is not, as The Sun writes, a "militant group" but a terrorist organization, so listed by the U.S. government. An Iranian-backed Syrian proxy, it seeks the destruction of Israel and to prolong Syria's illegal occupation of Lebanon. And even after a full withdrawal by Israel from the security zone in southern Lebanon, Hezbollah still insists that Israel is occupying part of Lebanon (the Shebaa Farms, which was actually part of Syria, not Lebanon) and continues to intermittently kill Israeli soldiers who patrol the border. About this, the editorial asks no questions. The Sun opines that "If the Bush administration supports the Sharon plan, that will radically shift U.S. policy ... which has operated on the premise of a negotiated settlement ...." Israeli and American policy long has operated on the assumption of a negotiated settlement. But -- and here Sun logic fails again -- negotiations require good-faith partners. The Palestinian Arabs have given no signs of being such partners, despite repeated opportunities. The editorial does not ask why, and so avoids the illumination an answer might give. Uninformed Questions The paper asks other already answered questions as well, including: 1) If Israelis leave Gaza and "Hamas and the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade continue to send suicide bombers" how will Israel respond? Probably with active counter-terrorism, including hot pursuit, as it has in Gaza and the West Bank. 2) "Where would Israel relocate the estimated 7,000 Jewish settlers living in Gaza? Would Sharon bar them from further populating the West Bank settlements? Why should Israelis relocated from Gaza not move to Jewish communities in the disputed West Bank, even to areas that might eventually be part of an Arab state? Does The Sun question the presence of Arab towns in Israel? 3) "Would Israel continue to permit Gaza residents to work in Israel?" Less than two weeks after the terrorist bombings in Ashdod, Israel announced that Arabs from Gaza will be able to return to Israel for work. No doubt, if relative calm returns after the killing of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin in Gaza, the crossings will be reopened. Eric Rozenman is Washington Director of CAMERA, an organization that monitors the news media for fairness in reporting news about Israel. To Go To Top

THE ONE, TEN PUNCH Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, March 23, 2004.

So they finally took out the murderous imp...hundreds of buried and thousands of maimed Jews too late. I know... He was a "militant" and not really a terrorist...meaning his victims were Jews not Gentiles. You know what's really sickening about all of this? Most of the world's reporting... Not only of Israel's assassination of Hamas' Yassin, but of its continuous coverage regarding the organization itself. Journalists simply can't be that stupid...which means that they deliberately engage in misleading journalism. Think about how many times you've heard a reporter or read an account about Hamas blowing up Jews on buses, in restaurants, or in teen nightclubs only to hear or read, along with it, that this was done to "end Israeli occupation." Like it's difficult to access the Hamas websites (or for that matter those of the supposedly "moderate" Palestinian Authority's as well with virtually the same messages) to see what they really mean by "occupation." Or to get a copy of its charter calling for Israel's total destruction. And like the media doesn't know that Israel offered to end that occupation years ago, and was told by the Arabs that that was still not enough. No brainers, Dudes...Yet you'd never know this via the media accounts...at least most of them. Now that Israel has taken the first major step, it needs to follow through. Its enemies mean business, and it's time for the Jews to take off the gloves the way any other people would have done hundreds of dead loved ones earlier. There's something to the saying, "actions speak louder than words." Israeli spokesmen need to review that one a bit. There's no need to telegraph your punch on matters like this, regardless of whatever perceived good it will do. Instead of announcing its war on Hamas' leaders and blowing a lot of hot air, what's needed is a dose of the old time Israeli pizzaz. Taking and targeting many of the top brass out almost simultaneously, for example. There's nothing to lose here. If America threatens to cut aid, Israel must take it on the chin. And it must tell its best friend that these are matters of survival. Hamas is dedicated to the obliteration of Israel and the slaughter of Jews. The world's hypocrites and anti-Semites are not the ones to take guidance from in these regards. The time for fighting with one hand tied behind the back should have been over a long time ago. America wasn't afraid to use its B-52s, B-1s, cruise missiles, bunker busters, etc. when it got hit...and America is a huge nation, the most powerful on Earth... not a country that one needs a magnifying glass to find on a map of the world. It was predictable that thousands of Yassin's fellow plotters and disembowelers of Jewish babes and grandmas would take to the street upon his death, warning of hellish revenge. Israel knew this. So why did it blow another chance to do what really needs to be done? Besides the need to cut off the other heads of the snake, Israel must be ready to take out Hamas killers en masse. If hundreds of Jewish civilians can be deliberately and wantonly slaughtered, then what's wrong with payback for the actual and potential murderers? President Bush has warned America's enemies that those who harbor and collaborate with terrorists will share in their fate. Why is this proper for America but not for the tiny nation which has been the most victimized by Arab rejectionist barbarity? Most Arabs have said that they would reject any Israel, regardless of size, borders, etc. The "moderates" have called Oslo, the so-called "peace negotiations," etc. nothing more than "Trojan Horses." At least Hamas has been honest... So, if Israel wants to weaken its deadly enemy, it must consider the numbers game a bit more. A surprise from above must await the next Arab demonstrations...one that will take them out by the hundreds. And the hell with world opinion...those who fire bombed Dresden, annexed entire nations, nuked Japan, etc, when their own lives and interests were on the line. The Israeli response must be exponential. Each time another Jew is slaughtered, the punishment must be increasingly overwhelming. Nice guys definitely finish last in this game...especially when your real and potential enemies vastly outnumber you. Israel gained no acceptance by trying to do this the "right" and "moral" way. While going house-to-house and the like, deliberately putting its sons in greater harms way in going after the rats in their dens, it was accused of massacres and such anyway. It even got taken to court for building a fence designed to protect its kids from Arab butchers. The Geneva Conventions specifically state that combatants cannot use their civilian populations as human shields...something Arabs do all the time. And those Conventions also state that the presence of civilians does not eliminate such areas as legitimate military targets. So Israel must do what it must do...and in high gear, full speed ahead. Arabs must fear Israel once again. They don't now. That's what works in this region...sad, but true. After dishing out a few rounds like this...again, where each Arab assault is followed by using an Israeli version of America's own "Powell Doctrine'' (i.e. unleashing overwhelming force upon the enemy)...then Israel can step back and let the dust settle a bit. And up the ante further as need be. The very cold "peace" Israel now has with Egypt came about only after President Sadat realized that the price of Israel's destruction would be so great that it would result, at most, only in a Pyrrhic victory. The "Palestinian" Arabs--many, if not most, of whom were newcomers themselves into "Palestine" from elsewhere in the region, including Hamas' "patron saint," Sheikh Izzedin al-Qassam, from Aleppo, Syria (as recorded by the League of Nations Permanent Mandates commission, etc.)--have evidently still not learned this lesson. Until they do, Israel, unfortunately, has to become a more effective teacher. Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has done extensive doctoral studies in Middle Eastern Affairs. He has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. To Go To Top

ILLOGICS I: Europe distances itself from America as Jihad Attacks the Crusades Posted by Evelyn Hayes, March 23, 2004.

Acccording to Webster' dictionary, the Crusades were a series of military expeditions by the Christians of Western Europe which includes Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, to recover Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Mohammedans from 1096 through the late 1200s. Europe, distancing itself from America is ignoring the attempted attack with poison on London, the promise of attack on France, the actual attack on the railroads of Spain. Europe is ignoring the fact that they are considered infidels. Furthermore, there was no America at the time of the Crusades. Big Lies have strange believers. Malcolm Hoenlein was explaining the terrorism of Yassin the assassinated and the outrage that a murderer was murdered. However, he is not upset that Israel wants to give away Gaza twice because Hamas is killer and killed. Remember Gaza First was a test of Oslo. It failed. Jewish Aza where Jews returned after the Egytian occupation was never contested. Jihad attacks because each rampage forward gets a freed range, first leaving room for another first to feed the unending thirst of those who once felt that no two religions could live in the same Saudi Arabia and now feel no religions can co-exist in the same world. Funny, the Mohammedan religion that supposedly is based on one G-d ignores the Commandments of that G-d and acts like the savages from whom Abraham walked away. Global Democracy is an oxymoron that the democrats would use to further liberalize themselves. Everyone is a crusader, only the America that came after the crusades, is solely guilty because it was attacked and is fighting back, because in one world order how can Peres be a Jew and John Kerry be a crusader? Watch them stage a "We-In" like Spain when they will never be accepted in the Jihad order. A dhimmi is a dummy when he thinks he's part of the Muslim brotherhood that even slaughters its brothers. In reality Global Democracy is sponsored by a Theocracy that is really a reverse crusades against anyone who isn't into jihad and wants to live as an individual in a free country under one G-d with liberty and justice for all including Jews and Christians, Hindus and Buddhists and individuals. As Israel builds fences and Germany lets its walls down, there is no blockage against the subtle infiltrations of the minds of the intellectuals who are too lazy to think. Without individualism, mind manipulation is the largest corporation. Seems oil is more than expensive; it is a derivitive in the substraction of civilization into prime-evil. Europe has suffered the Aryans and now the Palestinians. Two Big Lies confuse a union of nations that lets a non-nation reverse religion and its Commandments and Greater Morality into warlordism and its demands and horrific depravity. As Europe distances itself from America, the distinction between madmen decreases. As Israel welcomes jihad, redeployment by redeployment even though it's unilateral, Israel is less welcome. No thank you, jihad can grow into a world holocaust if all dhimmis are dummies and think their enemies are their friends or just think befriending their enemies will make them safer. Failing Logics I is a left bank with nothing right. Not passing over the illogistics of Big Lies is failing in the course of life, liberty and love. The punishment for being guilty of not thinking is to reverse Descartes' hypothesis, 'I don't think, therefore, I am not going to be.' Think. Think. Evelyn Hayes is author of "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, us, because their hearts were softened for more." and just released sequel, "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." To Go To Top

THE FEAR FACTOR Posted by Ian Fletcher, March 23, 2004.

This article was written by Bret Stephens, editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. It appeared today on the Editorial Page in the Wall Street Journal. JERUSALEM--Are Palestinians weeds? It would seem many people think they are. Following Israel's assassination early yesterday morning of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas,the gist of international reaction was that the strike would bring new converts to the Islamist cause and incite a fresh wave of terrorist violence against Israel. In other words, Palestinians are weeds: Mowing them down, as it were, only has the effect of making them grow back stronger and faster. There are moments (Monday morning was one of them) when I find myself tempted by the metaphor. As I write, my TV screen is filled with images of Palestinian mourners thronging the streets of Gaza, praising Yassin as a martyr and vowing deadly vengeance. This looks like the reaction of an emboldened people, not a frightened one. So what's the sense, in purely utilitarian terms, of further Israeli attacks? Alternatively, what's the sense of showing any restraint at all? If the weed metaphor is right, either Israel should sue for peace on whatever terms the Palestinians extend or it should resort to extreme measures like population transfer. Anything else just fruitlessly prolongs a cycle of violence. But of course Palestinians aren't weeds. They're human. They think in terms of costs and benefits, they calculate the odds, they respond more or less rationally to incentives and disincentives. And what makes us afraid can also make them afraid. This is a trite observation, but it's one Palestinians would rather have us forget. Over 42 months of conflict, their strategy has been to persuade Israelis that they, the Palestinians, are made of different stuff. Why else the suicide bombers? Not because of their proven capacity to kill civilians in greater numbers than any other weapon currently in the Palestinian arsenal. That's only a second-order effect. The deep logic of suicide bombing lies in the act of suicide itself. People who will readily die for their cause are, by definition, beyond deterrence. By showing that Israel's tanks and fighter jets are just so much scrap metal in the face of the Palestinians' superhuman determination, they aim to disarm Israel itself. How does one respond to such a logic? It helps not to be fooled by it. Again, allow me to make the trite observation that Palestinians love their children too. To date, there has not been a single instance in which a Hamas leader sent one of his own sons or daughters on a suicide mission. I once interviewed a Hamas leader, since deceased, as he bounced his one-year-old girl on his knee. Contrary to myth, this was not a man who was afraid of nothing. Unsparing as he was with the lives of others, he was circumspect when it came to the lives of his own. Indeed, when one looks closely at just who the suicide bombers are (or were), often they turn out to be society's outcasts. Take Reem Salah al-Rahashi, a mother of two, who in January murdered four Israeli soldiers at the Erez checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel border. In a prerecorded video, Rahashi said becoming a shaheed was her lifelong dream. Later it emerged she'd been caught in an extramarital affair, and that her husband and lover had arranged her "martyrdom operation" as an honorable way to settle the matter. It is with such people, not with themselves, that Palestinian leaders attempt to demonstrate their own fearlessness. In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively. The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire. In this context, it bears notice that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Palestinian fatalities also declined significantly, from 1,000 to about 700. The reason here is obvious: As the leaders of Palestinian terror groups were picked off and their operations were disrupted, they were unable to carry out the kind of frequent, large-scale attacks that had provoked Israel's large-scale reprisals. Terrorism is a top-down business, not vice versa. Targeted assassinations not only got rid of the most guilty but diminished the risk of open combat between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian foot soldiers. Now a few words about Yassin, the international reaction to his killing, and the likely result for Israel. It may be recalled that Israel released the good sheikh in 1997, after having sentenced him to life in prison, with the promise that he would never again promote terrorism. This was during the Oslo years, when serious people actually thought that such conciliatory gestures served the interests of peace. Today, that is beyond comprehension. At any rate, Yassin didn't keep his promise. Meanwhile, assorted foreign ministers are in full throat against Israel. "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself--and it is fully entitled to do that - against the terrorism that affects it, within international law," says British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing." It would be interesting to know exactly what, according to Mr. Straw, Israel is lawfully allowed to do in self-defense. Perhaps it would be as well if the minister also reminded the Palestinian Authority of its obligations, under the Road Map, to "undertake visible efforts... to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning attacks on Israelis." But if Mr. Straw and his colleagues do not do so, it is not from an excess of respect for the Palestinians, but rather its lack. They will, after all, be viewing them merely as weeds, not as humans capable of acting in their own best interests. To Go To Top

ISRAEL KILLS HER TORMENTER Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 23, 2004.

Israel kills her tormenter and the world, even some Jews, say: "For Shame!" When President George Bush said: "You are either with us against the terrorists or you are with the terrorists", I'm sure he would include those planning terror attacks and sending young people out to blow themselves and Jews up on the streets of Israel. So, IF Israel doesn't eliminate the terrorists in her midst then she is NOT fighting the Global War against Terror - which President George Bush has rightly declared is necessary. This has become correctly known as "The Bush Doctrine" and Bush may be the first leader to acknowledge that terror is a global problem to be attacked by all. For years an evil old man sent out missions of killers, even children, with bombs in their backpacks or strapped to their bodies to kill and maim Jews in the most horrible ways possible. [Note a brief rap sheet of crimes attributable to Sheikh Yassin at the end of this article.] This old man created Hamas (which means "zeal" in Arabic) long recognized by those who now condemn Israel, as a terrorist organization. It can be expected when men such as Kofi Annan, Hosni Mubarak, Jack Straw, DeVillapin, et al condemn the killing of Yassin as illegal, unjust, against the rule of International Law because they have shown their opinion of Jews for years. These same complainers had ignored the incubation of Terror, mostly in the Middle East, because the Arab nations represented oil and obscene profits. International Law requires and accepts deadly response to terrorists' attacks - except for Israel who must bow to laws of appeasement. Expected too is the comment by the non-Jewish Jew, Shimon Peres, when he said: "Terror can be liquidated by liquidating the reasons for terror, not the leaders." If we use the Peres formula, Israel's existence, according to Peres, is the reason for terrorists and thus it follows that Israel would have to be liquidated in order to appease the terrorists. As for the world leaders who condemn Israel for finally responding after years of vain restraint demanded of her by these same world leaders, well, Hell isn't big enough or hot enough for all of them. All recognized that Muslim Terrorism has been incubating for the last 30 years. The world not only recognized this phenomenon but sold them the weapons to eventually castrate these decadent world leaders. Oh, you didn't know that one of the practices of Muslim Terrorist warfare is to castrate their enemy and stuff their parts into these enemies mouth as a final insult to their manhood? This practice is a psychological act for suspicions of their own manhood. Pride and Shame are two of the pillars of Islam and woe to the enemy who defeats them. They believe that it is their right to win. Whenever one of Yassin's or Arafat's killers managed to kill a few or many Israelis, the world's leaders would issue a pro-forma condemnation of both the killers and Israel's victims equally as if they were the same. They had reams of pre-printed condemnation letters which only needed a signature which was only for a disingenuous comment - as if they really cared. The Europeans told the Israelis not to respond or retaliate for the most heinous bloody terror acts while they were sending millions in Euros to the terrorists. They thought (as decadent Europeans) that they could bribe the mix of terrorists to kill elsewhere and NOT on their soil. Kill Israelis and we will keep paying, only don't kill us good Europeans. See, we hate the Jews as much as you do. Haven't we, as Christians, proven that over the centuries. We are your partners; we are your friends. Just keep on selling us your oil and you can kill as many Jews as you like. Well, Spain got her answer. Who's next? Many Arab leaders and their spokesman are babbling about the start of another Jihad (Islamic Holy War). Since 1948 these leaders and radical Mullahs have issued Fatwas declaring Jihad against the Jews and the Jewish State. The Jihad against the Jews never stopped, notwithstanding speeches by Arafat about continuing the fake "peace process" to trick the gullible West. The majority of Media Pundits take on a somber visage and repeat the babblings of Muslims who foam at the mouth (Arafat really does) in rage because for over 55 years they have not been able to crush the Jewish State of Israel. The War by Islam against the West has been there even before 1948 because these Islamists hate everyone in the non-Muslim world. Jews, Christians - even Muslims of sects different from their own. Even the European bribers are targets for take-over as Muslims move to become a majority in France, the Netherlands, England and wherever else they are allowed a foothold. Does anyone believe that this decadent scum who refuse to face down terror in their own nations would ever try to rescue Israel should she begin to look like she was losing a war? Hopefully, Israel will continue to take out the senders of Muslim terrorists such as Arafat, Rantisi, Dahlan, Nasrallah and the others. Let them take out the terrorists and forget about collateral damage give that their "collaterals" love and idolize their terrorists and cheer the exploits of the homicide martyrs. America does just that because it's necessary to target terrorists who use the crowds, the children and youths as camouflage. I spoke about decadent Europeans but, there are many Americans and would-be Presidents who are annoyed at the Bush War against Global Terrorism. In America we have hundreds of thousands of Muslims who secretly cheer when Americans are killed in Iraq or Afghanistan - or when Israel takes a vicious hit by homicide bombers. When, NOT IF, America suffers another 9/11, perhaps these whiners will change their tiny minds or simply slink off in silence. The uncivilized world of Islam is at war with the civilized, democratic Free West. Through the centuries they have risen up at different times to show their true character of savagery. Ignore all this blabber about Islam being a kind, peaceful religion. (If only.) But, let's be realistic. We are seeing true Islam in all nations where they manage to become a critical mass. There they attack their generous host governments and intimidate the population by their aggressive behavior. As for Israel, she will never have a day of peace until all Muslim Arabs live across the Jordan River, or go back to the nations they came from. Clearly, the mere sight or existence of a free, thriving, sovereign Jewish State send them into hysterical rioting mobs who swarm like locusts or flies. Not so strangely, it was G-d's instruction in Tanach (the Hebrew Bible) that the Jews "rid yourselves of the idol worshipers and pagan tribes in the Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael, lest they plague you all your lives." Not bad advise! The Arab Muslims have proven themselves to be an evil, war-like people who can tolerate no one but their own kind. Even then they kill each other unless held down by brutal leaders who understand their own people. Perhaps this is why they aim their killers out to the others, the Jews, the Westerners, the Americans, the Christians. Remember what George Bush said: "Either you're with us in the War against Global Terror or you are with the Terrorists." Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

PASSOVER SUPPLIES SENT TO INDIA Posted by Michael Freund, March 23, 2004.

The Bnei Menashe, a group claiming descent from a lost tribe of Israel, will enjoy a kosher for Passover festival this year thanks to provisions being sent from Jerusalem. The Amishav organization, which reaches out and assists "lost Jews" seeking to return to the Jewish people, has arranged for the dispatch of hundreds of kilograms of matza and dozens of bottles of kosher for Passover wine to the Bnei Menashe, who reside in the northeastern Indian states of Mizoram and Manipur. "Passover is full of symbolic and religious meaning for the Bnei Menashe," said Michael Freund, Amishav's Director and an Arutz-7 radio and television host. "They are anxious to observe its rituals to the fullest extent possible, so we have sent them the supplies they need in order to do so.  An Amishav emissary will conduct a traditional Seder at the group's Hebrew Center, located in Aizawl, the capital of Mizoram. Local government ministers, as well as some 350 members of the Bnei Menashe, are expected to attend. Freund noted that up until the arrival of British missionaries in northeastern India a century ago, the Bnei Menashe had celebrated an annual springtime festival known as "Chapchar Khut", corresponding to Passover. As part of the ritual, he added, a village priest would sacrifice an animal, and then spread it on the doorposts of his home, just as the Jewish people had done in Egypt at the time of the Exodus. The priest would then separate the meat from the bones of the animal's carcass with particular care, as even one broken bone would invalidate it for use in the sacrifice. "This, of course, mirrors the law of the korban Pesach (the Passover sacrifice), where the Torah says that not one bone of it may be broken," Freund said. Then, while offering the animal on an altar to G-d, the priest would recite a series of ancient chants, one of which read as follows: "We had to cross the Red Sea, our enemies were coming after us with chariots, the Sea swallowed them all as if they were meat. We were led by the cloud during the day, and by fire at night. Take those birds for the food, and drink water coming out from the rock." The Bnei Menashe claim descent from the tribe of Manasseh, one of the ten tribes exiled from the Land of Israel by the Assyrians more than 2700 years ago. In the past decade, Amishav has brought more than 800 Bnei Menashe to Israel, where they undergo a formal return to Judaism via conversion by the Chief Rabbinate. Approximately 6,000 Bnei Menashe remain in India, all of whom wish to make aliyah. Since June of last year, however, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz of Shinui has refused to allow them to come. This appeared in Arutz-Sheva and is archived at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=59955 To Go To Top

THEY KILL ONLY JEWS Posted by Arlene Peck, March 23, 2004.

Someone sent me a joke in the e-mail today, where Osama Bin-Laden calls Yasser Arafat and says, -"Listen, Yassi, there is something that I don't understand. We are both terrorists, we both killed thousands of innocent people, but all the world is hunting only me, and at the same time you are the honorable Nobel-Prize for Peace Winner! What is your secret?" " Oh, it is very simple, Osammame. I kill only Jews!" Now, saying that, we have a problem. The double standard is alive and well and functioning all over the world. Logically, the Jewish state would be well aware of this troubling fact and, act accordingly. They are in a war. Not a "conflict" with "militants" and "activists" but, with a barbaric and savage, dysfunctional culture that wants to kill them... dead! In fact, these are the same enemies that we, in the United States and all those folks who voted for terrorism in Spain and the rest of the world, are facing. It has recently become apparent that the raging Muslims over the hill now have their sights set on the Sunday crowd also. We, under the sporadic leadership of George Bush, are facing unbelievable problems at the moment that have no end in sight. The influx from America's borders, are like a leaking ship. The sea of illegal immigrants, are bringing our very civil structure down. Or economy is going down the tubes because of them and fighting their damn terrorism is beginning to make our Social Security look like a thing of the past. Hey, I'm so old I remember when we had a state called Florida and a wonderful vacation spot named Miami Beach. Ah, but that was before Jimmy Carter and his "open door" policy and thousands and thousands of Haitians and Cubans were encouraged by him to flee the oppression of their countries. Fidel Castro gladly acceded to his wishes and opened up all of his jails and mental institutions and sent them on the boats to the new life in the United States. President Bush is in the process of doing the same thing to California and a few neighboring states because of his great friendship with Mexican President Fox. Thousands of illegal Mexicans cross our borders daily and immediately go on our tax and social service rolls. Jobs are being lost at an alarming rate. It's almost impossible to call for airline reservations or get technical help with any of the major companies and not get someone from India or the Philippines helping you. I don't even want to think about how many Islamic terrorists are also crossing these open borders with Canada and Mexico. The reason I mention this, is because, we, in the United States are making blunders incredibly often in both domestic and foreign affairs. Yet, this is a government that the present Israeli leaders seem to be taking their orders from. Bush and our State Dept. turn the screws a little tighter and Israel caves in faster than Spain after their latest 9/11. Somewhere along the way, Isreal began to do what those in Spain did by capitulating to the terrorists. Our war on drugs was defined by the quote, "Just say No". Why is it impossible for both the United States AND Israelis leaders to remember that Israel is a sovereign country? It's time to remind them that the Jewish State is not a Banana republic which must take orders from the Americans, EU, United Nations and especially the Arab dictatorships. A good part of this group would love to see the demise of every Jew in the area. It's illogical to try and negotiate with a culture which for the large part have become "killing machines." And, at the very least believe in the creed of evil and death. These are people who happily live in tunnels and caves if the light at the end of the tunnel is a school or bus to bomb. All they understand is force. It's very basic. Sharon seems to finally "getting it". Now that the cruel leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, has been eliminated the flame of terrorism is going to burn higher. I hope that Isreal isn't alone in fighting this resulting battle between good and evil. Britain, has already come out in condemnation along with the EU, UN, and Israel's good friend, Hosni Mubarak who of course never stopped the flow of arms from his tunnels. It's too bad that they don't remember what Churchill had to say when he said, "The appeaser is the one who hopes the crocodile will eat you last." I hope Sharon will not be forced into appeasement and continues to believe that when you are dealing with savage barbarians, you can't let their evil seduce you. Nor, can you reason with people who not only want to kill you but everyone who differs them and their sick ideology. The world deplores the terrorists when terrible things happen around the globe. Except of course, when they happen in Isreal. Then, they are incidents caused by "militants" or activists. Our President repeats the mantra... "The war on terrorism" at every opportunity. Great! I'm all for it! I've said it before but it bears repeating. The terrorism isn't about land. Never has been. It's about the very existence of the Jewish State. It's down to Them vs. Us. This war can be won and quickly. But not if they decide to talk it to death. The time for apologies are over! Maybe it's time for Israel and its leaders to start repeating the words they seem to forgotten, Never Again! Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com To Go To Top

THE U.S. INSTITUTE OF PEACE STUMBLES Posted by IsrAlert, March 23, 2004.

Isralert's source for this item: Isralert contributing commentator Daniel Pipes http://www.danielpipes.org/article/1659 http://daily.nysun.com/standard/ShowStoryTemplate.asp?Path=NYS/ 2004/03/23&ID=Ar00701&Section=Foreign. Thia article appeared in the New York Sun, March 23, 2004. The author is Daniel Pipes, an expert on the Middle East, who was, despite Muslim opposition, appointed to the Institute of Peace board. His webiste address is http://www.DanielPipes.org. Daniel Pipes sends out a mailing of his writings 2-3 times a week.)Sign up for related (but non-duplicating) e-mail services: Middle East Forum (media alerts, event reports, MEQ articles): http://www.meforum.org/subscribe.php Campus Watch (research, news items, press releases): http://www.campus-watch.org/subscribe.php Middle East Intelligence Bulletin (monthly publication): http://meib.org/maillist_survey.htm Last week, I became a whistleblower. (According to Merriam-Webster, a whistleblower is someone "who reveals wrongdoing within an organization to the public or to those in positions of authority.") This is not a role I expected or sought, but I felt compelled to go public when the U.S. Institute of Peace, in Washington, D.C., the taxpayer-funded organization to whose board President Bush appointed me, insisted on co-hosting an event with a group closely associated with radical Islam. That group is the Washington-based Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy; the event was a workshop that took place - over my strenuous objections - on March 19. Most of CSID's Muslim personnel are radicals. I brought one such person in particular, Kamran Bokhari, to the attention of USIP's leadership. Mr. Bokhari is a fellow at CSID; as such, he is someone CSID's board of directors deems an expert "with high integrity and a good reputation." As a fellow, Mr. Bokhari may participate in the election of CSID's board of directors. He is, in short, integral to the CSID. Mr. Bokhari also happens to have served for years as the North American spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun, perhaps the most extreme Islamist group operating in the West. For example, it celebrated the first anniversary of 9/11 with a conference titled," Towering Day in History." It celebrated the second anniversary by hailing "The Magnificent 19." Its Web site currently features a picture of the U.S. Capitol building exploding. Nor is Al-Muhajiroun's evil restricted to words and pictures. Its London-based leader, Omar bin Bakri Muhammad, has acknowledged recruiting jihadists to fight in such hotspots as Kashmir, Afghanistan, and Chechnya. At least one Al-Muhajiroun member went to Israel to engage in suicide terrorism. Al-Muhajiroun appears to be connected to one of the 9/11 hijackers, Hani Hanjour. USIP's indirect association with Al-Muhajiroun has many pernicious consequences. Perhaps the most consequential of these is the legitimacy USIP inadvertently confers on Mr. Bokhari and CSID, permitting radicals to pass themselves off as moderates. That legitimation follows an assumption that USIP carefully vetted CSID before working with it. But USIP did nothing of the sort. When its leadership insisted on working with CSID, it explained its reasons: "The CSID is assessed by relevant government organizations and credible NGOs supported by the Administration to be an appropriate organization for involvement in publicly funded projects organized by both the government and NGOs, including the Institute." Translated from bureaucratese, this says: "Others have worked with CSID, so why not us?" But such buck-passing means that in fact no one does due diligence - each organization relies on those that came before. Once in the door, a disreputable organization like CSID acquires a mainstream aura. Or it does until its true identity becomes clear. Over and over again, branches of the American government have been embarrassed by their blindness to jihadist Islam. Ask the presidential candidate who had himself photographed smiling side-by-side with an Islamist who soon after was imprisoned for terrorist activities. Ask the U.S. military, which has arrested or convicted at least seven Islamists for criminal activity connected to jihad. Ask the New York State prison system, which recently awoke up to the fact that one of its chaplains announced that God had inflicted 9/11 as punishment on the wicked - and the victims got what they deserved. Ask the mayor of Boston who had city land sold to the Islamic Society of Boston for less than 10% of market value, only to learn later that the organization is closely associated with one jihadi extremist banned from entering America, another sitting in federal prison, and a third who welcomes suicide bombings against Israelis as "glad tidings." In all these cases, no one was minding the store. The lesson is simple but burdensome: each governmental institution must do its own research. In the war on terror, it is not enough to deploy the police and the military; it is just as necessary to recognize and reject those who develop the ideas that eventually lead to violence. The American government needs to wake up to those elements in its midst whose allegiance in the war on terror is on the other side. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

APPEASEMENT OF TERROR, NOT ITS ELIMINATION, IS DANGEROUS Posted by Americans For A Safe Israel, March 23, 2004.

Herbert Zweibon, Chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI, applauds the elimination by the IDF of Hamas leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin. He states, "The removal of the arch Hamas terrorist leader was something that should have been done a long time ago. His Hamas organization is responsible for over 50 "major" terrorist attacks against Israel since the infamous Oslo agreement was signed in 1993, claiming hundreds of lives and wounding many hundreds more." Zweibon continued, "The August 19,2003 bus bombing in Jerusalem killed 22 people and wounded 135, the March 27, 2002 bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya, murdered 22 and wounded 140, and the June 1, 2001 massacre at the Dolphinarium Disco in Tel Aviv took 21 young lives, wounding 120. These are only three of the ghastly attacks perpetrated by Hamas in the last three years. "The victims included citizens of Israel, the U.S., the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia, Romania, Thailand, Norway, and South Africa. They were primarily innocent family members, babies, toddlers, teenagers, students, parents and grandparents. They were murdered on their way to school and work, celebrating the Passover holiday, and enjoying a night out after completing their exams. Any compassion felt towards Hamas and its murderous leader is sorely misplaced." In conclusion, Zweibon quotes a top Israeli army officer about the problem of terror. The officer said, "The army has the capability to eliminate the terrorists in Gaza in less than a week." Zweibon asserts. "The appeasement of the enemy all these years, urged by the major countries of the world, has led us to this dangerous point in history, where Hamas, joined by other terrorist organizations, now threatens America and the western world. The elimination of terror, not its appeasement, is what is necessary. Israel is engaged in a war of survival requiring decisive military action to achieve victory. It needs courageous leadership to wage this war successfully." Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI) is an activist organization. It was in the forefront of opposition to the Oslo Accords and its subsequent clones. It can be contacted by mail at: 1623 Third Ave., Rm. 205, New York, N.Y. 10128; Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717; afsi@rcn.com; http://www.asfsi.org To Go To Top

MACHIAVELLI'S ADVICE ABOUT MIDDLE EAST PEACE Posted by Leo Rennert, March 23, 2004.

I wrote this to David Ignatius of the Washinton Post. I read with keen interest your Post column of March 23 in which you question whether Israel might not be better off ignoring Machiavelli's famous advice -- "It is much safer to be feared than loved." In the aftermath of Sheik Yassin's assassination, you suggest that "sometimes it may actually be safer to be loved than feared. An Israel that took risks for peace might find unexpected rewards." What you overlook, however, is that Israel, since its founding, repeatedly took risks for peace only to reap "unexpected rewards" in the form of Arab and Palestinian hostility, war, violence and terrorism. Look back on Israel's "love" strategy in 1947-48 when it accepted the U.N. partition plan, then after 1967 with the Allon Plan, in the 1990s with staged withdrawals from Palestinian population centers under Oslo, and in 2000-2001 at Camp David and Taba when Israel offered Yasir Arafat a viable, contiguous Palestinian state in 96 percent of the West Bank (with land swaps to make it 100 percent), all of the Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem and the lion's share of Jerusalem's Old City. Each time, as in the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy yanked the football away. Arab armies sought to obliterate the Jewish state. Israel was rewarded with two intifadas. Even before Yassin's assassination, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Arafat were committed to Israel's eventual destruction. If there's one more big dose of Israeli "love," will you be ready to help man lifeboats for escaping Israelis off Haifa and Tel Aviv? To Go To Top

DEATH KNELL TO SECULAR LEADERSHIP Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, March 23, 2004.

One has to search in vain among our present Jewish Leadership for someone who believes and is faithful to what is written in the Bible. The latest pronouncement of Netanyahu is very typical of secular leadership and its thinking. He has set conditions before he would approve of Sharon's plan to uproot Jews from the Promised Land. Netanyahu does not take seriously the words of the Prophet Ezekiel that no Jewish Leader is permitted to relinquish the inheritance of the entire Jewish People (Ezekiel 46:18). The inheritance of the Jewish People is not Sharon's or Netanyahu's to give away. Every Inch of this Promised Land, belongs to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that is the entire Jewish People, whether living in Israel or outside of the Holy Land. Sharon can decide to give his farm that he has acquired during his lifetime, to both or either of his sons, or to anyone else. But he cannot decide to give up the Land promised to the Jewish People by the Almighty. That Promise is an integral aspect of Jewish Law, and is an eternal inheritance. No generation, and no Jewish Government in a Jewish State has the right, or the authority to bind present or future generations of the Jewish People with regard to parting with any portion of this inheritance. Ben Gurion stated these crucial facts back in 1933 to an International Zionist gathering in Basel. Sadly, he later was pressured to change this view. Unfortunately, that occurs when secular leaders lack knowledge of what is required of them by the Torah. Ben Gurion was a serious student of the Bible, but he was not religious, nor did he possess the necessary faith in the Lord's Promises. Subsequent leaders of the Jewish People in Israel have also been secular. When pressured, they fully succumbed. They did not possess the strength and belief in Jewish Law, which is part and parcel of every religious and Bible-believing Jew. No matter what the pressure, or the source of such pressure, no matter what is demanded of him, a believing Jew will not go against Jewish Law, nor defy the Will of G-d. Believing in the Bible, and the Lord's repeated Promises to the Jewish People, he will never waiver. Their faith and belief in G-d has preserved the Jewish People down through the ages. They had a related belief, a belief in Jewish Destiny. Secularization has worked havoc with these fundamental values. Trust in G-d's Will, has always been characteristic of the Jewish People. Even the disastrous Holocaust, followed as it was by the rebirth of Israel, carried with it an important message for religious Jews: Zion was being reborn out of the ashes of Auschwitz. With the miraculous return to Zion, Jewish Destiny was being fulfilled. Those who objectively witnessed this awesome event, saw that the Hand of G-d was directly involved. The Jewish People desperately need to cast off the yoke of secular leadership, and return to their basic faith and belief in the One G-d of this Universe. Their faith in the Promised Land as a Holy Land must be restored. The glory and pride in being Jewish, that once existed for the Jewish People during the days of the Psalmist King David, can and must reign in the reborn Land of Israel. We first must rid ourselves from secular leadership, and restore G-d and His Prophets to their rightful place in our everyday life. Amen. Selah! Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

OPEN LETTER TO THE FOGGY FOLKS Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, March 23, 2004.

I continue to read of your State Department's criticism of Israel regarding the fate of the disputed territories. It seems, unfortunately, that President Bush has bought into your positions as well. As a proud American who knows his own nation's history reasonably well, I find this a bit perplexing...to say the least. But more on this later... You, who bucked President Truman's recognition of a newly-reborn Israel in the first place in 1948, don't like Israel's security fence, especially it's possible route. I know...You claim that you are only acting "in America's best interests," and those of us who disagree with you are therefore disloyal. Malarky! Using this same reasoning, you're now doing the same number on some 30 million stateless Kurds today -- while insisting on a 23rd Arab state -- that you tried to do to post-Holocaust stateless Jews. You, who rejected bombing the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz (while our bombers were flying over the town itself), and gave orders to the U.S. Navy to chase the German liner S.S. Saint Louis away from the Florida shoreline so its Jews wound up in Nazi ovens instead, now also insist that Jews cave in to all Arab demands regarding the disputed -- not "occupied" -- territories. There was no sovereign power legally in control of Judea and Samaria, the "West Bank," when Israel took control of these lands from Jordan in a war that the latter helped start by joining Egypt's Nasser in his adventures designed to eradicate Israel in May of 1967. The Hashemites had earlier seized those unapportioned parts of the Mandate -- open to settlement by all peoples -- in their earlier attempt, along with other Arab states, to nip a reborn Israel in the bud in 1948. Only Great Britain -- whose officers led the Transjordanian Arab Legion -- and Pakistan recognized this acquistion. Disputed...not occupied. You claim that Israel must stick to the "Green Line" of its 9-mile wide, armistice line-existence. I'll bet you folks drive further than that just to get to work. And let's not mention the territories our own nation came to possess, control, or manipulate -- some thousands of miles away -- in the name of our own national security interests. Does the name Manuel Noriega and dozens of others ring a bell? And what's Guam and Guantanimo Bay all about? No one else really had any choice in these matters -- and hundreds others like them -- did they? I'm not arguing that we didn't have our reasons...but we're the most powerful nation on Earth, and our borders extend three thousand miles from coast to coast. Is not a little empathy for our tiny, embattled ally -- Israel -- in order here in these same regards? You seem unable to figure out that Israel's 9-mile wide, artificially-imposed existence was a travesty of justice in desperate need of rectification. The post-'48 armistice lines were never meant to be final borders. I realize that you folks don't want the second Arab state that is to be created within the original borders of Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920 (Jordan emerging in 1922 on some 80% of the whole) to be a "bantustan," but whatever the size, shape, etc. that proposed 23rd Arab state might eventually be, justice demands that it must not come at the expense of security of the sole, miniscule, resurrected state of the Jews. But, then again, your colleagues opposed that resurrection in the first place. And, once again, I don't see them supporting a "roadmap" for some thirty million stateless Kurds either. It seems that justice for Arabs takes precedence over justice for everyone else with you guys. So understand the concerns that many of us have. You parrot the Arab call for Israel to return to those pre-Six Day War suicidal lines. Yet you know full well that the very architects of the final version of UN Resolution # 242 -- Eugene Rostow, Arthur Goldberg, etc. -- had no such plans in mind...despite what Arabs claim today. And they've written extensively about this, as have legal experts such as William O'Brien and others on related issues. While they did not envision Israel holding on to large amounts of territory, they also did not expect a return to the status quo ante given the fact that Israel had just fought a defensive war after being blockaded -- a casus belli -- at the Straits of Tiran and other hostile acts. And they stressed that any withdrawal must be linked to a total cessation of hostilities (not Arafat's temporary "Peace of the Quraysh" designed, in the Arabs' own words, as a "Trojan Horse") and the creation of secure and recognized borders to replace those fragile lines that you now insist Israel retreat to. Please don't offer the advice that Israel is prejudicing the outcome of negotiations. You know full well that Arabs still want all of Israel proper (take a look at their maps, websites, etc.)...so don't think that we're all stupid and expect them to agree to a permanent compromise over the disputed territories. Disputed...not "Palestinian" Arab lands. One more time. This must sink in...though I know it won't. As leading experts have explained, those lands were non-apportioned parts of the Mandate, and all residents of the Mandate had the right to settle there. Indeed, as recorded by the League of Nations' Permanent Mandates Commission and others as well, scores--if not hundreds--of thousands of Arabs poured into these areas and Israel proper from surrounding Arab states -- i.e. Arab settlers setting up Arab settlements -- because of Jewish capital developing the land. Why do you consider Arabs in these areas "legal" but Judeans -- Jews -- in Judea not? I'm sure that you're quite aware that most of Israel's population and industry lies in that narrow waist area bordering Judea and Samaria, the "West Bank." Those lands were not called by that latter name until British imperialism entered the scene in the early 20th century and Transjordan later seized the west bank of the Jordan River in 1948. Jews lived and owned land there until they were massacred by Arabs. Arabs would have never even known of Abraham's tomb in Hebron without the scriptures of the Jews they disembowel and despise. If Judea must become Judenrein, then should Israel become Arabrein? Think about that a bit. I can, unfortunately, build a better case for the latter than you can for the former. Israel has suffered, proportionally, many times over our 9/11. Yet, when tragedy hit our own home, you unleashed your leader's famous "Powell Doctrine"...massive retaliation against our enemies. B-52s, B-1s, Stealth bombers, cruise missiles, and such along with daisy cutter and bunker-buster bombs did our negotiating for us. And we insisted in toppling the regimes that were responsible and targeted their leaders. When we thought we knew where Saddam was dining, we leveled the place -- innocent civilians and all. In short, despite your claims of differences, the hypocrisy and double standards stink...and many red-blooded Americans are among those who smell the stench. Asking Israel to return to the Green Line when you know full well that Arabs have continuously responded that even a total Israeli withdrawal would still not make it "acceptable" is sickening. You're fully aware of the Arabs' "destruction in phases" strategy that they've spoken about since post-'67. Many of us were hoping--despite the continuous influence of Big Oil and other multinational corporations -- that the historical anti-Semitic, let alone anti-Zionist, stance of your Department could finally be moderated. Your current unfair demands of a beleaguered ally do not bode well for this. Your position is nothing short of a disgrace on the honor of our great nation. Hopefully the Administration will come to its senses. Israel, the sole State of the Jews, should not be expected to sacrifice itself on the petroleum-greased altar of international hypocrisy so that Arabs can have their 23rd. Now I know this will tick you off, but, like it or not, many see an analogy to pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and the Sudetenland here. You really don't want to buy "peace for all time " in Judea and Samaria today the way Mr. Chamberlain sacrificed his Czech "friends" to Hitler at Munich, do you? Demanding microscopic Israel to forsake necessary minor adjustments -- i.e. extending its width from nine to perhaps fifteen or twenty miles -- in light of the nature of the rejectionist enemy it faces is unfair, plain and simple. Other nations, including our own, have changed their borders and acquired territories for far less. Gerald A. Honigman is a contributing writer for Jewish Xpress magazine (http://www.jewishxpress.com), a monthly publication based in southern Florida. His background is in Middle Eastern Affairs. His articles and op-eds have been published in dozens of newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites all around the world. To Go To Top

VOICE OF JUDEA COMMENTARY Posted by Voice of Judea, March 23, 2004.

1. Egypt pulls out of peace celebrations Egypt is pulling out of celebrations of the Camp David peace accords in protest over the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin. "What peace? The world's on fire," Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Monday after Israeli helicopters killed Yassin, Hamas' founder, in Gaza. Friday marks 25 years since Egypt became the first Arab nation to make peace with Israel. Voice of Judea Commentary: Indeed, what peace? 2. Federman Rally - Dov Shurin Freedom Concert Jews from throughout Israel are expected to fill Zion Square in Jerusalem, Today at 6:00 PM in a demonstration demanding the release of Noam Federman, a resident of Hebron and former Kach activist who has been placed in jail, under administrative detention, without trial. Federman has been in jail for the past 6 months. Shaul Moufaz has recently signed for an additional six month administrative order. Federman is the only Jew under administrative detention in all of Israel. Many fear that the Israeli government will launch additional arrests to silence legal opposition to Sharon. At Tuesday's rally, Dov Shurin will be holding a free "Freedom Concert". 3. Anti-Semitism in Toronto More episodes of anti-Semitic vandalism took place in Toronto. Unknown perpetrators broke seven stained-glass windows at the Pride of Israel Synagogue and spray-painted swastikas and anti-Semitic messages at various locations along Bathurst Street. Also, United Jewish Appeals signs in the city were defaced and swastikas were painted on a clothing donation box. The damage was discovered Saturday morning. In a separate incident discovered early Sunday, 22 cemetery tombstones were toppled in the nearby Bathurst-Lawn Jewish Cemetery. The incidents took place only days after vandals spray-painted swastikas and hateful messages in a Jewish neighborhood in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. Voice of Judea Commentary: 10 Good Reasons To Come Home To Israel: 1- It's Jewish law to live in Eretz Israel. 2- For the spiritual sake of our children. 3- Anti-Semitism is rampant in the Exile. 4- Movies like the "Passion" fuel old passions? 5- Moslem inspired violence and hatred is spreading. 6- White Nazis and racists. 7- Black haters and haters. 8- Economic uncertainty and the Jewish scapegoat that always emerges. 9- Jews and Israel will be blamed for Islamic terrorists attacking U.S. targets, just as Spanish voters punished their government for the recent terror attacks. 10- There is no future for the Jew outside of Israel. 4- Why did Sharon kill Yasin now? According to all of the major political commentators in Israel, the timing of the Yassin assassination was in no way coincidental. All agree that Sharon timed the assassination with yesterday's no confidence motions, to neutralize right-wing opposition to his plans to soon surrender Jewish Gaza. Yasin's role in orchestrating massacres against Jews is nothing new to the Israeli security community. Israel intends on leaving Gaza proudly and not with their tail between their legs, as was the case when they left Lebanon under fire. Israel intends on hitting the Hamas hard until the withdrawal so as to diminish the feeling of victory on the part of the Arab terrorists. Voice of Judea Commentary: 1- In reality, Yasin is a reflection of general Arab sentiment in Gaza. The majority of Arabs support homicidal suicidal terrorist attacks against Jews. A recent Maariv poll showed that 25 percent of Arab children dream of killing themselves and Jews in a "Martyr's death". Yasin is not the problem. Just as Arafat is not the problem. We have a problem with a society that supports the annihilation of every Jew and the entire state of Israel. 2- There is nothing Israel can do that can turn their surrendering Gaza into a victory. Yes, Sharon can enjoy a short lived political victory among Jews, silencing his right wing opposition. But no Arab will consider the surrender of Gaza to be a victory for the Jews. The Jews are experts at creating a feeling of hope in the hearts of their enemies. Jews inspire the Arabs to kill more Jews by showing that they can achieve their goals through terror. The two most dangerous components are hate and hope. There is nothing we can do to get the Arabs to love us. But there is much that can be done to instill fear in their hearts and to shatter their belief that they are winning. Israel continues to build Arab hopes, aspirations and expectations with every additional concession. Every Israeli surrender strengthens the Arab resolve to intensify the fight against the Jews. Every surrender is interpreted as weakness by the Arabs. Everybody knows that Sharon is fighting a losing battle of! delusions and illusions by hitting at isolated Arab terrorist targets. Killing Yassin is a good thing. But killing Yassin and trying to convince us that this will in some way change the loss of Gaza into a victory is an exercise in futility. Killing Yassin takes on new meaning only if Israel decides to wipe out the Hamas and the PLO and to drive the hostile Arabs out of Gaza entirely. Then, it is a stepping stone in the right direction. Now it is being done with the opposite intention. Yassin was killed to facilitate the expulsion of the Jews and the surrender of Gaza, by neutralizing credible right wing opposition. The Arabs understand that Israel has one foot out of Gaza. Sharon may be fooling his pseudo right wing coalition but he is not fooling the Arabs. The Arabs know that Sharon has not declared war but that he is running away and trying to score political points at home, looking tough, to be able to carry out his surrender. Nobody on the right will bring Sharon down "while he is fighting a war against terrorism." Some people fight wars to win wars and save the lives of their citizens. It is not strange in military tactics to trap your enemy and fake defeat, or to sacrifice one battle to win the overall war. General Sharon is brilliant at tactics. Sharon is doing the exact opposite - he is staging a victory to be able to deliver surrender and defeat, in the end. Sharon has effectively crushed his right wing opposition as he marches on to surrender Gaza and parts of Judea and Samaria. Sharon is a dangerous man. He is dangerous to the people he marks as his enemy. In 1973 the Egyptians were his enemy. Now, after he has entered politics, his biggest enemies are the political forces that conspire against him. He has marked the Yesha enterprise as his new enemy and he will do whatever it takes to crush his political rivals. Don't be fooled by his renewed fighting spirit. However, things may spiral out of control, forcing Sharon out of office or forcing him to commence a real war against the Arabs. The website address of Voice of Judea is http://www.voiceofjudea.com. Subscribe by writing listmaster@voiceofjudea.net To Go To Top

FATAH CALLS ISRAEL "OCCUPIED" Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 22, 2004.

When Fatah owned up to having lunched the fatal attack in Ashdod, in the State of Israel, it called that municipality "occupied territory." (IMRA, 3/14.) Fatah is under the control of Arafat, who also controls the P.A.. Thus we find that the Arabs use the term "occupied," loosely. To the Arabs, "occupied" territory is land they once had seized. They use the term without regard to its established meaning. They use it as a pejorative, to manipulate politically correct people. Like Pavlov's dogs, politically correct people act on cue when they hear certain loaded terms. Since the P.A. calls Israel occupied, it would all the more easily attack Israel again if it had sovereignty over Yesha, which it currently is seeking. Many leftists cannot see beyond the Arabs' immediate demands for land. The leftists mistakenly assume, contrary to Arab doctrine, with which they studiously are unfamiliar, that if the Arabs' immediate demands were met, their thirst for land would be quenched. In assisting the Arabs' to meet their immediate demands, however, Israeli leftists take a self-defeating step in assisting the Arabs to meet their further demands. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

SUBVERSION IN THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 22, 2004.

[We excluding those genuine unbiased hard-working diplomats.] Some officials and bureaucrats in the U.S. State Department have friends in high places that have never been investigated for their personal advocacy of nations hostile to the U.S. Often it appears that segments of the State Department has become a magnet, a refuge and an operational base for individuals who have their own agenda with loyalties to foreign and business interests inconsistent with the best interests of the American people. During WWII several well-researched books demonstrate that the State Department officials had become fellow travelers with certain German interests. (1) This includes banking, industry, saving SS Generals and, above all, protecting industrialists who engaged in slave labor during WWII. Thus, the State Department joined in de facto and de jure maneuvers with Hitler's planned "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". There is little doubt that the State Department has been and remains virulently anti-Semitic with policies that conflict with those of the American public. No organization worked as hard to defeat the partitioning of Israel into a homeland for the Jews than the State Department - in deference to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, etc. When they lost that battle in 1948, they dedicated themselves to pro-Arab/anti-Israel manipulations both in Washington and through the Embassies or Consulates of the 22 Arab and/or Muslim countries. Add to that the Embassies and Consulates in those European countries who not only had a bias against Jews but were tight with the Arab Muslim nations who wanted Israel destroyed. Do the expressions come to mind such as: "Crimes Against Humanity", "War Crimes" or "Genocide"? The State Department's Middle East desk knew very well that the Saudis taught hatred of America as well as hatred of Jews and Christians. Their "madrassas" (Islamic schools that teach radical fundamentalist Islam) were not hidden but, the State Department bureaucrats closed their eyes in deference to the special linkage to both Saudi Arabia and the American oil companies who had enormous influence at the Sate Department. Then, of course, there are those diplomats who, having collaborated with their host government while employed by America, leave their post and go to work privately in Washington for very high salaries to lobby Congress, the Administration and continue to "unofficially" work with these old pals at State. Even today, with the exposure of the Saudis financing world Islamic Terror, there has not been a call by Congress or the President to investigate the Saudi connection to Global Terror or 9/11. Three thousand Americans (and others) were snuffed out in a few minutes by 15 Saudis and 4 Egyptians, with the State Department scurrying about to control the damage to these nations. One would think that the State Department is independent of the United States presidential administrations and, in many aspects, you would be correct. The media have remained silent lest they lose their connection at State and not slipped those tips State wants leaked. After 9/11, in the belly of the beast, the phone wires were burning up with calls to journalists, editors, publishers, TV news anchors to downplay or, at least, to soften the impression to the American people. After all, it was the Saudis and Egyptians who had to be shielded from the rage of the American people. According to State, 'somehow' the Saudi government and/or the Egyptian government were not really anti-American and the State Department rolled over. Today, based upon required reports to the Congress about Palestinian compliance with their Oslo obligations, the State Department is the key to $200 million taxpayers' dollars going to Arab and the Palestinian Authority every year. It was the legal requirement by Congressional rule that the State Department was to be the gatekeeper in terms of a yearly report of PA compliance. Every year the pro-Arab, anti-Semitic State Department falsified its report to the Congress that, indeed, Arafat and the P.A. had complied with the requirement of No Terror. Normally, for such continuous fraud on the Congress through falsified reports, one would think there would be an investigation. Perhaps even a few of these scoundrels should be spending some years in the Federal Penitentiary but, no. They were protected by friends in high places or possibly they had certain knowledge against Presidents and Congressmen of deeds that they were complicit in what amounted to old-fashioned blackmail "J. Edgar Hoover" style through secret file. (I wonder where Hoover's blackmail files finally ended up?) The State Department was shielded for its years of acting as enablers to allow potentially dangerous Islamists free immigration - totally safe from investigation. They browbeat the FBI and CIA so that even the most egregious acts by Arabs Muslims against American interests were not to be investigated. Should one of the 'sleeper cells' of radical Islamo-facism manage to hit any of our cities again, you might thank the U.S. State Department for their assistance in opening the gates for Arab/Muslim immigration from even the rogue Terrorist nations to allow them entry without carful screening. Did Congress call for an inquiry into the State Department's assistance to Arab nations - resulting in those 'sleeper cells' or into the universities loaded with Muslim extremists, many enrolled in classes for Nuclear Physics, Biology and Chemistry? The Blame Game centered on the FBI who, indeed, failed its mandate but not because they personally chose to ignore Islamists and Muslims raising money for Terror via organizations with 'Charity-sounding' names. The FBI was a convenient fall guy to protect the State Department who quashed any investigations of Arabs or Muslims lest their Arab-friendly nations be offended. Any diligent FBI or CIA agent knew very well that investigating Arabs and/or Muslims before 9/11 could bring down the wrath of the State Department so due diligence wasn't a good career move. It was very strange that they knew who the hijacking bombers were by 9/12. That information was in the 'inbox' of the various surveillance agencies but they had not read it yet or they had no Arab speakers to interpret it. This is still a major failing derived from the "hear no evil, speak no evil" attitude at State descending down to the FBI and CIA. It would appear that the State Department has a dark, subversive side as indicated from its protection of war criminals during and after the German Nazi period, through their Arabist period, through 9/11 Terrorist period and onward. Unlike presidents who can serve only up to 8 years or Congressmen and women who can serve until voted out of office, the U.S. State Department is a perpetual motion machine. Its staff can stay until they either retire or die. Which means that this institution which pretends to adhere to Presidential or Congressional policy when, in fact, they do pretty much as they please. Governments come and go but, State is there forever. Like many corporations that do not clean house periodically, you have lots of dead wood and mouse droppings in dusty corners at State. (No wonder they call it "Foggy Bottom".) There is no real oversight by Congress so those with special connections to special interests never get ferreted out. Congress has no idea how many Aldrich Ames, Hansens or Walker brothers (spies finally discovered in the CIA), or other moles are embedded at State who owe their loyalty to European nations, Arab oil dictatorships or multi-national oil and energy corporations. No investigations, no audits, no probing, no accountability for false reports to the Congress or to the nation. This institution who all assume is harnessed to American interests and the voice of the people is more like a giant computer who unplugged itself long ago and no one noticed that it was running on its own power and for its own power. (Like "Hal" in the 2001 Space Odyssey?) As I said earlier, perhaps State has the dirt on many politicians who fear to get tough on this "unholy" mechanism. It would appear that the State Department's tail is indeed wagging the dog of American foreign policy. This a dangerous condition for a democratic nation which should be challenged and changed. Let us demand that the investigative media start digging underground, Woodward & Bernstein style to force a reluctant Congress to clean up the State Department's house. Bounce the subversives with allegiance to other interests. Put the bit back in the teeth of this runaway animal. We have had our first 9/11 with others to follow. We do not need an institution who feels that it must protect terrorist nations based upon commerce or diplomats who find pricy employment after they leave State. Let's have at it! Send this to your local and national media and to the Congress, demanding a real investigation as opposed to those phony constituted pleasing hearings where a few Congressman look good but do absolutely nothing. ### Short List of Key References "The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law & Genocide in the 20th Century" by Christopher Simpson Grove Press NY 1993 "The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People - 1920-1992" by John Loftus & Mark Aarons St. Martin's Press 1994 "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans & the Holocaust" by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen Alfred A. Knopf New York 1996 "Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq" by Alan Friedman Bantam Books New York 1993 "The Death Lobby: How the West Armed Iraq" by Kenneth Timmerman Houghton Mifflin New York 1991 "The American House of Saud: the Secret Petro-dollar Connection" by Steven Emerson Franklin Watts New York 1985 "The High Cost of Peace: How Washington's Middle East Policy Left America Vulnerable to Terrorism" by Yossef Bodansky by Prima Publishing of Random House California 2002 "Betrayal: The Story of Aldrich Ames, An American Spy" by Tim Weiner, David Johnston & Neil A. Lewis Random House New York 1995 Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

PRESIDENT BUSH - SANCTION SYRIA Posted by Jerusalem Prayer Team, March 22, 2004.

The Bush administration is facing a deadline set by the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act, and must soon determine what sanctions to institute against the government of Bashar al-Asad. Why are these sanctions necessary? 1. Syria continues to provide an open pipeline for Islamic terrorists (or as they are called in Syria, "resistance volunteers") to ply their deadly trade against the U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq, and against the Iraqi people. # Despite a promise to Secretary of State Colin Powell, Asad has provided Hizballah with 220-millimeter rockets capable of threatening Israeli cities. The Syrian secret police have taken up residence in Lebanon to maintain control over the Lebanese people, and to keep open another pipeline for Hizballah terrorists to gain access to Israel. (Syria made a show of reigning in Hizballah only after Israel struck a terrorist training camp near Damascus in October 2003.) # Syria provided night-vision goggles, antitank weapons, aircraft parts and ammunition to Hussein's forces. # A State Department spokesperson stated last May: "They [Syria] have allowed al-Qaeda personnel to come in and virtually settle in Syria with Asad's knowledge and support." # Terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to operate in Syria, apparently with Asad's blessing. Because of unrest in Syria in the form of unprecedented demonstrations in support of President Bush, Washington faces the challenge of being able to use this internal discontent as leverage for encouraging changes in the Asad regime's behavior. It is time for the Bush administration to implement the Syrian Accountability Act set forth in May 2003. Sign our letter to President Bush asking him to Stop Syria! The purpose of that document is: To halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of weapons of mass destruction, cease its illegal importation of Iraqi oil, and hold Syria accountable for its role in the Middle East, and for other purposes. In spite of the fact that Israel has totally complied with UN Resolution 425 (total withdrawal of all troops from Lebanon) Syria permits attacks on civilian targets in Israel. The Israeli-Lebanese border and much of southern Lebanon are under the control of Hizballah, which continues to attack Israeli positions and allows Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other militant groups to operate freely in the area, destabilizing the entire region. Sign the letter to President Bush today asking him to impose the necessary sanctions on Syria to halt the infiltration of terrorists from Syria into Iraq. The lives of American service men and women are at stake. A democratic government in Iraq is at stake. The ability to halt future attacks inside the borders of Israel is at stake. The Jerusalem Prayer Team is a prayer movement of people, whose members include some 300 prominent Christian leaders. Its website address is http://www.jerusalemprayerteam.org To Go To Top

THE WORLD'S DOUBLE STANDARD IN CONDEMNING ISRAEL Posted by Leo Rennert, March 22, 2004.

Since the turn of the century, under the "spiritual" direction of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, Hamas launched 425 terrorist attacks against Israel that killed 377 people and wounded more than 2,000. On a per-capita comparison scale, these atrocities dwarf the 9/11 toll by a factor of more than six times. Yet world leaders who now condemn Israel raised no protest when President Bush, in the aftermath of 9/11, approved plans to hunt down and eliminate leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban. Battered by more than three years of Hamas atrocities, Israel adopted the same strategy and caught up with the perpetrator-in-chief. If Osama Bin Laden, al Qaeda's "spiritual leader," suffered the same fate, would Israel's critics also shed tears? To Go To Top

AMERICAN BAPTIST MINISTERS VISIT GUSH KATIF, GAZA Posted by Dror Vanunu, March 22, 2004.

Forty-five Baptist ministers and a USArmy reserves general visited Gush Katif on Friday. The ministers, from States as diverse as Indiana, Iowa, Oklahoma, Maryland, Texas, Illinois and Washington. The group visited Kfar Darom, met with soldiers, visited the hothouses of Anita Tucker in Nezer Hazani, and heard talks by Ami Shaked and Moshe Saperstein in Neve Dekalim. The ministers expressed their support for the brave residents of Gush Katif, and their strong opposition to PM Sharon's disengagement plan. The sole diplomatic initiative they support would be the annexation by Israel of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. They promised that immediately upon return to the US they would lobby the Bush administration to stop Sharon's plan. To Go To Top

THE BASIS BY WHICH GOVERNMENTS STAND: Building An Alliance Among its Allied Peoples Posted by Yocheved Golani and Moshe Kerr, March 22, 2004.

Israel's Domestic Dilemma The Jewish nation is terribly divided against itself (a fact evidenced by emigration statistics, spats between secularists and religious Jews and between various groups of religious Jews, six economically crippling Histadrut strikes in the past eighteen months). As a body, it is threatened by the lack of a solution to the lingering and explosive Genocidal War on Israeli Jews and an international boycott. Pressures upon Israel's governing body and military from the World Court, the UN, and international boycotts are further deteriorating the direction of the Knesset and the military and thus local morale. Our multicultural people, who vary widely in their worldviews, are presently confused as to the role of Israel's government, and the government seems rather unstable given the five and counting no-confidence votes of March 2004. Israel is haunted by the need for a defense from hostile, genocidal residents and hostile, genocidal neighboring countries, international censure, an ongoing debate regarding a Jewishly versus secularly accented body of law, etc. Israel needs to reengineer itself, to be reborn as a functional, healthy society. As former Chief Rabbi Meir Lau announced at the March 15-17 2004 Jerusalem conference and at a Labor party meeting three years ago, "... After 55 years, the Knesset has not, to this day, found the time to take five days and discuss what exactly this Jewish State we have created is meant to be. The words 'Jewish State' are mentioned 22 times in Israel's Declaration of Independence - not "State of the Jews" but rather "Jewish State" - and yet the Knesset has never found time to define just what that means." Future Stability for Israel Depends on Capable Leadership and a Productive Internal Alliance Given all that, future stability for our State depends upon capable leadership and the alliance that it must develop among Israel's citizens. Statecraft of this nature for the tiny Jewish homeland requires an intra-Jewish diplomacy of dialogue rather than the baffling, counterproductive behind-closed-doors policies that apparently reign today (Prime Minister Sharon's hotly contested Unilateral Withdrawal Plan is but one example of such policies). Israelis want to stand up for themselves, and perhaps they would if they could only determine who they are and what they want as a body politic. Open communication channels would require that the citizens of the Jewish State assume upon themselves the obligations of sharing an alliance with all inhabitants of the land: defense from hostile, genocidal residents and hostile, genocidal neighboring countries, international censure, a Jewishly versus secularly accented body of law, etc. Peoples not willing to accept the responsibilities of this alliance would consequently lose political or economic rights. It thus would not be in the interests of disagreeable or murderous foreigners to stay or to live in Israel for long. Israel would retaliate against internal and external dissent in order to protect the majority members of its consensual society. An illustration of this principle is to think of how unwise it is to commit mass murder and mayhem on the US and its allies. The US and her allies track the whereabouts of resident enemies, limiting access to sensitive locations and information, and imprisoning, deporting or executing malcontents who threaten the safety and freedoms of law-abiding citizens. Alliances Determine a Society's Agenda and its Domestic Ethical Containment Force The first task of any new, democratic government is to form an alliance with the diverse, possibly dispersed peoples it will govern. Then the "led" members of that society will be able to understand and to approve of the government's agenda. The consensus can also give rise to understandings that will be protected on the formative, defining and public documents of the society and to its desired domestic accomplishments. As the alliance between the governing body and the governed public develops, a moral code or domestic ethical containment force is inevitably and simultaneously established (within those protective documents). The moral borders of an established society would naturally and simultaneously rest on the cultural alliance(s) of the people within that society. With the alliance thus accomplished and the issues settled, statecraft can commence. It would make a good case scenario for beleaguered Israel. Statecraft Commences and Endure Statecraft requires great wisdom on behalf of political leaders and political advisors so that a society's alliance endures. In Israel's case, political leaders must consider, then resolve several pressing issues such as "How Israel will build its people and lands in the face of ethnic differences," "What measurements Israeli leaders will employ in order to ascertain Israel's success and failure?" (e.g., Economic wealth? Military supremacy over hostile regional states? Moral Imperatives to which other entities must acquiesce?). Open Dialogue as a Primary Function within Allied Israel Once the primary function of an institutionalized, allied Israeli government became established (those open channels of dialog among its allied peoples during crises of heated dispute), less pressing matters, whatever they prove to be, would become secondary issues. A strong economy would certainly become a strong candidate for a secondary issue. For Israel, a strong economy can perhaps be more easily attained than popularly believed. According to Globus' year 2001 report, Israel's Gross Domestic Product stood at $13,330.00. Syria ranked $3,280.00, Egypt $3,520 and Turkey $5,890.00. According to NASDAQ, Israel is technologically poised to dominate the debuting WI-FI industry in 2004. Israel's Automatically Unifying Force Before Israel becomes an economic force to be reckoned with, it has to make sure that the country doesn't collapse of its own cultural weight. Israel's multitude of Jews hails from different parts of the world, with vastly different world-views and cultural experiences. Therefore, Israel's unification must lie with a common denominator that overrides uncontrollably varied experiences unique to former localities and ways of life. A unified Israel's definition of desired domestic accomplishments also must speak in a language broad enough so that her diverse peoples can build trust-based, working relationships with one another, relationships that imply mutually agreed-upon terms of responsibility and liability. Quite naturally, the language of such a social contract must rest on a common value system and knowledge base. That's simple to say, complex but necessary to achieve. Luckily for Israel, a 2,500-year old solution exists in the Torah, Judaism's sacred text of history and nascent law. It is what Rabbi Lau alluded to in his recent remarks. Jewish leadership can guide and direct its peoples with the historically enduring tool of Toraitic laws of adjudication, a thread binding our peoples because it is woven through the fabric of our common history and common exile among the nations. A Divine Authority leads the Torah's laws of self-determining statehood. Those laws encompass economic enterprise and economic policies that demand nominal charitable contributions and courts of law. These laws have always been applicable to all Jews, regardless of individual adherence to Toraitic law, and to non-Jewish residents in Israel. This reality exists because the Torah's form of government does not stand upon religious faith but upon Justice. The commitment to ensure the sanctity of Toraitic law requires tremendous moral strength. The issues, then, become 1) Who is morally suitable to apply these laws on a judicial basis and 2) How do they develop a government whose sole purpose rests upon establishing dialog among its allied peoples? Political Science Reality and Torah-true Israel Torah-true leadership places constitutional limits (these exist in the body of halacha, Jewish law) upon public servants by limiting how legislation can be imposed upon its governed populations. Any government institution or political party with an agenda that establishes laws not based upon interpreting the intent of the Torah/Constitution constitutes as an illegal seizure of power and a revolution against the constitutional authority of the Torah. Historic precedent proves this to be true: When King Saul became the government rather than an agent of the government, his kingship deteriorated. A Jewish king does not constitute the head of government. The institutional body that interprets the intent of the Constitution is the head of State and the king functions as an agent of the State. The king's function is to enforce the laws that a judicial legislature interprets. A law has no legal mandate if it lacks precedent, a logical basis with the Constitution (Toraitic and otherwise). Achieving Priorities This rigorous discipline of interpreting the Constitution (based on Toraitic Law in Israel's case) enables the judicial legislature to employ the same logical techniques for applying diplomacy among Israel's allied heterogeneous population. The goal of that Toraitic constitution is for disparate groups among our allied peoples to enjoy equal opportunities to talk with, rather than at, one another. Once a stable Israeli government supplies a forum in which heterogeneous populations can communicate and understand the intents and/or perspective of differing and opposing populations, we can then focus upon other secondary issues such as foreign policy If You Can't Comply with the State of Israel, You Will Not Benefit from it As a nation among the Community of Nations, Israel possesses a mandate that determines the parameters of the Jewish State. Arabs and any other non-Jews who desire to live within the borders of the State and enjoy the benefits of Israeli citizenship must accept the obligation of also making a solemn alliance with the constitutional authority of the state (resident alien, or Ger Toshav in Hebrew). That alliance is known as the Seven Noachide Commandments (Shivat Mitzvot B'nai Noach). Refusal to accept the Noachide obligations of the Israel's government instructs the king to remove these illegal populations from the lands of Israel. Arabs and other non-Jews who accept the alliance of Noach with the Zionist state may volunteer to serve in the army, and enjoy the benefits of citizenship. Private beliefs cannot be legislated away, and a Toraitic allowance is made for such differences. Outside the Muslim or any other non-Jewish home in Israel, the only legitimate non-Jewish lifestyle is compliance with Shivat Mitzvot B'nai Noach. Zionism does not recognize the principal of separation of State and religion. Zionism does not deny the existence belief in foreign gods among the nations and therefore isn't occupied with validating or denying other belief systems. However, the Creator has a sworn covenant with His people, the Jews to, establish justice in our lands. Torah law is not a merely a belief system. Our covenant/brit with the Creator does not depend on our personal beliefs in the event that we lose our awareness of Him. It depends on the commandment He gave for acquiescence to Torah law, whether or not we like it, whether or not we want to comply. The obligation and the measure of Zionist statecraft therefore rest upon establishing Justice/Diplomacy among our allied peoples, the measure of Israel's wisdom. By this measure alone shall Israel stand among the community of nations. Other forms of statecraft fall in the category of non-Jewish political philosophy. Allied Israel Chai! Psalm 105:8-15 specifies that G-D deeds Israel to the Jews. For anyone who unquestioningly accepted King David's premise and poetry, who never had it expunged from their liturgy, it's a hypocritical development after two thousand of years of singing Psalms in church to suddenly dispute Jewish claims to The Land of Israel. It is unconscionable to support Israel's detractors as she strives to protect her borders. An allied Israel working with the consensus of its disparate residents will not be threatened with annihilation from within or without. An allied Israel will be able to defend its integrity swiftly and rationally. As King David sang in Psalm 129:4-5, (G-D will cut the ropes of the wicked/Let them be ashamed and turn back, all who hate Zion). As Israel considers the outcomes of the raging genocide upon Israel's Jews, the recent B'Sheva Conference and the candidacy of Moshe Feiglin, an Allied Israel is a matter of increasing urgency. Sidebar: The forum through which the government enables disparate allied groups currently in dispute over particular issues is not a building in which representatives of the divergent allied parties may come and talk together. Rather, it is diplomats sent by the government to gather and to compile opinions, statements and views of each disparate party, employing the same logical tools used by the judicial legislature that interprets the Torah as the constitution of the State. By those same means the judicial legislature may judge the intent of parties in dispute and by means of diplomats convey how they interpret the intent of all parties involved in the particular dispute to all parties. If the disputing parties still fail to resolve their dispute the party/ies may ask the judicial legislature to rule on the case and empower the king to enforce their ruling. The end result would be for Israel's multifaceted population to be at odds with itself, a reality illustrated by the present debate over withdrawal and several subsequent no-confidence votes within the Knesset. Israel has thus been distracted from minding more fundamental issues, such as shoring up an economy reeling from the international boycott related to the genocide, and to a dismal educational system that is more patchwork than pedagogy. The country is in dire need of a solution in order to thrive. To Go To Top

HAMAS SAYS: "YOU CAN'T KILL OUR KILLERS!" Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 22, 2004.

It's instructive to observe Arab terrorists claim the right to plan terror, murder innocent civilians but, when their leaders are attacked, they cry "unfair". Israel's pin-point bomb killed the Palestinian counterpart of Osama Bin Laden, the Sheik Ahmed Yassin, founder and spiritual leader of the prime terrorist organization of Hamas on Monday morning March 22. Arab Muslims are threatening bloody revenge - which would ironic if the facts of their unremitting terror were not irrefutable facts. Hamas in their hysterical frustration, screams it will take revenge against Israel and America. Here again, terror speaks as they use any excuse to kill any non-Muslims who oppose them. It is true that America, like Israel, is fighting terror. But the Terrorists want a one-way street, that is - to kill but not to be killed. Sheik Yassin was in every way the Arab Palestinian twin of Osama Bin Laden in terms of his responsibility for planning and promoting more deaths than any other terror group. Sheik Yassin cynically used the religion of Islam to send women and children (as well as boys and men) to blow themselves up in order to kill hundreds and maim thousands of Israelis. Hamas means "zeal" in Arabic and is responsible for more homicide bombing deaths than any other terrorist groups. Some of the news pundits are trying to soften his image with an appeal for sympathy by portraying him as a quadriplegic in a wheel chair. Do they believe him less of a terrorist because he had debilities from a childhood accident? Besides hundreds of dead Israelis (as well as Americans, Arabs and Christians) hundreds more will live in wheelchairs for the rest of their lives and many have nails in their bodies from the bombs Yassin sent. It is true that America is trying to kill Osama Bin Laden and his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawaziri for planning and enabling terror, especially as 9/11. This is what the nations must do to fight terror. Hamas, echoed by Fatah, called for vengeance against Israeli and Jewish targets overseas, because their typical Muslim killer was himself responsible for hundreds of killings and wounding of thousands more. Hamas called on Muslims the owrld over to join battle against Israel. So, why isn't it 'OK' for Israel to seek vengeance on their killers or to pre-emptively prevent more violent terrorist attacks? Not so - according to Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak who says killing Yassin was a "cowardly act". This is the word from Mubarak who has personally allowed Arab Palestinian smuggling tunnels to include terrorists transiting Egypt into Gaza unimpeded. Yassin said publically in a FOX NEWS interview with Jennifer Griffin: "All Israel from the Jordan to the Mediterranean is Islamic land. I issued a "Fatwa" (Islamic religious edict) to resist Americans in Iraq. Legal and right to fight the Americans". (Taped earlier, rebroadcast March 22) Muslim terrorist leaders are saying this is an attack on Islam. Perhaps these Muslims have forgotten that it was Yassin who issued "Fatwas" for Islam to war on Israel and America. This was followed by homicide bombings and suicide attacks, further proving that Islam was at war - not only against Israel and America but, the entire non-Muslim West. For a brief moment we have seen the old warrior, Arik Sharon, emerge to protect his people. Will he continue? No one knows. Israel has rid the world of a terrorist murderer. American should be proud if she can do the same. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

RESPONSES TO TERROR Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, March 22, 2004.

So yesterday morning I was lamenting to my husband that even if we in Israel saw Arafat's head served-up on a silver platter tomorrow, how could we celebrate the event or even laugh after so much damage, trauma and grief etc...etc...etc... But by last night I was laughing as the news broke about twins being born to 54 year old Margaret Kikis. Two years ago, the Kikis's son, Beni -a medic in the IDF, was killed in a terror attack. But that family wasted no time in reaffirming their commitment to life. As the new mom said, "It's not an exchange. It's a completion. It's a continuation." What a brilliant response to terror!! So, it was a little out of character, but I poured myself a glass of white wine and said a private Mazal Tov and L'Chaim to the Kikis family. And at 6:30AM this morning I saw the news reports coming off of the Internet about the demise of Yassin and company, and I cried for joy. My husband, who had returned from early minyan with one of my sons, burst in the door and asked if it was true. In a highly uncommon response, he pulled a bottle of vodka down from the shelf and made a L'Chaim. On the last day of Adar, our joy was increased and we had a second taste of Purim. I can now look forward to the miracles of Nissan. Is it too early to celebrate? Am I being reckless? Shouldn't I be quaking and waiting for the Arab's fury to be unleashed? Well, I am apprehensive about what will be, but Sharon's response (as delayed as it was) was obligatory, and a continued and unrelenting military response is required of us. The worst thing we could do at this time would be to listen to the messages coming out of the White House and show "restraint". We have a long overdue job to perform and we must not hesitate! I noticed that Jack Straw was one of the first European voices to respond. He said Israel was not entitled to carry out "this kind of unlawful killing, which we condemn." Well, my response to British Foreign Secretary Straw can be taken directly from Obadia 1:18. I won't quote it here for fear of being accused of incitement. We Jews have not kicked off World War III, but the groundwork may have been laid on the White House lawn just over a decade ago. The only Anti-Semitic response I'm really concerned about is the one that could come from all the good people of this world who have been waiting for a proper response to terror on the part of Israel. They want to know why we we've spent so much time listening to the voices of the world who plan our demise rather than taking care of the snakes that have been allowed to propagate in our backyard. In addition to a decisive military reaction, prayer on the part of all of us would be a good response. So, may all of the extreme anger and rage that has been generated by Yassin's death fall upon those who mourn for him. Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

SHEIKH YASSIN'S 'HAPPIEST DAY' Posted by Honest Reporting, March 22, 2004.

Early Monday morning, the IDF struck and killed Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas. Since early media reports misrepresented the IDF strike in a number of fundamental ways, HonestReporting encourages subscribers to be on the lookout for these four myths, and to respond appropriately with the facts: MYTH 1: The Yassin strike will escalate the violence Nearly all news reports claimed within the first two sentences that the IDF strike is "likely to escalate violence," and constitutes "an enormous gamble by Sharon" that "risks triggering a dramatic escalation in bloodshed." (Associated Press) This claim - which belongs on the editorial page, not in the same breath as the actual news report of the event - was so widespread that one almost forgets that it represents only the Palestinian position: The official PA statement characterized the Israeli strike as inviting "more violence and further escalation." The absent Israeli position: Though terrorist efforts may increase temporarily, in the long run the elimination of Yassin will upset Hamas' leadership and violent capabilities, and serve as an essential deterrent to ongoing Palestinian terror. As Israeli spokesman Avi Pazner said: His elimination will serve peace in the long run. He is personally responsible for all the most dreadful attacks in Israel. He was a dangerous extremist Islamic ideologist. He was danger to the entire region. By eliminating this threat to peace we will improve chances for a better Middle East. Responsible news reports should either convey both positions, or neither. MYTH 2: Yassin was an impotent old man BBC profiled Yassin as "a frail man who could barely see. His voice was thin and quavering." The Evening Standard prominently quoted the UK Foreign Secretary, who said "he did not believe that Israel would benefit from the killing of an old man in a wheelchair." Actually, Yassin was in a wheelchair since age 12, when a sporting accident left him paralyzed. It's self-evident, therefore, that being wheelchair-bound never hampered Yassin's ability to orchestrate unprecedented terror - he founded Hamas in 1987 and proved perfectly capable of building the organization to its current strength from a sitting position. Moreover, Yassin has had enough wherewithal in the recent years to direct dozens of heinous terrorist attacks, leaving Yassin's hands drenched in Israeli blood. HonestReporting encourages readers to check that articles present this essential information on Yassin's terror record. AP completely omitted any reference to Yassin's connection to terrorism until the final sentence of their report, and then only referred to Israel "blaming" Yassin for "inspiring" Hamas bombers. MYTH 3: Yassin was a 'spiritual leader' who deserved immunity AFP, like most agencies, described Yassin as "the Islamist movement's spiritual guide," which suggests to a western audience that Yassin operated in a peaceful, contemplative realm aside from the violence, and was therefore unfairly targeted by the IDF. BBC went so far to say Yassin was "a powerful inspiration for young Palestinians disillusioned with the collapse of peace hopes." CNN calls Yassin a spiritual leader (unquoted), but then puts scare quotes around Israel's reference to him as a "terrorist." Actually, Yassin's brand of 'spirituality' is the very ideological and emotional fuel that drives Palestinian (and worldwide Islamic) terrorism, the plague of our age. Yassin continually called for suicide terrorism as a religious obligation, and even said about himself that "the day in which I will die as a shahid [martyr] will be the happiest day of my life." (Al-Quds, July 26, 1998) As Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Sofer said: [Yassin] was not a spiritual leader. This term does injustice to the term 'spiritual leader' and an insult to real spiritual leaders. He was a terrorist mastermind. MYTH 4: Israel's strike creates a western threat of Islamic terror After Hamas released a statement that threatened radical Islamic retaliation beyond Israel's borders, AP called this an 'unprecedented' threat, triggered by Israel: For the first time, Hamas also threatened the United States, saying America's backing of Israel made the assassination possible...In the past, Hamas leaders have insisted their struggle is against Israel and that they would not get involved in causes by militant Muslims in other parts of the world. Today's statement suggested that Hamas might seek outside help in carrying out revenge attacks, since its capabilities have been limited by Israeli military strikes. This is simply untrue - Yassin himself had long called upon world Islamic terrorists to join with Hamas in global jihad. MEMRI reported in March, 2003 that on the Hamas website, "Sheikh Ahmad Yassin called on the Islamic nation 'to strike at Western interests everywhere if Iraq is conquered.'" And just two weeks ago, Hamas announced its commitment to "the global level of the Islamic world" as the reason for its choosing British suicide bombers to murder Israelis at Tel Aviv's Mike's Place in 2003. Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about ISrael. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com To Go To Top

LET THEM CATERWAUL - IT IS TIME TO CELEBRATE Posted by Steven Plaut, March 22, 2004.

It does not Matter what the Israel Bashers Now Say And it does not matter that it is much too little and much too late. It does not matter that the anti-Semitic scum of the world is already whining that the assassination of the Bloody Sheikh, the genocidal Yassin, was "illegal" and an "obstacle" to peace. Any peace for which the killing of Yassin is an "obstacle" is one that should be prevented at all costs. It does not matter that Israeli leftists, including Avraham Poraz from the Shinui party, are already denouncing the killing of the sheikh and would no doubt also denounce a targeted assassination of Hitler had they been alive in 1943, or the targeted assassination of Haman. It does not matter that the Sharon people are already trying to offset the international heat by expounding the new "goodwill gestures" they hope to make to appease Arafat and his stormtroopers. Gaza was the Biblical military center of the Philistines, and Sharon is officially pledged to recreating a center for Philistine barbarism there. It does not matter that all those do-gooders and bleeding hearts now caterwauling about Israel's "provocation" have long forgotten that under Oslo it was the legal obligation of the PLO itself to assassinate Sheikh Yassin, and that it was only in exchange for such an obligation that Yossi Beilin and his sandbox crew promised to turn the West Bank and Gaza over to the PLO in the first place. It does not matter that even as Arafat is screaming his love for the genocidal sheikh and proclaiming official PLO support for this his beloved comrade in arms and for Yassin's program of genocide, the Left is denouncing Israel's "act of terrorism". It does not matter that Ariel Sharon showed cowardice in not also mowing down the Hamas "mourners" marching in the Bloody Sheikh's funeral procession. It does not matter that the same people screaming how inhumane it was for Israel to kill the mass murderer who happened to be confined to a wheelchair never had anything to say about the Palestinian terrorists tossing Leon Klinghoffer overboard. It does not matter that the British Foreign Minister thinks assassinating the nazi sheikh was an awful provocation, but cheered to the skies when the sons of Saddam Hussein were dispatched and their photos splashed on the network screens. It does not matter that the media will quickly revert to its position that Israel must be prevented from undertaking any action against terrorism besides total capitulation. It does not matter that this was the first act in well over a decade by Israel that gave some credence to the slogan of "Never Again", a decade otherwise characterized by craven cowardice and appeasement. It does not matter that the same Bush administration and US media who spent the weekend cheering because they thought the number two al-Qaida leader had been killed in Pakistan are now suddenly all squeamish about the killing of Arab Islamofascist terrorist leaders. It does not matter that the Israeli political establishment is maintaining a blind eye to the open identification with the Hamas and its leaders by so many Israeli Arabs. It does not even matter that Israeli super-comic Eli Yatzpen, well known for his impression of the nazi sheikh, will now need to come up with some new material. It does not matter that Israel's Tenured Traitors are already turning out their Op-Eds for the world newspapers who lease their services in order to denounce Israel's "crime". It does not matter that Yassin should have been killed decades ago and that he would have been vaporized last year had not Ariel Sharon feared using a heavy-enough bomb, one that might have produced "collateral damages". It does not matter that some Israeli Far Leftists were already endorsing "negotiations" with the Hamas and so will now declare that Israel has lost a golden opportunity to make peace. Gaza is where the injured Samson took his revenge on the barbarians. The world politicians and the media may be bewailing this uncharacteristic manifestation of Israeli courage. Let them. For, you see, the very best commentary on the effects of the assassination of this nazi sheikh is not on the BBC nor on CNN nor in the NY Times. The best commentary is Chapter 15 of Exodus: The Nations have heard of it and are enraged, Panic and shuddering have seized the denizens of Philistine Gaza, The leaders of Edom are frightened, while the champions of Moab tremble, And the courage of the pagan Canaanites melts away. Fear and Panic have fallen upon them. For Your might arm crushes them like a stone, while Your people proceed ahead. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

IN-FLIGHT ENTERTAINMENT Posted by David Frankfurter, March 22, 2004.

A little outside my usual theme - but when a friend of mine, Cara Bereck Levy, told me of her experiences on a trans-atlantic flight, I asked her to jot it down so that I could share it with you. I recently witnessed a small group of traditionally dressed religious Jews provide unwitting, in-flight entertainment. The flight was on March 8th, 2004, from New York to London, two international icons of Western culture. The overwhelming majority of passengers appeared to be middle-class, white British and American citizens. There was a sprinkling of other nationalities on the plane; native Africans, Sikhs, Pakastanis, and a few Rastafarians. There were also four Hasidic Jews. They were the focal point of general comment, conversation, disgust, and derision throughout the flight--behind their backs. I am a middle-aged white woman. My ethnicity is not apparent; I am a Jew who does not wear traditional dress. That is why I was invited to join in the fun. One well-dressed Englishwoman caught my eye, jerked her head toward the Hasids, then rolled her eyes while circling her fingers next to her ears to mock the Jew's sidecurls. When I walked down the aisle towards the restrooms, I heard several references to 'those bloody Jews'. As I waited in line, a man smiled at me, gestured towards the Jews, and began to mimick their espressive Yiddish and the hand gestures the Hadisim used as they spoke to each other. During the flight, I also overheard references to 'those bloody Israelis'. What chilled my blood was the fact that many of the passengers, who apparently did not know each other, were unified by this single factor - their negative feelings towards 'those bloody Jews'. What disgusted me was the fact that they felt their feelings were socially acceptable - to the point that these passengers, not identifying me as one of 'them', expected me to share their feelings and take part in their display. None of the other ethnic groups were singled out, not the turban-wearing Sikhs, not the dark Pakistanis, not the Rastafarians with waist-length dreadlocks. Only the Jews, with their hats, sidecurls, and dark clothing. All I did I was to sarcastically reply to those who approached me how pleased I was to see how open-minded and cultured they were. In reply, I received blank looks. I was afraid to say more. We live in a world where, if you are identified as a Jew, you may be at risk. The rabbis of France advise Jews to forgo wearing those symbols that identify them. The disease spreads. Anti-Semitism is not geographically isolated. David Frankfurter is a writer on the Middle East conflict. He sends "Letters from Israel" emails to subscribers. Contact him at David.Frankfurter@iname.com To Go To Top

THE DEATH OF YASSIN - A BOTCHED JOB Posted by Reuven Kossover, March 22, 2004.

Today's strike against the terrorist Hamas leader Yassin, killing him at long last, was a botched job. Yes the scum is not merely dead; he's truly and sincerely dead. Thank G-d! That part of the job was done well. Sharon still can plan an execution. A man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Jews is at last dispatched to his reward. One can only hope that Hashem has provided a fiery hell for him to go to, so that he should eternally feel justified in his beliefs in one. But it was a botched job. Shortly after the execution, mobs of Arabs gathered to scream and howl demanding Jewish blood. This was the point that Israeli gunships should have gone in and struck, leaving hundreds dead. The same killing should have taken place at the funeral of the dog, Yassin. Arabs screaming for Jewish blood are not innocent souls, they have the souls of murderers They should have been treated that way. Arafat should have been dispatched to the same hell that Yassin has been sent to. When Arab prisoners at a prison in the Negev refused to eat, they should have been sent to their cells, with the message that they would have nothing but water for a week to allow them to help mourn. Why such cold blooded brutality? Why crack down with an iron fist? Because it is long past due. The message of hundreds of funerals and starving prisoners sent the Arabs would have been clear. If they wanted war, they were getting war. If they screamed for Jewish blood, they would drown in their own. After drowning in enough of their own blood, they would figure out the choices they had to make. Most people want to live, and adjust their belief systems to that desire. They could afford shahada (suicide) terrorism against the hated Jew (and they hate us - their preachers and teachers see to that) secure in the knowledge that entire villages would not die as a result, that they and not we would choose the time of battle, that the hated Jew was restrained in his acts against them. Unrestrained violence is terrifying. Ask any woman who has had to endure the violence of a man's unrestrained temper. The worst thing that can happen to parents - even Arab parents - is the loss of their children. If they have been talked into the virtues of shahada for one or two children, that's one thing. But if Israelis come and kill their children unbidden, that is very different. That is loss. That is truly loss. That breaks the spirit. And that is what we must do to the Arabs - break their spirit. Otherwise, they will succeed - scratch that - they are succeeding in breaking ours. In short, the actions that Israel takes in dealing with the Arabs must be aimed at breaking their spirit, and encouraging them to do the logical thing if they want to live - flee Israel. This need not have been done in October of 2000. Had a firm and determined stand been taken against the Arabs then, thousands of lives would have been saved. But cowardice ruled the day. Israel thought it had the choice between honor and war on the one hand, or dishonor and peace on the other. It has chosen dishonor and has gotten war. Now, war is at hand, not peace. The leader the Israeli people elected to fight that war refuses to bite the bullet and fight. The "lion of Judah" acts like an angered rabbit, getting in a bite here and there like killing the dog, Yassin. This is not sufficient. In the end, a dog will overcome a rabbit. But no dog will ever overcome a lion. It's time to move in on the kill. To Go To Top

ANOTHER TACK: AIR JORDAN Posted by Women In Green, March 22, 2004.

This was written by Sarah Honig and appeared in the Jerusalem Post, March 18,2004 Lucky for the Jebusites that the Hebrews were the People of the Book. Otherwise these Jerusalem-area Canaanites would have never made their very fleeting appearance on the pages of history or on Jordan TV. For those who may have anyway forgotten the brief biblical references, the Jebusites were the folks from whom King David conquered a wee hamlet he later turned into his capital. The books of Judges and Ezra indicate that they intermarried and assimilated amongst the Israelites. But that latter bit of scholarship escaped the notice of Jordanian historiography. An unforgettable JTV documentary on Jerusalem not too many years back magically transformed Jebusites into "Palestinian Arabs" to establish an Arab claim to Zion. The Jebusites' contribution to mankind was concomitantly magnified to a proportion that would have doubtlessly amazed them. JTV even treated us to recipes from the Jebusite kitchen. These would have altogether floored the long-lost Jebusites, as it appears that their favorite ingredients included tomatoes and chili peppers, which, alas, only reached the Old World 2,500 years later, when Spaniards brought them back from America (unless the enterprising Jebusites beat Columbus there, thereby establishing an Arab claim to the Western Hemisphere). The past obviously isn't safe from retroactive repairs. Take last week's Jordanian demand that Ariel Sharon apologize for having, in his less-confounding days, insisted that Jordan is Palestine. Now the Jordanians are after a public retraction of the truth. They maintain that Sharon's cronies promised that this would pose no problem. Considering Sharon's incredible flip-flops of late, it indeed shouldn't. Sharon once labored hard to expose the deception the Arabs managed to market so successfully to a world so eager to be deceived - i.e., the artificially concocted Jordanian and Palestinian ethnicities, along with the notion that these recent-vintage nationalities were distinct from each other and deserved self-determination in separate homelands - Jordan and Palestine. THIS FABRICATION begat the image of the stateless Palestinians, aggrieved indigenous inhabitants of the land, striving desperately to throw off the yoke of foreign (Jewish) occupation. Yet until 1948, "Palestine" was used synonymously with the Hebrew "Eretz Yisrael." Those called Palestinians were generally Jews. Local Arabs preferred allegiance to Greater Syria (or Iraq). Golda Meir used to quip: "I am a Palestinian but don't like the name. Palestine is a name the Romans gave Eretz Yisrael with the express purpose of infuriating Jews Why should we use a spiteful name meant to humiliate us? "Christendom inherited the name from Rome, and the British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine. The Arabs picked it up as their nation's supposed ancient name, though they couldn't even pronounce it correctly, and turned it into Falastin, a fictional entity." That entity never had an independent existence, unique identity, language, or culture to distinguish it from the surrounding Arab milieu. Moreover, the British Mandate in Palestine extended over both banks of the Jordan. In 1921, some 77% of what was designated as the national home of the Jewish people was ripped off and given as a gift to Abdullah, son of Mecca's Hashemite chieftain who lost the battle for control of Islam's holiest city and surrounding Hejaz to a rival clan, the Saudis. Had he won, we'd be speaking today of Hashemite Arabia. Instead, we're saddled with Jordan. Abdullah sought the title of Emir of Palestine, but the Brits made him settle for Transjordan. No Transjordanian nation appears in human chronicles. It was conceived on Palestinian soil by perfidious Albion. That was the first division of Palestine. In 1953, Transjordan annexed the "West Bank" and became Jordan. Its leaders, including the late King Hussein, stressed over and over in numerous pronouncements that Jordan and Palestine are one and the same. So did Palestinian leaders, including Arafat. The Palestinian covenant, in fact, covets all of Jordan, precisely because it's Palestine. Since then it became expedient, PR-wise, to claim that Palestine exists exclusively west of the mini-river, justifying the campaign for a second Palestinian Arab state. Fearing that his Palestinian subjects would collude with the PLO to topple their imported Hashemite rulers, Hussein kicked the PLO out in Black September, 1970. Too bad. Had he failed, Arafat would be running Amman and no one would dispute that Palestine is divided among Jews and Arabs, with the Arabs owning nearly four-fifths thereof. Sharon may consider such division no longer feasible. That's his prerogative. But he wasn't entrusted with the right to rewrite history. Any assertion that Jordan isn't Palestine is just as unimpeachable as that memorable JTV documentary, which expunged Jews from Jerusalem's annals, save for one abrupt but indispensable appearance in the Judenrein city. Villainous Jews arrived suddenly out of nowhere and stayed just long enough to crucify Jesus, described as "a Palestinian Arab prophet." Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green) is an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

ISRAEL SHOULD SUPPORT THE KURDS AGAINST SYRIA Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, March 22, 2004.

In 1982, the Syrian government carried out mass murder against it's own citizens, killing over 20,000 people in the Syrian city of Hama. Since 1976, Syria has occupied its neighbor to the west, Lebanon, viciously suppressing any sparks of freedom. Now Syria has carried out a new massacre, murdering almost 100 Kurds and arresting thousands. Israel should speak out loudly about these Syrian atrocities, and support the Kurdish minority against Syrian Arab violence. It all started as riots between Arabs and Kurds at a soccer game in Qamishli - in the northern Kurdish region of Syria or what Kurds call Western Kurdistan - but quickly spread to several northern cities. Pro-Assad, Baath Party loyalists responded by murdering Kurds in several towns. It's been reported that Syrian security services conducted mass arrests. Kurdish sources claim that some 2000 people have been detained in Damascus and Aleppo, and that in Damascus, almost every male Kurd over the age of 16 has been arrested. The Kurds in Syria, Iran and in Turkey are severely repressed. In Turkey, even their identity as Kurds is still denied; they are called Mountain Turks. In Syria, they are denied most civil and political rights. About 2 million Kurds live in Syria. But the seething anger that exploded in Qamishli is generated most, by the fact that almost 200,000 Kurds are denied citizenship outright. They cannot vote, own property, go to state schools or get government jobs. Kurds in Iran live under similar repressive conditions. With the rise of an autonomous region in a post-Saddam federated Iraq, the question of Kurdish rights in other parts of the region looms large. As the discussion of "democratization" of the Middle East continues, an important point that must be made time and time again, is the importance in building structures that liberate the minorities of the region from oppression. Non-Arab and Non-Muslim minorities live throughout North Africa and the Middle East. Contrary to the propaganda that the region is Arab/Muslim, these minorities are remnants of the indigenous peoples, before the great Arab imperialist wars of the 7th century, and "Islamicization process" that followed. Non-Arab Muslims like the Kurds in Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran; the Berbers - known as Amazighes - in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, have all resisted "Arabization" for over 1,000 years. Non-Muslims like the Assyrian Christians in Iraq - who argue that they are not Arabs - the Copts in Egypt, Christian Lebanese - many who claim not to be Arab but Phoenician - the Christians in Sudan, and other Christians throughout the region, have been persecuted minorities, since the rise of Islam. Others like the Druze and Jews have also been persecuted by Arab/Muslim regimes throughout history. And we can now see, from the recent Sunni terror attacks on Shiites in Iraq - and Bin Laden's recent statements that Shiites are heretics - that even some Muslims - Shiites and other non-Sunnis - are persecuted minorities in parts of the Middle East. Only Israel, the Jewish State, has fully liberated itself - in the political sense - from this Arab/Muslim oppression, although it still suffers from physical violence against her people. Israel should take the lead - in it's foreign policy - to support "democratization" and "regime change" throughout the region. Israel shouldn't wait until countries of the region "reform," but should pro-actively support the legitimate aspirations of the oppressed minorities of North Africa and the Middle East, and build alliances with them. Kurds were brutally suppressed by Saddam's Baathist regime through his "Arabization" program, expelling Kurds from their traditional areas and replacing them with Arab settlers. It's no secret that close relations existed between Israel and the Kurds throughout most of the sixties and into the seventies, until the collapse of the Kurdish revolt in Iraq, in 1975. Reflective of this, and that Moledet Party founder and former leader Rechavam Ze'evi was involved in Israeli-Kurdish relations, the 1996 Moledet Party Platform, Chapter 9: Foreign Policy, paragraph 17, states "Israel will act against the oppression of peoples like the Kurds..." Ze'evi - as a military officer - had been to Kurdistan and Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani had even been to Israel. With this in mind, Israel should actively revive the former policy of support for the Kurdish people. The idea of reviving this relationship hasn't been missed by Kurds themselves, as Kawa Bradosti wrote - in Kurdish Media - back in Sept. 2003, "...the potential is there for Israel and the Kurds to have a much closer relationship especially when considering the often hostile attitude of the neighboring countries in the region both to Israel and to the Kurds. It would be good common sense for the two nations to support each other and to forge an alliance together." Some might ask about Israel's relationship with Turkey, and how will active support for the Kurds, be seen in Ankara - since Turkey also oppresses upwards of 15 million Kurds. I believe that Israel's relationship with Turkey is mature enough to weather the storm. I don't see Turkey throwing tantrums at the US for its role in Iraq, helping the Kurds there. Turkey, I believe in the long run, will come to see the benefits of a re-structured Middle East, where the threat of Islamic radicalism and terror - also directed at Turkey - is greatly reduced. Turkey also has its problems with Syria. If the Kurds, Israelis, and Turks (along with a democratic Iraq?), could come together, Syria - the bad boy of the neighborhood - could be put in her place for good. For a while now, I've written about Syria's oppression of the Lebanese (see my article, "Lebanon's Real Economic Woes Are Syrian Induced"). I've written about Syria's help for the former Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq (see my article, "Syria, UN resolution 520, and the Security Council"). I've written about how Syria has pushed drugs, supported terror, and needs to be forced back to its "natural" size and influence in the region (see my articles, "Free Lebanon Now" and "Israel, Don't Hit Hizbollah, Hit Syria!"). And in a recent article, I've called on the Israeli government to say ("It's time for Syria to get out of Lebanon"). Now we need to turn a magnifying glass onto their behavior towards their Kurdish minority. In the past I've written a survey article, "Democracy in the Middle East," about the oppression of minorities in the region. Now I'm calling on the Israeli government to make a policy decision to actively support the Kurds and other minority groups, to build a non-Arab and non-Muslim regional alliance for change. Till now, I haven't mentioned the so-called "Palestinians," and I won't beyond saying, that they are part of the problem, not part of the solution. Aren't they an oppressed minority? No, as Arabs, they are part of the greater Arab Nation who since the 7th century has conquered, oppressed, and occupied everyone else in the Middle East and North Africa. As radical Muslims, everyone can see that Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the other terror groups are continuing down the same path as Bin Laden. In fact, recently Hamas "spiritual leader" Sheikh Yassin, has begun speaking about the "Global Jihad" in Bin Laden and al-Qaeda type terms. Hezbollah has also been working in the "Palestinian" administered territories for a while already, as evidenced by Israel's recent capture of a Hezbollah cell in Gaza. So, they are part of the regional oppression network, not the future liberty and freedom alliance that Israel should work to build with other minorities in the area. Israel's Foreign Policy toward Syria should be built on the demands that it leave Lebanon unconditionally, end it's support for Hezbollah and "Palestinian" terror groups, dismantle it's Weapons of Mass Destruction, and keep it's hands off the Kurds. Israel's greater regional policy should be based on supporting the rights of minorities in the area. Only that way, based on democratization, liberation from oppressive regimes, and encouraging freedom, will the Middle East and North Africa be transformed into a region worthy its millennia old history. A pre-Arab and pre-Muslim history I might add! Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations and Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko To Go To Top

URGENT! SEND OUT A CONDOLENCE NOTE TO A JEWISH LEFTIST! Posted by Shimon Malkiel, March 22, 2004.

Now that the Bloody Sheikh has been turned into toast, we have something constructive to suggest. We would like to suggest that you send a condolence message to the Jewish leftist anti-Semites of your choice. The message should read something like this: We would like to extend to you my deepest condolences for your loss. We know that Sheikh Yassin represented everything you believe in and everything you support. We know you must feel empty and alone, now that the one person most clearly embodying your ideas is gone from us. You are not alone in your grief. We hope you will somehow find a way to get over this horrific tragedy and blow to your agenda. Among the many people to whom you could send this message are: Baruch Kimmerling at mskimmer@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Colman Altman at phraltm@techunix.technion.ac.il Jacob Katriel at jkatriel@tx.technion.ac.il Tamar Katriel at tamark@construct.haifa.ac.il Oren Yiftachel at yiftach@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Emanuel Farjoun at forjoun@math.huji.ac.il Dan Bar-On at danbaron@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Aharon Eviatar at arkee@frodo.tau.ac.il and arkee@post.tau.ac.il Moshe Zimmerman at mszimm@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il Hanna Herzog at hherzog@post.tau.ac.il Uri Hadar at uri-h@freud.tau.ac.il Tanya Reinhart at reinhart@post.tau.ac.il Linda Ben-Zvi at lindabz@post.tau.ac.il Ilan Pappe at pappe@poli.haifa.ac.il Avraham Oz at avitaloz@research.haifa.ac.il Amiram Goldblum at amiram@VMS.HUJI.AC.IL Micah Leshem at micahl@psy.haifa.ac.il Zalman Amit at amit@csbn.concordia.ca Anat Biletzki at anatbi@post.tau.ac.il Ran Greenstein at rangreen@sn.apc.org Yehudith Harel at ye_harel@netvision.net.il Ran HaCohen at hacohen@post.tau.ac.il Gila Svirsky at gsvirsky@netvision.net.il almas at almas@bezeqint.net Yigal Arens at arens@ISI.EDU David Bartram at d.bartram@reading.ac.uk Oded Schechter at oschecht@midway.uchicago.edu pnina feiler at pnina-f@inter.net.il Shmuel Amir at amir_h_s@netvision.net.il Shraga Elam at elams@dplanet.ch Adam Keller at otherisr@actcom.co.il Anat Matar at matar@post.tau.ac.il Michael ardon at ardon@ vms.huji.ac.il tirtza tauber at trn1@zahav.net.il Lev Grinberg at lev@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Bilha Golan at bilhagolan@bezeqint.net Neve Gordon at ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il Yuval Yonay at rsso231@soc.haifa.ac.il Mikey Lerner at rabbilerner@aol.com Arthur Waskow at awaskow@aol.com Noam Chomsky at chomsky@mit.edu To Go To Top

AHMED YASSIN Posted by Israel Ben-Ami, March 22, 2004.

Some politicians are regretting the action of Zahal in "taking out" Ahmed this historic morning.They should be informed that their reticence and regret are misguided and will cost them popularity amng the Israeli voters. Ahmed Yassin was no moderate and his ultimate aim was the destruction of the Jewish State including Tel-Aviv.He was given many opportunities of mending his ways and declined. He was indeed our Osama BIN-LADEN,AND THE SAME FATE AWAITS HIS SCARED SUCCESSORS. Britain having ruthlessly eliminated sundry Irish patriots would be wise to not condemn our action. America will not follow Britain. To Go To Top

THE COUNTERFEIT HUMAN RIGHTS INDUSTRY Posted by Jewish Community of France, March 22, 2004.

This was written by Amnon Rubinstein and is archived at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/406813.html Shortly before the terror attack in Madrid there was an international conference of victims of terrorism. Nobel Peace Laureate David Trimble, head of the Unionist Party in Ulster, Northern Ireland, who spoke at the conference, said: "One of the great curses of this world is the human rights industry. They justify terrorist acts and end up being complicit in the murder of innocent victims." The conference ended with a call on human rights groups "to defend the rights of the victims of terror, without blurring the distinction between the murderer and their victim." Human Rights Watch, the human rights group, issued a condemnation of that. The concept of human rights has gone through a revolution, apparent in three aspects: the recognition that formal democratic procedures are not enough to protect human rights; the principle that no regime can deny any person "natural" rights, meaning those granted to them by virtue of being human (or in Judaism, by virtue of being in God's image); and the perception that civil rights are not the domestic considerations of a state but can be supervised by international law, and their violation gives other states the right to intervene in a state's affairs. Jews have a special interest in that aspect, since they are the main victims of the precept that civil rights are domestic matters for countries. It is no accident that Jews were key activists in formulating the language of treaties about human rights. Nowadays, however, we can see two contradictory phenomena. One is supremely expressed in genuine defense of human rights by European institutions. The other is nothing but a broad industry, seemingly of human rights, resulting in a counterfeit product. That is the difference between the court in Strasbourg, peopled by professional justices from democratic states, and the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, headed by a representative of Libya, and member countries that belong on the bench of those accused of violating human rights. There's also a huge ideological gulf between the original and the forgery. Human rights laws set grades of rights and the very top level is the right to life and personal safety. In other words, the law recognizes the relativity of rights: The right to life is more important, for example, than the right to privacy. The law is not the same for a state that murders its citizens, as Sudan did for nearly 20 years, and a state that suspends jury trials during periods of emergency to fight terrorism, as England did in Northern Ireland. The human rights industry is made up of various organizations, academics, and media people who do the exact opposite: all rights are equal. Censorship is the equivalent of genocide. Detention without trial in Guantanamo is the equivalent of murderous terror. While the original concept of human rights graduated rights according to their level of importance, there is no relativity in the approach taken by those who violate those rights. All the criminals should be judged according to the same criteria. On the other hand, if a Western country were to perpetrate only one- hundredth of the crimes conducted by Saudi Arabia against its residents, there would be an enormous outcry from Geneva to Berkeley. But despite the permanent protests by the human rights groups, few know how many people are executed in Saudi Arabia (in 1999 alone there were 301). But in Oslo, human rights devotees demonstrate against Israel. Nobody protests against the fence that Saudi Arabia is building on its border with Yemen - against international agreements and harming thousands of shepherds whose flocks graze on the lands were the fence is going up, but there is no organization that does not protest against Israel. That said, the fence route is indeed unjustified and causes injustice. Thus the tables have been turned. What was relative in the original has become absolute in the counterfeiting industry and what was absolute has become conditional on political correctness. This email was distributed by Communaute-Juive-France-owner@yahoogroupes.fr Their website address is http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Communaute-Juive-France/ To Go To Top

REMEMBERING THE VICTIMS OF ATZMONA Posted by Herb and Mikimia Sunshine, March 22, 2004.

This was written by Joshua M. Rolnick. It appeared in Arutz Sheva (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com). It has also been published in The Jewish Herald Voice and by The Freeman Center for Strategic Studies. It is archived at http://www.israelnn.com/article.php3?id=3470 As students, we sit at our desks in our constant quest for academic excellence. We thirst to gain greater knowledge as we study and benefit from the wisdom of our teachers. Imagine the following scenario. You are studying late one night when suddenly you hear a loud bang. Soon after, chaos breaks loose. At first you are bewildered. You run to the door to see what is going on. To your horror, you are in the line of fire of a terrorist's machine gun. Providentially for you, you are protected by a concrete doorpost. Many others are not as lucky. There are no weapons in the study hall; therefore, you are unable to stop the terrorist from massacring your fellow students. The terrorist throws grenades into the room. You quickly run to a corner and pray to G-d that all of you will survive. Moments later, you see a grenade land five feet from you. You stare at it for what seems like hours, not knowing when it will explode and end your life. Fearing the inevitability of disaster, you cover your head and pray once again. Abruptly, it blows up. Sharp pain spreads throughout your body. Suddenly, you are soaring through the air. When the helicopter arrives at Tel Hashomer Hospital you are rushed into the emergency room. Your chest and your arms are in horrible pain. The doctors explain to you that you had been sprayed with shrapnel. You suffered hearing loss in both ears and nerve damage to the left side of your body. Your arms took most of the damage, but one piece had hit the center of your chest. No exit wound was found. The doctors said that there was no shrapnel in your chest. They tell you that miraculously it bounced off your sternum. This conceivably sounds like a nightmare that could never transpire. My friend, Netanel Bluth, would probably have said the same thing. Unfortunately, it happened to him. On March 7, 2002, a terrorist penetrated the community of Atzmona in Gush Katif. This hate-filled individual waited for four hours, until the study hall was filled with students. He then went to the study hall, kicked down the door, threw at least five grenades and started firing his automatic assault rifle. Twenty-three students were injured. Five were killed. They sadly joined the 1,288 Jews brutally murdered because of the Oslo appeasement process. On the anniversary of this act of terror, my thoughts turned to my friend's suffering. I thank the Almighty for the miraculous recovery of Netanel. Concurrently, my prayers turned to those who were not as fortunate. I understand that I will never truly comprehend the loss that terror victims' and their families endure. I will, however, remember the five students murdered that evening, the 24th of Adar. They were: Asher Marcus; Tal Kurtzvail; Eran Picard; Arik Robiak; and Ariel Zana, zichronam l'bracha. May their memories help me understand the horror generated by the appeasement of terrorists. At the same time, may I truly appreciate the enormity of the Jewish sacrifice for our holy land. It has been too precious for us to allow the abandonment of Gush Katif. To Go To Top

ISRAELI PREEMPTIVE STRIKES - Essential and Justified Posted by Jock L. Falkson, March 22, 2004.

Israel's self-interest demands that the government protect its inhabitants from the murderous attacks of Palestinian suicide terrorists and other forms of assault. There is now also the fear, both here and abroad, of mega attacks aimed at killing and maiming fearful numbers. We have an absolute right to expect our security and defense forces to protect us from such barbarous intent. We must have this protection before Palestinian murder and mayhem envelopes us. This moral guideline was valid even when the number of killed and wounded was relatively small, as in bus attacks. The threat of mega terrorism increases this justification a thousand fold or more. Retaliation after the event is a necessary deterrent. But retaliation cannot restore the lives of innocents. Coming after the event it neither revives the dead nor returns lost quality of life to the living. Life will never be the same for bereaved and destroyed families, nor for the traumatized and disabled. Preemption Is A Given That is why preemption must be an absolute given for which Israel has no need to apologize. If anything, Israel should apologize to the bereaved and hurt for not having prevented murder-obsessed Palestinian terrorists from carrying out their cruel savagery. It is true that from time to time persons other than those specifically targeted may be hurt or even lose their lives during our operations. Israel invariably expresses regret even though these individuals were often in their company, as aiders and abettors, or living shields, of those on Israel's most wanted terrorist list. Nevertheless it is also true that Israel does its best to avoid so called civilian casualties. Whereas Palestinian terrorists deliberately aim for the greatest number of civilian casualties. Mass death is their unambiguous objective. The fact that Palestinian terrorists seldom if ever wear uniform in shootouts does not make them civilians. Those who harbor and succor terrorists, their planners, handlers and financiers, are equally guilty. The greater the bloodletting of Israeli civilians, young and old, the more intensive Arab rejoicing. Mobs whoop and dance in the streets and fire guns in the air. There's no restraining their glee, no hiding their bloodthirsty joy . . . while Israelis mourn their bereaved and endure the pain of their wounded. Who Incites Race Hatred? You may find it hard to credit - but the think tank behind the Road Map found it necessary to require both the Palestinian Authority and Israel to stop continued incitement - at the outset of Phase 1. I quote: *  "All official Palestinian institutions end incitement against Israel." *  "All official Israeli institutions end incitement against Palestinians." Incitement and hatred are inseparable because incitement is both the cause and result of hatred. That the Palestinian Terrorist Authority officially institutes anti-Jewish incitement and race hatred is not in doubt. The sources of hatred and incitement are embedded in the Koran for all to read. More specifically: * Their educational books from kindergarten to university are explicit promote Jew hatred. Israeli educational texts do not incite Jews to terrorism; do not teach hatred of Arabs. * Their maps never show the Jewish State - it has seemingly, already been eliminated. Israeli cartography is accurate. * Their official publications are replete with contempt, race hatred and anti-Jewish incitement. The converse does not apply to Israel. * Islamic institutions are funded and officially supported by the Palestinian Terrorist Authority. Imans routinely preach sermons of intense anti-Israel incitement. Rabbis do nothing of the sort. * Their radio and TV broadcasts propagandize the Palestinian Terrorist Authority's anti-Jewish mission without let up. Israeli TV and radio provide unequalled opportunities for Arab viewpoints. * Their newspapers, supported by official advertising, grants and favors (not to overlook intimidatory discipline) cause them to follow the Palestinian Terrorist Authority's line without deviation. Israeli media are independent and often fiercely critical. * The not unexpected effect of unbridled Arab race hatred and incitement is such that any Jew who blunders into any Arab town will almost certainly and horribly be dispatched by blood hungry, angry mobs. (As has happened on each such occasion.) * The converse does not apply to Israel. Arabs work and shop in Israel. None has ever been lynched. Road Map To Nowhere The attempt by the drafters of the Road Map [the United States, European Union, United Nations, and Russia] to establish moral equivalence between the Palestinian Terrorist Authority and Israel is shameful and dishonest. Because the fundamental cause of incitement is entrenched in the Koran. Thus there can be no practical solution. So much for the future of Phase 1 of the Road Map. Jock Falkson is an Israeli writer and translator. He can be reached by email at falkson@barak-online.net. To Go To Top

PEACE NOW WEIGHS IN Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 21, 2004.

Peace Now suggests abandoning all the Israeli settlements in Yesha and using the armed forces near them to protect Israel's resulting boundary. After suicide bombers got by the Gaza fence, many Gaza areas celebrated the terrorists' success in murdering Israelis. In Jenin, the Arabs gave out candy. Since Peace Now expects the Army to have to protect Israel from the P.A. after Israel would have abandoned Yesha, then Peace Now knows that the P.A. wants to conquer Israel, not just take over Yesha. In that case, what does Israel get out of withdrawal, but an empowered enemy, able under the resulting sovereignty to import heavy weapons? That means worse war. Change "Peace Now" to "War Soon." Even to compromise with such vicious enemies is foolhardy. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

WHAT WOULD YOSL SAY? Posted by Judy Lash Balint, March 21, 2004.

A few months ago, storyteller Yosl Birstein passed away in Jerusalem. A diminutive man, with colossal charisma and talent for spinning yarns about everyday life, first in Yiddish and later in Hebrew, Birstein was the embodiment of secular Jewish culture. Born in Poland, he fled the country for Australia in 1937. After a four year stint serving in the Australian army, Yosl met and married another Jewish refugee, Margaret Weisberg from Frankfurt. They stayed in Australia for several more years, and Yosl started writing his stories in Yiddish, for the audience of survivors who were rebuilding their lives down under. Zionism kept nagging at the Birsteins, and eventually they made their way to Israel and settled on Kibbutz Gvat, in accordance with their socialistic ideals. Yosl continued to write, while earning his kibbutz keep as a shepherd, and his books and stories soon became popular reading amongst Israelis of European background. The Birsteins raised two talented Israeli daughters, and moved to Jerusalem in their later years. Margaret began translating Yosl's work into English. Next week, several renowned authors will appear at an evening of remembrances and readings in honor of Yosl Birstein. How do I know all this? Jerusalem is really just a little Jewish shtetl...on Friday I noticed the announcement of the memorial evening on a bulletin board in the neighborhood. On Shabbat I met Margaret Birstein for the first time, and realized that she lives just around the corner from me. We were both hosted by the inimically hospitable Cohn family, whose Shabbat table is routinely graced with a minimum of 10 guests. Ruth Cohn struck up a conversation with Margaret in our local supermarket, and promptly invited her for lunch. Across the table from Margaret sat another neighbor and author, Moshe Aumann, an expert on Jewish-Christian relations. Moshe and Margaret, who had also never met before, traded stories of schooldays in their native Frankfurt. Jerusalem is a place where time, people and events have a tendency to coincide and resonate with meaning. Shabbat was the Shabbat before Rosh Hodesh (the New Moon) where we recite prayers for God to grant us a month of fulfillment and blessing. Then we add, "May He who performed miracles for our forefathers, and took them from slavery to freedom, speedily redeem us and gather in our people from the four corners of the earth so that all Israel will be together in friendship." The rabbi had just welcomed a group of young olim (immigrants) from Montreal spending their first Shabbat in Israel. This Shabbat also marked the first anniversary of the shul, which has fast outgrown the small rented building. Plastic chairs are lined up in the courtyard as the windows are thrown open, to accomodate all those who are drawn to the warmth, passion and friendliness of the community. Walking home on Shabbat is another of those small, Jerusalem pleasures. The March sunshine, still a long way from the apex of it's summer intensity, brightens the flower-lined back streets. Dozens of people strolling in the middle of the street, on their way home or to visit friends with only a stray vehicle or two disturbing the quiet; children enjoying the small playgrounds scattered around; and the occasional stranger who will bid passers-by a "Shabbat shalom." But, the Shabbat peace was disturbed by a tragic event that brings into sharp relief the murderous hatred of our enemies. A 20 year old Hebrew University student was shot and killed on Friday night in the French Hill neighborhood. George Khoury went out for a run, and never returned home. The Al Aksa Brigade branch of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement quickly claimed responsibility - but "apologized" when Elias Khoury, George's well-known Christian Arab father, claimed the body. Oh, we thought he was a Jew... In what should have been a damning act confirming his culpability for terror, Arafat himself called Khoury, the bereaved father, twice on Saturday to apologize for the mistake, and assure him that his son would be considered a martyr. Like many Israeli families, Elias Khoury, now counts two members dead at the hands of Arab terrorists. His father, Daoud was one of 14 killed on Jaffa Road in 1975 when an explosive device went off in an abandoned refrigerator. The other chilling aspect of this latest attack is that it shatters the assumptions of many Israelis who until now assumed that terror only strikes at crowded public places. Now the blood-lust has apparently heightened to the point where they're ready to pick us off one by one. What's next, an armed personal security guard for every citizen? Other terror news in today's Yediot daily paper - warnings for Israelis traveling for the Pesach holiday. Over 45,000 Israelis are expected to leave the country during the Pesach break. One anti-terror organization issued a sharp warning for Israelis not to travel to two favorite destinations - Istanbul and the Sinai. Lesser alerts are posted for Thailand, India and the Philippines. But Foreign Ministry spokesmen say the panic is unwarranted and they have received no specific threats against Israelis. Finally, in typical Israeli fashion - today, some six weeks after the 5.3 earthquake shook the country, we received a nice color booklet from the Electric Company on how to prepare for an earthquake. We're told that the big one may come "tomorrow, in a month or 50 years from now.." It's the kind of thing that Yosl Birstein would have made into a great story. Judy Lash Balint is author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen). It is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com. To Go To Top

SUNDAY 3/21 OMBUDSMAN COMMENTS ON USE OF WORD TERRORISM Posted by Deb Kotz, March 21, 2004.

I sent this letter to the Washington Post ombudsman. Dear Mr. Getler: I appreciate your comments on readers' letters to you complaining about the hypocrisy of using the words "terrorist attack" to describe the Madrid bombings but not the suicide bombings in Israel. I also appreciate the continuing time and energy that you've put forth over the past few years to resolve this issue. I, myself, am a journalist, so I can sympathize with the need for balanced reporting. Whenever I report on a new medical procedure, "wonder drug" or piece of research, I always put the finding into perspective. Often I consult my Webster's Collegiate dictionary to guide me on word choices. According to Webster's, the word terrorism means the systematic use of terror as a means of coercion. Terrorize means to fill with terror and anxiety. These definitions are clear cut and don't leave room for your weak reply that terrorism is "like other things that you know when you see". In your column, you compare Israel's targeted killings, house demolitions (of suicide bombers' abodes) and civilian casualties - which are not intended to terrorize the population at large but to halt the terrorists themselves - with Palestinian suicide bomber attacks meant to kill the most innocent people possible in order to scare the most cilivians possible. This is simply outrageous. Saying that you are balanced by avoiding the word "terrorism" because the Palestinians and certain human rights groups view Israel as a terrorist nation makes no sense. You would then have to avoid the word terrorism to describe the Spanish attacks since Al Queda views Spain's participation in the Iraq war as terrorist. Al Queda views itself in a war against what-it-calls terrorist nations the same as the Palestinian suicide bombers view themselves in a war against Israel. Yes, I would have to agree with you that the word "terrorist" has been grossly overused in the past several years to describe anyone engaged in an act of war - or sometimes even a petty crime. I would even agree that Palestinians who target and kill Israel soldiers - though heinous - are not terrorists. But those who blow up buses and cafes in Jerusalem? Who target babies, old men and pregnant women walking the streets of Netanya? Who want Israelis to fear for their lives everytime their enter a supermarket or mall? Mr. Getler, check your dictionary. These are, indeed, terrorists. No other word would be fitting to describe them. Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com To Go To Top

THE POST'S KABUKI DANCE ABOUT "TERRORISM" Posted by Leo Rennert, March 21, 2004.

I sent this to people at the Washington Post about the Post's indefensible defense of refusing to label Hamas or Islamic Jihad as terrorist groups. Trying to square the circle is an exercise that usually ends in failure. So does your attempt to once again defend the indefensible - the Post's double standard in using "terrorism" to describe lethal attacks by fanatical Islamists on the United States or Spain but not against Israel. Your March 21 column, responding to complaints about the Post's descriptions of the Madrid bombings as "terrorist" attacks but the Ashadod bombings as something else, leaves you and the Post again tied up in semantic knots. You start out by saying that you and Post editors agree that the attacks in Spain or a bus bombing in Israel are "terrorist acts." Fine. But why not follow that simple precept. "Terrorism" is a perfectly proper and accurate word to describe deliberate attacks and murders of innocent civilians in pursuit of a political agenda. As you acknowledge, it fits the Madrid carnage as well as Palestinian suicide bombings. But - and of course you need a "but" to wiggle out of your first sentence - you add that Post editors consider such "labels" not helpful compared with "factual reporting." Why not helpful? After all, terrorism is a precise word and if it fits the occasion, it should be used instead of some politically correct euphemism which implicitly suggest a measure of legitimacy on the part of the perpetrators. The Post had no problem in using this "label" about Madrid. Yet, when it comes to Israel, Hamas regularly has been described as a "militant" group, a term which doesn't do Hamas or Israel justice. More recently, Hamas isn't labeled at all but referred to as "the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas." Some readers might conclude on the basis of that description that these are fine fellows. Well, since you're obviously on weak terrain, you feel a need to try something else. But you end up digging yourself an even deeper hole by asserting that the "context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is different, as is the conflict in Iraq, in which suicide bombings and other attacks are described rather than labeled." Do you mean to say that there was no excuse for Madrid or the World Trade Center, but there can be some rationale or mitigation for terrorist attacks in Iraq or Tel Aviv? What is different? Again, whether in Iraq or Israel, if the target is a bunch of civilians, that's terrorism. On the other hand, if the targets are U.S. or IDF troops, that's NOT terrorism because the target is a military one. It's easy to distinguish between the two. Pearl Harbor was NOT an act of terrorism, it was an act of war. So was the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon which, unlike the airliner hijackings and the World Trade Center attacks, was an act of war. 9/11 thus was both an act of terrorism and an act of war. What's so difficult in making this distinction? Words still have some meaning. But since the argument about different places, different words also gets you nowhere, you try still another tack - the Post doesn't want to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Or, as you put it, "Israelis, of course, describe such acts as terrorism. But to adopt the language of one side in what essentially is a bitter war carried out daily over many years by gunmen and suicide bombers one one side and an army on the other is not something that the Post, is going to do." Well, let's examine this a bit more closely. Are you saying that because Israel calls something "terrorism," given the conflict with the Palestinians, the Post would be taking sides by calling terrorism "terrorism"? Or are you postulating equivalence in the methods of both sides since you suggest that each is conducting a "bitter war" against the other? But if that's the case, the people you called terrorists in your first sentence aren't terrorists at all, they are warriors. Is that better "factual reporting" of Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Yet, that's where you seem to end up because to buttress your argument, you note that Palestinians view Israeli actions like "collective punishment, targeted killings, civilian casualties, house demolitions" also as as "terrorism" as "do some human rights groups." But factual journalism shouldn't be based on the perceptions or claims of either side, or those of some unnamed human-rights groups. It's the job of Post editors and reporters to come up with what you hail as "factual reporting." If an Israeli like Baruch Goldstein guns down Islamic worshippers in Hebron, he's a terrorist. If an Israeli fanatic tries to plant bombs in an Arab schoolyard, he's a terrorist. Again, "terrorism" as properly used should be applied without fear or favor. The only things that should count are the targets and the motives. When Israelis use targeted killings to eliminate a Hamas leader, that's not "terrorism" because the attack is not aimed at civilians. When Israelis demolish the houses of terrorists, that's not "terrorism" because it's not a murder spree against innocent civilians. Israelis ensure that demolished houses were empty precisely to avoid a terrorist rampage. As for Palestinian "civilian casualties," if civilians are intended targets, that would be terrorism; but if they're unintended casualties during a raid on a terrorist cell, that is not "terrorism." When Iraqi civilians are killed in the process of a U.S. military attack on suspected insurgents, guerrillas or terrorists, the Post doesn't report that as terrorism. Finally, as you end your dubious meanderings, you seem to get back to your initial premise when you suggest that terrorism does in fact exist. "Terrorism," you conclude, "is like other things that you know when you see, and The Post should not shy away from that word when it is useful for the general reader." But that assertion, while perhaps well intentioned, throws you quickly into another semantic swamp. The first half of the sentence suggests a paraphrase of the old dictum by a Supreme Court justice that when it comes to obscenity "I know it when I see it." But terrorism is not as rubbery a term as obscenity. The latter can vary with different perceptions by different viewers, although the author of "I know it when I see it" obviously thought that everybody would share his perceptions. However, terrorism is defined by objective measurements. If civilians are deliberately killed and the perpetrators are intent on using this tactic to "terrorize" entire populations in pursuit of political goals, that's terrorism pure and simple - wherever it rears its ugly head. If you think you've done the Post or its readers a service with your clumsy defense of the indefensible, please think again. To Go To Top

CHILD SACRIFICE Posted by Linda Olmert, March 21, 2004.

Of all the things that I have read and sent out in the last months, this leaves me in utter dispair. How can we ever hope to find any common terms of reference with beings that sacrifice their children. I was about to use the word animals, but I know of no animals who would do such a thing. This article was an opinion piece in the Jerusalem Post Online, March 16, 2004. It is archived as http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid =1079410302969&p=1006953079865 Israel was shaken Monday. It wasn't because of a terrorist atrocity actually perpetrated, but because of one thankfully preempted. Front pages were dominated by the story of 11-year-old Abdullah Quran, who carried a powerful bomb in his schoolbag, replete with a load of metal pellets and other assorted bits of hardware calculated to rip through human flesh. When they opened the bag, soldiers found, alongside the explosives, the boy's Spiderman doll. Abdullah wasn't merely a courier. He was, unknowingly, a guided missile. A cellphone connected to the 10-kilo bomb he lugged was primed to detonate the bomb by remote control, if his dispatcher considered it expedient. The boy told the border policewoman whose suspicions he aroused that someone promised him "lots of money" if he took the heavy backpack through the IDF checkpoint outside of Nablus. Had the precocious smuggler succeeded, the contraband would have been set off in an Israeli bus or similar crowded civilian target. However, the plan called for detonating the charge on the boy, if he were stopped. Indeed, as sappers handled his bag's contents, someone dialed the cellphone trigger. A technical failure prevented the death of the child and many of those around. This is not "just" child abuse, but child sacrifice. It is almost as if Palestinian terrorists are trying to reach new depths of war crimes, matched only by previous uses of ambulances and pregnant women to carry out terrorist attacks. Bombs have been transported in Palestinian ambulances, at times under stretchers bearing children apparently writhing in pain or women ostensibly in labor. Only recently did a weeping Gaza woman, claiming to have a prosthetic leg, blow herself up, killing the very soldiers who helped her when her bomb set off a metal detector. Incredibly, Abdullah's misadventure went largely unreported by the world's media, further underscoring the double standard against Israel. One might think the story of this child would evoke a modicum of human interest from a world that claims to care about Palestinian children. Is no one interested when Palestinian children are systematically indoctrinated by official media into a cult of suicide and murder, and if that doesn't work, they are employed as unknowing cannon fodder? Such indifference seems somewhat selective. When Muhammad al-Dura was shot in October 2000, he was immediately transformed into an icon of Israeli inhumanity. Subsequent credible studies proving that the child was killed by Palestinian fire, such as that of James Fallows in The Atlantic, were largely ignored. By contrast, the Palestinian manipulation of children is as pervasive and transparent as Hitler's "Children's Army" at the end of World War II. It's a flagrant violation of Article 38 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which censures "the recruitment and involvement of children under 15 in hostilities and armed conflicts." Yet it's an entrenched Arab practice in this country. Already back in the 19th century, women and children were frequently deployed in the front-lines of disturbances and riots. They functioned as human shields and generated particular volatility. This tradition has been monstrously upgraded with the advent of suicide bombings. In the past three years, 29 suicide-bombings were perpetrated by youths under 18. Another 22 were killed while attacking Israelis. Forty other teens were arrested while trying to do likewise. Ascribing these statistics to occupation-engendered despair is intellectually indolent or demagogic. Palestinian youngsters are incessantly subjected to brainwashing in the media and classroom. Hate is inculcated in them. Even preschoolers are taught to aspire to martyr status. They grow in a culture that, rather than consecrating life, glorifies violent "sacrificial" death. The PA's Jerusalem mufti, Ikram Sabri, once said in a newspaper interview that "the younger the shahid [martyr], the more he's admired... That's why mothers cry with joy upon hearing of his death... The shahid is envied, because the angels in heaven usher him to his wedding." Journalist Huda al-Hussein, asked in the London-based Sharq al-Awsat already three years ago: "What kind of independence is built on the blood of children, while the leaders, including their own kids and grandkids, remain safe?" Good question. To Go To Top

JACK KELLEY: HEVRON'S SPOKESMAN UNCOVERED HIM LONG AGO Posted by Bryna Berch, March 21, 2004.

This was an item in today's Arutz-Sheva (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com). The news that USA Today's ex-star foreign correspondent Jack Kelley apparently fabricated substantial portions of several of his major articles over the past ten years is a vindication of sorts for the Hevron Jewish Community. USA Today, the largest-circulation newspaper in the U.S., announced officially that Kelley had engaged in deceptions around the globe, including, apparently, an alleged face-to-face encounter with a suicide terrorist in Jerusalem, participation in a high-speed hunt for Osama bin Laden, and the departure of six Cuban refugees who later supposedly drowned. On Sept. 4, 2001, Kelley wrote an article in USA Today entitled, "Israeli extremists take revenge on Palestinians." Hevron spokesman David Wilder, in a letter at the time to USA Today publishers and editors, called the article "anti-Israel, anti-Semitic propaganda [that] is so full of lies and is so inaccurate..." Wilder wrote afterwards that he never received a response to his letter. Kelley's article began: "After a quick prayer, Avi Shapiro and 12 other Jewish settlers put on their religious skullcaps and headed toward Highway 60. There, they pushed boulders, stretched barbed wire and set tires afire to form a barricade that, they said, would stop even the biggest of Palestinian taxis... Shapiro, the leader of the group, gave the settlers orders: Surround any taxi, "open fire" and kill as many of the "blood-sucking Arab" passengers as possible. "We are doing what [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon promised but has failed to do: drive these sons of Arab whores from the land of Israel," said Shapiro, 42, who moved here with his wife and four children three years ago from Brooklyn. "If he won't get rid of the Muslim filth, then we will." Wilder wrote, after checking for several hours, "There is no one with the name Avi Shapiro who lives in Hebron, Kiryat Arba, Gush Etzion or Efrat... To the best of my knowledge, [he] does not really exist..." Wilder acknowledged that local Jews participated in roadblocks during times when "scores of Jews were being murdered by Arab terrorists in drive-by shootings... There was an attempt made to hinder Arab traffic, so as to save Jewish lives. However, at no time were any 'orders' ever given to 'open fire and kill...'" Wilder also noted several factual errors in Kelley's report, such as writing that "at least 119 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in the West Bank and Gaza, according to B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group" - when in fact B'Tselem reported that only "eleven Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli civilians." For another example, Wilder notes Kelley's outright "lie" that "in July, Jewish vigilantes killed three Palestinians, including a 3-month-old boy, in Nablus." Even more telling, in light of the ongoing investigation against Kelley, Wilder notes that Kelley's audio and written reports contradict themselves: "In his audio report, Kelley accuses 'settler teenagers, many of whom are from Brooklyn' of beating [a certain] man and then setting him on fire. In this written report, Kelley says that the man was beaten and set ablaze by Israeli soldiers. Why does Kelley contradict himself in the two reports? How does he know that the supposed 'attackers' are from Brooklyn?" "In conclusion," wrote David Wilder over two and a half years ago, "we expect that Kelley's tenure with the newspaper will be terminated immediately and that USA Today will not only publish this rebuttal, but will also print an apology for slandering our community." To Go To Top

THE ASSOCIATION FOR CIVIL RIGHTS IN ISRAEL ... ISN'T Posted by Steven Plaut, March 21, 2004.

The ACRI = Association for Civil Rights in Israel is an anti-democratic extremist group that does NOT endorse free speech! The ACRI, like Betselem, the Physicians for Human Rights, and many other assorted splinter far Left anti-Israel pro-PLO groups in Israel, pretends it is nothing more than a neutral human rights watchdog. This is an Orwellian lie. The ACRI is an extremist anti-Israel group who only cares about "human rights" when "defending them" is part of delegitimizing Israel, such as in http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/= JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1079770576867&p=1078027574097 It has never heard of a human right for Jews it wishes to defend, such as their right not to be murdered by terrorists. Think I am exaggerating? A few months back I approached the ACRI and offered them an opportunity to defend free speech in Israel and prove they support human rights for all, even for those who might disagree with their leftist extremist ideology. As you know, I am being sued in a harassment SLAPP "libel suit" by a leftist extremist lecturer at Ben Gurion University because I dared to criticize his political opinions and his public political behavior, such as his serving as human shield for Arafat while Arafat was hiding in his offices the murderers of an Israeli cabinet minister and other terrorists, all this to illegally interfere with an Israeli military operation. This suit is clearly nothing more than an anti-democratic assault on free speech by a leftist extremist who thinks it is a crime to criticize him. SLAPP stands for strategic lawsuit against public participation and SLAPP suits are anti-democratic libel suits designed to suppress the free speech of one's critics. SO I contacted the ACRI and asked them to take up my case and denounce the Ben Gurion extremists's tactic of trying to use SLAPP litigation as a bludgeon to supress free speech for non-leftists. There can be no clearer opportunity for those who value free speech as a human right to denounce such misuse of the courts as this case. I invited the ACRI to help defeat this cynical move by the leftist extremist in question, Neve Gordon from political science at Ben Gurion University. In response I got a peremptory refusal from a spokesperson for the ACRI. So when exactly does the ACRI protect free speech? Well, I will tell you when. This past November saw a quiet but significant victory in Israel over the treasonous Far Left. Some Israeli extremists were operating an Israeli branch of the "Indymedia" web network, which is a network of dozens of Marxist-anarchist web sites all over the world who devote their days to the singing of praises of communism, terrorism, the International Solidarity Movement of Saint Pancake, violence, and anti-Semitism. The one operating out of Israel was famous for its posting messages praising suicide bombers, denying the Holocaust, posting messages mocking Judaism and the Bible and otherwise anti-Semitic harangues, not mere anti-Israel pieces. Its managers claimed they did not pick the pieces and that it is open web publishing where anyone can post trash, but the fact of the matter is that they regularly censored anything on the site that was PRO-Israel and deleted it, leaving up the nazi screeds, this at www.indymedia.org.il. In November they ran, alongside their other filth, a cartoon showing Ariel Sharon French kissing Hitler. Some people were outraged and filed a petition with thr Attorney General to shut the site down. It has been successfully shut down ever since, evidently thanks to a court order, although recently a new substitute site just opened at israel.indymedia.org (you might want to stop in to post some pro-Israel material there to annoy them). For months, ever since the original Israel Indymedia web site was shut down, its URL carried a message in English and Hebrew from this same ACRI protesting the shutting down of this suicide-bombing-cheerleader web site. I guess the ACRI supports free speech only for leftist traitors... Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

PRESIDENT BUSH AND THE TERRORISTS Posted by Israel Ben-Ami, March 21, 2004.

Here in Israel the vast majority admire the President and his action against the terrorists, be it in Afghanistan,Iraq and indeed the entire world.The result of America's actions are there for everyone to see. 1]Afghanistan and Iraq are embarked on the road to fairer government for their citizens. 2]Oppressed women are beginning to see hope for rights and freedom. 3]A higher standard of living for Moslem citizens is around the corner and anticipated. 4]Potential terrorist states,such as Lybia and Syria are expressing a desire to 'toe the line' 5]Israel has been convinced to agree to a Palestinian State. Insofar as item 5 is concerned, the terrorist elements both in Gaza and the West Bank will have to be eliminated prior to a modus-vivendi between Israel and the Palestinians, and this should preferably be by a joint effort of both Jews and Arabs. The crazy, noisy Minority demonstrating against Bush and Blair should listen to the ghosts of the Kurds Iranians and Iraqis massacred by weapons of mass destruction and realise that Sadam Hussein would in the future have alligned himself with world-wide terrorism. Bush and Blair should be re-elected-in order to beat the terrorists world-wide. To Go To Top

MANHIGUT UPDATE Posted by Moshe Feiglin, March 21, 2004.

The desire to destroy the settlements, and the declarations about the approaching implementation of this, led as could have been expected to a new wave of terror. The separation fence in Gaza again proved its worth when two terrorists from the Gaza Strip who had planned to smother Ashdod in a cloud of poisonous gas were forced to make do with the murder of port workers. It seems that Sharon has chosen the lethal path of adopting and implementing all the worst possible options. What will be the next idea to germinate in the minds of Weissglass and Omri Sharon, after the disengagement plan smashes into pieces, with G-d's help, on the rocks of reality? I spent the last week in the US in order to participate in the annual Manhigut Yehudit dinner. I followed the reports in the American press regarding the disengagement issue. The US administration no longer believes that Sharon himself knows what he wants. Bush realizes that Sharon has no strategic aim and is very dangerous, and therefore keeps his distance from him. "So what has happened to Sharon?", everyone is asking. "'Restraint is strength', 'they deserve a state', Tannenbaum, the destruction of the Gush Katif settlements - has Sharon simply gone mad?" Sharon has not gone mad. We predicted his behavior, and published articles on the subject in Lechatchila several years ago. Sharon is behaving like a bird that finds itself trapped, and beats itself to death against the walls of its cage. It is not simply that Sharon is trying to sacrifice the settlers in the hope that this will delay the efforts of the Left to prove the charges brought against him. A far deeper issue is involved. All the leaders of the Right who attempted to face reality using classical Zionist awareness found themselves in a hopeless situation. It is impossible to understand the reality we are facing, or to navigate our path in it, without a Jewish Road Map. Israel does not want to admit it, but the world sees it as the representative of the Jewish people and of divine justice. When Israel surrenders to Moslem terror and says in effect that it is based on justice, it actually confirms the anti-Semitic claims made by both Christianity and Islam. This process leads inevitably to the waves of anti-Semitism sweeping the Western world. Manhigut Yehudit is emerging out of this great confusion. More and more people are realizing this, whether joyfully or from fear. But in the end the State of Israel will have Jewish leadership. Simply because there is no other way for it to survive. Premiere of the Manhigut Yehudit film: "If You Wish It" The most amazing reactions to the short film we have produced came from people on the Left who viewed it. It is quite clear to them that the futuristic story of Manhigut Yehudit's rise to power is not at all imaginary, and is only a question of time. We shall discuss this next Sunday. At 19:00 on Sunday the Premiere of the Film will be held in Heichal Hasimcha, 27 Yerimayahu St., Jerusalem (near Zol Poh). For the first screening we have invited our Central Committee members and major Manhigut Yehudit activists. No invitations have been sent by mail. Regular activists are invited to come and hear the latest news. The film will be screened to a wider audience in the future. Political Update This week we have engaged in judicial activities. On Monday the Likud Court was convened to deal with a large number of appeals. It should be kept in mind that the very convening of the Conference on Tuesday, Nissan 8 (30.3.04) was an achievement by itself, since this was the very last thing that the Prime Minister and his aides want. The effect of brave Sharon facing a corrupt Central Committee has already worn off, and now every time a session of the Conference fails to make significant decisions the feelings of frustration and discontent amongst Central Committee members increase, directed at the way the party is being run by its leader. During this legal session the issue was debated of the proper way to conclude the Conference and permit the election of party institutions, elections for the World Likud Organization, and the special voting for amendment 19c to the constitution (an MK or minister who votes contrary to Central Committee decisions will not be able to be a candidate in the next elections) and amendment 156 (the prime minister will have to submit for approval by the Central Committee a list of ministers and the guidelines of the government he wishes to form). If these two amendments are passed Sharon will find it very difficult to get his disengagement proposal adopted by the government, and he will also be unable to get the Labor Party to join the government if the Rightist ministers resign. Our demand that these amendments be put to the vote in the coming session is based on the clause in the Likud constitution that states that 20% of the members of each body can demand that a specific subject be placed on the agenda, in which case the body must address it within 30 days. Together with the Forum for Preservation of Likud Values, we submitted the signatures of more than 600 Central Committee members for these two amendments some time ago. On the eve of the session we were given a surprise: We received the response of the Likud's legal advisor, Haberman, in which he stated that we had only submitted 386 signatures for amendment 19c. This claim was backed by a letter sent six weeks ago by the Likud Secretary General's senior aide, Mrs. Ronit Rubin, to the president of the conference, Agriculture Minister Israel Katz, in which she informed him of this. What could we do? Obviously the claim was untrue, but how could we convince the Court of this without being involved in further delay? Clarifications of the issue on Monday morning reversed the situation, leaving Haberman himself surprised. After querying the matter with Israel Katz and his office, the minister confirmed that the letter and its contents had not been brought to his knowledge. Since the letter itself did not contain the Likud logo and was not even signed, the obvious conclusion was that the letter must be a forgery. It therefore seems that Sharon's confidants are so worried by the proposed amendments, that they are prepared to go to the lengths of making false claims to the Court in order to stop them. With G-d's aid this was exposed in Court, but the president of the Court still requires a lot of courage to withstand the pressure being applied by the party machine orchestrated by Sharon. At this stage we don't know how the Court will decide and we are trying to cover all contingencies. We believe that the Almighty will cause a good decision to be made. Lobbying Activities in the Knesset We can now reveal that joint action by Moshe Shomron and members of other parties in the Knesset led to the signing of an order prohibiting the unrestricted supply of "services" of erotic conversations. At the end of Tamuz an order signed by Minister Olmert will come into force, which will obligate the cellular phone companies to completely block any sex-based calls. Only persons more than 18 years old who request that this block be removed may participate in this "service". It is important to emphasize the contribution of MKs Gila Gamliel and Danny Ben Lulu and their aides, together with the mediation of Moshe Shomron, who promoted the issue and led to its successful conclusion. We should like to thank them and hope that this cooperation will continue in the future in other matters of importance to the Jewish people. For the last four months a demonstration against the administrative arrest of Noam Federman has been held every Saturday night from 21:00 to 22:00, opposite Shikma Jail (where Noam is being held), near the main entrance to Ashkelon. Immediately afterwards the demonstration moves to a new location opposite the home of Avi Dichter, in Ashkelon, until 23:00. This demonstration is growing in size. Last Saturday night about 100 people, residents of Ashkelon, Kiryat Malachi, Gush Katif, and Hebron, participated in it. Our aim: To perfect the world in the kingdom of the Almighty. Moshe Feiglin established Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership), a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Feiglin has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To Go To Top

THE USUAL SUSPECTS Posted by IsrAlert, March 20, 2004.

Isralert's source for this item: Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs This article was written by Ronald S. Lauder, a former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the president of the Jewish National Fund. At a number of recent public forums dealing with American foreign policy in New York, the question-and-answer sessions were marked by the following challenges: Individuals stood up and asked if the speakers would comment on the "neo-cons like Perle, Kristol, and Krauthammer who control the Pentagon." They really meant Jews. In an underhanded and deceitful manner, these disingenuous questioners were using code words to say what is not politically correct to utter in polite society. They are hardly original. Back in the 1930s, Gerald L.K. Smith and the Reverend Charles Coughlin preached vociferously about a cabal of "international bankers" and the "money changers" who controlled and manipulated the world's economy in evil ways. Everyone knew who they were really talking about. They meant Jews. Now, when people who talk about the latest "cabals of neo-conservatives" and only mention the Jewish names in the group, it's just the latest way of talking about you-know-who. And when they fail to mention the many non-Jews who feel the same way, and they believe that only Jews have the secret power to manipulate the minds of such softies as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney, and President Bush, they are practicing a time-honored and despicable tradition. They are the political heirs to bigots like Smith and Coughlin. It seems that the Holocaust produced a half-life of tolerance of just about six decades. Now enough time seems to have passed to allow the whispering campaign to begin again. We see it throughout Europe, we read the medievalist writings from the Muslim world, and we even hear it right here in New York. So the next time you are at a dinner party or on a bus or at a public forum and you hear someone talk about those "neo-cons" and only mention the usual suspects while conveniently forgetting names like Fred Barnes, Christopher Caldwell, and Brit Hume, challenge them. Ask them what they really mean. And then walk away. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

JUDAISM NEEDS AN ENTRY STRATEGY Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, March 20, 2004.

Here is an article to ponder. It was written by Kerry M. Olitzky and Paul Golin. The road to growth runs through intermarried households American Jewry needs a revolution. Jewish life needs to become extroverted rather than inward looking because we refuse to resign ourselves to a shrinking US Jewish community. In its current incarnation, Jewish life in North America is simply incapable of addressing the dual trends of zero population growth and a below-40 percent affiliation rate. The last revolution occurred 35 years ago, prompted by student protests at the annual General Assembly of the Conference of Jewish Federations (now the United Jewish Communities). That 1969 upheaval was a turning point - from helping immigrant Jews become more American to helping Americanized Jews become more Jewish. On the whole, that revolution succeeded in transforming our institutions. Those that had been ardently secular - like Jewish community centers - are now infused with Jewish education. Religious institutions - like synagogues in the more liberal movements - now incorporate many more traditional elements of Jewish prayer and ritual. The problem is that most of these same institutions are incapable of attracting large numbers of newcomers. The exit doors - out of Jewish life and into the American mainstream - have been flung wide open, but we have barely cracked any corresponding entry doors back in. Instead, our strategy has been to try to shut the exit doors. Three decades of national Jewish population studies (NJPS) tells us that this strategy has failed. To begin opening more entry doors into Jewish life, our institutions need to recognize the barriers they create, and then lower them. How expensive is it to affiliate? How much Hebrew is someone initially expected to understand? How long a time commitment do our programs ask for? There are very few entry-level programs to be found anywhere in our community. Even most programs of so-called outreach expect participants to walk into high-barrier institutions like synagogues on their own initiative. This isn't happening in nearly the numbers we need it to. That's why we at the Jewish Outreach Institute offer a new definition of outreach: to take Judaism to where people are, both physically and metaphysically, rather than waiting for them to come to us. The Jewish community must move out of its own four walls, to become extroverted rather than inward looking. That is the next institutional revolution. There are small signs that this movement is beginning. For example, 20 years ago San Francisco hosted the only Jewish film festival. Today, there are hundreds of such festivals throughout North America. And the organizers have found that when films are shown in secular movie theaters, they often attract Jews who are not synagogue or JCC members. So film festivals are one way for the organized community to connect with unaffiliated Jews. We need many more such points of initial contact, and then we need trained professionals who can gently steward newcomers into deeper engagement. This stewardship, what we call "outreach methodology," will require a corps of specially trained professionals. Just as the last revolution placed a Jewish educator in almost every JCC, now we need an outreach coordinator in every JCC. And because there is no magic-bullet solution to the complex issues of disaffiliation, this new revolution will require our institutions to actually listen to what unaffiliated Jews need, and then meet those needs with programs of meaning. To do so, institutions must genuinely want to serve the unengaged. Serving the unengaged means losing our preconceived notions of what a Jew looks like because the population we've disenfranchised includes Jews of color, it includes gay and lesbian Jews, and most of all it includes intermarried Jews. IN THE past, Jewish outreach has more often than not been used to define a population - the intermarried. We consider outreach to be a methodology and believe that programs of welcoming and meaning will find relevance among all segments of the unaffiliated, including intermarried families, without necessarily being tailored to one target in particular. That said, any institutional attempts at outreach that are not welcoming to intermarried families are doomed to fail because not only do the intermarried make up the largest part of unaffiliated Jewry, but they also represent the community's best hope for growth. The fact that nearly half of all marrying American Jews are intermarrying is well known. What is little understood about this statistic is that the better way to describe it is not with the word "half" but with the word "double." The number of intermarried households created is nearly double the number of in-married households created. That's because for every two Jews marrying each other to create one in-married household, there are two Jews marrying non-Jews to create two intermarried households. The result is that sometime within the next few decades, the number of intermarried households will surpass the number of in-married households. This "coming majority" is in some ways already here: the recent NJPS shows that among Jews age 18-25, a minority of 48 percent have two parents who were born Jewish. (It's noteworthy that the other half of that age range, with only one parent born Jewish, nevertheless identified themselves as Jews to the survey takers.) There are currently more than a million intermarried households, making up more than one-third of all married households containing a Jew. If we really want to ensure the Jewish future in America, the road to growth runs through intermarried households. That's because intermarriage itself does not end Jewish continuity - not raising Jewish children does. If we can encourage more than half of intermarried families to raise their children Jewish, it will offset our lower-than-average birthrate and actually grow our numbers. This is not an impossible task. The NJPS found that one-third of intermarried households are already raising their children Jewish. Increasing that percentage should be the single most important goal of the Jewish community. The target audience is there: almost half of intermarried families say they are raising their children as "both" or "nothing." We know from our work that behind those words is a wide spectrum of meaning, and that for many of those families the door is still open to the Jewish community and to raising exclusively Jewish children. We need a massive effort to bring tens of thousands of new Jews into the US Jewish community - a kind of internal immigration - by creating many more entry-level programs to function alongside our programs of deeper commitment. And we need to open all our programs, and our hearts, to any family interested in raising Jewish children. Just get them in, teach them, and welcome them. It will take a revolution within our institutions to get us to that point. But we know that revolutions have happened before. Rabbi Olitzky is executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, the only independent, transdenominational organization welcoming intermarried families into the community. He is author of Introducing My Faith and Community. Paul Golin, assistant executive director of JOI, is author of the report "The Coming Majority: Suggested Action on Intermarried Households for the Organized Jewish Community." This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post Online (http://www.jpost.com) March 18, 2004. To Go To Top

AN ANTI-TANK ROCKET HITS A HOME IN GUSH KATIF Posted by Dror Vanunu, March 20, 2004.

At 7:20 Monday morning, March 16th, an anti-tank rocket hit the roof of the Shunam-Levi home causing extensive damage. Miraculously no one was hurt. The rocket exploded in the room of a daughter who had left at 5am for a class trip. This was the 78th home damaged in the past three years, and the second time this home was hit. Local brigade commander General Dan Harel was quickly on the scene and talked with homeowner Arlette Shunam-Levy. She described how she and her late husband and their children built the house several years. "This is my home" she said, "and I won't move from here." General Harel assured the family that all would be well... An extraordinary miracle occured on Sunday, March 15th, when a bus crowded with women, children and soldiers was hit by a Rocket Propelled Grenade near Netzarim. Though the bus was armored the projectile penetrated the vehicle and exited without injuring a single passenger. The time has come for the Prime Minister to recognize that buses in Jerusalem and Netzarim, the port in Ashdod and homes in Neve Dekalim are all the same target. Terrorism must be defeated, now! Dror Vanunu is is Director of the Katif Region Development Fund. To Go To Top

COLUMBIA'S EDWARD SAID CHAIR DONOR LIST RELEASED. SHOCKING Posted by IsrAlert, March 20, 2004.

This is from Campus Watch, March 19, 2004. It is archived at http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1076 March 19, 2004 - The recently established Edward Said Chair at Columbia has caused much controversy, in part because it is held by former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi and in part because the donors of the chair's estimated $4 million endowment have until now been kept secret. As Campus Watch has reported, it is highly irregular for the identity of academic chair donors to be concealed. It is all the more alarming that a university, naming a chair for one political activist and then awarding it to another political activist, would then prevent the public from knowing who had funded the chair. Columbia University continued to refuse disclosure. On Friday, March 12, 2004, Columbia's Office of Public Affairs finally released in print (not on its website) the full list of donors: Yusef Abu Khadra Abdel Muhsen Al-Qattan Ramzi A. Dalloul Richard and Barbara Debs Richard B. Fisher Gordon Gray, Jr. Daoud Hanania Rita E. Hauser Walid H. Kattan Said T. Khory Munib R. Masri Morgan Capital & Energy Olayan Charitable Trust Hasib Sabbagh Kamal A. Shair Abdul Shakashir Abdul Majeed Shoman Jean Stein United Arab Emirates With the list now public, it is clear why Columbia University preferred not to disclose the donors' identities. Columbia is already known for the lack of balance in Middle East studies. The list of donors to the Edward Said chair only confirms the problem. Particularly worrisome is the presence of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) among the donors. As Martin Kramer has pointed out, the incumbent of the Said Chair has also been named the director of Columbia's Middle East Institute, a federally-subsidized National Resource Center for the Middle East, and as such administers over $1 million in U.S. government subsidies intended to improve national security. The conflict of interest is obvious. Jonathan Calt Harris, managing editor of Campus Watch points out, "In brief, at Columbia right now, a political activist professor, paid in part by an Arab state, currently administers funds from the U.S. taxpayer, in part for the purpose of 'outreach' to the public. Both Columbia alumni and taxpayers should find this shocking." A previous UAE government donation to an American university has come under fire - the gift of $2.5 million in 2000 from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan for a professorship at Harvard Divinity School (HDS). Rachel Fish, then a student at the Harvard Divinity School, showed the antisemitic activities of the UAE's Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up. HDS President William Graham has promised an investigation. Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, addresses five problems in Middle East studies: analytical failures, the mixing of politics with scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of power over students. Middle East Forum, a 501(c) 3 organization, works to define and promote American interests in the region and to shape the intellectual climate in which U.S. policy is made. To Go To Top

ARIEL SHARON POSITIONS HIMSELF AT THE BECK AND CALL OF THE U.S. STATE DEPT Posted by David Bedein, March 20, 2004.

For the past decade, U.S. demands for Israel to dismantle Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the Golan Heights and the Gaza strip were sweetened with talk of a " peace process" and economic benefits that would accrue for the Israeli people from such a move. Now, gone are any such promises of peace when the U.S. calls for Israel to dismantle Jewish communities. Undersecretary of State David Satterfield recently told the media at the State Department that the U.S. simply demanded that Israel dismantle its Jewish communities in areas that Israel acquired in a defensive war in 1967. Period. As a matter of policy, Israel had offered to trade some of these areas for bona fide peace agreements, and that is precisely what Israel did in 1982, when Israel handed over the Sinai and dismantled 16 Northern Sinai Jewish communities as a part of the formal peace agreement between Israel and Egypt brokered by the U.S. This is not the first time that the State Department brought pressure to bear against Israel. On September 1, 1982, President Reagan issued a plan that also mandated unilateral Israeli withdrawal from vast areas that Israel had acquired after the 1967 war. Yet nothing happened at the time. In February 1993, I interviewed the man who was Israel's Prime Minister back in 1982, Yitzhak Shamir. I asked him how it was that the U.S. made demands and nothing happened? Shamir's answer was that "we said no, and they understood the we meant it, and they backed off." Today, however, the State Department pressure seems to be working. That is not because Israel has any peace partner or any peace agreement in the offing. It is because the U.S. has new leverage on Israel, which has asked the U.S. for billions of dollars of loans to enable the Jewish state to cope with the loss of foreign investment during the four year guerrilla war of attrition that has wreaked economic havoc. Ariel Sharon, Israel's current Prime Minister, has announced that he will succumb to State Department policy dictates and dismember the Jewish communities in the Katif district of Gaza. The question, however, is whether the U.S. and the sycophantic Israeli Prime Minister will now transform a democratic ally like Israel into a banana republic. Israel is often referred to as the only democracy in the Middle East. Let us hope and pray that it stays that way. After all, it is surrounded by hostile dictatorships where totalitarian rule is the norm and that constantly seek Israel's destruction. With a system of proportional representative democracy, much like the United Kingdom, the Israeli Knesset parliamentary elections can often produce as many as twenty political parties out of only 120 seats. The Israeli Prime Minister therefore always presides over a coalition government that consists of a diverse amount of political parties to which he is accountable. Those parties are also accountable to the Israeli Prime Minister. That is Israel's system of checks and balances which has kept Israel's democracy working through the continual state of war that the Jewish state has coped with since its inception in 1948. Yet on March 9, 2004, Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ignored Israel's parliamentary system of democracy and behaved like a dictator. On that day, our news agency learned that the Israeli Prime Minister had unilaterally informed officials of U.S. intelligence that he would begin to dismantle the 21 thriving Israeli farming communities and evict 1200 Israeli families of the Katif district of Gaza as early as May 1, 2004. Prior to his Pentagon leak, Sharon held no cabinet discussion or decision, no Knesset parliamentary discussion or decision and no Israel National Security Council discussion or decision. He acted alone. And only last week, a member of the Knesset revealed yet another secret plan documented by Sharon to brutally evacuate the Jewish communities of Katif by ordering the cutoff of all their water, electricity and police or military protection. Sharon's foreign press spokesman would not deny the veracity of that document. This is not the first time that Sharon has ignored the decision-making process of Israel's democracy. After trying an earlier unilateral move on his own, Sharon in May, 2003, was forced to deal with the Israeli cabinet that ultimately approved the "The Road Map" prepared by the "quartet" - the U.S., the UN, the EU and Russia - all of them foreign powers. The cabinet added fourteen clear reservations, designed to protect Israel's absolute autonomy and security, which include reasonable demands that "The Palestine Authority (PA) dismantle all terror organizations," and that the "end of the process will lead to the end of all claims and end the conflict." The U.S., however, has ignored Israel's reservations, and Sharon has followed suit by making it a policy of saying and reiterating that "Israel accepts the Road Map," as if it does so without any qualms. Following Sharon's meeting with three top U.S. officials on Thursday, I asked Sharon's official spokesman if the Prime Minister had brought up Israel's reservations to the Road Map. The spokesman whispered "yes". I then asked if the reservations would be mentioned in the press release following the meeting. The PM spokesman said, "no", giving "space consideration" as the reason, and saying that the press release would be very short. Sharon has therefore formally relinquished Israel's independence, placing it instead under the thumb of outside powers and financial interests that may not have Israel's best interests in mind. In the words of Dr. Uzi Arad, the head of the Herzlia Interdisciplinary Center of Strategic Studies, "It was predictable that the concept of a 'unilateral' withdrawal would never work . . . The result is that Israel has fallen prey to strange bedfellows." Indeed, the French and British governments, the European Union and the government of Egypt have all been discussing the possibility of deploying troops to Gaza to fill the void that would be created by a pullout of Israeli communities from the area. Hence, the comparison to a banana republic. The question has been asked: Can Sharon implement such a radical policy without the approval of the Israeli Government, Knesset or Israel National Security Council? Remember he is a democratically elected leader of a robust democracy on par with the United States and Great Britain. The answer is that he just might be able to get away with it: Both the Arabs and the Jews of Gaza still live under military rule. Thus it would be no problem to make life so uncomfortable for the Jews in Katif that they could not survive there for one day. At this point, that means that Ariel Sharon challenges Israel's democratic system, for only in a totalitarian country would we normally witness a regime that would force its citizens out of land and homes that they have lawfully bought and farmed. Katif's 21 Jewish farming communities represent one of the most prosperous and productive contributions to Israel's free market economy. These competitive farming communities often beat out the Israel Labor Party's socialist Kibbutz collective farms for produce contracts for export abroad. Indeed, 65 percent of Israel's tomatoes for export abroad emanate from Katif. Within domestic Israeli society, a conflict of interest exists for farming concerns within Israel's 1948 green line who stand to benefit from such a removal. Most Americans and Europeans are unaware of this. The Israel Labor Party, instead of fulfilling its responsibility as the leading opposition party to the imperious way in which Sharon is handling his role as Prime Minister, is waiting in the wings to join the new government if and when the National Religious Party and National Union Party decide to leave his control. Those parties are not where he normally draws his support. A survey of Sharons's ruling Likud party shows that a majority of the 41 Likud Party members now oppose Sharon's policy. Thus the only effective option against Sharon's plan centers on his own Likud party members and cabinet ministers opposing him. And only when Likud members and their staffers are literally swamped with telephone calls to their cell phones and their Knesset offices or forced to stand in line at the post office to sign for hundreds of registered letters each day can things be turned around. The Free World can and should make its voice heard. Katif should be understood by the entire free world community as being under the threat and the black cloud of eradication as a sop to the Arab world. At a time when the Prime Minister of a democracy has announced his intention to oppress some of his own citizens, those citizens need to know that the free world has not forgotten them. Katif is no different than the Sudetenland of Czechoslavakia at the start of World War Two that was given away by Neville Chamberlain. History is repeating itself in the War On Terror. Members of Israel's Knesset can be reached by writing the name of the Knesset member c/o Knesset, Jerusalem, Israel. All members of the Knesset are listed at www.knesset.gov.il. David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency and Research Fellow at The Center For Near East Policy Research in Wellesley, Massachusetts. This article appeared in Israel Behind the News (israelbehindTheNews.com) March 15, 2004. To Go To Top

WE MUST SAVE THE THREATENED JEWS OF GAZA Posted by Ken Heller, March 19, 2004.

When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced that he would unilaterally withdraw from Gaza, forcing 8,000 Jews to be transferred out of their homes, he showed his true perfidious side. Sharon has placed the Jews of Gaza in the threatened position of being moved out of their homes, farms, synagogues, schools, hot houses, dairies, and the beautiful Mediterranean seashore. All of this would be done to capitulate to Arafat, his PA and PLO, and his terrorist cohorts, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, etc. There is no logical explanation for this handover to the terrorists, who would use Gaza as a staging ground to attack all of Israel more efficiently. The underground tunnels from Egypt would work more successfully, and any military plans Egypt had to go against Israel would be facilitated by removing the front line, the Jewish population, from Gaza. The end result would be a de-stabilization of the entire Middle East. The twenty-one communities that make up Gush Katif have banded together to launch a campaign preventing the implementation of the Sharon transfer plan. They need funds in order to pay for free buses to bring Israelis to Gush Katif, so they can see for themselves the beauty and development of the area. The funds will pay for booklets that will be mailed to every Israeli home, pleading the cause of the Gaza Jews. A film, celebrating the beauty and Jewish life in Gush Katif is being made, to be distributed as widely as possible. You can help by sending a tax deductible contribution, made out to: "Friends of Gush Katif" Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205 New York, N.Y. 10128. The need is urgent. The campaign must be launched immediately. It cannot succeed without the help of Jews who want to be certain that "Never Again" will be the reality. Thank you for your genuine caring and concern... and support!! Ken Heller is a pro-Israel activist. He can be reached at kjhnha@aol.com. To Go To Top

AFSI AND CIPAC ON CAPITOL HILL ASKING FOR U.S. MORAL CLARITY Posted by Helen Freedman, March 19, 2004.

AMERICANS FOR A SAFE ISRAEL/AFSI, led by Chairman Herbert Zweibon, and CHRISTIANS' ISRAEL PUBLIC ACTION CAMPAIGN/CIPAC, chaired by Richard Hellman, joined forces on March 15, 16 to visit over fifty offices in the Senate and House of Representatives, speaking on issues concerning Israel and America's policy in the Middle East. A sampling of those visits follows: Senator Sam Brownback, Rep. Frank LoBiondo, Senator James Inhofe, Senator Zell Miller, Senator George Allen, Senator Norman Coleman, Senator Jim Talent, Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Rep. Tim Johnson, Rep. Jim Ryun, Senator Richard Durbin, Senator Peter Fitzgerald, Rep. Dan Burton, Senator Jeff Sessions, Rep. Jim Saxton, Rep. Pete Sessions, Rep. Mike Pence, Rep. Eliot Engel, Rep. Steve Israel, Rep. Chris Smith, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, Rep. Henry Hyde, Rep. Steve Rothman, Rep. Jack Kingston, Rep. Ike Skelton, Sen. Pat Roberts, and Rep. Ander Crenshaw. Talking points were distributed beginning with a STATEMENT OF BELIEF: "It is not in America's best interests to weaken its only democratic ally in the Middle East while it is striving to create stability and democracy in that region. Instead of urging Israel to give up its land, transfer its people, and create a terrorist "Palestinian" state inside Israel's tiny country, the U.S. should be encouraging Israel to strengthen itself in every way possible. The "Road Map" should be replaced by the biblical road map. Israel should be given the green light to wage an all-out fight against terrorism. Only with a strong Israel as its ally can the U.S. hope to achieve its goals in the Middle East." We addressed America's desire for stability in the Middle East, pointing out that threatening Israel's qualitative military edge by continuing to give billions of dollars in military aid to Egypt is counter-productive, while Egypt continues its alliance with Hamas and the PA. Congressman Anthony Weiner was thanked for introducing the Egyptian Counterterrorism and Political Reform Act - HR 3725, which details the countless violations of President Mubarak and the Egyptian government. MK Dr. Yuval Steinitz's article, "When the Palestinian Army Invades the Heart of Israel" (Commentary-Dec. 1999) served as the focus of our arguments about the terrorist nature of Arafat's army and their goal of destroying all of Israel. We reminded the Congressmen that it was Yasser Arafat who introduced homicide bombing and the use of children as shields. We argued that it would be a victory for terrorism if there was any withdrawal from any part of Israel in response to the reign of terror which has claimed 1000 Israeli lives and thousands of injured since Sept. 2000. We thanked Senators Arlen Specter and Charles Schumer for their sponsorship of the Senate's Saudi Arabian Accountability Act, S 1888, and Congressmen Anthony Weiner, Jerrold Nadler, Peter Deutsch, and Carolyn Maloney for the House version, HR 3643. The Act seeks "to halt Saudi support for institutions that fund, train, incite, encourage, or in any other way aid and abet terrorism, and to secure full Saudi cooperation in the investigation of terrorist incidents." We urged the cut -off of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, to whom the U.S. is the key military supplier, since Saudi Arabia supplies at least 50% of Hamas' budget of $20 million, and its donations increased after Sept. 11, 2001. The Syrian Accountability Act, HR 1828, spearheaded in the House by Congressman Eliot Engel, and the Senate Act, S. 982, introduced by Senator Barbara Boxer and Senator Rick Santorum, also received our attention. We visited these Congress people, thanking them for their efforts to halt Syrian support for terrorism, the end of the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, the stopping of the development of WMD, and the cessation of Syria's illegal importation of Iraqi oil. Finally, in our intensive meetings, we spoke about democracy, America's goal in the Middle East. We stressed that Israel is America's only reliable democratic ally. Countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia have voiced their objections to America's suggestions for political and economic reforms, and accountability on human rights issues, declaring them an "imposition of foreign ideas and interference in their internal affairs." We expressed the belief that pressure on Israel to relinquish its sovereignty threatens the democratic institutions of Israel. It sends a message to Arab regimes that they should reject U.S. leadership in adopting democracy, since it might push them into the same weakened position that Israel finds itself in today. The two day visit to Washington concluded with a gala reception for the Senators and Congressmen who are supportive of Israel. CIPAC's "Friend of Israel" award was presented to Congressmen Eliot Engel, Anthony Weiner, Jim Saxton, Jim Ryun, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Joe Crowley, Mike Pence, Todd Tiahrt, Ernest Istook, Trent Franks, Joe Wilson, and Cliff Stearns. A surprise visit by Israel's Minister of Housing, Effie Eitam, capped the event. Minister Eitam spoke about the warmth he felt at this union of Christians and Jews, united on behalf of a whole Israel. He related a story about his Entebbe rescue experience where G-d's presence was the crucial ingredient in achieving success. Objecting to PM Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan from Gush Katif/Gaza, he stressed that we must continue to work together to ensure that there are no give-aways of Israeli land as a reward for terrorism. In evaluating our talks with the Congress, it was agreed that we had met with a great deal of support and understanding. The breakdown seems to be with the U.S. State Department and the Sharon government. They must proceed with the moral clarity necessary to honestly deal with the terror that is threatening the entire world. Israel has proven to be the test tube for world terror. If the Israeli government proceeds with its plans to evacuate the 8,000 Jews of Gush Katif/Gaza, and turn over the farms, homes, hot houses, synagogues, schools and factories to the terrorists, there will be celebration in the militant Islamic world. The drive will then be to accomplish the same thing in Judea and Samaria, and all of Israel. With that success, homicide bombers will spread throughout Europe, the U.S., and indeed the entire world, emboldened by each victory for terrorism, while the rest of the world cringes in fear. The message we delivered was clear. Victory for terrorism will turn the entire western world into victims. We must uproot the evil at its core. Helen Freedman is the Executive Director of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI (http://www.afsi.org). To Go To Top

FINALLY, THE G-D'S HONEST TRUTH OF THE AMERICAN/ISRAELI RELATIONSHIP Posted by Jerome S. Kaufman, March 19, 2004.

This is based on a speech given at the Jerusalem Conference by Dr. Rand Fishbein, former staff member U.S. Senate Defense Appropriations subcommittee on March 17, 2004. "Israel can just say no!" Dr. Rand Fishbein, former Professional Staff Member of the U.S. Senate Defense Appropriations and Foreign Operations Appropriations subcommittees, told participants of the three-day Jerusalem Conference. "The democratically elected leaders of the State of Israel are under no obligation to reflexively bow to State Department pressure - you can say no!" Dr. Rand Fishbein told the Jerusalem Conference today (Wednesday, March 17, 2004) The conference was organized by B'Sheva newspaper and is on its final day. Dr. Fishbein's comments were made during a panel discussion on Israel's relations with the United States. "American policy in the Middle East today is driven by "flawed notions," said Fishbein who went on to give several examples of such faulty assumptions. "That democratization and political reform are possible in the Arab world in our lifetimes, that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be contained and Arab sensibilities appeased by continual Israeli concessions, and that threats to Israel"s security are manageable and do not constitute existential dangers." The ex-congressional staffer outlined what he saw as "disturbing signs of trouble in the U.S. - Israel relationship," warning that Israel must not be na've regarding America's stated commitment to the Jewish state's security. "There is the discriminatory way in which export licenses often are denied Israeli companies while approvals are granted almost effortlessly by Washington to companies operating in non-democratic countries like China and Saudi Arabia," said Fishbein. "There are regular denunciations of Israel by the State Department for its use of pre-emption to stop imminent attacks on its population, yet the doctrine of pre-emption is what now guides the U.S. military in the war on terrorism." Dr. Fishbein also mentioned that Israel was the only one of America's allies in the war with Iraq explicitly barred from bidding on prime contracts - despite the fact that "Israel contributed mightily to the U.S. victory in Iraq by providing extensive intelligence and logistical support to American forces." Even more sinister, according to Fishbein, is the fact that there has been an "exponential rise in the quality and quantity of high-tech weapons provided to Arab countries." Fishbein chose Egypt as an example delineating the, "extraordinary array of state-of-the-art offensive weaponry" approved by the U.S. for sale to Cairo. The long lists includes over 200 M1 Abrams tanks, extended-range missile launch systems, Harpoon anti-ship missiles (which can also be used as cruise missiles), 24 F16 aircraft, Blackhawk and Apache helicopters, Stinger missile launchers and missile boats. Fishbein also pointed out the discrepancy in American policy regarding loan guarantees given to Israel versus other nations, such as Egypt. America docked $289.5 million from Israel's loan guarantee package on account of policies that the U.S. administration objected to. Egypt on the other hand continues to receive its entire $2.3 billion in U.S. foreign assistance, despite Egypt's opposition to Saddam Hussein's removal. The U.S. administration has also turned a blind eye as Egypt, "aids and abets the smuggling of weapons from the Sinai to terrorist groups in Gaza", acquired 24 No-Dong missiles from North Korea capable of striking Israel anywhere within its borders with weapons of mass destruction, as well as resuming defense ties with Iran after a nearly 25-year hiatus. However Fishbein did not lay the blame with America but rather called upon Israel's leaders to take responsibility for their "plans of retreat". Fishbein also made clear that Israeli leaders have hid from criticism from the Israeli public by insinuating that America is dictating such policies as "unilateral withdrawal". Fishbein dismissed the assumption that Israel's withdrawal from parts of Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) would lead to increased support by the Bush administration - calling it "rubbish". "The planned Gaza retreat has undercut Israel's strongest supporters in the Congress who believe that any retreat in the face of terrorism only encourages more terrorism," lamented Fishbein. "I would remind Israel's leaders that they have no greater friend than the U.S. Congress." "Israel must continue to stand tall and resolute - commanding the forumespect of the world through its tenacious defiance of its enemies," concluded Fishbein. "This must be the guiding precept for Israel and America as they chart their future together - for nothing less than their mutual survival is at stake." Jerome S. Kaufman hosts Israel Commentary (http://www.israel-commentary.org), a website of news and analyses. To Go To Top

A HATIKVAH EMERGENCY MEETING: To Be a Free Nation in Our Own Land Posted by Americans For A Secure Israel, March 19, 2004.

THIS PASSOVER - OUR FIGHT FOR FREEDOM IS TO LET OUR PEOPLE STAY SAVE THE 8,000 JEWS OF GUSH KATIF/GAZA IF GAZA GOES, OUR WORLD WILL TOPPLE WITH IT What would be your reaction if: Terrorists tossed Molotov cocktails at a synagogue killing or injuring local Jews and the U.S. government reacted by making the area Judenrein? Or if Jews in NYC were attacked by Jew haters and the New York City police decided to evacuate the Jews? Or if the French government forced Jews to leave Paris in response to terrorist attacks on them? You would be outraged that the victims were being punished and terrorists rewarded. That is what PM Sharon is doing in his plan to remove Jews from Gush Katif, Judea, Samaria, and... ATTEND A PUBLIC FORUM WEDNESDAY. MARCH 31, 7:30 PM WEST SIDE INSTITUTIONAL SYNAGOGUE 120 W. 76th St., between Columbus & Amsterdam Aves. In New York City SPEAKERS - FROM ISRAEL - MK DR. ARIEH ELDAD, YOSSIE BEN AHARON, former Director General of the PM's office, and Gush Katif residents, DROR VANUNU and MOSHE SAPERSTEIN. ADDITIONAL SPEAKERS - Rabbi Rafael Grossman of the West Side Institutional Synagogue, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis of Hineni, Mort Klein of ZOA, Rabbi Allen Schwartz of Ohab Zedek, Herbert Zweibon of Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI, and more. No fee - Bring your friends and neighbors - A voluntary tax-deductible contribution to "FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF" would be greatly appreciated. AND PLAN TO JOIN AFSI ON ITS CHIZUK SOLIDARITY MISSION TO ISRAEL - MAY 16-24 - WITH TWO DAYS IN GUSH KATIF/GAZA Contact: Helen Freedman, Executive Director, Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI; 1623 Third Ave., Rm. 205, New York, N.Y. 10128; Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717; afsi@rcn.com; http://www.asfsi.org To Go To Top

WHY I AM NOT A MUSLIM Posted by Ray Marshall, March 19, 2004.

For the evolving understanding of Islam, Mohammed and their advocates, it is crucial that the educated read a well researched and documented work titled "Why I am Not a Muslim" by Ibn Warraq. Ibn Warraq captures the essential research of many historians and religious writings into a comprehensive text that seems to strip away much of the religious-political spin found in many current books, articles and speeches. Knowledge gained from this book is culturally, politically and religiously instructive while enabling understanding of some thought processes and behaviors exhibited by believers of Islam. Ibn Warraq provides a comprehensive direct and indirect analysis of what it means to have shared values with Islam or rather to what extent shared values are possible between Muslims and non Muslims. Moreover, Ibn Warraq analyzes the Koran and so makes it a simple matter to recognize why, from an Islamic perspective, it is virtuous to commit acts considered amoral or barbaric by the overwhelming majority of people while simultaneously accusing others, especially Jews, of perpetrating or being the reason for those acts. Why I am Not a Muslim provides substantive indications as to why Egyptian TV and other government controlled media are continuing to air "Horsemen Without A Horse" (a redo of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion); why the U.S. is a Great Satan; why Israel is a colonial occupier; why Muslims do not generally criticize Islamic co-religionists when their words or actions are heinous but which conform to Koranic pronouncements, why historical revisionism is appropriate deception, why making peace with Jews yet alone Israel is contrary to various Suras, etc. It is likely fatal to assume that followers of Islam have the same assumptions for friendship, peace and tranquility as Jews, Christians, and others. Read, learn and teach! To Go To Top

SHARON TOUTS PLAN, PRESENTS NONE, GETS VOTE ON IT Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 19, 2004.

Before addressing the Knesset about his plan for withdrawal, he cited only alleged advantages: 1. Improve long-term security; 2. Prevent a national cleavage; 3. Enlist international support; 4. Maintain the P.A. obligations to the Road Map; 5. Compel the P.A. to feel it lost something by not reaching an agreement with Israel; 6. Reduce impression of Israeli retreat under fire; 7. Keep long-term cost reasonable; 8. Avoid Arab excuse to keep fighting for part of Gaza, as Hizbullah did in Lebanon, because the pullout there would be complete (Arutz-7, 3/11). At the Knesset, he discussed the plan without presenting it and without showing it would enhance security. Although his speech was empty, as cynics predicted, he called for a vote on his announcement. The vote barely passed, though more MKs opposed withdrawal than support it (IMRA, 3/15). All 8 points are incorrect or misleading: 1. Withdrawing from parts of the Land of Israel in favor of a terrorist state impairs security. 2. It may precipitate a national cleavage but not prevent one. The Left is not satisfied with the plan except as a first step. Thus the same agitation for Israeli withdrawal would continue. 3. No Israeli leader should delude himself that in this Arab-appeasing, Jew-hating world, foreign states would support Israel except for withdrawals that weaken it. Indeed Sharon's plan is gathering international support, but only as a first step and with criticism for not planning more steps (that Sharon may be planning secretly). Foreign countries very likely would call it a precedent for further withdrawals that PM Sharon claims he doesn't want. It may lead to foreign troops alongside Israel, protecting the terrorist entity from Israeli retaliation. 4. Nothing Israel does maintains Arab obligations. The Arabs sign agreements, but deceitfully. They do not meet their obligations. The West does not make them. For example, after a decade of Oslo, the West still subsidizes the P.A. despite its being in complete violation of the Accords. 5. The P.A. won't feel it has lost anything by not reaching an agreement with Israel. To the contrary, its terrorism will have brought it a rollback of some Zionist development of the Jewish homeland and a PLO state without Arab obligation. According to Arafat's phased plan for the conquest of Israel, the PLO would use that state as a base for conquering Israel. 6. Retreating from terrorism is retreat under fire. During the Israeli retreat, the Arabs would fire. 7. Allowing PLO sovereignty leaves terrorism stronger. That will cost plenty. 8. The Arabs of Gaza would use the excuse that they are fighting for Judea-Samaria. Besides, being deceitful, the Arabs never run out of pretexts or causes. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

AN INTERVIEW WITH BERNARD LEWIS Posted by CAMERA, March 19, 2004.

In an interview with Fiamma Nirenstein in the March 11 Jerusalem Post, the renowned Middle East historian Bernard Lewis shares his knowledge and insight about several issues that are commonly reported on, but usually without sufficient context. It was entitled "Avoid the Algerian precedent." Princeton scholar Bernard Lewis, universally accepted as the world's leading expert on the history of the Middle East and author among other works of The Crisis of Islam and, most recently, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East, discussed with the Post developments in Iraq and Israel, during a visit to Tel Aviv early this month. This was translated from the Italian by Rachel Donadio. Are you in favor of immediate elections in Iraq? I don't want us to repeat what happened in Algeria, where elections quickly devolved into a massacre. We need to tread very carefully. Elections have to stabilize Iraq, not upset it. Otherwise, countries like Iran and other Middle Eastern dictatorships have an interest in seeing to it that democracy never takes root. Much of the funding and organizational support for terrorist groups comes from Iran. Can the US really take on countries directly responsible for terrorism? I don't think that there's a need anymore for other wars. If the opposition isn't blocked, Iran is poised for a democratic revolution. As for the other countries involved in funding terrorism, I can imagine the collapse of corrupt minority regimes in crisis, ones which persecute and impoverish their citizens. Do you have faith that, in spite of everything, democracy will prevail? Saddam Hussein, a Ba'athist-minority dictator, was nourished by Nazism first and then by communism, both European totalitarian ideologies. If anything, the risk of not succeeding in dismantling these fragile Middle Eastern dictatorships today lies more in the history of the rapport between the Muslim and the Western worlds than it does in Muslim roots. Islam, which has been weak for two centuries, has always sought backing to help it fight the enemy - Western democracy. First it supported the Axis against the Allies, then the communists against the US: two disasters. Today it is seeking the protection of Europe against the US, which it sees as its principal enemy. And Europe is facing a difficult debate between those who want to accept that role and those who don't. Please, I have no intention of comparing Europe to Nazi Germany or the USSR, I'm only talking about the position in which the Arab world is trying to put the old continent. How has America's war on terror affected the terrorists? The war, which has set the entire Middle East in motion, threatens terrorism, and so it contributes to the terrorists' activating their defenses. You see, Iraq today could become a democracy in the middle of the Middle East. In the papers we may only read about terrorist attacks, but in reality Iraq is bustling with all kinds of movement - new newspapers, new local forms of self-government, young people signing up to be in the police or the army. Things are incomparably better than they were under Saddam. And we can proceed with caution, without rushing to carry out elections that would require local electoral lists, laws and structures that still need to be defined. How will the trial in the Hague affect the Middle East peace process? What's happening in the Hague is absurd. It's a matter of common sense. Everyone knows it's not a legal question, but rather a political one, one which can only be resolved when the two sides have decided to treat it as such: politically. The world has always been tormented by border issues. Alsace and Lorraine spent hundreds of years establishing their borders and only now, just maybe, have they succeeded. The UN may pose the question in legalistic terms - and in a minute I'll explain why I mean legalistic, not legal - but this is really not about what the UN says it's about. My impression is that the UN has taken up a debate from the Palestinian side, so we can't be sure whether the discussion concerns the dimensions of Israel, its behavior, or its existence. Is Israel violating international law in its building of the fence? The only Armistice Agreement that deals with borders is the one signed in Rhodes on January 6, 1949. The second part of article five says that the cease-fire lines are "not to be interpreted as political or territorial borders and their delineation in no way affects the rights, demands or positions of any of the parties to the cease-fire agreements regarding the final disposition of the Palestine question." The subsequent UN resolutions are built on this one document, and defer to a political structure not yet established. But what if the fence were built on the Green Line? It wouldn't make any difference. The Palestinians have been offered borders in which to establish their state many times: In 1936 by the Peel Commission, then by the UN itself in 1947, then in many Israeli offers, the most recent one at Camp David in 2000 with Arafat, [Ehud] Barak and Bill Clinton. History teaches us that Palestinian policy is informed by an implicit refusal to accept the State of Israel. They won't change their tune this time either. Israel says it's putting up the fence to defend against terrorism. It's a very serious direct measure, and one that makes one think that terrorism in general is not on the wane - not in this area, not in Iraq, where there are terrorist attacks every day, and not in the rest of the world, which is in a constant state of alert. There are two kinds of terrorism, but, mind you, they're not in conflict and are often unified in their actions. The first kind is always armed with highly ideological means and is aimed at preserving existing tyrannies. The second, al-Qaida kind, is aimed at subjugating the entire Western world. What do you make of the UN's transition from creator to prosecutor of the Jewish State? Let's look at the facts. First of all, Palestinian rhetoric hasn't changed since 1947. It still continues to reject the existence of a country it considers an enemy, a stranger in the region. Its schools, radio and television continue to teach incitement. Now let's consider another Palestinian issue in which the UN is also involved: the refugee problem. In pushing for the right of return, the Palestinians are essentially proposing the elimination of the Jewish state. And the UN has never proven that it differs from the Palestinians on the refugee question. History is very clear. In the last century, millions of refugees moved between war-torn countries. The most important migration was between India and Pakistan in 1947, which involved at least seven million people. In 1945 millions of people moved between Poland and East Germany, and all were resettled. With the partition [and creation of the State of Israel], 725,000 Arab refugees were relocated, and the UN immediately created a fixed institution, [the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East], which has literally prevented the Palestinians from resettling. In 1929, Jews were killed or forced out of Hebron, and in 1948 others were killed or forced out of Jerusalem, but have you ever heard them referred to as refugees, protected by the UN? What about the 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries? The UN never bothered with them. I'd like to add that when on December 17, 1947 the Arab League rejected the resolution that established the partition - within the confines of international law, I might add - the UN didn't make a sound. Nor did it say a word when the Arab countries forbade Israelis of any religion from entering its borders - preventing even Muslims from making their obligatory pilgrimage to Mecca - and closed its borders to Jews regardless of their citizenship. Nor did the UN speak out when Jordan in 1954 offered citizenship to any inhabitant of Palestine, except Jews. The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) monitors the news media for fairness in reporting news about Israel. To Go To Top

JEWISH RUNNING MATE SAYS LE PEN WILL FIGHT ANTI-SEMITISM Posted by Jewish Community of France, March 19, 2004.

This was written by Adar Primor and appeared in Ha'Aretz. "Our region needs something better. Our religion does too!" reads the opening line of a letter distributed in recent weeks among the Jewish community in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, one of the largest and most important regions in France. Behind the letter is Sonia Arrouas, a 42-year-old Jewish woman, and No. 4 on the regional list of Jean-Marie Le Pen's National Front party. On Sunday, French citizens go to the polls in regional elections that are viewed as a significant test of the balance of power and the National Front's position in the country. Arrouas has been working full tilt for her candidate, Le Pen - the only person, in her opinion, who can solve France's problems, the only one who "can put an end to the authorities' incompetence in the face of anti- Semitic aggression." Arrouas's letter continues: "Has France become an anti-Semitic state? No, but anti-Semitism is dangerously on the rise in a number of regions, including our region. We must not err in identifying the source of the evil: Those responsible for the anti-Semitic incidents, for the most part, come from the Maghreb countries. These worrisome people must not be allowed to harm our community. The Jews' faith [in the authorities] has cracked. Therefore, I decided to fight with you for our region, for our security and for our religion. Therefore, I decided to stand as a candidate in the elections alongside Jean-Marie Le Pen. Let's stop the disinformation!!!  Come and sign up." Arrouas, a jurist, businesswoman and a mother of three, was born in Paris to a traditional Jewish family from Tunisia and Algeria. She tries to come to Israel often to visit her relatives. She says she supports Le Pen because she grew up "in a patriotic family for which law and order was our daily lot;" because for her, September 11 was "very traumatic;" because the Muslim girls' headscarves affair "intensified my fears;" and because she has no intention "of being left at the mercy of the radical Muslims." Arrouas says she became "an anti-fundamentalist and was naturally drawn to the figure who refuses to allow the radical Muslims in France to get stronger. Had they listened to Le Pen, there wouldn't be so many extremists like these in France. One must not show tolerance for those who have no tolerance." Arrouas sees Le Pen as a repentant man who has changed his anti- Semitic views thanks to, among other things, his 1991 marriage to his second wife, Jany, "some of whose best friends, including myself, are Jews." Arrouas says she is very proud of "Le Pen's admiration for the State of Israel," adding: "He has always identified with Israel's policy of defense in the face of the aggression of the Arab world." Arrouas, who serves as Le Pen's unofficial adviser on Jewish issues, is not afraid to be labeled "the Jewess of," noting: "I am not alone. More and more Jews identify with me and will therefore give him their vote. Many recognize that he expresses out loud what they feel in their hearts." Jean Marie Le Pen's daughter, Marine, who is running for leadership of the Ile de France region, also speaks of increasing Jewish support for the National Front. "The Jews have started to take an interest in our manifesto. They perceive us differently. The misunderstandings of the past are fading," she told Haaretz. Marine Le Pen says she doesn't have numbers to support this claim, but notes that from talks she has held with friends in the Jewish community, it is clear to her that "they understand that the real danger for them lies in the [Arab] immigration. The Jews are being forced to take the aggression and racism of the immigrants twice - once for being French, and again for being Jews." Marine Le Pen calls on the Jews of France "to fight here with us against the intensifying immigration problem," and to withstand the pressure they are under to immigrate to Israel. "The Jews have understood who is truly responsible for anti- Semitism," Jean-Marie Le Pen said in an interview with Haaretz published last week. "Some of them, therefore, are happy about the existence of the National Front, which they perceive as [a party] that can protect them." Jewish philosopher Alain Finkielkraut says the French Jews' support for the National Front stems from their fear of what he terms "the Islamic-extreme left-wing alliance," which is responsible today for the spread of anti-Semitism in France. The fact that Tarak Ben Ammar, a Muslim film producer, took on the task of distributing Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," Finkielkraut says, illustrates the problem: "It wasn't someone from the extreme right, from the Catholic-fundamentalist school, who became the film's distributor, but a Muslim." Pascal Perrineau, a scholar of the extreme right and author of "Le Symptome - Le Pen," has conducted surveys in cities such as Paris and Strasbourg, which are home to large Jewish communities. "In all of those places," he says, "voting for the National Front was very low." Perrineau also points out a difference between the voting patterns of the Sephardi Jewish community, whose "anti-Arab feelings are stronger," and the Ashkenazi community. Nevertheless, he stresses, the National Front's Jewish voters are few and far between. France's Jewish leaders do not accept the existence of a "Jewish- fascist" vote in the country. Henri Hajdenberg, former president of the Representative Council of the Jewish Organizations of France (CRIF), believes that no more than 5 percent of French Jews give their vote to Le Pen. "Even those don't really identify with the National Front and its values, but wish to voice a protest against the hatred and violence of the immigrants," he stresses. Hajdenberg does admit, however, that the phenomenon, considered taboo in the past, is indeed a matter of concern for the leaders of the Jewish community. Echoing Hajdenberg's sentiments is an editorial written recently by Elizabeth Schemla, editor of the Proche-orient.info Web site, which deals with issues relating to France's Jewish community and the Middle East. In her article, Schemla blasts "the many Jews who are falling into the National Front's trap" and issues a warning to them not to be misled, saying: "Le Pen and the National Front are racists, xenophobes and first and foremost anti-Semites. To forge a tactical alliance with them is tantamount to collaborating with the most dangerous of the anti-Semites." This email was distributed by Communaute-Juive-France-owner@yahoogroupes.fr Their website address is http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Communaute-Juive-France/ To Go To Top

SCANDAL AT THE U.N. Posted by Jewish Community of France, March 19, 2004.

This was written by William Safire in the New York Times, March 17, 2004. The cover-up in the office of the U.N. secretary general of a multibillion-dollar financial fraud known as the Iraqi oil-for-food program is beginning to come apart. The scandal has been brewing for years. The first I learned of it was in a New York Times Op-Ed article last April by the journalist Claudia Rosett charging that the U.N.'s secretive oversight of more than $100 billion in Iraqi oil exports and supposed humanitarian imports was "an invitation to kickbacks, political back-scratching and smuggling done under cover of relief operations." After checking with Kurdish sources in Iraq, I reported that half the money allocated to their people had been blocked by Saddam "conspiring with bureaucrats in the U.N. Plaza." Kofi Annan's right-hand man, Benon Sevan, had been named by the secretary general to head the oil-for-food program and report directly to him. Though he could not deny a favored French banking connection, Sevan branded as "inaccuracies" charges by Ms. Rosett and me of secrecy, citing a hundred audits in five years. But he refused to make public what companies in what countries got Saddam's largess. Now, thanks to evidence of systematic thievery on a huge scale, discovered by free Iraqis in Baghdad, the whole rotten mess of 10 percent kickbacks on billions in contracts is coming to light. In detailed accounts, Susan Sachs in The Times, Therese Raphael in The Wall Street Journal, and Charles Laurence and Inigo Gilmore of London's Daily Telegraph have flipped over the flat rock of corruption. Assistant Secretary General Sevan, now on an extended vacation until his retirement next month, denied through a spokesman "that I had received oil or oil monies from the former Iraqi regime" and demanded that his doubters produce documentary evidence. The Journal then produced a document in Arabic that suggests Sevan received an allocation of 1.8 million barrels of oil. Under the U.N. bureaucracy's nose - and I suspect, in some cases, with its collusion - nearly three-quarters of the suppliers jacked up their prices to pay the 10 percent kickback. These included European manufacturers, Arab trade brokers, Russian factories and Chinese state-owned companies. Corruption's take - out of the mouths of hungry Iraqi children - was estimated by Sachs of The Times at $2.3 billion. Hired by the U.N. to monitor these imports was a Swiss-based firm, Cotecna, which was paid out of the exorbitant fee the U.N. charged for overhead. Ms. Rosett, writing in National Review last week, notes that Kojo Annan, the secretary general's son, was once on staff and later a consultant to that tight-lipped company. In denying to The Telegraph in 1999 that he worked on the U.N. oil-for- food account, Kojo Annan said, "The decision is made by the contracts committee, not by Kofi Annan." About that "661 compliance committee," on which the U.S. has a seat and to which the secretary general now wants to pass the buck: a U.S. official familiar with its operation tells me that "its purpose was formally to approve what the U.N. staff recommended. Only the U.S. and the U.K. experts ever put a hold on a contract, and that about items that had dual use in weaponry. Few U.S. firms got contracts, and those that did worked through middlemen to avoid the General Accounting Office." Annan's office kept blaming the 661 committee and stonewalling the press until an irate Iraqi Governing Council hired the accountants KPMG and a law firm to investigate what its advisers told Annan was "one of the world's most disgraceful scams." Under mounting pressure, this week the U.N. let it be known that its laughably titled Office of Internal Oversight Services would look into the matter. An internal whitewash? Not nearly good enough. Will the Security Council appoint an independent counsel to clean house in an inept or corrupt Secretariat? No, because France and Russia had their hands in the kickback till. But free Iraq, backed up by the U.S., is not helpless. Our Congress supplies 22 percent of the U.N. budget, and we have a right to an accounting. Chairman Henry Hyde, of House International Relations, calls this "an outrage" and will arrange for a G.A.O. briefing this week, to be followed by open hearings in April. The U.N. can redeem its sullied reputation by helping to shape Iraq's future. To take up that challenge, it must have clean hands. To Go To Top

HAMAS WEBSITE HOSTED IN SWEDEN Posted by Martin Lindeskog, March 19, 2004. /font>

A website linked to the terrorist organization Hamas has been hosted in Sweden. It has moved to a host in Russia. The security police has had this site on its radar for a long time, but hasn't done anything about it... Instead it was the Internet provider TeliaSonera that shut down the site after receiving complaints from e.g., the Jewish Community in Gothenburg. The website (http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/ekot/artikel.asp?artikel=385524) ran The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, fatwas, and stories by suicide bombers. I wonder who the guy is on the right side of the Hamas leader Abd al-Aziz al-Rantissi. The web host company has received about $2650 per month from a group of Palestinian students in Lebanon. Ousama Al-Mardini has most of his customers in the Middle East. UPDATE 03/20/04: Here is a quote by Magnus Norell, an expert on terrorism at the Swedish Defense Research Agency (FOI): "In my opinion, the connection is very evident, not least the detailed information about operations that Hamas has conducted and how quickly they are published on the site. It tallies with what Hamas has done before. Everything indicates there is a total connection between Hamas and the web site." (Jerusalem Post, 03/18/04.) Other blog-eds by Martin Lindeskog are on his website: http://www.egoist.blogspot.com To Go To Top

THE BLAME GAME OF THE IGNORANT Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 18, 2004.

A new era is blossoming in Terror with its victims casting about for someone to blame other than the terrorists themselves. As a result of the Madrid bombing by Al Qaeda, the Spanish people tangentially blamed President George Bush's war against Iraq for their pain and they voted in the opposition Socialist government. The emerging fact that the Terrorists were mostly a Moroccan branch of Al Qaeda who had targeted others including Spain, in the past, did NOT deter them from playing the "Blame Game of the Ignorant". In the New York Times of March 17 there is a Survey (taken before the 4 bombs in Madrid) by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press of numerous European and Muslim countries with regard to their opinion of the United States and Terrorism. Within a mixture of opinions there is a high percentage who blame the U.S., presumably in panic over the increase in terror. *(I recommend that your read it yourself to get the statistics and flavor of world opinion.) What is wrong is that there is a negative opinion at all among informed people, given the facts and circumstances. Let us examine the cascading facts about Global Terror insofar as U.S. response. The U.S., to its discredit, virtually ignored or restrained itself from investigating local and Global Terror prior to 9/11 under the Clinton regime and before that the Bush/Baker regime. America reluctantly rescued Kuwait under the watch of the first Bush, James Baker and the pro-Arab State Department, Colin Powell (then General as Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) - ending the war too soon and leaving Saddam in power with his Republican Guard. Then it waited 12 years for the U.N. to do something about the most savage regime of repression on the planet whose mass graves we are still being uncovered of Saddam Hussein's victims. After 17 resolutions by the U.N. NOT complied with by Saddam, George W. Bush, the son, righted his father's wrong, rescued the Iraqi people - despite the useless U.N. and such appeasement-oriented countries as France, Germany, Russia who only wanted to lift sanctions so they could 'do business' with Saddam to recover past debt from Saddam's weapons-for-credit purchases. All during those years we now learn that the U.N. program of Iraqi Food-for-Oil administrated by Kofi Annan was lining the pockets of U.N. Administrators while Saddam was also bribing political officials across Europe with gift shiploads of crude oil which they could sell for personal gain. That's only the thinnist of background of corruption that preceded the U.S. and British invasion of Iraq. Strangely, Israel played a low key but crucial role in providing Intelligence on Iraq, in addition to training U.S. troops on how to fight Terrorism in an urban setting. (More on this later.) The Terrorists had been building a global network for decades before the U.S. invasion of Iraq which was known and deliberately ignored by the Europeans and the U.S. State Department because it would have focused on Arab Muslim countries with its financial epicenter being Saudi Arabia. BRIEF HISTORY OF ARAB/MUSLIM TERRORISM & ASSASSINATION (1) The world has forgotten the centuries of Terror which was brought to a high state of the art in the Middle East long before Nasser, Arafat, the Iranian Ayatollahs, Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. Even the word "assassin" dates back to 1090 C.E. of a sect dedicated to murder who knew they would die in the act. It was believed they drugged themselves with hashish for courage and thus were called "Hashishin" - later distorted into Assassin. Arab Muslim fanatical killers didn't start with Arafat's suicide bombers or those blowing up Americans on 9/11. The assassins of the 10th Century eventually came to be hated by the Arab world which, no doubt, will happen to the Terrorists now blowing up their brethren in Iraq and Globally. Terrorism was being developed in Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Morocco, Yemen with later connections in Indonesia, Chechnya, Bosnia, the Philippines, many nations of Africa, and others. Unfortunately, the U.S. trained the "mujahadin" (Islamic jihad fighters) in Afghanistan (including Osama Bin Laden) to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. These "mujahadin" came in as Muslims from much of the Arab/Muslim world and then returned to their own nations (and others) well-trained by the U.S. as efficient terrorists. America helped drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan but, the ultimate product of that necessary effort was to seed trained terrorists around the world. There they incubated, hitting smaller targets to gain experience, connecting up to each other and thereby creating what we now face as a Global Threat of Terror which can only be fought with the most brutal retaliatory methods. Oh, Yes! I did forget to insert the fact that these Muslim terrorists were mostly driven by religious radicalism which would have continued no matter what appeasements were offered. We are talking of the Islamists' goal of World Conquest in order to institute Sharia law (extreme form of Wahabbi Islam) across the planet. We are also talking about Koranic mandate for Muslims to recover any land previously conquered by Islam, such as Spain and half of France in the 7th Century, which must be re-conquered. Thus, the "Blame Game of the Ignorant" is being played out in some desperation, hoping that appeasement of terrorists will solve this growing problem. (It won't.) Let us jump to another, more complex Blame Game, this time NOT of the Ignorant but of the Malicious. BLAMING ISRAEL & THE JEWS FOR GLOBAL TERROR Background: Hitler used Church-taught hatred of the Jews to recruit his victim nations of Europe to join him in his "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". Every nation in Europe, in one way or another, assisted him in eliminating their Jews, 6 million, including 1.5 million children. A remnant of Jews escaped the graveyards of Europe and made it to Eretz Yisrael (called "Palestine" by the Romans for 2000 years). The U.N. in a moment of global embarrassment for those nations who collectively participated in Genocide of a of Europe's Jewish population, voted to partition a tiny (15-20%) portion of the designated Homeland for the world's Jews. This portion of "Palestine" was an irregular and indefensible minuscule slice of what Mark Twain saw as a desolate land but, nevertheless, accepted by Jews desperate for a homeland and out of the clutches of the Europeans who had proven their deep anti-Semitic willingness and ability to destroy the Jewish people. Surrounding Arab nations, themselves gifted with their partitioned land by the Allies after WWI of the Ottoman Empire lands formerly held for 400 years by Turkey, rejected Israel's partition. Seven Arab nations launched a brutal war against the newly born State of Israel, recreated after 1950 years of exile. Naturally, neither the Europeans, the U.N. nor the U.S. offered to interfere with the Arabs' assault. The assumption was that the Jews would be eliminated by the Arab armies and all political problems would be solved. But, the Arabs lost, the Jews won the first and five more wars. 6,000 Jews out of a population of 600,000 were killed during the 1948 War of Independence. The Arab Muslims attacked and gambled away the land they held. Israel, the Jews begged for peace each time they won, even offered to give up land they won but, the Arab Muslims refused peace. Despite the fact that the Arabs provoked each war, losing land in an aggressive war, they and the Europeans (though the U.N.), demanded that Israel must give up the land they had won when they were attacked. In 1964, Egypt created the Yassir Arafat's PLO, Palestine Liberation Organization, terrorists who between each war, launched terror attacks against the Jews. The Arab nations and their proxy terrorists always spoke of peace to the Anglo world but, in Arabic, only spoke of terror and conquest of any non-Muslims, including both Jews and Christians. The Arab Muslims say: "First the Saturday people; then the Sunday people." WHEN THERE IS NO ANSWER, BLAME THE JEWS It always seems that the Muslim believe that 'somehow' Christians and Jews have joined to act as Crusaders against Islam. There are 5 million Jews in Israel and perhaps a total of 16 million Jews throughout the world in comparison to at least 1.3 Billion (I said Billion) Muslims in the world today. That tells the story of who is the victim. Would that we Jews had the influence attributed to us by the Muslims to explain their poverty, backward civilization and the fact that they are the epicenter for Terror throughout the world. When they cannot explain why they do what they do - they invariably reach for the Jews as their excuse. Every failure of the Arab or Muslim world is always the fault of someone else. Moreover, they believe their own distortion of the facts and history. Meanwhile, the European nations who were Hitler's proxies to kill the Jews during WW2, now joined the Arabs in the "Blame Game of the Malicious". They knew that the Muslim Arab world would never cease their terror and their plans to conquer the Jews of Israel, to regain the land they claimed was an organic part of Islam. But, they played the Game of Blaming Israel for the Terror launched against her as if Israel could truly appease the Arab Muslims and "Jihadists". The European Media, the Liberal Media of America invariably slants their stories about Terror against Israel - as if her mere existence was the correct reason for or roots of Arab Muslim Terrorism. When Israel responds to horrific attacks against her citizens, the Leftist Media goes ballistic and twists itself into verbal knots to explain that, were it not for Israel's response to Terror, Terror would cease. Many of the shallow, self-styled intellectual pundits have now launched the theme that, 'somehow' Global Terror would cease or, at least, modify its attacks if the so-called Israel-Palestinian problem would be resolved - as if the two components were equal or had anything to do with their plans to create one Global Nation enslaved to Allah and Islam. Surely, Al Qaeda would cease its Global attacks and no longer consider America its prime target for a Super Hit, if Israel capitulates. Surely, Saudi Arabia will cease funding its "madrassas" (schools all over the world for teaching children the radical form of Islam) and will also cease teaching "Wahabbi" laws that speak of world domination by Islam as the "Great Umah" if the Palestinians were give another Arab Muslim state of their own. No one speaks of the hatred the Muslim Arabs have for the Arab Muslim Palestinians or the reason why none of the Arab countries will accept them as their citizens. The Media and the pundits have forgotten why Kuwait and Saudi Arabia transferred those 750,000 Arab Palestinians who lived for years in their countries out - to Jordan - as they were considered untrustworthy and a risk to their governments. Surely, if the Arab Palestinians are pacified, Iran will cease building nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and will cease penetrating its Taliban-like teachings into every Muslim and non-Muslim nation to accept Sharia laws, etc. But, yet intellectual pundits like Arnaud de Bourgrave (on FOX NEWS March 17th) or Tom Friedman will continue spouting a partial truth that terror cells have, indeed, incubated all over the planet but - the main problem is Arab Palestinian discontent. America is now getting her unfair share of wrongful blame because, like Israel, she is really fighting Global Terror. The Europeans hate America and Israel, each for different reasons but, the "Blame Game" is being directed at both. Therefore America and Israel are natural allies. They must each strengthen the other and ensure that the smaller Jewish State is not weakened to become vulnerable to Arab Muslim takeover. We are entering an era of not 5 or 10 years of ongoing terror but, perhaps 50 or more years. Here I agree with Arnaud de Bourgrave. After a few more 9/11s or Madrid catastrophes, perhaps we will begin fighting terror with no holds barred and abandon the "Blame Game". Hopefully, America will cease trying to stop our natural allies, especially Israel, from fighting terror in the way it should be fought - To Win! Appeasing Terror by sacrificing their intended victims will not buy us the their friendship nor take America off their list of targeted nations. Perhaps we ought to tell the decadent Europeans that this time we will not sacrifice American soldiers as we have in the past to rescue or assist them when Terror stalks their cities. 1 "The History of the Assassins" by Amin Maalouf (from book "The Crusades Through Arab Eyes" pp. 98-105 by al-Saqi Books. http://www.sunnahonline.com/ilm/seera/0056.htm Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

THE RISE OF "EURABIA" Posted by IsrAlert, March 18, 2004.

This was written by Robert Spencer and it appeared on Front Page Magazine (http://www.frontpagemagazine.com) today. Robert Spencer is the director of "Jihad Watch" and the author of "Onward Muslim Soldiers: How Jihad Still Threatens America and the West" (Regnery Publishing), and "Islam Unveiled: Disturbing Questions About the World's Fastest Growing Faith" (Encounter Books). Now that Spain has rejected its pro-American government in the wake of the Madrid bombings and Osama bin Laden has effectively become the Spanish Foreign Minister, the question is not so much "Why did this happen?" but "What took so long?" What is really surprising is not Spain's spectacular act of appeasement but the fact that the anti-terror Aznar government bucked Europe's prevailing winds in the first place. For over thirty years, Europe - including Spain - has been preparing for this moment: doing everything possible to transform itself into the newest homeland of a resurgent political Islam. The renowned historian Bat Ye'or explains that the European Union has since 1973 been constructing "a whole infrastructure of alliances and economic, industrial, media, cultural, financial bonds with the countries of the Arab League." This new Euro-Muslim entity - which she has dubbed "Eurabia" - has been consciously intended to become "a counterweight to American power" on the world stage, "whose aim was to separate and weaken the two continents by an incitement to hostility and the permanent denigration of American policy in the Middle East." Eurabia is a political and economic entity. Through a succession of international agreements, Europe agreed to support the Islamic world's political aims - particularly its anti-Israel stance - in exchange for favored treatment in Arab world markets. Observes Bat Ye'or: "From the outset the [Euro-Arab Dialogue] was considered as a vast transaction: the EC agreed to support the Arab anti-Israeli policy in exchange for wide commercial agreements." The fallout has been cultural and demographic as well, as Bat Ye'or details in her forthcoming book, Eurabia. In exchange for the opening of Arab markets, Europeans encouraged Muslim immigration into Europe, discouraged assimilation of these immigrant populations, and fostered the dissemination in Europe of Islamic perspectives on history and contemporary politics. Meanwhile European foreign policies were brought into harmony with the aims and goals of the Islamic world. This "shifting of Europe into the Arab-Islamic sphere of influence," Bat Ye'or explains, was intended to break the "traditional trans-Atlantic solidarity." To deflate American power and assure themselves a steady supply of oil, European leaders accepted "the traditional cultural baggage of Arab societies, with its anti-Christian and anti-Jewish prejudices and its hostility against Israel and the West." In exchange for markets in the Islamic world, Europe turned its back on its Judeo-Christian heritage and set the stage for its own Islamization. At the highest political level, Europe, including Spain, has been selling its soul for decades now - giving up, in effect, its blood for oil (not to mention the blood of countless Iraqis and others who had to suffer under the heel of tyrants with whom Europe happily did business.) Ironically, incoming Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero declared: "We're aligning ourselves with Kerry. Our alliance will be for peace, against war, no more deaths for oil." Yet Zapatero and his new government, not the existing order, represent the Europe that has been giving up her life for oil for thirty years now. After all, according to United Press International, it was Spain's European Union colleague, France, that accepted bribes from the Iraqi oil ministry in exchange for opposition to the American invasion of Iraq. Zapatero is trying to convince the world to see his election not for what it is - the biggest radical Muslim victory since 9/11, or even the Khomeini revolution in Iran - but simply as a referendum on Iraq. He has castigated Bush and Blair for their "lies." However, in the caves and highlands of Afghanistan, the Al-Qaeda leadership is not interested in the niceties of legality, disclosure and intelligence that are currently swirling in the West around the Iraq invasion. They see the war in Iraq as a jihad - indeed, as one segment of a global jihad - and they will not see Spain's withdrawal from Iraq as anything but a victory for jihad and confirmation that terror works. This fact remains quite aside from all questions of the validity of the Iraq invasion. Osama bin Laden, if he is alive, and other radical Muslim terrorists will see it the same way they saw Bill Clinton's withdrawal from Somalia in the 1990s: as proof that the West is weak, unwilling to fight, and ripe for the plucking. Now that Al-Qaeda has adjusted Spain's foreign policy with a bombing, will they not be justified in thinking they can adjust her domestic policies - and religion, and culture - with a few more bombings? The greatest glories of fabled Al-Andalus may yet lie in the future. To Go To Top

MILLIONS IN AID FOR PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY, BUT WHERE HAS IT GONE? Posted by David Frankfurter, March 18, 2004.

The attached OpEd appears in today's Scotsman and is archived at http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/opinion.cfm?id=315932004 THE European Union has poured an astonishing 4 billion into Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) since 1993. Together with contributions from the UK, the US and other individual countries, this, according to a leading World Bank official, is the largest per capita transfer of aid funds ever. But while evidence of high-level corruption within the PA is clearer than ever before, Brussels persists in claiming that it sees reform; its efforts to change the PA are "paying off". Any serious analysis of the money reaching the PA necessarily begins with Chris Patten. As EU Commissioner for External Relations, he has spearheaded a policy of far-reaching tolerance towards his Palestinian beneficiaries. "We have done more to reform the PA than anybody else ... reinforced transparency in finances - and the adoption of the Law on the Judiciary", Patten has claimed. The true picture is deeply depressing. While the average Palestinian wallows in poverty, and violence created by the Palestinians shows no sign of let-up, their leadership shows few visible signs of financial distress. Where has the investment gone? Mohammed Dahlan, one of the inner circle of PA powerbrokers, throws some light on the question: "Those who are surrounding Arafat are blocking internal reforms," he explained last month. Hardly surprising? It is no secret that the PLO was established in the 1960s under KGB guidelines. Four decades later, the same leadership remains in power, enjoying the fruits of a much richer economic climate. Consider: 1. Nabil Shaath, the PA's current foreign minister, was cited back in 1997 for financial mismanagement. Today, he owns a super-luxury villa in the middle of Gaza. 2. Mrs Arafat lives in ostentatious luxury in Paris with her mother and staff, funded from EU-provided budgets. 3. Arafat's hand-picked prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, came under investigation as the owner of a cement company that supplies Israel with material for building settlements and its reviled security fence. 4. The IMF, in a September 2003 report, revealed that hundreds of millions have been misappropriated and pointed to major structural deficiencies within the PA's Ministry of Finance. Then there's the lawlessness. The mayor of Nablus, Ghassan Shakaa, resigned last month in protest at the absence of progress in dealing with unsolved rapes and unpunished crime. In some towns, rival militias, such as Arafat's Al-Aksa Brigades, compete for control of the streets. As for democracy, Palestinians have often reasoned that elections could not be held since 2000 because of Israel's reaction to the Intifada. In fact, Fatah's Revolutionary Council was elected into office more than 15 years ago. It's not hard to understand why the EU officials repeatedly raise the flag of reform. It spares them from having to face up to the minimal return on their huge investment. New villas in Ramallah and Gaza are the few visible signs of donor money having passed through town. The European Commission money managers must be seeing this. Otherwise, how do we explain their recently revised strategy of channelling aid into Palestinian NGOs instead of directly to the PA? Yet most Palestinian NGOs are connected to the PA leadership. Some have been caught engaging in corrupt practices or working outside their stated charters. Consider LAW - a Palestinian human rights agency. Only after some $2m of European taxpayers' money ended up in private bank accounts, was an investigation started. Or the Palestinian Red Crescent Society - severely criticised by the International Red Cross for using ambulances to ferry weapons. The Negotiation Support Unit runs activities that directly contradict UK national policy. European money plays a very significant role in the events affecting the Palestinians. The taxpayer deserves to see a better use of the money. The average Palestinian needs to see it arriving. David Frankfurter is a writer on the Middle East conflict. To Go To Top

THE JEWS OF GAZA NEED YOUR HELP Posted by Dror Vanunu, March 18, 2004.

For over three and a half years the villages of the Katif region have been subjected to an unprecedented terror offensive. More than 11,000 terror attacks have been launched in the region, including unending shooting on the villages and the army bases which defend them, attacks on the travel routes, the planting of bomb explosives, attempts at infiltration and the shooting of thousands of Kassam missiles and mortar shells. Despite the pain and anguish that has been our lot during these years, the firm stand of the people of the Katif region is an outstanding example for the rest of the country.That firm stand of the residents of Gush Katif is now being tested in the face of another ordeal, this time coming from our own government. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's announcement about the disengagement plan, is a sign of defeatism and shortsightedness of the present leadership. This dangerous plan to give our enemies parts of the Holy Land undermines our right to the land, endangers our state and rewards the terror, as we can well see by now. In the face of such weakness, we are working hard to initiatea campaign that will include the bringing of many people to Gush Katif from all over the country, distribution of hundreds of thousands of CD's, initiating parlor meetings in Israel, 'face to face' operation, advertising in the press, on billboards and more. We are determined to stay in our homes, on the land of our ancestors! We are sure that Sharon's plan will lead us to a disaster for the entire country and we intend to prevent it from happening. In order to launch a campaign preventing the implementation of Sharon's transfer plan we need funds that unfortunately are not available to us. Dear friends, Now more than ever we are calling on you to take part in the struggle for the Katif Region and for the unity of Eretz Israel. We ask you now to participate in the efforts to prevent this dangerous plan, rather than to be forced later to deal with the dreadful consequence. Dror Vanunu is Director of the Katif Region Development Fund. To Go To Top

I BELIEVE ARAFAT Posted by Dr. Mordechai Kedar, March 18, 2004.

This was first published in June, 2002. It remains true. On May 15, 2002, Yasir Arafat addressed the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramalla. The occasion was the 54th anniversary of the Nakba ("the disaster" of Palestine, i.e., the establishment of the State of Israel on May 15, 1948). In his speech Arafat referred to the suicide attacks against Israeli citizens, stating that these attacks "do not serve our cause, but rather subject us to angry criticism on the part of the international community". Arafat called upon the Council to deal with this problem (which has aroused serious discussions among Palestinians and Arabs in general) from the vantage point of the "Hudaybiyya Conciliation Accord, out of our concern for the patriotic and national interest of our [Palestinian] people and [Arab] nation, in order to strengthen worldwide solidarity with the Palestinian people and its cause". What is behind this reference to Hudaybiyya? It conveys the following twin messages. 1. "The Hudaybiyya Conciliation Accord" was an agreement which the Prophet Muhammad signed in the year 628 A.D. with the infidels of his tribe, the Kuraysh. He did so upon their refusal to join the community of Islam, when he realized that he could not defeat them militarily. Two years later, having consolidated his power, he attacked Holy Mecca, slaughtered the men of his own tribe and torched all the symbols of their heathen culture. Islam regards the actions of the prophet as religiously sanctioned models for the behavior of the faithful. In fact, the authorized collections (Hadith) of Muhammad's acts and pronouncements are among the important sources for the Islamic authorities of every generation in deciding questions of religious law. Thus, the prophet's way of treating his agreement with the Kuraysh is perceived as the ideal procedure for Muslims when dealing with non-believers: When Muslims cannot impose their will for expanding the rule of Islam by force, they are permitted to sign temporary agreements with the non-believers. Such agreements are to be kept until Allah grants a sufficient increase in Muslim power. At that point the faithful are allowed (or obliged) to break the agreements and to impose Islamic terms on the infidels. Why else would Allah have granted them the power to prevail? In referring to Hudaybiyya, Arafat meant exactly this: Any agreement with Israel is - in his eyes - no more than a Hudaybiyya Conciliation Accord. This is eminently clear to anyone who reads the Islamic sources, preferably in Arabic. (Internet sites in English tend to portray a rather conciliatory picture of Islam, for Western consumption, by rephrasing Islamic messages.) 2. The proof for this is inherent in the second message of the quotation from Arafat's speech. Suicide attacks at this juncture are not condemned as vile inhuman acts but are held in abeyance because they are presently incapable of advancing Palestinian goals. At present, the Palestinian cause can best be served by avoiding international condemnation and by promoting the encouragement and sympathy of the world community. What does Arafat mean? That suicide attacks are evil and should be removed from now on from the arsenal of legitimate weapons in the struggle against Israel? Not at all. If anything, recruitment and training of shahids is accelerating. What he advocates for the near term is a change in the modus operandi. Does he promise not to use suicide attacks again? By no means. Does his most recent call to desist from attacks upon civilians remind us of his record of broken promises made to Rabin (1993), Netanyahu (1996) and in many public declarations between 1993 and 2000? They do indeed. As a student of Arab politics and as a Zionist with personal past involvement with efforts to promote peace and understanding between Israelis and Arabs, I do indeed believe Arafat's message: he does wish to come to an agreement with the Israelis, but, as he points out to his followers, any agreement with non-Muslims, such as a commitment to stop suicide attacks, is simply a modern version of Hudaybiyya. As such, in accordance with Islamic principles which form the basis of the political culture in the Arab sphere, such a commitment may (or must) be broken at the right time. Clearly, before long, when in Arafat's judgment suicide attacks will again be helpful to the Palestinian cause, he will once again call upon his followers to go out and sacrifice their lives in Israel's streets ('millions of shahids marching to Jerusalem'). Great tragedies have occurred in international affairs when governments try to understand potential enemies in terms of their own political culture. The events of September 11 can serve as one recent example. Israeli ignorance of Islamic traditions and Arab culture have brought about many serious political and military setbacks, from the surprise attack which started the Yom Kippur War (October 6, 1973) to our lack of realism all through the Oslo process, 1993-2000. We shall continue to disregard the Islamic tradition only on pain of more naive dreams, by Israeli and Western leaders, dreams which are totally detached from the Middle Eastern reality, a reality which is becoming increasingly colored by the Islamic brush. Dr. Mordechai Kedar is in the Department of Arabic of Bar-Ilan University and  is a research associate of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. To Go To Top

THE CNN-BCC-LA TIMES-WASH POST HANDBOOK FOR HOW TO BE AN "ACTIVIST" Posted by Steven Plaut, March 18, 2004.

1. Murdering people makes you a killer or a terrorist. But if those murdered are Jews then you are an activist. You might also be a militant. 2. Crashing jet planes into buildings makes you a terrorist. But attempting to shoot down civilian planes landing in Israel makes you an activist. 3. Placing large bombs on trains in Madrid makes you a terrorist, but placing bombs on Israeli buses full of children makes you an activist. 4. Blowing up a nightclub in Indonesia full of Australians makes you a terrorist. But mass murdering Israeli children makes you an activist. 5. Snipers shooting innocent people in Virginia are terrorists. Snipers shooting Jews in the West Bank are activists. 6. People trying to ram soldiers with trucks and cars are generally terrorists unless the soldiers in question are Jews. 7. Throwing rocks at civilians makes you a criminal and maybe even a terrorist, and if you do so off a California overpass you will get jailed. But throwing the same rocks at Jews in Israel makes you an activist and maybe even a professor at Columbia University. 8. Denying the Holocaust makes you a racist and a fascist bigot, unless you are an Arab, in which case it makes you a moderate, at least if you deny the Holocaust in grammatically correct English. 9. Hiding behind children when you shoot weapons at soldiers makes you a coward and a villain, unless you are a Palestinian or an Iraqi Baathist. 10. Murdering children makes you a fiend and maybe a nazi unless the children are Jews, in which case you are an activist with legitimate grievances. 11. 9-11 and 3-11 terrorism has no underlying causes or root grievances, but Middle East activism in which Israelis get mass murdered does - because of Israeli insensitivity and because Palestinians feel occupied. 12. When Bosnians or Albanians in Kosova get mass murdered, that is a war crime. When Jews get mass murdered, this is their comeuppance for their insensitivity, and of course it is reactive activism. 13. When Americans assassinate al-Qaida or Taliban leaders anywhere they find them, this is part of the war against global terrorism. When Israel shoots terrorist leaders, it is an obstacle to peace and is unjustifiably deactivating activism. 14. When the US jails hundreds of terrorists in Guantanamo Bay without trial, this is because the jailed are terrorists. When Israel jails people who have mass murdered Jews, this is undermining the peace process and antagonizing activists. 15. Firing mortars and rockets into civilian areas in the Balkans makes you a war criminal. Firing them from Gaza into Jewish homes makes you a militant. Protesting wearing of fur also makes you a militant, or maybe an activist. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

PLANS AND PLANS Posted by Gary M. Cooperberg, March 18, 2004.

Clearly a great many people are very upset with Sharon's plan to uproot Jewish people from their homes. It is ironic that, from June of 1967 onward, nearly every Israeli government has sought to give away that which was miraculously handed to us by our G-d. And, at long last, when we finally got a Prime Minister who was, deemed by most observers to be, the most right-wing militant leader we could hope for, he does an about face and suggests the most leftist policy ever dreamed up! No wonder many people are losing hope in our future. Threats to our existence are nothing new to the Jewish people. What we must continue to keep, first and foremost, in our minds is the knowledge that Israel and the Jewish People are part of a Divine Plan which no human power can alter. Of course it would be a lot better if we, the Jewish People, could pull ourselves together and act with faith in G-d and true self-confidence in the certainty of our destiny. By failing to do this we are the prime cause of our own needless suffering. While we can examine mistakes we have made over the centuries and identify how G-d has rescued us so many times, even though we may not have been worthy of His mercy, let us just take a brief look at recent Jewish history. Theodore Herzl, the founding father of modern "secular Zionism", was certainly not a religious man. His dream of a Jewish State was not that of his fathers. As a result of the Dreyfus trial in France he came to the conclusion that the world hates Jews so much that it could easily destroy them physically. His concern was not to save Judaism, rather to save Jewish lives. He did not see the connection between antisemitism and Judaism. All he saw was irrational hatred of the Jew. Antisemitism did not discriminate between observant and non-observant Jews. The fact is that all Jews have an equal obligation to serve our G-d and bring redemption to Mankind. That many Jews choose to ignore their obligation as Jews does not remove the fact that they still have that obligation. The holocaust, which was probably the most brutal and horrible expression of antisemitism in history, clearly revealed that no Jew can escape from his destiny. Many thought that they could abandon Judaism and thus escape antisemitism only to find themselves hunted down equally with observant Jews. The reason we Jews were not permanently accepted by any nation is because it was our destiny to remain a people apart from all the nations of the world. Had we been accepted and become a part of the nations of our exile we would have disappeared centuries ago. Today, after thousands of years of wandering from nation to nation, in spite of our desire to become a part of those nations, it is nothing less than a miracle that we still are recognizable as a people! Yes, we have made plans to make new lives in so many different places, only to have those plans disintegrate before our eyes. For two hundred years we lived in Spain and considered it home ... until the Spanish Inquisition forced us out. Jews living in Germany considered themselves Germans first and Jews second, failing to believe Hitler even when he clearly expressed his hatred for the Jews. It was no coincidence that the reborn Jewish State came into existence right after the holocaust. Clearly the most horrible desecration of G-d, the wholesale murder of millions of His people, brought with it Divine reaction. Were G-d not to intervene for the sake of His Holy Name, the nations would have destroyed the Jewish people completely. Thus Divine Redemption was pushed forward. While Herzl would have settled for a state in far off Uganda, it was not Hertzl's plan that was being implemented. He was merely an unwitting tool in the Divine Plan. His efforts set into motion the events which eventually led to the modern state of Israel. It is also interesting to note that most of the leaders of the Jewish Agency were opposed to the concept of Jewish independence. They would have preferred to remain a protectorate of Great Britain for fear that a Jewish State would not have the ability to defend itself, and thus would be better off depending on a strong foreign power to protect it. Thus it was clearly another miracle that Ben Gurion had the courage to declare independence in the face of overwhelming odds, both from within and without, which threatened the viability of such a state. We Jews have been trying to compromise with our enemies from the moment of our re-emergence as a sovereign entity. Consistently those efforts have brought nothing but war and strife. Never have we gained any advantage as a result of our attempts to appease our enemies. The only times we had any respite from our enemies were in response to inflicting decisive victories against them. Yet, in spite of this observable fact, we have consistently undone those victories by voluntarily surrendering to the losers! Sharon is correct in assuming that we have no partners with whom to make peace. We have only ourselves and thus must resort to making unilateral decisions for our future. How strange and incredible that he would think to make unilateral expressions of surrender rather than decisively destroy our enemies! Yet his thinking is consistent with that of most Jewish leaders of our recent past. The one element which sets us apart from the nations and gives us our unique, unbeatable strength, is completely ignored! England was never our protector. The government to which Jewish leaders had wanted to trust our security turned out to be an enemy of the Jewish people! Had we trusted our future to the British the Jewish homeland would likely have become another Arab State. Anyone who thinks that today our only hope for survival lies with the United States of America is making the same mistake. America is not an evil country. It is not our enemy. But should we fail to recognize the reality that we are dependent only upon the Living G-d of Israel, and seek to exchange Him for a burnt out Bush, it may well be that the USA will become our enemy in order to force us to turn to the Fountain of Living Waters rather than depend upon more broken cisterns. What we must all take to heart during these days of apparent despair and road maps to hell is that Jewish destiny will override both the plans of our enemies, and that of our own leaders. Project Shofar (http://www.projectshofar.org) is dedicated to spreading these truths wherever it is possible to do so. It is sounding the alarm, to Jew and Gentile alike, to open our eyes to the G-dly process that is presently underway, and work to support it. We dare not stand idly on the sidelines. Project Shofar is dedicated to spreading these truths wherever it is possible to do so. It is sounding the alarm, to Jew and Gentile alike, to open our eyes to the G-dly process that is currently underway, and work to support it. We dare not stand idly on the sidelines. If you want to support the concepts espoused by the Voice from Hebron, and the physical work of Project Shofar, you can send a tax deductible contribution to: Project Shofar, Inc., P.O. Box 181191, Casselberry, FL 32718. Those who are in a position to invite Gary Cooperberg to speak to their local groups may contact him directly at gary@projectshofar.org. He makes regular speaking tours to the states and strives to reach out to all who express an interest in the ongoing process of Zionist Redemption, Jew and Gentile alike. To Go To Top

MUSLIM SERMONS AND TOLEDO MUSLIMS Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, March 18, 2004.

If you ever wondered what Muslim religious leaders say in their sermons, here is one example of many. My question to you is simple, do Muslims everywhere, including those in Toledo, Ohio, sympathize with the bigotry expressed in this sermon? Is a request by the Toledo Muslims that a tiny (table size) Israeli flag must be removed from a Jewish display in an Interfaith Meeting designed to bridge between the religious communities in this town, an indication of their support of such sermons? Does the fact that Toledo Muslims erase Israel from their maps tell you something? Let us hear from their leaders directly. Some of them are on this email list. This is Special Dispatch #683, issued by the Middle East Media Research Institute (Memri), It is archived at http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD68304 Memri writes: The Friday sermon [1] of March 12, 2004 in the Sheikh 'Ijlin Mosque in Gaza was delivered by Sheikh Ibrahim Mudeiris, an employee of the Awqaf (Religious Affairs) ministry of the Palestinian Authority. The following are excerpts from the sermon:[2] The Battle of Truth & Falsehood "... Ever since Allah created this life, it is a conflict between Truth and Falsehood, a continuous battle between good and evil, and a constant struggle between those who are good and those who are evil. On this holy land, we witness one of the chapters of this holy battle, the battle between Truth and Falsehood. We are the good, people of Truth, who defend it with our blood and souls. We defend our rights, we defend our land, and our holy places. On the other hand, our enemies are evil, people of Falsehood who fight using the sword of Falsehood. We will beat them, because victory will be that of Truth, Allah willing." Jews Had to be Destroyed "Oh servants of Allah, history repeats itself. When the Prophet [Muhammad] entered Al-Madina, he entered it in order to establish the Islamic state. But he found serpents there, disseminating their venom among the Arabian tribes, in order to destroy their kinship and spark war between the Arabs and the brothers [i.e. The Muslims]. "When the Prophet saw the situation of the Arabs, he found that they were not capable of establishing the Islamic state... He looked around and saw the flame of civil strife raging through the Arabian tribes. Brother fighting brother, and tribe fighting tribe. "When he investigated the cause of these civil wars, he found that the Jews were behind them. The most grave thing the Prophet saw was the war raging between the Aws and Khazraj tribes. When he investigated the cause of this great war between the two largest tribes, he found a Jew behind it. A Jew named Shas sparked the fire of civil strife between the Aws and Khazraj. "The prophet had to have a good plan in order to establish his Islamic state. He based his plan on two elements. The first of them was to make peace between the Arabs and brotherhood among the Muslims... The second element the Prophet had to deal with was the Jewish existence in Al-Madina, with which no Islamic state could ever be established. "The Prophet received an instruction from the Lord of heaven and earth, Who knows the nature of the Jews, who forever live off the fire of civil strife and disseminating their venom among the brothers, Muslims, and friends. Allah ordered him to forge his plan to take care of the Jewish existence in Al-Madina. "The prophet could not fight the Jews immediately following his emigration to Al-Madina, because his security, military, political, and economic situation did not permit him to wage war against the Jews, at that time. "The Prophet had three stages in taking care of the Jewish existence: The first was political. One should deal with the Jews politically to defend oneself from their evil. The Prophet dealt with them politically and signed pacts with them, even though he knew they treat the Muslims ruthlessly, but this was an unavoidable stage. Oh Allah's servants, it was an unavoidable political stage in order to strengthen the Muslims, because wars weaken the Muslims if they are not strong enough to begin with. The second stage was harder for the Muslims: The stage of tolerating the damage caused by the Jews, who again, began violating the pacts and spreading their poison among the Muslims? "Then came the great battle of Badr, where the Muslims grew stronger. This brought the third stage of dealing with the Jewish existence in Al-Madina. We have tolerated you for a long time - you offspring of apes and pigs! We have tolerated you for a long time. After the battle of Badr verses came down, ordering the Prophet to fight the Jews... The Jews lived in fortresses and in various tribes. The Prophet said: 'By Allah, I fear the Qaynuq'a tribe.' Meaning, 'I fear the civil strife they spark.' We must first teach the Qaynuq'a tribe a lesson that will deter those behind them... "Mixing with the Arabs gave the Jews an Arab trait - courage. Praise Allah. Imagine - the Qaynuq'a Jews were the bravest Jews in Al-Madina because they mixed with the Arabs. They won this courage from their neighboring Arabs. Thus, there was no choice but to begin with the strongest among the Jews so they will serve as a lesson to those who follow them - the Jews of Khaybar, the [Banu] Nadhir tribe, and the rest of the Al-Madina Jews." The Jews' Evil Deeds Led to Their Downfall "Then an incident took place that was a turning point regarding the Jewish existence in Al-Madina. They started! And they bear the responsibility for their bad deeds and for the venom they spread in the heart of Al-Madina. A Muslim woman went to the Qaynuq'a tribe to sell something. They asked her to uncover her face but she refused. The Muslim woman refused to uncover her face in front of Jews. When finished with the sale, she sat down next to a Jewish jeweler, and this jeweler tied the edge of her garment in the back, so when she rose up, some say her face and others say her legs were revealed. She screamed and cried for help. Then, a noble Muslim came, who could not bear the humiliation of this woman. He rose to defend the Muslim woman's honor, drew his sword and struck that Jew, the lowly jeweler. He struck and killed him. The Qaynuq'a tribe turned against this Muslim and killed him. They killed this Muslim who defended a Muslim woman's honor. "[The Prophet] prepared his army and went to the Qaynuq'a [tribe]. He laid siege to them for 15 days until they came out and surrendered. The Prophet rejected [their surrender] unless all their men were killed, and only the women and children be allowed to leave Al-Madina. "Hypocrisy also played a role. Abdallah bin Ubai, Allah's curse upon him, asked to spare their lives. The Prophet did not want civil strife in the ranks of the Muslims and said, 'I accept, provided they leave Al-Madina.' The Prophet expelled them from Al-Madina, so they would serve as a lesson to those who follow. This was the first lesson of the Jews of Al-Madina. Later, there were many other lessons. "Time does not permit us to discuss the rest of the Jewish tribes. But we must learn the lesson of the Prophet with regard to the Jews of Al-Madina, whom he expelled. His strategic choice was: 'Fight them, Allah will torture them [at your hands]' and also, 'Make ready against them [all] the force and horsemen that you can.'" Jews Seek to Conquer Saudi Arabia "The Jews today - there is no doubt - are avenging their ancient forefathers, the sons of apes and pigs. Some of the extremist Jews are demanding today their property in Al-Madina. There are even those who have requested to be buried at the southern edge of Palestine. When the one-eyed Dayan was on his deathbed, he instructed that he be buried at the southern edge of Palestine. When asked why, he said, 'So that I will be close to Al-Madina.' This is the extremist tendency of the Jews. They are the extremists, they are the terrorists. They deserve death, and we deserve life, because we are the people of Truth. "They avenge their forefathers, they take revenge on us, the Muslims, by taking our holy places and by taking our lands by force. Only last week, this bloody week, they killed from among the sons of our people, children and women, some 40 Palestinians, in front of the entire world, and no one lifted a finger." Arab States are Abandoning the Struggle "In light of these massacres, I tell you, I congratulate our people and brothers in Jordan, and bless them for the ties they are establishing with the Jews, and for laying the cornerstone - on the day of the massacre, at the time the massacre was being carried out on the land of Palestine, in Bureij, Nusseirat, Rafah, and Jenin. At these moments, they lay the cornerstone and inaugurate a science institute in order to normalize relations between Jordanian and Jewish students. Blessings to you, the people of Jordan, blessings for the American supervision of this successful project, and blessings to our people in Libya and blessings to all the Arab peoples, as we are slaughtered here on the land of Palestine." We will Fight the Jewish Cancer "... We will fight them with Allah's help. The Jews are the ones of whom Allah, who knows them best, said: 'You strike more fear into their hearts than Allah does.' Oh Muslims, it is Allah who tells you this. And this is what we see and know well. But the Arabs and Muslims must know that this is a Qur'anic truth. We strike more fear into their hearts than their Maker. Who stated this fact? The Lord of heaven and earth. Allah is the one who created them and knows their nature well. "Allah knows that they love life: 'None preserves life more than them' - life, no matter what kind of life. Even if it is a life of humiliation, disgrace, and submission, they preserve it. "This preservation of life roots miserliness and cowardice in them. The Jews are disseminating their venom, and history repeats itself. They disseminate their venom in the Arab countries, because they cannot live in the Middle East like a cancer, spreading in this land, unless they spark the fire of civil strife and war among the Arabs and the Muslims. And indeed, they spark this fire. "Furthermore, they incite the world superpowers against the Arab countries. Israel incites the U.S. against Syria. Syria will face great, heavy pressure and we say to them: Be patient and Allah will be with you. Our people in Syria, our brothers in our struggle and our Jihad against this cancer on this land... Our brothers in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Egypt, in all countries of the world, we will never desert them, as long as they fight this cancer. "We reach our hand out in peace, as the Prophet reached his hand out in peace, but they act ruthlessly towards the Muslims." The Palestinian Mother Wishes to Receive Her Son as a Corpse, but Not Butchered "We, the people of Truth, reach out our hand in peace. But they accuse us of being terrorists. Terrorists, because when the Palestinian mother welcomes her martyred son, she wishes to receive him as a corpse. She does not want him to be alive. But she does not want this corpse butchered. The wish of the Palestinian mother is to see the body of her son the martyr. "Are we terrorists? We, terrorists?! We face burning rockets that leave the martyr no flesh, bone, head, or foot. When the news of the death of her son reached the martyr's mother, she said to the youths: 'I want to see my son.' They were patient with her and took him to the cemetery to be buried. She learnt of this, and went there, asking: 'Where is my son?' Her son is a pile of flesh in a container, in a small sack. She watched while they buried him, and she said: 'If only a foot remained, I would kiss it.' Allah Akbar, is she a terrorist?! A terrorist, this woman who wants to find the foot of her son so she can kiss it before he is buried?! With these statements, Umm Muhammad broke the hearts of those present. "Where are the hearts of the world?! Where are the hearts of the Arabs? Where are the hearts of the Muslims in light of these sights? By Allah, if they didn't see them, we would say, 'Never mind.' But the entire world saw how our martyrs are burned in their cars on the road. Our children - their heads are cut off. Despite all this, we will be patient, because we are a people that deserves triumph, Allah willing." [1] For a comprehensive report on Friday sermons in PA mosques shown on PA TV, please see MEMRI Special Report No. 24, December 26, 2003, 'Palestinian Authority Sermons 2000-2003.' For MEMRI video page, which includes clips of Friday sermons, see http://memri.org/video. [2] PA Television, March 12, 2004. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is located in Washington, DC. Its website address is http://www.memri.org. To Go To Top

FREE NOAM FEDERMAN Posted by David Ben-Ariel, March 18, 2004.

Dear Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, Quit making Israel look like a petty dictatorship by refusing to charge Noam Federman or RELEASE HIM! The whole world is watching you and you're a big embarassment for Israel and the Jewish people. Turn this around and do something noble for once: FREE NOAM FEDERMAN, especially with Passover our Festival of Freedom approaching. Sincerely, David Ben-Ariel News Item, Arutz-7, March 18,2004: FEDERMAN TO STAY IN JAIL; STILL NO CHARGES OR TRIAL The 12-year-old daughter of administrative detainee Noam Federman told Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Wednesday, "I am embarrassed by this government, which is imprisoning my father." This after Mofaz signed an order extending Federman's incarceration by half a year. Federman is being held under the 1979 Emergency Powers Detention Law. The law, based on the British Mandatory Emergency Regulations, empowers the Minister of Defense to incarcerate a person for up to six months without trial, charges, or due process of law. The law has been traditionally used by the defense authorities in Israel as a last resort against Arab terrorists who were considered a threat to public security. Federman's daughter Yiska called the Defense Ministry minutes after Mofaz extended the detention order and requested to speak to Mofaz himself but was turned down. The teenage girl left the following message: "I am embarrassed to live under a government that holds my father in administrative detention without a trial or charges. I miss my father very much, as does my mother and all my brothers and sister. I know that you want to do everything in order to break my father, but know this - my six siblings and I are continuing in the way of our father and in the end, you [DM Mofaz] will be the one who will be thrown out of power." Chairman of the Rabbinic Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Rabbi Dov Lior said with regard to Federman's imprisonment, "It is shocking that in these difficult days, the Defense Minister chooses, along with the Shabak (GSS), to shut the mouths of precious Jews who oppose the fraudulent 'peace initiatives' - using legal methods of a third-world country to do so." The Defense Minister's office claims that the extension of Noam Federman's administrative detention came after, "unmistakable proof was shown demonstrating Federman's involvement in causing, engineering and encouraging acts of terror [against Arabs]." "As a matter if fact," claimed a spokesperson for the Defense Minister's office, "in the past half-year there have not been any acts of terror from his circles - without him the attacks don't happen." Defense spokesmen further explained that, "the decision to extend his detention was not easy; we consulted all the security bodies, but the decision of the Defense Minister and members of the Shabak was that terrorism had been prevented ever since Federman was arrested." "Various legal considerations have delayed a guilty verdict against him, but we are working constantly to formulate a guilty verdict in his case," said Mofaz. "This is intentional abuse," said Orit Struk, spokesperson for the Jewish Community of Hevron, where Federman lives. "Noam lives opposite my home and I know he went under house arrest for many months. How did he organize terrorism from his house? How did he coordinate terror from his jail cell? I don't understand these deceptions," said Struk. Last December, Meretz Knesset member Zehava Gal'on called for Federman's immediate release if charges were not brought against him. "If the police have evidence against him, then let them file charges; otherwise, he must be let go," Gal'on said, adding, "It is disgraceful that I, as chairperson of the Meretz faction, have to demand Federman's release.  Activists are working on behalf of Federman from all sides of the political spectrum. They are calling upon the public to send letters of protest to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz at: mailto:sar@mod.gov.il . David Ben-Ariel is the author of "Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall" (http://www.benariel.com). To Go To Top

TEL AVIV PROFESSOR: NO SUCH THING AS OCCUPATION Posted by Mordechai ben-Menachem, March 18, 2004.

This was a news item in today's Arutz-7 (http://www.IsraelNatonalNews.com). "Judea, Samaria and Gaza are not 'occupied territories' according to international law due to the fact that they were not taken from any foreign sovereign," says Law Professor Talia Einhorn, a senior member of the research faculty at Tel Aviv University and a Law professor at the Shaarei Mishpat College in Hod HaSharon. Einhorn delivered her statements at a session entitled "U.S.-Israel Relations" at the Jerusalem Conference which concluded Wednesday. She declared: "It is important to remember and mention daily what Israel has already said for years - not only the government, but judicial experts - that Yesha [Judea, Samaria and Gaza], according to international law is not occupied territory." Einhorn explained that when Israel won the Six-Day War, no foreign country had recognized sovereignty over the land that was liberated. Egypt claimed no sovereignty over Gaza, and when Jordan tried to assert sovereignty over Judea and Samaria in 1950, the only countries to recognize it were England and Pakistan - with England limiting its recognition to eastern Jerusalem, but not the expanses of land extending north and south of it. "Their biggest opponents were in fact the Arab countries," said Einhorn. She went on to say that the 1967 demarcation lines are in fact, according to international agreements, simply cease-fire lines that should never be considered political demarcations or national borders. In the Encyclopedia of International Law, it is written that Israel was established without international borders. Israel's only internationally recognized borders are with Jordan and Egypt, as a result of the peace agreements that were signed. Calling Israel 'Colonialist' with the intention of deligitimization is very severe, Einhorn said, especially considering how specious the argument is. "The Land of Israel is our land. No other nation ever made Israel into its country." Einhorn reminded the attendees at the Jerusalem Conference that the biblical curse according to which Israel will remain desolate when controlled by foreigners unfolded throughout history as a reality. Einhorn pointed out that it is largely for this reason that no other nation ever claimed it, and "we must remember this." To Go To Top

THE GLOBALIZATION OF ANTISEMITISM Posted by Deb Kotz, March 18, 2004.

This is a good essay by Daniel J. Goldhagen, author of "Ordinary Men," a book about how ordinary Germans signed on to kill the Jews during the Holocaust. He presented this paper at the Montreal International Conference on Global Antisemitism, March 14-16, 2004. Other recent examples of global antisemitism: Iran and Spain both refused Israel's help in their recent tragedies. Israel offered to help dig out Iranians trapped in the earthquake rubble, some of whom survived for days. And Israel offered to help Spain deal with its terrorist train attack. By refusing this aid, both countries made a statement that they'd rather have their citizen's die than accept Israel's help. Also, Sweden has started putting labels on all things imported from Israel (not just from the West Bank) to alert consumers not to buy those products. Antisemitism is evolving. After a period of remission owing to the horror of the Holocaust, the ancient prejudice has recently been reactivated, catalyzed by the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has become particularly acute in the context of the Iraq war, with even respectable people among the political and journalistic elites of western countries suddenly leveling fantastical antisemitic charges. Tam Dalyell's wild notion that George Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld, the hard bitten practitioners of domestic and international Realpolitik, are puppets of a "Jewish cabal," and that this cabal has "taken over the government of the United States," can be put forward only by someone in the grip of a fantastical image of Jews and their alleged maleficent power, or who, wishing to tap into and inflame popular antisemitic sentiments, cynically seeks political advantage. Dalyell's adoption of the malignant conspiracy trope from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, whether unwitting or witting, is symptomatic of the changed nature of today's antisemitism. As Dalyell's comments reflect, antisemitism has entered a new era in which its main focus has shifted from the domestic to the international. The tempest around Dalyell's antisemitic outburst will pass, but the new antisemitism is a growing menace that needs to be understood and exposed for what it is. Always protean in quality, always changing to take on the idiom of its day, antisemitism has been globalized. Antisemitism has always had domestic and international components. During the long era of Christian antisemitism, the transnational institution of the Catholic Church spread the belief that Jews as Christ-killers were a cosmic force for evil. But the principal target of anti-Jewish prejudice was local, the Jews of one's town, region and country who allegedly harmed their Christian neighbors. In its second era during the 19th and 20th centuries, antisemitism took on a secular and more racist cast, in which an international conspiracy of Jews worked against humanity. Still, most of the antisemitic fire was aimed locally - by Germans at German Jews, by French at French Jews - for the harm that they allegedly inflicted on their countrymen. The "Jewish Problem" - one of the most burning political issues of the day - was overwhelmingly about what Germans, French, Poles and others should do with the Jews within their countries. Globalized antisemitism is a new constellation of features grafted onto old ones. Varied and complex, it is oriented to the global stage. In most of Europe, and certainly in the West, the domestic "Jewish Problem" is all but dead. Only fringe elements in Germany, France and elsewhere believe that local Jews are causing great harm - financial, professional, moral - to their non-Jewish neighbors, and that a radical response is necessary. The focus of the animus against Jews has shifted overwhelmingly to Jews of other countries - of Israel and the United States - as the alleged central moral and material culprits of the international arena. Zionism has become, for many, a mythical entity, a destructive agent in the world, and anti-Zionism has become interwoven with anti-Americanism to the point where Russian nationalist politicians can express their fear of American domination by saying that Russia is in danger of being "Zionized." The center of antisemitism and directions of its transmission are also new. In the previous eras of antisemitism, the demonology about Jews flowed first from the Christian, and then the European, center to the periphery. Today, there are many antisemitic centers and multidirectional flows from Europe, to the Middle East and elsewhere, and back. Essentially, Europe had exported its classical racist and Nazi antisemitism to Arab countries, which they applied to Israel and Jews in general, suffusing it with the real and imagined features of the intensive local conflict. Then the Arab countries re-exported the new hybrid demonology back to Europe and, using the United Nations and other international institutions, to other countries around the world. In Germany, France, Great Britain and elsewhere, today's intensive antisemitic expression and agitation uses old tropes once applied to local Jews - charges of sowing disorder, wanting to subjugate others - with new content overwhelmingly directed at Jews outside their countries and their continent. The imagery characterizing globalized antisemitism is new. Rambo Jew has largely supplanted Shylock in the antisemitic imagination. The sly and stealth corrupting Jew of the first two eras of antisemitism, now armed with his new military and political power, has become the subjugating, brutalizing and killing Jew, either doing the dirty work himself, as in Israel, or employing others to do it for him, as the Jews, fantastically, are said to do with the Bush administration and the "East Coast" establishment is purported to do with the United States generally. An emblematic image of globalized antisemitism is of Donald Rumsfeld wearing a yellow star inscribed with "sheriff," followed by a cudgel wielding Ariel Sharon who is flanked by a golden calf. That this scene, expressing the putative globalized nature and predations of the Jews, was created for an anti-globalization demonstration in Davos is no mere coincidence. Globalized antisemitism has other important and new features, including its instantaneous, global transmission through the Internet and by television's biased stories and inflammatory images of Palestinian suffering, which are incorporated into the antisemitic narrative; its unification of elements of the European left and right, and its semi-concealing cloak of anti-Zionism. Perhaps most distinctive, though, is the unmooring of antisemitism from its original sources. It is detached from Christianity, even if there are still powerful Christian sources of antisemitism. It is detached from its 19th-century European sources of nation building, reactions against modernity and pseudo-scientific notions of race and social Darwinism, even if that era's demonology is still potent in somewhat transposed form. Globalized antisemitism has become part of the substructure of prejudice of the world. It is free-floating, located in many countries, subcultures and nodes, available in many variations, and to anyone who dislikes international influences, globalization or the United States. It is relentlessly international in its focus on Israel at the center of the most conflict-ridden region today, and on the United States as the world's omnipresent power. It is self-reinforcing, with its fantastical constructions of Jews and Zionism - which are divorced from the fair criticisms that can be made of Israel's policies - and by being located totally outside people's countries and experience. And it is only a few clicks of a mouse away. After the Holocaust and after Vatican II, it seemed that antisemitism had diminished and might eventually atrophy. It had indeed declined, and in most European countries, including Germany, the publics' conception of their domestic Jews was de-demonized. Many people in Europe and elsewhere today also reject the new antisemitic fantasies. Yet the reawakening of antisemitism in its new globalized form meant that antisemitism succeeded again in metamorphosing and in extending its reach - even to Africa and Asia. So far the new globalized antisemitism has not proven to be as dangerous as earlier forms, except in the Middle East, but its disquieting features suggest that it has the potential. A genuine settlement to the Arab-Israeli conflict would take some of the wind out of this new antisemitism. But antisemitism's deep roots in the ever more globalizing consciousness, and its proven tenacity and plasticity, make its dissipation unlikely. It must be combated by all people - especially by non-Jews - who do not subscribe to this threatening demonology, so that it becomes unmistakable to all public figures that it and its propagators have no place in the public life and politics of civilized nations. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, of Harvard University's Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, is the author of "A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair." To Go To Top

ISRAELI PUBLIC OPINION NOW REALISTIC Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 18, 2004.

The people of Israel learned the hard way that the Oslo process is appeasement and appeasement does not work. Public opinion wants heavier fighting against the Arabs. Government officials have not caught up to the public. The Left has an almost totalitarian control over the media, hampering popular opposition to continued government appeasement. The media distorts polls by misconstruing opposition to Beilin's appeasement as being anti-peace. The leftist Steinmetz Center for Peace at Tel Aviv uses its "peace index" to inflate the percentages supporting its position. Nevertheless, it admitted that 84% of Israeli Jews approve of the security fence, and few wish it to hew to the Green Line. Some of the other Jews disapprove of it as a pale substitute for rooting out the terrorists. Most of those who endorse the fence think that other means of fighting against terrorism remain necessary. 70% of Israelis approve of assassinating terrorist leaders even if "innocent" bystanders may be injured. The Israeli media disapproves, calling it a war crime (which, factually, it definitely is not). The media is divorced from reality. Most Israelis don't care if the security fence makes hardships for the enemy population, but half of them would prefer trying to avoid making hardships. On the other hand, following PM Sharon, most Israelis would be willing for him to remove all the Jewish communities from Gaza and some from Judea-Samaria (Prof. Steven Plaut, 3/9, e-mail). Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

BABES IN JIHADLAND Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, March 18, 2004.

"We have seen the enemy... and he's in the fourth grade." Arab fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, university students and professionals - male and female alike- are doing it. So two days after two eighteen-year old terrorists from Gaza blew themselves and 10 Israelis to death, was anyone really surprised that death can also come in the form of a 10-year old Arab boy carrying a bomb-laden bag? Luckily, the explosives were discovered in time. The seemingly innocent child was sent back to school and lived to tell about the episode (see more on the story at http://www.israelnn.com/news.php3?id=59502). What will the enemy think of next - Semtex Pampers? Come on, this 10-year old kid isn't even ripe enough to take advantage of the 72 virgin bonus in paradise (talk about purgatory...). Where will all of those maidens come from anyway? Will Hamas recruit multitudes of young school girls to don explosive-packed chastity belts in order to satisfy the glut of martyrs in paradise? The exploitation of children has been in the picture for a long time and we've all seen the images. The international media has been hard-pressed to present the Arab inhabitants of Judea, Samaria and Gaza in a humanitarian light. Usually the only way to achieve this has been by denigrating the Israeli soldiers and settlers, thereby leveling the playing field. But every once in awhile a photojournalist neglects to crop his photo before exposing it to the world- and the truth is inadvertently exposed. Last month http://www.MidEastTruth.com sent a communique with an incriminating photograph - compliments of Reuters - of a terrorist firing from amidst a group of children. Whether the terrorists deliberately set-up shop and fire from areas swarming with children, or whether the children are allowed and encouraged to enter the firing zone makes no difference. Under the circumstances, it's something of a miracle that more Arab children are not killed in the line of fire. This is obviously due to the scrupulous policies of the IDF. However, this must be frustrating for the terrorist organizations, as they would resort to anything in order to recreate the media extravaganza that produced the poster child of the year 2000. Mohammed al-Dura was caught in the crossfire and the twelve-year old's dramatic death was captured on screen. That the fatal shots were likely fired from Arab guns made no difference. Al-Dura's death became an enduring symbol for the international community and an endearing moment of glory for the Arab world. The real tragedy is if al-Dura were alive today, it's very possible that he would be armed, dangerous and an up-and-coming member of one or more of the following 'youth groups': Fatah, Tanzim, Force 17, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, DFLP, PFLP or Al-Aska Brigades. There are no innocents and subsequently no virgins in the Arab-occupied portions of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The young generation has been raped and indoctrinated by their parents, clerics, educators, political leaders and society at large, in an orgy of self-induced violence and rage. It is a society which simultaneously thrives on and consumes itself with hatred. I reject the assumption that a tendency towards evil stems from oppression, occupation, or poverty. Rather, I believe that destructive traits are revealed in individuals and groups which are lacking in a heritage that is based on sound ethical and moral foundations. It's this perception that causes me to question the validity of the Palestinian Arab claims to legitimacy. A good portion of the Arab inhabitants from Judea, Samaria and Gaza have chosen to answer their challenges and trials with terror and destruction, rather than search for creative and productive solutions. The Jewish people as well as other nationalities and ethnic groups have managed to adhere to basic ethical principles and moral behavior even when repeatedly confronted with persecution, upheaval, and unspeakable anguish. A quest for order and the desire to create when faced with chaos is the miracle of the the human spirit, and ultimate test of humanity. As human beings we have every right and are obligated to investigate and question the purpose, goals and origins of a purported people who consistently destroy the life and hopes of its progeny to the point where their children dream and aspire to death -their own as well as that of others. We also reserve the very human right to remove those who aim to destroy us from our midst -regardless of their age. Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

CONTAINERIZED TROJAN HORSES Posted by Bryna Berch, March 17, 2004.

You gotta give these Arabs credit. They may contribute zilch to civilization, science, medicine, art or sanitation. But when it comes to figuring out new delivery systems so they can kill people, they are the tops. Read this news item from today's Arutz-7 (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com). THE TERRORISTS CAME BY CONTAINER? The mystery of how the two suicide terrorists entered the Ashdod port on Sunday to murder ten Israelis may finally have been solved. Several possibilities had been entertained, including that they arrived via the sea, via an underground tunnel, or over the port's perimeter fence. However, the discovery today of weapons, a mattress, and food remnants in a container stored in the port - a container that arrived there only a half-hour before the attack - points in a different direction. It now appears that the terrorists arrived inside the container, which arrived from Arab Gaza via the Karni Crossing to Ashdod, and jumped out at an opportune moment inside or near the port entrance. Five fragmentation grenades and other weapons were among the items found in the container today when it passed through a state-of-the-art detection system. The grenades were hidden inside a bag within the double wall of the container. The container, filled with marble slabs, was to be loaded onto a ship leaving for abroad, but remained in the port after the order was canceled. Following today's find, the port is currently closed, and cargoes are not being loaded or unloaded. To Go To Top

"AFTER VICTORY, COMPROMISE" Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 17, 2004.

"After victory, we can compromise with the Arabs," is a line one hears from Israelis. What victory, and what compromise? And if one wins, why compromise? Before PM Sharon announced his new policy of at least partial (if not an insidious, perpetual) surrender, it was not one of pursuing victory. It was pursuit of stalemate. Israel mostly has sought to tread water in the Territories, until it could negotiate them away. Now it finds the Arabs will not negotiate an end to their war on Israel. Israel could decide to achieve victory, by thoroughly clearing the terrorists out of Yesha and annexing the non-Arab-populated areas it wants. Even better would be to multiply the Arabs' hardships and they would have to depart. Compromise is not possible with jihadists. They do not compromise. They make an armistice. During it, they rebuild their forces. On its termination, they resume the offensive. Actually, "compromises" were tried. The bulk of the Jewish homeland was closed to Jewish national development and ultimately turned into Jordan and Syrian Golan. Israel yielded the Sinai, which did not cause Egyptian enmity to abate. It made a peace agreement with Jordan and gave it scarce water, but the Jordanian people hate Israel more than ever. It withdrew from parts of Yesha, only to find the PLO/P.A. using autonomy for expediting terrorism against Israel. Those were not real compromises. Those were Israeli retreats for nothing in return. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

WHEN THE POST CAN'T OR WON'T IDENTIFY OBVIOUS TERRORISTS Posted by Leo Rennert, March 17, 2004.

I sent this to Washington Post personnel. The Post, after more than 3 years of the intifada, still can't get it right. I refer you to the Wednesday, March 17, article by John Ward Anderson about Israeli airstrikes in Gaza. When two Palestinians were killed in a missile attack on an Islamic Jihad building, the Post identified them as "two Palestinian men" balancing Israel's version that they belonged to Islamic Jihad against claims by neighbors that they were "bystanders." But you didn't have to accept either version or engage in a semantic kabuki dance between the two. Islamic Jihad itself identified "two Palestinian men" as members of the terrorist group. Contrast your article with the New York Times', which headlined its account "Israel Kills 2 Islamic Militants As It Steps Up Raids in Gaza" The Times attributed its report to a spokesman for Islamic Jihad. But let's not just take the word of your main national competitor. Haaretz, the most pro-Palestinian newspaper in Israel and a more vociferous critic of Sharon than either the Post or the Times, also reported that the two men who were killed were members of Islamic Jihad. So how come that when prominent media that are about as enamored of Sharon's counter-terrorism strategy as the Times and the Post are of George W. Bush nevertheless still manage to get it right, the Post can't - or won't - inform its readers that Israel did indeed kill terrorist targets? In the same Anderson story, the Post also inserts its usual misleading summary of intifada fatalities - 950 Israelis against 2,800 Palestinians - and leaves it at that. But as you well know, Palestinian fatalities are mainly combatants or would-be bombers who blow themselves up prematurely or Palestinians killed by Palestinians, whereas the great preponderance of Israeli fatalities are innocent civilians. So why not report the following: From Sept 27, 2000, until March 17, 2004, there were 2,716 Palestinians killed, including 960 non-combatants or 35 percent. On the Israeli side, there were 916 killed, including 714 non-combatants or 78 percent. Put another way, for every 3 Palestinians killed, one was a non-combatant. But for every 4 Israelis killed, more than 3 were non-combatants. By showing such a glaring difference between the methods used by both sides, your readers might have a better understanding that Palestinian terrorists are interested mainly in killing "bystanders," while Israel goes to great lengths to zero in on terrorist groups, although the number or percentage of accidentally killed Palestinian "bystanders" is by no means negligible. The statistics are from the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism. You can check its web site at www.ict.org.il. The Post is well acquainted with its findings, but in ignoring them, has yet to show any bias or flaws in its research. Its methodology is there for anyone who'd seriously like to check it out and its chief researcher, Don Radlauer, is available for quizzing by any reporter. Incidentally, to remind David, Radlauer does not get all his figures from the IDF. It's the other way around: the IDF consults the institute to put together its figures. Also, the institute has been criticised for tilting toward the Palestinian side, since it makes ample use of Palestinian media and other sources and, whenever there's a bit of a gray area, tends to give the benefit of the doubt to the Palestinian side. Yours for responsible journalism. To Go To Top

PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON AS WARRIOR Posted by Samson Krupnick, March 17, 2004.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was elected twice by an overwhelming majority. He was deemed the right military man to deal with mounting Arab mass murder ("terror") in Israel and "Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi mass murder worldwide. Sharon - hero of the Yom Kippur [Day of Atonement] War in 1973 - was assigned the task of dealing with a very difficult battle situation wherein the Arab and "Saudi" Arabian Wahhabi enemy used every illegal and inhuman means of mass murder, including women and children throwing stones and fire bombs, as well as suicide slaughterers. This was not a "major" war where Israeli troops battle Arab enemy troops, but rather a very painful series of Arab enemy operations concentrating upon murdering civilians in busses, malls and cafes. New techniques were adopted, including two deterrents designed to discourage Arab mass murder operations: The destruction of the homes of Arab suicide slaughterers; and targeted attacks upon planners, suppliers and transporters of mass murderers (which we advised through Labor Minister Zevulun Orlev to the Prime Minister some two years ago). The construction of a fence helped somewhat in delaying would-be Arab suicide slaughterers, many of whom were captured alive. The Arab mass murder war continued. The American Road Map was non-existent, simply because the "Palestine" "Authority" could not and would not undertake the task of disarming ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas and ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Islamic Jihad mass murderers. The last two Arab mass murder attacks and the Ashdod port double Arab suicide slaughters murdering 10 and wounding 16 were a combination of ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas, ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Islamic Jihad and Fatah with el Aksa Martyrs Brigade. Fatah and el Aksa are under the direct control of The Egyptian from Alexandria (current alias "Yasser Arafat", previous alias "Abdul Rauf el-Codbi el-Husseini"). There is no Arab partner for "peace" negotiations and no Road Map - U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Kurtzer so stated at a recent conference of Conservative Rabbis. Israeli military operations continue. The Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.), with excellent intelligence, makes continued attacks on Arab mass murder bases and Arab mass murder leaders with remarkable success. It would appear that Arab mass murder leaders prefer to live rather than join their suicide slaughterers in paradise with 70 virgins. This continues to be an expensive condition with losses of lives and of increased numbers of soldiers and equipment, which the Israel economy must bear. With this background and American pressure, successful Prime Minister Ariel Sharon the Warrior attempts to become Sharon the Peace Maker. To the amazement of his coalition Government, Sharon decided personally upon a "disengagement plan" whereby the Gaza Strip Jewish Pioneering Communities ("settlements"), including Kfar Darom - there since its recapture from the Egyptians in 1949 - would be abandoned. The population of these Jewish Pioneering Communities, about 10,000, would be moved to Jewish Pioneering Communities in Judea and Samaria ("West Bank") or where ever else they chose. This plan was opposed immediately by most Knesset Members, by the Ministers and particularly by Sharon's party the Likud, the Religious National Party, and the Unity Party. I.D.F. Chief of Staff, Lt. General Moshe Ya'alon, opposed the plan for obvious military reasons. It would be a reward for Arab mass murder operations and would encourage more Arab mass murder. Moreover, Gaza the seaport would receive unlimited quantities of arms. The (Iranian funded Shiite) Hizbullah could enter at will with Iranian assistance. Egypt refused Israel's request for Egyptians (!) to guard the Gaza border. Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom opposed this "disengagement" plan as politically undesirable and impractical. Retired Israeli Admiral and former Shin Bet (General Security Services) Director Ami Ayalon advised strongly, "Keep the gloves on in Gaza at all costs. Target leaders and avoid skirmish with armed and masked terrorists surrounded by schoolchildren", a new technique of ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas and ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Islamic Jihad. Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, meeting with an American Delegation comprised of U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Adler, U.S. National Security Council Middle East expert Elliott Abrams, and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns, stated that, "This unilateral disengagement could be extremely problematic and could even make of the abandoned Gaza Strip a base for international terrorism". It was also announced that the United States would not foot the bills for such a unilateral "disengagement". The opposition is gaining strength and the plan could be delayed indefinitely for a later date when conditions would be more favorable. Prime Minister Sharon gave an explanation for his "disengagement" plan. He said bluntly, "I have been a warrior for many years and I saw well many casualties. There seems to be no one among the Palestinians who seeks peace, so I would attempt unilaterally with the approval of the United States to make a sincere effort for peace until such time as a viable partner can be found". We would advise our Prime Minister as follows: 1) In an election year you should not rock the boat with any new ideas, especially one that is highly provocative. 2) You were elected as the successful warrior, not as a politician who gives up land. Continue as the warrior who will destroy Arab mass murder in Israel as an example to the rest of the world. Also, in your coming visit with U.S. President George W. Bush, please ask him how to dispose of arch mass murderer "Yasser Arafat" who controls and directs four mass murder organizations. We need some precise answers and a practical solution. Shabbat Shalom from Liberated Yerushaliyim, Samuel Krupnick is Board Member and Treasurer, Root & Branch Association, Ltd.; Israel Chairman, Jerusalem Embassy Initiative, Root & Branch Association, Ltd.; Yakir Yerushaliyim (Jerusalem Prize) Award Winner, 2001; Board Chairman, Encyclopedia Talmudica; Former Board Chairman, Shaare Zedek Hospital; and Columnist, National Jewish Post and Opinion (www.jewishpostopinion.com). To Go To Top

THE LESSONS OF THE ASHDOD BOMBING Posted by Michael Freund, March 17, 2004.

This is an article of mine from today's Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com) about the link between the recent Palestinian suicide-bombing in Ashdod and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to retreat from Gaza. It didn't take long after Sunday's suicide bombing in Ashdod for the Israeli media to begin looking for someone to blame. Even as the wounded were still being evacuated to local hospitals, the police and the port's administrators were busy giving interviews, ducking responsibility and pointing fingers at each other for the lapse in security that enabled terrorists to hit the site. Unnamed police sources said they had warned the port's management that security was lax, while port officials asserted they had done everything the police had asked. It was, quite frankly, a sorry sight to behold, as so much energy and effort was being devoted to covering, rather than saving, people's behinds. The Hebrew papers, of course, had a field day, devoting page after page to the question of who fouled up and why. Did the police really take the threat of a "strategic attack" seriously, they wondered. And why was the port protected by a simple metal fence, rather than an electronic one, they demanded to know. But for all the attention which Israel's media devoted to the matter, they nevertheless failed to identify the gravest blunder of all - namely that of the government itself, which not only has allowed the terrorists to operate with impunity, but which now dangles before them the prize of a withdrawal from Gaza. Indeed, in recent weeks, nearly the entire military and security establishment has made clear that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's talk of a unilateral retreat would embolden the terror organizations and invite further attacks. As Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi, the head of Military Intelligence, recently said, groups such as Hamas and Fatah will do their utmost to ensure that an Israeli withdrawal be perceived as a retreat under fire, hence they would surely try to intensify their attacks as a result of Sharon's plan. And so, we have a situation where the experts were all but unanimous, with everyone from the IDF Chief of Staff to the head of the General Security Services saying that a unilateral pullback would buoy the terrorists and increase their motivation to kill Jews. And that is precisely what occurred. Ten innocent Israelis lost their lives in Sunday's attack, the first victims of the Prime Minister's dubious plan. Their deaths were effectively foretold in advance, but Sharon refused to listen. The warnings and admonitions, the advice and the counsel, all of it was brushed aside and ignored by an arrogant and tired premier, one unwilling even to listen to his own generals. Even in the aftermath of the attack, Sharon has not learned his lesson. Less than 24 hours later, he stood before the podium in the Knesset, insisting that Israel had no choice but to move forward by moving backward and fleeing Gaza for good. But running away from a problem is no way to solve it. If anything, Sunday's attack should serve as a compelling, if unpleasant, reminder of precisely what Israel is up against. Just meters away from where the terrorists detonated themselves in Ashdod's port were storage tanks containing dangerous chemicals, such as bromide, ammonia and fuel. Had one of the containers caught fire and exploded, it might very well have caused hundreds, or possibly even thousands, of casualties in the nearby area. This was, quite simply, a Palestinian attempt at mass murder on a scale equivalent to that of America's September 11, and Spain's March 11, with the only difference being that Fatah and Hamas aren't as "proficient" as their Al-Qaeda colleagues. This is not the first time that the Palestinians have attempted to carry out such a "mega-attack". In April 2002, Israel thwarted a planned assault by Palestinian terrorists against the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, which they had hoped to bring down along the lines of the World Trade Center. One month later, terrorists set off an explosive device hidden under a truck at the Pi Glilot fuel depot outside of Tel Aviv. Miraculously, the complex did not go up in flames, which could have endangered untold thousands of people. Such attacks have nothing to do with a Jewish presence in Gaza, but they have everything to do with a Jewish presence in the Middle East. By attempting to carry out a mass attack that could have murdered thousands of Jews, the Palestinians have made clear that they are willing to resort to genocidal tactics to achieve their goals. Sadly, if it is a battle for survival which the Palestinians are after, then Israel has no choice but to fight it. But in order to prevail, the government must first recognize that no amount of wishful thinking, or shortsighted withdrawals, will appease a foe bent on our destruction. Building fences and uprooting Jews from their homes is hardly the way to fight such terror. Only by reasserting complete and permanent military control over the territories, and by dismantling the Palestinian Authority and the terrorist infrastructure, can Israel hope to achieve a modicum of security for its citizens. There is simply no alternative to the IDF being there physically, militarily, and running the show. The fact of the matter is that the only way to eliminate terrorism is to eliminate the terrorists, and not to run away when the going gets tough. Israel did not start this war, nor did we ask for it. But we sure know how to end it. And after the Ashdod attack, that is what Ariel Sharon must finally now do. The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Prime Minister's Office under former premier Binyamin Netanyahu. To Go To Top

ANOTHER TACK: SLEEP NO MORE Posted by Women in Green, March 16, 2004.

This was written by Sarah Honig and appeared in the Jerusalem Post March 11, 2004. It came to me while trying to avoid decking myself out in a full-blown Purim costume for a party we were invited to. Why not go as a replica of myself, my own impostor? So I drew and cut out a giant lapel-label in the shape of a seedpod and imprinted a bold "snatched body" inscription across it. My humble homage to the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a sci-fi cult classic about human doubles hatched from mysterious pods, became an unexpected attention-grabber and conversation-sparker. In no time, the chitchat gravitated to current affairs and speculation about which leading politico's body may have been replaced. By the end of the evening there was unanimity among the merrymakers. Though Ariel Sharon may look, sound, and move like his old self, he's no Arik. We hypothesized elaborate scenarios about his alien abduction, takeover by a mind-controlling physical look-alike, eventual altering of his life-force, and erasure of all emotions and ideals that had moved him previously. Then someone quipped that "it's as good an explanation as any" for Sharon's bizarre behavior and disquieting surprises, which no longer shock the desensitized population. Why indeed search for an elusive psychoanalytical diagnosis to account for the settlement champion's out-of-the-blue resort to the term "occupation"? Why construct fanciful concoctions to account for the "constriction minister's" submission to an outsider's road-map-to-ruin? Why burrow for clues to account for the super-hawk's sudden penchant for cowering behind a fence with very mutable lines? Why beat our tired brains trying to account for the quintessential warrior's quizzical propensity for retreat? We don't need to conjure undying devotion between the PM and his erstwhile produce marketer, who was also the erstwhile father-in-law of Elhanan Tannenbaum, to account for the hardliner's suddenly turning soft on Hizbullah and submitting to its extortionist ransom demands. THE BODY-SNATCHING theory is as valid as any convoluted cerebral contortion to make sense of the strange goings-on around the national control-board. In fact, it probably makes better sense. The bottom line is that the Sharon currently in the prime minister's office isn't the Arik we once loved or feared, each according to his/her political predilection. Someone inhabiting Arik's exact likeness is behaving in ways diametrically opposed to Arik's. Thus the very notion that Sharon today can regret Begin's refusal to allow the Egyptian army into Sinai boggles the mind. The whole idea was to make the Sinai vastness a buffer, military movement into which would tip Israel off in time to counter any offensive. The basic logic was to keep the still-menacing Egyptian military machine away from Gaza, the historic highway for numerous invasions of Eretz Yisrael. The rationale was to prevent a re-enactment of 1948, when attacking Egyptian forces endangered Tel Aviv. Equally mind-blowing is the notion of these chillingly unfriendly Egyptians curtailing weapons smuggling into Gaza. Who's Arik kidding? These are the very Egyptians who at present aid and abet such illicit arms-supplies. They honestly caution that they've no intention of becoming our guardians, so why should we delude ourselves otherwise and not take their word for it? We already tried to entrust our fragile defense into enemy hands (the Oslo fiasco), and see where that brilliant stroke got us. Who's to guarantee that the latest gamble would pay off, while its predecessor literally keeps exploding in our faces? How do we know we can now trust Sharon's professed omniscient wisdom any more than we could safely swallow his assurances on the eve of the swap that brought Tannenbaum back? That deal, which only risked returning terrorists to their training bases, was finally exposed as a folly at best. Sharon's grander schemes could risk lots more. Even his words erode our position. Only the concessions remain, none of the compensations. In the Tannenbaum affair, we didn't rescue a tortured compatriot. Israel's 14 road-map reservations are forgotten. The security fence's beyond-the-Green-Line bulges are fast disappearing, and the mooted annexations in return for a Gaza withdrawal are ephemeral red herrings. Only dupes would put their trust in anything Sharon advocates or extraterrestrial duplicates. Maybe Sharon isn't the only leading Likud light snatched. That would explain not only his increasing strangeness but also the lack of resistance from his party's cabinet contingent. Perhaps the Likud ministers too aren't who they claim to be. Their reactions also appear eerily modified. They don't seem to be themselves. That's what comes of prevaricating, acquiescing, letting one's guard down, shutting the eyes. Indeed, in the relentlessly haunting flick, zombie-like aliens propagate only when folks sleep, when they aren't vigilant. The dormant victim is replaced by an emotionless drone. Eventually the entire town is possessed by pod changelings, and everything is threatened. The B-picture's original name was Sleep No More. A message for us? Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green) is an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

CALL KNESSET MEMBERS Posted by Elias Yrachmiel, March 16, 2004.

YOU CAN PREVENT THE DESTRUCTION OF GUSH KATIF Is this retreat not a reward for terrorism? Is it not a violation of human rights to force people out of the homes? How can a Jewish government act as an oppressor of Jews? People to call: CALL AS MANY AS YOU CAN! CONSIDER STARTING FROM THE ENTIRE LIST AND PLEASE DISREGARD ANY PREVIOUS NOTICE TO START AT THE BOTTOM OF THE LIST! Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz. Spokesperson: Shiri Eden 056-298005 Ministry of Finance Netanyahu. Spokesman Uri Ginnosar 051-410 410 Ministry of Health Danny Naveh Spokes Tal Sandroni 056-242 221 Minstry of Education LIMOR LIVNAT AYALA BAR 050-466 466 MIN of Public Security HANEGBI YEHOSHUA BAUER 053-309 276 MIN OF Absorption ZIPPI LIVNI ARIK FODER 056-214 660 SPECIAL MIN of Dinance. MEIR SHITRIT OFIR AKUNES 056-207025 MIN Without Portfolio. SCHARANSKY IRIS GOLDMAN 056-286501 LIKUD MK RONNY BARON. ASSTS: OREN:053-430049; DONNA 053-768270; RAUT 056-233693 GAVRIELA INBAL. ASSTS: MEITAL 067-7032225; AMIT O64-635 558 MICHAEL GORLOVSKY. ASSTS: EFRAT 052 824265; NATALIA 051-389851 GILA GAMLIEL. ASSISTANT: NIR 054-740740 AVRAHAM HIRSECHENSEN. ASSTS: SARA 050 561962; ROBBY 051-282 166 RUHAMA AVRAHAM. ASSTS: NIR 051 295800; ADI 058-502075 DEPUTY MINISTER YAAKOV EDRI. ASST:ORLY 056-272090 MICHAEL EITAN. ASSTS: YOSSI: 053 210848; RONNY 050-456429 GILAD ARDEN. ASSTS: OREN 054 540547; SARIT 067-399275 ZEV BOIM. DEPUTY MINISTER OF DEFENSE 03-6977155 MICHAEL RATZON. DEPUTY MIN OF TRADE 02-666 2700 EHUD YATOM. ASSTS: BOAZ 053-702766; ORR 055-459971 GIDON SAAR. ASSTS: RONEN 052-668826; DONNA 051-476476 Thank you for your participation   Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaqer     action@netzahyisrael.org To Go To Top

ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED TO UNILATERAL WITHDRAWAL Posted by Bryna Berch, March 16, 2004.

News items from Arutz-7 (http://www.think-israel.org). ABSOLUTELY OPPOSED TO UNILATERAL WITHDRAWAL In a Jerusalem Conference session last night that asked whether PM Sharon's disengagement plan is a legitimate diplomatic process, Labor MK Yuli Tamir surprised some listeners by expressing her opposition to the plan. She said that though she is pleased that the "Green Line" has once again become the international standard by which to judge whether Israel is withdrawing "sufficiently," she is against the unilateral nature of Sharon's planned pullout. "We cannot allow ourselves to be dragged along by the Americans," she said, "but must rather determine what is good for us - and this plan does not serve our interests. We must sit and talk with the Palestinians." Likud MK Gila Gamliel bemoaned the fact that Israel of late spends too much time going back to "old questions should have been settled long ago, such as the illegitimacy of a Palestinian state, instead of taking positive steps forward to fortify our security and presence." She said that no majority exists in the Knesset to pass the withdrawal plan. National Union MK Aryeh Eldad was sharply critical of Prime Minister Sharon: "In some American and European circles, it is being seriously considered whether Sharon has gone crazy... There is no logic to his disengagement plan - which is an advantage, because when a plan is insane, no one expects it to have any logic... Even if Sharon were to be deposed tomorrow morning, or be forced to resign by having an indictment served against him - the damage that he has already done is irreversible... Even if he changes his mind and builds another 100 Jewish towns in Yesha - I am finished with Sharon." Eldad said he is not sure that MK Gamliel is correct in her prediction that the Knesset would not vote in favor of the withdrawal plan: "Sharon has met with three relatively minor American emissaries to present the plan - though he has not yet done this with the government or the Knesset. Once he is able to say that he already 'promised' President Bush, some of the MKs who are currently wavering or 'rebelling' will not be able to withstand such a situation, and will not vote against it... Sharon is destroying Zionism." Atty. Elyakim HaEtzni of Kiryat Arba said, "Violating any order or law to uproot us from our homes is a Torah commandment. Courts in the future will determine that we fulfilled the law. By showing that this law has the 'black flag of illegality waving over it,' we will be the ones fulfilling democracy and the rule of law... Even if the Knesset will decide by majority vote or plebiscite to remove me from my house, this is not only a crime, but firstly a blow to democracy. No democratic tool can remove me from my house." Hevron spokesman Noam Arnon said that ever since the Oslo process began, "Islamic terrorism has intensified and has become the international agenda-setter - and it's all because of Oslo. The Oslo process gave Islamic terrorism a victory, money and power that it never had before. By running away from Gaza and continuing this process, we will bring a catastrophe of inconceivable proportions - not only for us, but for the entire world." Arnon also said that the disengagement process is a "crime against the Jewish Nation. Sharon is leading an illegal plan, a national crime." JERUSALEM CONFERENCE, DAY 2: NATIONAL STRENGTH - OK; ISRAELI PRESS - MISLEADING The second day of the Jerusalem Conference began this morning with a discussion of how well Israel is standing up to the ongoing conflict, and whether the press accurately reflects the situation. The Conference, a project of Arutz-7-s B'Sheva newspaper designed to set Israel's national agenda, is being held in Jerusalem's Hyatt Regency Hotel. One of this morning's speakers was MK Uri Ariel of the National Union, whose political career is intricately bound up with the hotel; he became a Knesset Member as a replacement for Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, who was murdered in late 2001 by Palestinian terrorists in the Hyatt. MK Ariel said that in general, the "graph of accomplishments of the Jewish People is always increasing - whether in Torah study, hi-tech, literature, building the Land, economics, etc. This is so even during the current war, even if slightly less so." Earlier, Dr. Reuven Gal - Deputy Chief of the National Security Council and responsible for its Policy, Society, and Infrastructures Wing - backed up this impression with facts and figures. Gal said that the national morale is constantly rising and dropping, in accordance with the level of terrorist attacks - "but the overall trend, which measures national strength, is constantly and gradually rising." MK Ariel said that we must not look at the current conflict "as a three-year old war, but rather as part of the 140-year struggle for Zionism, or even, if you will, as part of all of Jewish history... The question is, however, if the Jewish People are always advancing, why is it that the leadership always sees the graph as if it is always dropping?" He explained that the population of Yesha - Judea, Samaria and Gaza - "lives a life of meaning. There is a goal, a finish line, a will to accomplish and influence. I was in northern Shomron two days ago, in Kadim and Ganim [two communities often mentioned as prime candidates for demolition - ed. note] - and the residents there told me - contrary to public perception - that no one is talking of leaving. Those who were weak, left a while ago - but now there are those who want to return. The process of unifying, of finding the inner strength, has begun... It's remarkable: What motivates a young unarmed mother to travel with her little children on these 'dangerous' roads? The answer is that the Yesha communities have initiated a new form of community - called a 'communal settlement' - and it has proven itself. People can travel on these roads with the subconscious knowledge that if the worst happens, there is a caring and loving community that will be able to take over. It's a system that works." Ariel continued to express his confidence in the situation, saying that he does not totally agree with the common perception that 'we have settled in the hilltops, but not in the hearts [of the nation]': "In general, there is much admiration among Israelis for the Yesha population and the Yesha enterprise - but it's hard for this to manifest itself when the Prime Minister, whoever he is, takes a different approach... Our leadership is weak - it doesn't meet the goals it itself set, and then blames the public for its own weaknesses... It's partly true that the media are to blame for some of our problems, but we must first of all look inward to see what we ourselves can improve." Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman decried the lack of an organized manner for making government decisions, and said that what most concerns him is the growing rift between those living in Tel Aviv and those in Yesha: "I have a cousin in a thriving Israeli city who would not let his daughter visit me in Nokdim, in Gush Etzion, but allows her to go traipsing in Colombia and the rest of South America - which is not exactly the pinnacle of stability... We have to talk less about Yesha, and more about the growing threat to Tel Aviv. I agree with arch-terrorist Muhammed Def, who said that after Netzarim comes Tel Aviv. People don't realize that there will soon be Kassam rockets in Kalkilye, only 200 meters from Kfar Saba... It must be clear: There is no chance of reaching peace, and whoever says that he will provide us with peace and security is misleading you. The most we can attain is security." Possibly the most interesting talk of all was delivered by journalist Caroline Glick, who served in the 1990's on the Israeli-PA negotiating team and later as a diplomatic advisor to then-Prime Minister Netanyahu. Now an editor at The Jerusalem Post, Glick said that Israelis are not being told the complete story about what goes on in the United States: "Israeli correspondents in the United States have no background in American society, politics, etc., but are chosen for the assignment based only on whose turn it is or the like. How are people like economic reporter Gil Tamari or political analyst Yaron Dekel supposed to turn into American experts overnight?" She noted, as well, that the political leanings of the reporters also affect their coverage. As an example of the mistaken impressions received by Israeli readers, Glick said that Prime Minister Netanyahu managed to obtain a letter written by some 90 Senators warning then-President Clinton against forcing Israel to compromise its ability to protect itself. "This was an amazing accomplishment, which had great ramifications on an already-weak President - yet what did the Israeli readers read? That Clinton was angry at Netanyahu for using AIPAC to pressure the Senate against him. This is a pure distortion of what happened, and an example of how we sabotage our ability to affect public opinion abroad." Glick also emphasized that when Israeli correspondents abroad report about State Department pressures on Israel, they mislead their readers by not explaining that the State Department is traditionally more pro-Arab than other branches of the government, and that these latter often offset its influence. "Thomas Friedman and The New York Times are no more representative of the American public than is FoxNews... These errors cause us not to understand the full extent of our power to influence public opinion abroad. We do have the ability to do so, though Israeli press reports often give the opposite impression." As a final example, Glick noted that the IDF press office made a very foolish mistake following Operation Defensive Shield two years ago: "Papers were discovered proving Arafat's connections with the murderous terrorism - and the IDF Spokesperson gave this scoop to The New York Times, which promptly buried it in a small inside story. Instead, this story should have been given to all the media, and in bits and pieces, so that it would be constantly featured on the front pages." To Go To Top

THE CANCER OF ANTI-SEMITISM IN EUROPE Posted by Communaute-Juive-France@yahoogroupes.fr, March 16, 2004.

This article was written by Jeff Jacoby and appeared in the Boston Globe March 14,2004. It is archived at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004 /03/14/the_cancer_of_anti_semitism_in_europe/ I HAVE BEEN meaning to write about the resurgence of anti-Semitism in Europe, a topic to which I last devoted a column in April 2002. Jews, I wrote then, "are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon to come." At the time, much of official Europe resented the attention being paid to the return of anti-Jewish hatred to the continent where 6 million Jews were murdered between 1938 and 1945. "Stop saying that there is anti-Semitism in France," the French president, Jacques Chirac, admonished a Jewish editor. "There is no anti-Semitism in France." Official Europe takes the attacks on Jews, most of which are the work of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East, more seriously now. At a conference in Brussels last month, Romano Prodi, the European Commission president, acknowledged that there are "vestiges of the historical anti-Semitism" in Europe today. "Attacking a Jew," French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin has said, "is tantamount to attacking the French republic." Chirac told the president of Israel during a state visit that he would be "uncompromising" in rooting out anti-Semitism. And yet the hatred spreads. At the University of Geneva, a Jewish researcher wearing a small Star of David necklace was attacked in a campus elevator by Arab students. When she reported the attack, she was told not to wear the necklace in public. In Hasselt, Belgium, Muslim fans at a soccer match between the Israeli and Belgian national teams waved Hamas and Hezbollah banners, and chanted: "Jews to the gas chambers!" and "Strangle the Jews!" The British Political Cartoon Society awarded first prize in its annual competition to a cartoon depicting a gigantic, naked Ariel Sharon biting off the head of an Arab baby. "What's wrong," reads the caption, "you've never seen a politician kissing a baby?" In Germany, scores of Jewish graves and Holocaust memorials have been defaced. At the cemetery in Beeskow, for example, "Heil Hitler" and "Crap on the six million lie" were painted on gravestones. At Langenstein-Zwieberge, a sub-camp of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, vandals plastered the walls with copies of anti- Semitic Third Reich newspapers. According to a poll conducted by the European Union last fall, 59 percent of EU citizens identify Israel as the world's greatest threat to peace - ahead of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. In December, millions of Europeans with satellite TV reception were able to watch "Al-Shatat," a Syrian film that portrayed Jews as blood-drinking monsters who conspire to rule the world. In a leading Greek newspaper, a journalist wrote that the Jews "have vindicated the persecutions of the Nazis... They deserved such an executioner [as Hitler] since they proved to be murderers themselves." At a televised reception to mark the publication of his memoirs, Mikis Theodorakis, the composer of "Zorba the Greek," denounced Jews. "These little people are the root of evil," he told an audience that included two Cabinet members - neither of whom reacted to his anti-Semitic outburst. The hatred has been most palpable in France. There have been so many attacks on Jews in recent months that the chief rabbi has urged religious boys and men to wear baseball caps instead of yarmulkes outside their homes. In November, a newly built wing of the Merkaz Hatorah school outside Paris was gutted by arson. Last week, in a newspaper column headlined "Jewish children are in danger," six French scientists described recent episodes of anti-Semitic violence in Parisian schools. In one of them, a girl was thrown to the ground and beaten by 20 students, who were yelling, "Dirty Jew! Dirty Jew!" As of late Friday afternoon, about 36 hours after the massive bombing that tore apart Madrid's commuter-rail network, the death toll reached 199. Another 1,500 victims have been wounded, many severely. The Arabic newspaper Al-Quds al-Arabi says it has received a statement of responsibility purportedly issued in the name of Al Qaeda. The statement describes the bombing as "part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam." Spanish police have found a van with seven detonators and an Arabic tape of verses from the Koran. Whether this massacre, like those in Istanbul and Bali and at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, was the work of radical Islamists, the world will know soon enough. What the world should already know but so often forgets is that Jews are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. Anti-Semitism is like cancer; unchecked, it can metastasize and sicken the entire body. When civilized nations fail to rise up against the Jew-haters in their midst, it is often just a matter of time before the Jew-haters in their midst rise up against them. This was distributed to the Communaute-Juive-France. Their website address is http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Communaute-Jeuve-France To Go To Top

THE NEW FACE OF ANTI-SEMITISM Posted by Communaute-Juive-France@yahoogroupes.fr, March 16, 2004.

This article was written by Robert Wistrich, who is director of the Vidal Sassoon International Centre for the Study of AntiSemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It appeared in the Montreal Gazette, March 14, 2004. It is archived at http://www.canada.com/montreal/montrealgazette/columnists/story.asp? id=4EE8A536-DA05-46CB-B823-3FE4877BACAB Anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism were initially two distinct ideologies that over time (especially since 1967) have tended to converge. The more radical forms of anti-Zionism that have emerged with renewed force in recent years display some striking analogies to fascist and racist anti-Semitism preceding the Holocaust. There is, for example, the call for a scientific, cultural and economic boycott of Israel, which arouses grim associations and memories among Jews of the Nazi boycott that began in 1933. To this, we might add the ways in which Zionism and the Jewish people have been demonized in recent years that are virtually identical to the methods, arguments and techniques of Nazi anti- Semitism. Even though the current banner might be "anti-racist" and the defamation is being carried out in the name of human rights, the same desire to stigmatize and defame the Jewish collectivity is in evidence. "Anti-Zionists" who insist on comparing Zionism and the Jews with Hitler and the Third Reich, are de-facto anti-Semites, even if they vehemently deny the fact. For if Zionists are Nazis and Sharon really is Hitler, then it becomes a moral obligation to eliminate Israel. That is the bottom line of much contemporary anti-Zionism. The exhibit in Stockholm in which an Islamic Jihad bomber is idealized as Snow White sailing on a pool of blood has nothing to do with "preventing genocide." It is an invitation to perpetrate another massacre of Jews, whatever the artist might claim. Israel is the only state on the face of this planet that such a large number of disparate nations, political groups and individuals (including self-hating Jews) wish to see disappear - a chilling reminder of Nazi propaganda in the 1930s. The most virulent expressions of this exterminationist anti-Zionism come from the Arab-Muslim world, the historical heir of earlier 20th century forms of totalitarian antiSemitism in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. It is echoed even by "moderate" Muslim statesmen like Mahathir Mohammad who publicly repeat the classic anti-Semitic myth that "Jews rule the world" without eliciting any objections in the Islamic world. The more radical Islamists from Al-Qa'ida to the Palestinian Hamas fuse indiscriminate terror, suicide bombings and a Protocols-of-Zion- style of anti-Semitism with the ideology of jihad. They embrace a total demonization of the "Jewish other" as the "enemy of mankind." The same demonizing stereotypes can be found in "moderate, pro- Western" Egypt (home to the anti-Semitic soap opera Rider without a Horse) secular Baathist Syria, conservative Wahhabite Saudi Arabia and Shiite fundamentalist Iran. This is an ideological anti-Zionism that seeks both the annihilation of Israel and a world "liberated from the Jews" - the ultimate final solution. The danger has become especially grave because such annihilationalist anti-Zionism is spreading under the mask of anti- Israelism and hatred of Ariel Sharon to Western Europe, America and parts of the Third World. It has found grassroots support in the Muslim diaspora among radicalized youth and strong echoes among anti- globalists, Trotskyists, and far-right groups not to mention parts of the mainstream Western media. The mobilizing power of anti-Zionism derives primarily from its link to the Palestinian cause. Since the 1960s, the PLO has worked hard to delegitimize Zionism and this policy has largely succeeded. Palestinian anti-Zionism involves a negation of Jewish nationhood and any legitimate Jewish sovereignty in Eretz Israel; a denial of any historic link between Judaism and Zion, or of the very existence of two Jewish temples in Jerusalem. No wonder Israel has never existed on any Palestinian maps even during the Oslo peace process. Nor should it be forgotten that the Palestinian Authority has frequently combined anti-Semitic motifs - including Holocaust denial, updated blood libels and Jewish conspiracy themes - with a more general incitement to jihadist violence. Palestinian anti-Zionism has helped to infect Europe with an old- new version of anti-Semitism in which Jews are turned into rapacious, blood sucking colonialists. They are depicted as alien, rootless and imperialist invaders who conquered Palestine by brute force. Zionists are modern crusaders with no legitimate rights to the soil - an alien transplant in the region, which cleverly manipulated Britain and then America to achieve its goals. This is an Arab anti-Semitic narrative of which Hitler might have approved. The popularity of the Protocols is one of the most telling symptoms in the Middle East of the complete merger between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Zionism is also vilified in some mainstream Western media as being criminal in essence as well as in its behaviour - another classic anti-Semitic stereotype. This flows from the left- wing mantra branding Zionism as a racist, colonialist and imperialist movement - the only empire in history whose waistline is about 10 miles wide. Israel's military actions offer Europeans the tantalizing temptation of saying that "the victims of yesterday have become the Nazi perpetrators of today," and the opportunity to present Zionism as heir to the darkest pages of Western colonial history - i.e. Algeria, Vietnam, South Africa. Such comparisons are not always anti-Semitic in intention however false they are in practice. But through endless repetition they become an ideological rationalization for dismantling Israel. This is a major aim of "progressive" anti-Zionism that insists on its moral purity yet turns a blind eye to so-called suicide bombings that are literally crimes against humanity. Such anti-Zionism is fundamentally discriminatory in negating even the possibility of a legitimate Jewish nationalism while idealizing the violent nihilism of the Palestinian national movement. The anti- globalist crusaders against Zion regularly justify the terrorism, jihadism and anti-Jewish stereotypes to be found in Islamic fundamentalism. For most of the Western left, Palestinians can only be victims. Hamas bombers are militants engaged in legitimate resistance. They are never perpetrators of any crimes or responsible for their actions. Only Israel is to blame. On the far left as well as the far right, contemporary anti-Zionism freely exploits stereotypes about the "Jewish/Zionist lobby, Jewish criminality and Israeli warmongering" that are deeply anti-Semitic. This world-view has penetrated the mainstream debate to the point where 60 per cent of Europeans regard tiny Israel as the greatest threat today to world peace. Anti-Zionism is not only the historic heir of earlier forms of anti- Semitism. It is also the lowest common denominator between anti- thetical political trends in Europe and the Middle East - the only point on which they can agree. It is a bridge between the left, the right and the militant Muslims; between the elites, including the media, and the masses; between the church and the mosque; between an increasingly anti-American Europe and an endemically anti-Western Arab-Muslim Middle East; a point of convergence between right-wing conservatives and left-wing radicals and a connecting link between the generations. Anti-Zionism is no longer an exotic collection of radical chic slogans that somehow survived the debacle of late 1960s counter- culture. It has become an exterminationist, pseudo-redemptive ideology in the Middle East which has been re-exported to Europe with devastating effect. This was distributed to the Communaute-Juive-France. Their website address is http://fr.groups.yahoo.com/group/Communaute-Jeuve-France To Go To Top

BACK-PEDDLING FROM TERROR WON'T STOP IT Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 16, 2004.

The Europeans give every indication that they are increasing their speed of back-peddling from terror. The Europeans are not known for their bravado but are infamous for throwing raw meat to pursuing predators to slow them down. Too often, this "raw meat" has been their live Jews. Most of Europe pandered to Hitler's insatiable appetite for live Jews. It really didn't slow Hitler down, he merely cannibalized them as he moved forward. Now we see Europe re-emerging with that same mind-set - only now they think they will feed their Jews to the Islamo-fascists in the hope that these terrorists will not make the Vatican "ground zero" in Italy or the Eiffel Tower in France. Neal Cavuto of FOX NEWS spoke about the cell-phones ringing on the covered bodies of the dead Spaniards in their bombed commuter train stations. He made the point that this will continue as terrorists will do what terrorists do. The Europeans have tried time and again to literally bribe terrorists with unimpeded access to their nations - as long as things blew up somewhere else. We see a certain desperation as the Europeans reach for Israel as their next human sacrifice to the Arab Muslim Palestinians in the hope that Arab terrorists will cease and desist targeting them. The problem is that each of the Arab nations were cultivating terror against Jews returning to their ancient homeland before Israel was partitioned and the State was born in 1948. Saudi Arabia was teaching Wahhabi Islam (radical fundamentalist Islam) to her children before 1948 which included hatred for those Christian Crusaders of Europe. Syria, Iran and Iraq were hotbeds of radical Islamic terror and of course, continue to be so. Add Egypt under Gamal Abdel Nasser, from 1963 onward, committing heinous crimes against humanity by using poison gas, namely mustard gas, phosgene asphyxiant during his 5 year war in Yemen. Egypt spearheaded the research, development and testing on live humans of Chemical Warfare and missiles to deliver it. Egypt shared this knowledge with Syria and Iraq, creating 3 countries in the Middle East, with fanatic Islamic terrorists who would have access to and who would use WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction). But, for the anti-Semitic Europeans, the opportunity to pass their terrorist troubles over to the Jewish State of Israel is merely what Europeans do. Throwing "raw meat" to tracking adversaries and hope they will gorge themselves on those bits of flesh and forget about terrorizing Europe. Whether it is the BBC, the NEW YORK TIMES, Tom Friedman, Jack Straw of Britain, Jacques Chirac of France, the extremely pro-Arab, anti-Israel State Department, their prevailing notion is that, if they shove another Palestinian State down Israel's throat, the terrorists will be satisfied. (I don't think so.) But, since Vichy France really never went away - since Germany is still working its way past the guilt but starting to spout about "those Jews" again - since the so-called "Elite" of Britain quip about that "shitty little country" (Israel) - not much has changed in the past 60 years. Well, something has changed. The Jews are no longer in their hands. They have their own State. Also, the Jews are now armed and should those good Europeans attempt to forcibly try to hand the Jews over to the Arabs, the Jews will fight back - hopefully in time. A NEW ERA OF GLOBAL TERROR Fighting Global Terror is a full time job and the faint of heart fall by the wayside. We have watched the people of Spain as they tried to bribe the terrorists to leave them out of their sights. General opinion is that the Spanish people, voted a Socialist government into power on the assumption that Spain would now withdraw their 1300 peacekeeping troops from Iraq. The Terrorists succeeded in terrorizing Spain with 3 train bombs, 201 dead and 1500 injured, 3 days before their election, bringing to power an appeasement oriented government. Therefore, it is now expected that they will move on to targets in Britain, Italy, France and elsewhere in Europe. Americans should not be visiting Spain and should consider closing our military bases in that nation. Spain's weakness is merely another symptom of Europe's weakness and decadence. "Warnings of al Qaeda's continuing threat came Tuesday, February 24th from Washington and London, as well as from George Tenet, Director of the CIA to the Senate Intelligence Committee. He spoke about the spread of Al Qaeda's radical agenda to local groups who now threaten America and are capable of 9/11 scale attacks. "According to French counter-intelligence, al Qaeda has recruited in France alone between 35,000 and 45,000 men and is organizing them into military style units. In Germany, Al Qaeda has recruited 25,000 to 30,000 men. The British domestic intelligence agency M15 estimates 10,000 faithful have joined up in Britain. Al Qaeda doesn't need an important foothold in Italy because it maintains a thriving presence next door in Albania, Kosovo and Macedonia. Unknown numbers are enlisting in Belgium, Switzerland, Holland, Sweden and Norway. Native Europeans - freshly converted to Islam are targeted for recruitment, called: "the while recruitment drive". " (2) In my previous article "Mankind Against Islamic Terror" of March 14, I pointed out that President Bush had exposed the swarms of Islamic Terrorists who had been breeding sleeper cells in secret nests for years. Now we face them - if we have the guts - or they bomb us. The Terror is coming to Europe despite all the E.U.'s attempts at appeasing the Arab Muslims by throwing them a weakened and vulnerable Jewish State of Israel. Remember Muslims are mandated by Koranic teaching to re-take all lands ever controlled by Islam. If you go to Europe, watch your surroundings, the people and the "things" they leave around. If you live in Europe, strengthen your country's moral stance toward Israel and military attitude toward fighting Terror and the Terrorists. In closing, be assured that the Europeans will never admit the shame of their cowardly weakness. Instead, they will try to shift the blame for Global Terrorism onto the Jewish State of Israel and the Jewish people in a pitiful attempt to appease the "Jihadists". ### 1. "Chemical & Biological Weapons in Egypt" By Dany Shoham (researcher for the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Israel) The Nonproliferation Review Spring/Summer 1998 http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/npr/vol05/53/shoham53.pdf I strongly recommend that you click up this article. You may be astonished at Egypt's successful efforts to develop the most hideous of CW (Chemical Warfare) weapons with the assistance of European and American companies. In following articles, I will discuss the issue of Egypt, like Libya, Iran, North Korea and other hidden recipients of Pakistan's nuclear technology. A summary is at "Chemical Weapons Program" on http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/egypt.cw/ 2. "Al Qaeda Builds a Euro Army" from DEBKA-Net Weekly, Feb. 20 - updated by DEBKAfile Feb. 25. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

PA MEDIA'S "NEW SHARON": WEAK AND DEFEATED Posted by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook, March 16, 2004.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) media has dramatically changed its portrayal of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon since he announced his plan to unilaterally leave the Gaza Strip. The PA media had always depicted Sharon as the cruel and inhuman killer of Palestinians, from Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon, until today. Now he is depicted as "Sharon the defeated" and "Sharon the weak," who is extremely vulnerable. This change in image can be seen vividly in this week's political cartoons, which are already showing a new, beaten Sharon. In four political cartoons from the official PA daily, two published before his retreat plan and two published this week, demonstrate Sharon's changed image: Before the proposed plan: Sharon the cruel and inhuman, who eats Palestinians alive. After the proposed plan: Sharon the weak and defeated, is eaten alive. Itamar Marcus is director of PMW -Palestinian Media Watch - (http://www.pmw.org.il). Barbara Crook, a writer and university lecturer based in Ottawa, Canada, is PMW's North American representative. To subscribe to PMW's reports, send an empty e-mail to reports-subscribe@pmw.org.il To Go To Top

TIME TO GO HOME? Posted by Yashiko Sagamori, March 16, 2004.

In the aftermath of the recent devastating earthquake in Iran, news media reported "a miracle": a man, extracted from the rubble and thought to be dead, stirred on the way to the mass grave. At least two other similar cases were reported. When I read it, my first thought was: In the rush to bury the victims in order to avoid an epidemic, how many people failed to stir in time and were buried alive - for the second time within hours or, at most, days? How many of those would have been alive today had Iran not rejected Israel's offer of help? If proof was still needed that hatred of Jews prevails over any other interest of the Islamic Republic, its government has presented it, loud and clear. Since no one in Iran uttered a word of objection to that policy, the population must support it wholeheartedly. Iranians would rather be buried alive than rescued by Jews. That's anti-Semitism. Not a single country, not a single international organization, not a single defender of human rights protested against it. Not even the United States of America. That constitutes universal acceptance of anti-Semitism, which is just another form of anti-Semitism itself. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Madrid, Spain followed in the footsteps of the ayatollahs and rejected Israel's help. It is safer not to be associated with the Jews. That's anti-Semitism. The United States has been afflicted with political correctness to a degree far beyond the loss of touch with reality. American Indians, who, in all the millennia preceding the arrival of evil white people, literally failed to invent the wheel, are being portrayed in American movies as carriers of elusive ancient wisdom. The police are not allowed to rely on statistics of violent crimes lest it offends African American sensitivities. Security personnel at airports are warned against "profiling" Muslims, despite the commonly known fact that Islam is the main source of terrorism against this country. And yet a movie whose message is most accurately described in three simple words, Jews killed Jesus, has raised no objections from the politically correct crowd: Jews are not subject to the same considerations. ! That's anti-Semitism. Many good Christians who enjoyed Mad Mel's production would tell you that some of their best friends are Jewish. Never mind their best friends; it is still anti-Semitism. I used to think that World War II had cured Christians of anti-Semitism, leaving it to the most backward people on the face of the planet, Muslim Arabs. I was wrong. Worse than that, I was ridiculously wrong. Evil that has flourished for 2,000 years does not go away because of a war - not as long as there are both Jews and gentiles among survivors. I used to think that the endorsement of the Jewish State by the UN was an implicit admission by the civilized nations of this planet that they were unable to guarantee the same safety for their Jewish citizens as was afforded to everyone else; therefore, the restoration of Israel was necessary for the survival of the Jewish people. Now I believe I was wrong. Now I believe that it was an attempt to gather all Jews in one place and leave it to the Arabs to render this planet judenrein. We were dreaming of coming home; they were dreaming of the biggest ever death camp for us. That's anti-Semitism. The best of us came home and built a country. The price has been enormous. Every square inch of Eretz Yisroel is fertilized with Jewish blood. Since 1948, Israel has not seen a single day of peace. When, instead of a super death camp, a prosperous country emerged, our enemies invented the myth of a "Palestinian people". No such people has ever existed. The myth itself is as much an anti-Semitic libel as the story of goyische blood in the matzo dough. But can you name at least one government that doesn't support that myth today? I don't think so. That's anti-Semitism. The name Palestine was a Roman invention, a part of their attempt to erase Israel from the map. That was anti-Semitism, plain and simple. I don't know who invented the term West Bank. What I do know, it is as much a lie as Palestine. The purpose of that lie is the same: to alter both history and geography, to erase evidence of Jewish presence in the Jewish land, to steal our land from us again. That's anti-Semitism. How many news agencies, how many governments ever refer to Judea and Samaria by their proper names? None. That's anti-Semitism. Not a single legal document entitles Arabs to an inch of Gaza, Judea, or Samaria. But a unanimous consensus of the international community declares it "Palestinian territory". Well, let me tell you something about consensus. When everyone present, except for the victim, gives his consent to a rape, it makes the rape neither legal, nor acceptable, nor does it turn it into an exercise in democracy. It turns it into a gang rape. Democracy or not, the only one whose opinion counts is the intended victim. And when the UN gang-rapes Israel, that's anti-Semitism. Every year, the EU, US, UN, and every other government and international organization that happens to have a few extra million of dollars or euros in their coffers, provides what they call "humanitarian assistance" to what they call "Palestinians". Everyone with an IQ above that of an average stone-thrower in Ramallah understands that it means directly financing mass murder of Jews. That's anti-Semitism. At every appropriate occasion, the United States calls itself an ally and supporter of Israel. The price Israel has to pay for the US support borders on the loss of sovereignty and leads to its gradual surrender to Arab enemies. As a result, today, Israel's survival is more questionable than ever before since the Yom Kippur War. Arabs alone, without US pressure on Israel, would have never been able to achieve such a victory. That's anti-Semitism. When the United States declared its War on Terrorism, everyone was invited to participate, even countries like Iran and Syria that have been sponsoring terrorism for decades, even countries like Pakistan, whose people hate the United States openly and with passion. Israel has been the main victim of Islamic terrorism. It would make a natural, resourceful ally in that war. The United States excluded Israel from participation in its war as firmly as Spain rejected Israel's help in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attack in Madrid, and, basically, for the same reason. That's anti-Semitism. When the terrorist organization that specializes in murdering Israelis, was, by means of the "road map", not only declared immune to prosecution, but was practically granted statehood, it was anti-Semitism, pure and simple. When, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the US government was awarding contracts in Iraq, even the staunchest opponents of the war got a chance to participate. Israel was unceremoniously pushed aside. That's anti-Semitism. On February 28, the New York Times; reported that the Iraqi Governing Council had been pondering a dramatic question: whether to allow Iraqi Jews to return. Jewish communities (should we say, settlements?) had existed in Iraq since at least the 16th century B.C.E. The state of Iraq was mandated by the League of Nations in 1921 C.E., 25 centuries later. Most Iraqi Jews left the country in modern times escaping persecution. The Council decided the Jews should stay out for now. That's anti-Semitism. Moreover, it's an example of the United States government accepting and sponsoring Arab anti-Semitism. That's anti-Semitism as well. Javier Marias, a Spanish novelist, assuming that the attack in Madrid was perpetrated by Basque extremists, complained in his op-ed article in the New York Times on March 12: [T]here's been no oppression in the Basque region for more than 25 years (beyond, of course, what the ETA itself exercises). There is an autonomous government and a parliament with a broad jurisdiction, and even a Basque police force, which, from time to time, the ETA attacks. The group is no different than the Mafia. Its members and sympathizers know that if they stop killing, they'll be nobodies in their towns and cities, they'll no longer be "respectable" - that is, fearsome and opportunistic. Sounds familiar? Unfortunately, to find any commonality between the two situations, one almost inevitably has to be a Jew. One absolutely has to be a Jew to remember that while the Basque people are not the ETA, the "Palestinians people" are really nothing but Arafat's terrorist organization. That's anti-Semitism. Christian anti-Semitism has been with us since ancient times, through the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, the two World Wars. It is with us today. Today, Christianity enjoys unprecedented enlightment. Most Christians would be offended by an accusation of anti-Semitism. They will draw a line between anti-Semitism and criticism of Israel. But what exactly is it about Israel that causes your criticism? If you criticize Israeli leaders for failing to claim what's rightfully Israel's and allowing what used to be a minor problem to grow into a real threat to Israel's existence, I am with you; however, when you criticize Israel for not surrendering to those who do not even consider it necessary to hide their intentions to wipe the country, along with its entire Jewish population, off the face of the earth, that's anti-Semitism. The inordinate number of Holocaust museums all over the world where people pay tribute to six million dead Jews appears to be evidence against my assertions. But dead Jews don't bother anyone. They no longer rule the world, even by proxy. Live Jews are a different matter. The International Court of Justice has been desperately seeking a legal basis for condemning Israel's attempt to defend itself against Arab terror. At the same time, not a single international organization seriously condemns terrorists as long as they choose their victims within Israel's borders. You call that justice? That's anti-Semitism. Israel has never attacked or occupied another country. Nevertheless, according to the now famous poll, 59% of the Europeans sincerely believe that Israel is the main threat to world peace today. Most Europeans sincerely believe that Israel was built in place of a country called Palestine and scattered its people. That's ignorance, which breeds anti-Semitism. Let's not forget attacks against Jews, Jewish institutions and property that have grown to a degree that makes it no longer possible for the European governments to sweep it under the rug. That's also anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is nothing new. We've been living with it for 2,000 years. When it grew unbearable in one place, we went elsewhere and stayed there as long as there were no pogroms. Our entire history since the destruction of our Second Temple consists mostly of going from one place to another. This time however it's different. The current wave of anti-Semitism coincided with globalization. This time, when the life of a Jew in England, France, or Spain becomes unbearable, he won't take his family to France, Spain, or England, because such a migration would make as much sense as moving from Munich to Nuremberg in the 1930's. The United States lags behind Europe when it comes to anti-Semitism. So far, this country has been good to us. History tells us however that no country in the world has been good to us forever. Are you willing to bet your life on the USA being the first one? A quiet Muslim invasion of the United States is going on steadily. Within a few years, Muslim votes will be more important to American politicians that Jewish ones. The economy, no matter what the propaganda says, is going through a deep crisis also caused, to a large degree, by globalization. How much longer are we going to feel at home in this country? How long before our neighbors begin blaming us for everything that goes wrong? Nobody knows. We do know however that until Hitler came to power, Jews felt safer in Germany than probably anywhere else in the world. Which reminds me: if John Kerry loses this year, Hillary Clinton moves into the White House on January 21, 2009. Next year in Jerusalem? Yes, if the Diaspora survives that long. Yashiko Sagamori is a New York-based Information Technology consultant. To read other articles by the author, go to http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko/ To Go To Top

SELF-PITY AND "SELF-DETERMINATION" Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 16, 2004.

One P.A. rallying cry is "self-determination." Another is to slay Jews, Christians, and Americans. Statehood would magnify that terrorist entity's power. P.A. self-determination means extermination. That is not in the US interest, but the biased State Dept. promotes it anyway. Do people who propose giving the P.A. sovereignty have no compunction about empowering the most murderous living group? Is there no question in their minds whether that group is worthy? There might be a question of that group's eligibility, if the media raised the notion of qualifications for self-determination. The group asking for the right to determine its future must be a separate group from the surrounding people. Otherwise, why give it a separate sovereignty? The P.A. Arabs are not a separate group. To reterate previous explanations of that, Arafat's people are of the Arab nationality. They demand statehood solely as part of their effort to destroy Israel. What is more, they have admitted it. If discontented, they should go elsewhere. The Arabs constantly complain about their plight. They who are pitiless towards infidels solicit the pity of infidels. Barbarians seeking world conquest do not deserve compassion over the hardships of their quest. Their lying whining about Israeli retaliation is contemptible. The Nazis had a similar trait. The Germans, an aggressor in the exhausting WWI, complained that fellow Germans had betrayed them by surrendering. They started WWII and supported it until they began losing. When defeated, they pretended not to have known of the many and unique atrocities their side committed. Now they are trying to raise a theory that they are victims of that war. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

TARGETED KILLINGS CAN SAVE LIVES Posted by Steven Plaut, March 16, 2004.

This was written by Tuvia Blumenthal, a professor of economics at Ben-Gurion University. It appeared today in Haaretz. Instead of addressing the question of how Israeli soldiers should deal with terrorism, the critics of Professor Asa Kasher, whom they disparage as "the court philosopher," charge that the answer to every question is to put an end to the occupation - despite the fact that they, too, know that the occupation will not be ending tomorrow. But what should be done until then? Should the war on terror be stopped? And once Israel evacuates all of the territories, as they demand, would we find peace at last? Can they promise us that Hamas will not gain control of the territories that are evacuated and continue its attempts to wipe out the State of Israel? Will the Israel Defense Forces be superfluous, and no longer need an ethical code? The aim of Kasher's commendable enterprise is to establish norms of behavior for Israeli soldiers for as long as terror continues to harm us, be it before or after the end of the occupation. At this point, the question of the targeted assassinations and their moral justification is raised. In this context, Kasher poses two arguments: First, when a military action is scrutinized, in order to determine whether it is moral or not, not only the results of the action should be examined, but also the implications of avoiding the action. The targeted assassination of a terrorist, in the course of which ten innocent Palestinians are killed, is no less moral than a decision not to act, as a result of which the terrorist succeeds in carrying out a terrorist attack in which ten innocent Israelis are killed. The justification for a targeted assassination should be judged not only by the direct result deriving from it, but also by the indirect result, of lives saved as a result of the targeted assassination. Therefore, the test of an action in which ten innocent Palestinians were killed does not stop there; one must also weigh the number of innocent Israelis remaining alive as a result of the action. Second, a terrorist attack is not only the result of a suicide terrorist, who may be the direct cause of it, but of an entire chain of command, which includes the commander of the action, the person who prepares the explosive belt and the driver who brings the terrorist to the bombing site. If there is moral justification for preventing the terrorist attack, it is not limited to striking at the suicide terrorist when he is 20 meters away from the objective. Rather, it applies to the entire terrorist cell, the entire chain of command. Added to this argument is the fact that striking at the suicide bomber will prevent one attack, while striking at an "arch-terrorist" can prevent numerous attacks. It should be borne in mind that a decision to carry out a targeted assassination is not reached in conditions of utter certainty as to the results of the action, either in terms of the chances of liquidating the target or in terms of the chances of harming innocent persons. It may happen, for instance, that after an operation is conducted, it emerges in retrospect that there was no justification for it - for instance, that numerous innocent Palestinians were hurt because of it. It is also possible not to carry out the action and to retroactively discover that there was justification for carrying it out - for instance, because the failure to act led to a terrorist attack with numerous Israeli casualties, who are also innocent. This means that mistakes are possible, and that it is certainly possible to make a moral decision that leads to an unwanted outcome. There is an understandable aversion to taking a stand on the ethical code of an army when as a result of that army's actions persons on both sides are being killed or injured. One could claim that any action in which innocents are killed is immoral, without any relation to the question of how many other lives have been saved as a result of that action. Yet when the subject is the ethical code of an army, and in particular an army that is waging a prolonged war against terror, it is not possible to evade cold calculations and considerations, not when there are dead and wounded on both sides of the equation. For instance, is there moral justification for preventing a terrorist attack if there is a 70 percent probability that if it occurs, 20 Israelis will be killed, but there is a 90 percent probability of 10 innocent Palestinians being killed if it is prevented through the targeted assassination of the terrorist? As a philosopher engaged in the field of ethics, Asa Kasher bravely grapples with questions such as these, while his critics try to dodge them. To Go To Top

SPANISH DEMOCRACY Posted by Leo Rennert, March 16, 2004.

This was an Opinion Piece yesterday from the Jerusalem Post Online (http://www.jpost.com). As recently as a generation ago, an event like Thursday's Madrid terror attacks would have prompted the Spanish government of the day to declare martial law. Or it might have provoked a military coup. Instead, on Sunday Spaniards went to the polls in greater-than-expected numbers to hand Socialist candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero an upset victory over his conservative opponent Mariano Rajoy. This is excellent news, proof of the resiliency of Spain's still-young democracy. So why are we disappointed by Sunday's result? Not because we have a view, one way or another, as to who is most fit to govern Spain, although the Popular Party under Jose Maria Aznar accumulated an impressive record of economic success during its eight years in power (recently celebrated in a Time magazine cover story). Rather, it's because the election's outcome is precisely what the perpetrators of the attack - whether it was the Basque ETA group or, what appears more likely, al-Qaida - intended. It creates the worrisome precedent that terrorist groups may attempt to influence the result of other elections with well-timed mega-attacks. Israelis are no strangers to this phenomenon. In 1996, a Hamas terror campaign, orchestrated in collusion with Iran, helped turn the Shimon Peres-Binyamin Netanyahu contest in the latter's favor. Throughout the seven-year peace process, the Palestinian Authority made every effort to manipulate Israeli politics to suit its convenience, sometimes resorting to violence as with the 1996 "Tunnel War." But these examples are as nothing next to what has happened in Spain. In their manifesto, the self-declared perpetrators, the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades of al-Qaida, cast the Madrid attack as punishment for Spain's participation in the "Crusader coalition" in Iraq. "The peoples of America's allies must pressure their government to withdraw immediately from their alliance with America...," the group declared. "And if you renounce [fighting us], we too will stop fighting you." (Translation by Memri.) This manifesto was released March 12, before Sunday's election. It would, of course, be unfair to accuse Spaniards of casting their ballots to accommodate al-Qaida's threats. But there is no doubt this is the way the perpetrators of the attacks will interpret the result. Zapatero campaigned to withdraw Spain's 1,300 troops from Iraq by June, a pledge he renewed Sunday night, and he has been vocal in his criticism of US President George W. Bush and of Aznar's close relationship with him. True, Zapatero also said he would make the struggle on terrorism his chief priority. But what does this really mean, if not standing fast with the US? Defensible arguments were made prior to the Iraq war that it was a distraction from the war on terror. Today, for good or ill, Iraq has become the prime battleground in that war. Spain's announced withdrawal will now likely increase popular pressure on other pro-US governments to withdraw their troops, particularly Poland, Japan, Britain, and Italy. The danger does not stop there. Countries that opposed the Iraq war and have so far escaped al-Qaida's terrorism may be lulled into thinking that they can purchase peace by taking an anti-US stance, or at least an anti-Israel one. This is a fallacy in its own right, reminiscent of Winston Churchill's famous adage about feeding the crocodile in the hopes of being eaten last. It also helps divide the West when a united approach to terrorism and terror-sponsoring states is badly needed. Finally, there is the threat to democracy itself. The al-Qaida manifesto spoke menacingly of a "Winds of Black Death" operation against the US, which it said was 90 percent complete. This may or may not be a bluff. What's certain is that if terrorist groups believe they can alter the outcome of Spain's election, why not attempt to alter the outcome of America's? In the immediate aftermath of Thursday's bombing, the first question on everyone's mind was "Who did it?" Then the question became "Why?" If people in democratic nations persuade themselves that the answer is the war in Iraq - and, more broadly, the American-led war on terror - they will have handed al-Qaida the very thing it seeks. To Go To Top

THE LITTLE SHAHID Posted by David Wilder, March 16, 2004.

Shalom. What does the name Abdallah Koran mean to you? Anything? If not, it should. Abdallah Koran should be a banner-sized headline in all news publications around the world, hard-copy and internet. Why? Abdallah Koran is about 10 years old. His exact age is not 100% clear. Yesterday afternoon Abdallah, before making his way through an IDF checkpoint near Shechem, in Samaria, was made a tantalizing offer. Approached by some 'older people,' Abdallah was promised a great sum of money if he would do them a small favor. [Ed note: eports put it R five shekels ($1.10).] They requested that Abdallah act as a messenger and take with him, along with his school books, a backpack for some people waiting on the other side of the checkpoint. Of course, little Abdallah agreed. Why pass up a chance to make some good money so easily. At the checkpoint a border policewoman, examining all those crossing over, became very suspicious. The backpack was big and heavy, much heavier than would normally be used by a ten year old. The youngster was quickly questioned - "What is in this backpace?" Never having been questioned by uniformed Israelis before, Abdaallah was frightened. "It's not mine. Someone gave it to me to take across the checkpoint, as a messenger." The backpack was carefully removed to an isolated area, where an army sapper examined it and proceeded to explode it. Inside the backpack was a 6-10 kilo (about 15 lbs) bomb belt, hooked up to a cellular telephone. It seems that the terrorists who provided the bomb to little Abdallah had planned on blowing him up, together with the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoint, at the time of its examination. But the plan failed. The bomb didn't go off. Had he managed to get it through the checkpoint undetected, it is most likely, according to Israeli intelligence-security forces, that the bomb would have been detonated on a bus packed with people, murdering Abdallah and the others on the bus. As I wrote, you should know this already because this story should be headlining all news programs, radio, t.v., newspapers and internet. But, it's not. As of this writing, this story does not appear on the homepage of CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Let's, for a minute, play one of my favorite games: Make Believe. Make believe, for a moment, that a ten year old from, let's say, Hebron, was found carrying a bomb on his back, attempting to kill some Arabs in Hebron. Or, maybe a little boy or girl from Yitzhar, who was trying to kill some Arabs somewhere in Samaria. Or, or or ... Can you imagine the headlines. I mean, after all, one of the pictures of the year, a few years ago, was a photograph of a Hebron child pulling off an Arab woman's headscarf. That was a major international crime which made blazing headlines. But, a 10 year old with a bomb, who was not only to be the killer, but also the target?! Why should anyone pick up the story? A 10 year old Arab with a bomb - that's everyday stuff. What's it worth? Only a couple of days ago 10 Israelis were killed in cold blood by two terrorists who managed to bypass the infamous 'wall' or 'fence' or call it whatever you wish - the magical barrier which would prevent any such infiltrations from Gaza into "Israel proper," in this case, the Ashdod port. That terror attack was billed as an "almost Mega-attack," due to the proximity of the terrorists to poisonous bromide tanks, which, upon explosion, could cause the deaths of thousands of people. But, here again, the terrorist detonated himself too fast, for one reason or another, and the "big tragedy" was averted. This time. But, according to most news broadcasters, commentators and everyone else, it will (G-d forbid) happen. It's just a question of time. The Spanish attacks will seem like child's play in comparison. In my opinion, mega-terror cannot be strictly measure by the number of people killed. Of course, numbers do mean a lot. But each and every individual person is just that, a person. And every loss is just that, a loss. To the families of victims, it is little consolation that their loved one was 'one of many.' When Mom or Dad, Brother or Sister, Son or Daughter is gone - they're gone and it makes no difference how many went with them. In my opinion, the attempted use of Abdallah Koran, an Arab 10 year old child, is Mega-terror. The vile, immoral, depraved use of a child to kill others, this is mega terror. Perhaps not in the quantitative sense, but certainly qualitatively. Only the brilliant alertness of a young border policewoman saved many lives - lives of Israelis and the life of little Abdullah. Otherwise Abdullah Koran would have been labeled, for the rest of eternity, 'the little Shahid' - the little martyr, who killed and died for his people, without his even knowing it, against his will. With blessings from Hebron. David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron (http://www.hebron.org.il). You can contribute funds to help the Community by going to http://www.hebron.org.il/contrib.htm. Or contact The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com, 718-677-6886. To Go To Top

THE STATE DEPARTMENT KEEPS DIALOGUING INTO THE WIND Posted by Morris J. Amitay, March 15, 2004.

The word circulating here in Washington is that Secretary of State Colin Powell already has "one foot out the door". His gradual disengagement from decision making at the State Department is not great surprise since it is widely assumed that this American icon will not be serving in a second Bush administration. Should "W" be re-elected in November, (despite his current low poll numbers which really mean nothing) this might create the opportunity to begin making much needed changes in the culture of our diplomatic establishment. While the watchwords of our State Department are "dialogue" and "engagement", by now it should be abundantly clear that there are certain rulers and regimes that no amount of speaking to can produce meaningful results. Cases in point abound - Khomenei, Arafat, Assad, and Kim-il-Jong readily come to mind. In too many instances the line between engagement and appeasement has become blurred. But for State Department officials and Foreign Services officers serving abroad, a primary goal invariably seems to be maintaining the status quo. You could say it takes one to know one! As a newly-minted Foreign Service officer in the 1960's, I was constantly reminded to not "rock the boat", to "keep a low profile", and always to show "proper punctilio" towards my superiors! But after three rapid promotions and three plum assignments in seven years, I called it quits. Besides wanting to put down roots for my growing family, I deeply resented having to get along, by going along with the prevalent culture. One particular episode is illustrative of the length to which our diplomats would go not to ruffle the feathers of a host government. It was 1967 in Verwoerd's apartheid South Africa when a much publicized visit to Cape Town of the U.S. aircraft carrier Franklin Roosevelt was scheduled. This was to come after years of avoiding showing public U.S. support to the regime. I was an Afrikaans-speaking political officer at our embassy. At the staff meeting in preparation for the event, the subject of shore leave for the ship's crew came up. The naval attache mentioned, almost casually, that there would be segregated shore leave for the American sailors - in keeping with local tradition. The ambassador, a veteran career appointee and a former Assistant Secretary of State, nodded approvingly. Obviously being more aware of the potential domestic ramifications of this arrangement in the U.S., I spoke up and inquired - "wouldn't segregating the black and white American sailors provoke a reaction back home?" The ambassador, in his most supercilious tone replied - "Mr. Amitay, I am sure the Navy is quite capable of handling this issue." Case closed - hardly! Predictably, when the word got out of the Navy's segregation plans, there was an uproar in the U.S. Congress. Sen. Hubert Humphrey led the charge - and all plans for shore leave were abruptly cancelled creating both unhappy sailors and a mini-crisis in US-South Africa relations. This same disregard for American values when dealing with autocratic regimes and protecting the rights of U.S. citizens can still be seen today. The State Department regularly sends its top lawyers to intervene in our courts against the claims U.S. victims of terrorism seeking redress from terrorist-sponsoring states. Whether it is shielding Saudi financing of terrorists or Iranian complicity in the murder of U.S. soldiers, State is there to protect the assets of the guilty nations. This is indicative of the State Department's trumping justice with diplomatic niceties, and how out of touch with our own country's values our diplomats have become. Admittedly, any bearer of bad news to a host government risks wearing out his, or (in Amb. April Glaspie's celebrated meeting with Saddam before the first Gulf War) her welcome at the presidential palace. But having ready access to a dictator or his minions should never be as important as having the guts to deliver a tough message, or in diplomatic parlance, holding a "frank" discussion. Unfortunately, the State Department's culture of moral relativism and resistance to change continues to permeate most of the denizens of Foggy Bottom. Until this changes, State will continue to undermine more muscular Administration policies towards tyrants and dictators. One can demonstrate understanding and sensitivity to local religions, customs and culture without becoming an apologist for the excesses and evils of the country in which you serve. Until adherence to our own values and democratic principles is reflected in the statements and actions of our diplomats, the State Department will not deliver the right message and continue to undermine a President who "doesn't do nuance." A current case in point is our relations with Iran. Deservedly included by the President in the "axis of evil", is it really credible to believe that we can talk the ruling mullahcracy in Tehran out of developing nuclear weapons or convince them to respect human rights? Here, a policy of "engagement" or "dialogue" with a regime openly bent on our eventual destruction is not only the height of folly, but deservedly earns us the contempt of our adversaries. The growing threat of Islamist terrorism and ensuing world disorder requires our diplomats to strive to be better than the classic definition of "gentlemen sent abroad to lie for their country". Instead, we need men and women who go abroad and are not afraid to tell the truth and reflect American values. Morrie Amitay is a former Executive Director of AIPAC and founder of the pro-Israel Washington PAC (www.washingtonpac.com). To Go To Top

THE HAGGADA OF THE JEWISH IDEA Posted by David Ha'ivri, March 16, 2004.

THE HAGGADA OF THE JEWISH IDEA Reviewed by Rochelle Caviness February 10, 2004 The Haggada of the Jewish Idea is a Pesach (Passover) Haggada that can be used not only at the Seder table, but also as a study text on both the teachings of the Pesach story and on the concept of the "Jewish Idea" as expounded upon by Rabbi Meir Kahane zt"l in his two-volume work, Ohr ha-Ra'ayon (The Jewish Idea). This Haggada includes an extensive commentary based upon Rabbi Kahane's teachings, which was written by his son, Binyamin Zev Kahane hy'd. The text of the Haggada, itself, is presented in Hebrew with an English translation on the facing page. The text is clear, dark, and well organized for use during the Pesach Seder. Instructions are provided, as needed, on how to conduct the seder. The commentaries, which are in English, are differentiated from the main text by being printed with a greyish background. Illustrations are scattered throughout the text, and a glossary, that includes biographical information about many of the luminaries mentioned, can be found at the end of the book. Rav Kahane's commentaries are eloquent and enthralling and he examines the Pesach story in exquisite detail. He not only explains the basic foundations of Judaism and the teachings inherent in the Pesach story, but he also elucidates his father's teaching about the "Jewish Idea" and the importance of every Jew in the galut (diaspora) returning to Israel - immediately. He examines the belief, held by many, that there is no halachic (religious law) compelling them to move to Israel, and the belief held by still others that the State of Israel can only come into existence after the arrival fo the Moshiach. Rav Kahane explains why both of these contentions are wrong, and why it is vital, as a means of hastening the Redemption, that every Jew must return to the Land of Israel. Throughout, Rav Kahane's commentaries are interwoven with excerpts from the Torah, Talmud, and other religious texts, as well as quotes from renowned scholars ranging from Rambam and Sifri to the Vilna Ga'on and Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook zt"l. The commentaries that accompany this Haggada emphasize the true meaning of the events surrounding the Exodus from Egypt and the receiving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. The lessons that can be learned from this historic event are important, both in relationship to how we can incorporate the teachings of Pesach into our day-to-day lives and what it means in terms of the coming Redemption. Now is the time to order the English edition of Rabbi Binyamin Zev Kahane's. Price $23 including Postage and Handling. This Haggada can be ordered online at: www.kahanebooks.com Mail order address: HaMeir L'David P.O. Box 960121 143 Doughty Blvd. Inwood NY 11096 USA or HaMeir L'David P.O. Box 4005 Ariel 44837 Israel To Go To Top

PRESIDENT BUSH, STOP SYRIA! Posted by Mike Evans, March 15, 2004.

At least 10 people were killed and 20 wounded Sunday during a double suicide bombing at the Israeli port of Ashdod. The blast occurred as day workers were heading home at the end of their shift. Reports from those at the scene indicate that one of the Palestinian terrorists asked for water. When the water was handed to him, he blew himself up. Hamas and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (part of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction) claimed joint responsibility for the attack. The bombers, aged 17 and 18, were from Gaza's Jabalya refugee camp. Thousands joined marches in the Gaza Strip to celebrate the attack. Syria has been involved in state-supported terrorism against Israel and American troops in Iraq, according to a U. S. State Department official. Is it time for the Bush administration to implement the Syrian Accountability Act set forth in May 2003? Sign our letter to President Bush asking him to Stop Syria! The purpose of that document is: To halt Syrian support for terrorism, end its occupation of Lebanon, stop its development of weapons of mass destruction, cease its illegal importation of Iraqi oil, and hold Syria accountable for its role in the Middle East, and for other purposes. In spite of the fact that Israel has totally complied with UN Resolution 425 (total withdrawal of all troops from Lebanon) Syria permits attacks on civilian targets in Israel. The Israeli-Lebanese border and much of southern Lebanon is under the control of Hezobollah, which continues to attack Israeli positions and allows Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other militant groups to operate freely in the area, destabilizing the entire region. Syria has once again been charged with blatantly sponsoring terrorism and failing to secure the border between Syria and Iraq, and is, in fact, allowing anti-American mercenaries and terrorists to travel through Syria. The Bush administration is being called upon to impose, at the very least, economic and diplomatic penalties - including barring US businesses from investing in Syria, restricting travel by Syrian diplomats, and banning exports of US products to Syria (except for food and medicine.) In November, Congress sent legislation to President Bush asking him to impose the sanctions. The legislation calls for certification that Syria is not supporting terrorist groups, has withdrawn from Lebanon, has secured the border with Iraq, and is not engaged in developing weapons of mass destruction. There is mounting evidence that at least some of Saddam Hussein's missing weapons of mass destruction are in Syria, smuggled there by the Iraqi dictator for safekeeping before the beginning of the war. Part of the stockpile the coalition forces have so far failed to find in Iraq was probably destroyed; part is likely still hidden. But a massively lethal amount of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons is stored alongside Syria's own stockpiles of WMDs. A Syrian journalist who recently defected to France, said in a letter to the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf that chemical and biological weapons were smuggled from Iraq into Syria before the war began, when Saddam realized he would be attacked by the US. He claimed to know the three sites where Iraq's WMDs are kept. Sign the letter to President Bush today asking him to impose the necessary sanctions on Syria to halt the infiltration of terrorists from Syria into Iraq. The lives of American service men and women are at stake. A democratic government in Iraq is at stake. The ability to halt future attacks inside the borders of Israel is at stake. Mike Evans heads the Jerusalem Prayer Team, a group whose members include some 300 prominent Christian leaders. Their website address is http://www.jerusalemprayerteam.org To Go To Top

SPAIN'S ELECTIONS SHOW WHY RADICAL ISLAM CAN WIN Posted by IsrAlert, March 15, 2004.

Isralert's source for this item: Isralert contributing subscriber Posey McMillan, Texas This article appeared in the Asia Times Online Front Page (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FC16Aa01.html). Radical Islam has scored its first unambiguous victory against the West, and it should have been visible at a long distance (Why radical Islam might defeat the West, July 8, 2003). Winston Churchill's quip that the appeaser hopes the crocodile will eat him last does not apply when the prospective victim expects to be in another world before the crocodile comes around. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party crushed Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's Popular Party in Spanish elections on Sunday. US commentators expressed consternation that Spanish voters would reject America's ally in the Iraq war after al-Qaeda's apparent act of retaliation last Thursday, March 11. Spain's death-knell sounded long before the train bombings in Madrid, however. No country in the world is more determined to disappear. The country's fertility rate of 1.12 live births per female is the lowest in the world. As recently as 1975, at the death of strongman Francisco Franco, the fertility rate stood at 3 births per female in 1976. By 2050 Spain will have lost a quarter of its population. Germany and Italy, whose fertility rates fell earlier than Spain's, will lose a third, according to economist Anthony Scholefield. Half a millennium after the Reconquista, when Spanish Catholicism expelled the country's Muslims and Jews, Spain has no choice but to ask the Muslims to return and take possession of its land by stages. Every Spanish worker in 2050 will support one pensioner, which is to say that the pension system will be bankrupt. According to one academic study, 5 million additional immmigrants must be working in Spain in 2050 to save the pension system, out of a projected population of 37 million - and that assumes an immediate recovery in the fertility rate to 1.5. At this point, it hardly matters what future fertility rate Spanish demographers might project. The demographic catastrophe of the past 30 years puts the pension system on a crash course toward bankruptcy, unless Spain attracts an army of immigrants. Except for a trickle of immigrants from Latin America, North Africa provides most of Spain's immigrants at present. Two hundred thousand Muslims now reside in Spain, and they have built 100 new mosques in the past 10 years. Unless Spain were, most improbably, to attempt a recolonization from Latin America, it cannot do without more Muslims. Socialist voters may not have worked out the arithmetic; Jose Zapatero's supporter in the street simply does not want to be burdened with America's distant wars, especially if they draw fire at home. It all amounts to the same thing. Countries too lazy to produce their next generation will not fight. Who will lay down his life for future generations when the future generations simply will not be there? Like other former strongholds of Catholicism, Spain has made an abrupt and terrible shift away from traditional family life toward egregious hedonism. Alone among Europe's great powers, Spain nipped Protestantism in the bud, avoiding the terrible religious wars that ravaged France during the 16th century, and killed off perhaps half the German population during the 17th century. By expelling its Jews, its Inquisition cut off access to the Hebrew language and Bible translation. By burning several thousand heretics in public, it offered a terrible object lesson to prospective dissenters. Not until 1936, when Catholic generals rose to overthrow the communist-tinged republic, did Spain finally have its religious war, with half a million deaths, of which one-quarter were from executions. The victorious General Francisco Franco kept Spain firmly in the Catholic fold until his death in 1975, after which Catholicism shriveled in Spain like a vampire exposed to the light of day. Along with church attendance, the birthrate fell from one of the highest to one of the lowest in the world. That already has been the fate of other Catholic strongholds, such as Canada's province of Quebec. There the fertility rate dropped from 4.95 children per woman in 1961 to 1.57 in 1996. Old Europe's people, religion, culture and fighting mettle have imploded together. The Europeans are not so much defeatist as resigned to extinction. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

THE SPANISH LESSON, 03-04 Posted by Marco Delmar, March 15, 2004.

Leadership With all due respect to Mr. Aznar's firm stand on Iraq, his way of 'doing things' was not at all firm. One would think that a firm right hand vs Jihad is bound to fail? The Spaniards' Blood is shed, the Spaniards Cry, the world Condemns, the Pro -Iraq-Operation are Ousted at election Who's 'happy' besides the Jihadi Islamo Arab Qaeda and 'moderate' sympathizers? Ultra liberals couldn't be happier, the organizers of the so-called 'Anti War' movement quickly dried off the fresh warm blood of the massacred innocents and are busy clapping about the "fruits" of "victory." 'I told you so...,' they'll shout. Between the masses and the 'anti War' organizers Of course it is easier to convince people to 'not go to any war,' than otherwise, but this is not the only way to convince those not involved in current affairs - the majority of people that 'just want to live their lives'. What people see It is what people see in their leaders behavior. It's 'How' they do things that ultimately determines the public opinion. In other words; It is not only What you do, but How you do it, how you do that important Right thing. And Spain? Mr. Aznar, being on the right side, was on the wrong side of doing things, right from the start. We saw his OPEN, or failed-to-hide show of fear from Al Qeada's political success following their atrocity. What did Spaniards see? They saw an evasive leader that is afraid, very afraid. Would he have come on like President Bush, and stand chin up, with full force, full volume, and speak with both cheeks on 'not giving in', would he have come out as a morale booster rather than a political geek, things would be different, very different. The Underlying Psychology Why is he afraid? What's his motive for caving in, which Spaniards saw in his stubbornness in refusing to blame it on Al Qaeda? Is he afraid of a shift more towards the 'anti-war-warriors' camp? If so - thought the Spaniards - it means there's a big fear of this possibility, because you Mr. Aznar are crumbling. It is YOU who's broadcasting to us via your vibes that many have that 'leftism' in them waiting to get out, just about to explode. Even more, it means there's a cowardly fear on your part of Jihadi Terrorists as a whole, you our leader! What People Follow People follow what they see as firmness, not just what you stand for, but how you back it up. They follow foundation; they follow what they see as a base. That's exactly why John Kerry is success - most people see a leader, not in what he says, but in the assurance and resilience with which he backs it up. Listen up liberals, especially those of you that are against Jihad, but go about it the wrong way, you should at least agree with me that the outcome in Spain is disastrous. It's Jihad's Victory over freedom and Democracy. So hold your horses and your trumpets! Most importantly, quit seeing these "successes" as 'evidence' that you are right. Don't tell us that this is 'what people want', for you are dead wrong on both accounts. The translation of this Spanish lesson is available in all languages! To Go To Top

DON'T TAKE ORDERS, TAKE CHARGE Posted by Ted Belman, March 15, 2004.

In exchange for the disengagement, Israel is seeking to get a compensation package from the US whereby the US agrees to the annexation of the major settlement blocks including Ariel, the US guarantees there will be no right of return and underwrites the cost of resettlement. Not only are the Americans saying "no" to the package, they are making demands. According to Israel National News, the US has set five conditions for the Gaza retreat, 1) The plan must not replace the US Road Map plan; 2) The US will not bear the costs of evacuating and resettling the nearly 8,000 residents; 3) The expelled residents must not be relocated in Judea and Samaria; 4) The evacuation must be not only of civilians but of all military residents; and 5) Israel must not annex any areas of Judea and Samaria. The Americans have also asked that the withdrawal be carried out only after the US elections almost eight months from now. They also concluded that it is important to the Bush Administration that the planned withdrawal not appear as a surrender to terrorism. Furthermore the US is demanding that the fence stay close to the armistice lines and that it not circle the airport preferring to expose Israelis to terrorism rather than Palestinians to inconvenience. To make matters worse, Prime Minister Sharon says he won't disengage without America's blessing and for that matter he won't hardly do anything without its blessing. Where does leave Israel? Nowhere. America's position couldn't be clearer. It is protecting the Palestinians at Israel's expense. America believes that it can better calm the Middle East if it forces Israel back to the '67 armistice lines rather than forces the Palestinians to accept major territorial adjustments. America is entitled to try to protect its interests but so is Israel. Israel accepted the Roadmap subject to fourteen conditions that the US agreed to give consideration to. These included 1. The absolute cessation of terror and incitement before anything is required of Israel. 2. "The future settlement will be reached through agreement and direct negotiations between the two parties, in accordance with the vision outlined by President Bush in his 24 June address." 3. "The removal of references other than 242 and 338 (1397, the Saudi Initiative and the Arab Initiative adopted in Beirut). A settlement based upon the Roadmap will be an autonomous settlement that derives its validity there from. The only possible reference should be to Resolutions 242 and 338, and then only as an outline for the conduct of future negotiations on a permanent settlement." These redlines are being ignored by both Israel and the US. The Roadmap itself is very clear on what the Palestinians and the Arab countries must do in the first stage and nobody is demanding full compliance of the Roadmap let alone the conditions. In theory, all issues are to be freely negotiated, yet Israel is constantly told what it can and cannot do. Res 242 requires agreement on secure borders, yet the world wants to impose Holocaust borders on Israel and ignores the requirement that they be secure. We hear about American and Arab demands but never about Israeli demands. We hear from Bush and Sharon that they will never jeopardize Israel's security but we never hear from either about Israel's right to the land or Jerusalem or any other right. We hear from both of them that the Roadmap (see http://www.un.org/media/main/roadmap122002.html) is still the way to go. I urge you to reread this roadmap if you can stomach it. It is extremely oppressive to Israel. Nothing has been done pursuant to the plan by any Arab country or by the Palestinians to stop the violence. In effect, all Arabs have rejected it by their actions and even by their words. Nevertheless, Bush blindly enshrines it as the way to go and Sharon dutifully agrees. Israel has no choice but to get off the Road and end the peace process. Everyone agrees that Israel has no partner in the peace process so in effect there is no peace process. It is time for unilateral moves by Israel not only in relation to the Palestinians but also in relation to the US. Israel cannot retreat from Gaza without an agreement with someone who will enforce security. But whom can Israel trust to prevent arms build up through smuggling via tunnels or ships or the manufacture of weapons, other than itself. So Israel should forget about the pipe dream of bettering its position by retreating from Gaza. There is no upside. Even if an acceptable security arrangement is negotiated, Israel should not withdraw from all of Gaza. It should keep certain settlements in Gaza in order to set a precedent for the rest of Yesha. It is not enough for Bush to stress that the evacuation shouldn't appear as "a surrender to terrorism", he should insist that terror cost the perpetrator. What better way then for Israel to keep some of the settlements. When Sharon argued that it is not worth keeping some of Gaza because it would provoke the Arabs to further violence just as keeping Shaaba farm did, I was horrified. If that's not appeasement, what is? Israel should formerly declare an end to the Roadmap. In deference to Bush it can wait until after the elections. At such time as the Palestinians get their act together and form a responsible government, negotiations can start without preconditions. Israel doesn't need a roadmap to negotiate a deal. Nor does it need Oslo or Resolution 242. Nor does it need the involvement of the Quartet including the US, especially if the US doesn't want Israel to do a "land grab" or if it doesn't want to underwrite the cost of the evacuation. Just think, no evacuation, no cost. If the Palestinians should choose instead, to continue in the path of violence, Israel should invite them "to bring it on" and deal with them accordingly. Meanwhile the Middle East is not standing still. American pressure is mounting on Syria and Saudi Arabia to change and Iraq is being stabilized. This will continue regardless of what is happening in Israel. Israel should not allow the payment for such developments to be Israeli blood or land. As for the fence, Israel should build it where it wants to build it, not where America dictates. If America wants to go so far as to allow a mandatory resolution to be passed by the UN, Israel can always negotiate a deal afterwards. But what are chances of the US government actually doing so? Nil. As for fighting terror, forget about world opinion and do what is necessary. Hold the Palestinian people collectively responsible for what the PA permits. There are no innocent Palestinians. They have a government that they elected and continue to support. They also support terrorism to achieve their ends. They must be held accountable and I mean the people and not just the leaders. Now that Israel has regained the upper hand she should press her advantage rather then to make a stupid deal as she did when she had the advantage prior to Oslo. It is not too late to take control of the situation. Don't take orders. Take charge. Ted Belman is a major contributor to the Israpundit website. This article is archived at http://israpundit.com/archives/005270.html#more To Go To Top

CHIRAC'S TURNABOUT: A Welcome Bright Spot Posted by Samson Krupnick, March 15, 2004.

Responding to a series of ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas attacks and as a preventive measure, seeking out mass murderer ("terrorist") cells, the Israel Defense Forces (I.D.F.) engaged a strong well equipped ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas mass murder force in the Gaza area. For some four hours the I.D.F. faced very fierce opposition with scores of anti-tank rockets, light weapons fire together with grenades and bombs. Some 15 Arab mass murderers were killed and 65 were wounded. The dead included a number of ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas leaders, including Abu Shella, who was involved in the attack murdering members of a U.S. diplomatic convoy last October. ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas and ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Islamic Jihad are now affiliated together with the international ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) mass murder organization al Qaeda, which cooperates with (Iranian funded Shiite) Hizbollah. To fire for four hours requires a large quantity of arms and ammunition. The I.D.F. had located and destroyed 44 tunnels to Egypt. Iranian supplies through Syria flow constantly. Financing is apparently no problem. The U.N. Security Council had passed a resolution authorizing sanctions against Syria, but to date no sanctions have been applied. Against this background, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, annoyed by an Israeli police inquiry, declared a "sensational" decision to exercise a unilateral withdrawal from 17 Gaza Strip "settlements" (Jewish pioneering kibbutzim, moshavim and towns), some of which were overrun by Egypt in the War of Independence in 1948, and later recovered. Some 10,000 Jews, including 500 new families, live in Gaza and do not want to be "relocated" to Judea and Samaria ("West Bank") or elsewhere. Logically, in view of the intense Arab mass murder attacks emanating from Gaza, it is vital to have an alert presence in the area, instead of turning it over to ("Saudi" Arabian petro-dollar profit funded Wahhabi) Hamas, or to the "Palestine" "Authority". Jibril Rajoub, The Egyptian from Alexandria's (current alias "Yasser Arafat", previous alias "Abdul Rauf el Codbi el Husseini") assistant, is ready to take over Gaza as a deposit towards more "Arab land" to come. From all sources there was a loud cry of opposition to turn over any Israeli land. Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu opposed any unilateral withdrawal, unless there is worthwhile reciprocity. I.D.F. O.C. Intelligence Major General Aharon Ze'evi opposed the withdrawal strongly, insisting that, "The evacuation of the Gaza Strip would be considered as a victory for terrorist groups and encourage more attacks in the West Bank". Residents of the Gaza Strip accompanied by many other Jews protested in Jerusalem at the home of the Prime Minister. Some 250 rabbis from all of Israel, including former Chief Rabbis Avraham Shapira and Mordechai Eliyahu, gathered at the Jerusalem Renaissance Hotel and signed a petition to prevent withdrawal. Rabbi Shapira declared, "Historical reality proved that any one who hurt the Land of Israel, lost both his seat and his rule". The rabbis headed a huge crowd "of all of Israel" assembled at the Kotel (Western Wall) for a mass prayer against the decree. A delegation from Washington is coming to discuss the matter. All of this maneuvering is worthless as long as arch mass murderer The Egyptian from Alexandria ("Arafat") sits in Ramallah in control of his four mass murder organizations. We will continue to battle mass murder in every way possible. This is part of the War on Mass Murder ("Terror") worldwide. On the occasion of completing the first year of the Sharon administration, the opposition has the right to question the Prime Minister. Instead of questioning, opposition leader Shimon Peres accused the Prime Minister of failing to achieve peace as promised. This chutzpa (arrogance) from a villain - Peres - who is responsible for the Oslo disaster and for bringing The Egyptian from Alexandria ("Arafat") illegally into power, is unbearable. Peres should be prosecuted by Attorney General Menahem Mazuz. The atmosphere here in Israel is on a rather sad level due to many hardships involved in an ongoing war. We pray for Heavenly assistance to overcome these difficulties. As if in answer to our prayers we enjoyed a very welcome bright spot. Our President Moshe Katsav was invited by French President Jacques Chirac for a four day state visit to France. President Katsav was accompanied by staff and aides as well as business executives. President Chirac was extremely friendly. He vowed that France shall always support Israel and its right of existence in peace and security. He insisted that any Jew-hatred ("anti-Semitism") in France is a blot of dishonor and would be dealt with constantly. President Katsav explained, "We cannot achieve peace no matter how ardently we desire it. We cannot negotiate with extremists who talk about destroying Israel". President Chirac expressed sympathy "for the heavy and cruel price inflicted by the terrorists". President Chirac hosted an elaborate state dinner. The menu was strictly kosher. President Katsav, the first Israeli President to visit France in 16 years, met with the various ministers and business leaders on economic projects. This royal reception followed visits by Chinese President Ju Initao and English Queen Elizabeth. President Katsav was honored by the French Jews. Over 4,000 crowded into the Palais des Congress for a unity rally. The President received an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the Sorbonne University in Paris in an elaborate ceremony. University President Jean Robert Pitte stated, "No Israeli child should have to live in the uncertainty about security that currently exists". This turnabout of France may be of great service to Israel's position in Europe and worldwide. Samuel Krupnick is Board Member and Treasurer, Root & Branch Association, Ltd.; Israel Chairman, Jerusalem Embassy Initiative, Root & Branch Association, Ltd.; Yakir Yerushaliyim (Jerusalem Prize) Award Winner, 2001; Board Chairman, Encyclopedia Talmudica; Former Board Chairman, Shaare Zedek Hospital; and Columnist, National Jewish Post and Opinion (www.jewishpostopinion.com). To Go To Top

THE WRONG WAY TO CONDUCT WAR IN IRAQ Posted by Richard H. Shulman, March 15, 2004.

The US failed to distinguish between its friends and enemies in Iraq. Instead, it supposes, as the US had in Vietnam, that its humanitarian and economic aid would reduce terrorism. (The terrorists were organized by totalitarians. Totalitaians do not care that humanitarian and economic aid would be good for their people.) The US treated the P.A. and S Arabia as friends and helped some of them against our friend, Israel. Those Arabs and Syria continued to support terrorism against us. The US does not realize there are evil ideologies and regimes. It pretends still that there is a significant difference to us between the PLO and Hamas. US forces are involved in Colombia (whose anti-drug war was re-named a war on terrorism), Yemen, Liberia, and the Philippines, without being able to conclude the war on terrorism. (S. Arabia and Iran and Muslim immigrants to the West largely finance terrorism; the West let it.) We cannot win in Iraq not only because we let S. Arabia and others keep the flow of terrorists coming. We didn't take steps to kill off the enemy in Iraq. (We also let them loot the armories.) We left intact the couple of thousand cadres who carried out the anti-American policies. The US did not know who was attacking it. Those cadres had enemies in Iraq, who did know, and who wanted to wipe them out. W failed to empower the enemies of the Baathists, lest they conduct massacres. Hence we disarmed all Iraqis we could, friends as well as foes. As a result, Iraqis who were pro-American might be assassinated, but Iraqis who were anti-American had nothing to fear. Pres. Bush squanders our resources abroad and much non-productively on the Homeland Security Dept.. He is delegating it too much discretionary power. The government doesn't trust Americans. It disarmed ordinary passengers, although armed passengers have foiled armed hijackers before. It forbids passengers from disobeying hijackers. It built up SWAT teams that can't tell friend from foe, so they keep people from running over to help wounded people and they push around everyone as if suspects. When there are terrorist attacks or anthrax scares, the government hypothesizes that it is from right-wing organizations, rather than make the politically incorrect guess than it might be from Islamist ones. We are spending billions of dollars without getting safer (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2003, p.45). Those are the type of sensible sounding arguments that require debate, lest they oversimplify the situation. The war cannot be won until politicians and others focus on the enemy ideology rather than on terrorism, which merely is its manifestation (Daniel Pipes, NY sun, 3/9, p.7). Mr. Pipes correctly holds that terrorism is a tactic, a sort of weapon. So long as there are societies believing in terrorism, they will generate people who use that tactic. Think of terrorism as a tapeworm whose head, S. Arabia, Iran, and the totalitarian Islamist ideology grow a long tail of terrorists. One may cut off the tail, but so long as the head gets fed, it grows a tail. Pipes ought not stop at expanding the identification of our enemy from terrorists to those who uphold their Islamist ideology. Non-Islamist N. Korea is a menace, too, because of its aggressive totalitarianism that believes that the ends justify the means. It, too, is part of the evil axis. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

AFTER ASHDOD BOMBING, MINISTERS STILL SIT ON THE FENCE Posted by Bryna Berch, March 15, 2004.

The peacenikers blandly ignore reality. The Likud ministers say the right things but don't do anything to stop Sharon's crazy plan to walk away from Gaza, leaving it to the Arabs. And Sharon? As the last paragraph of these news items from today's Arutz-7 (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com) indicates, Sharon talks one way and acts exactly the opposite. Weird. SHINUI MK AFTER GUSH KATIF VISIT: NO ALTERNATIVE Shinui MK Ehud Ratzabi spoke with Arutz-7's Emanuel Shilo about his visit with his party colleague Reshef Chen to Jewish Gaza yesterday. "We visited Kfar Darom, Shirat HaYam, and other communities - it was the first time I was ever there. For me, it was like seeing the beginning of Zionism as I imagined it: the farmers, the people who get up and do things... the beautiful homes of N'vei Dekalim - a simply wondrous thing. I saw people with vision, and despite the rumors of disengagement, they continue to invest their time and resources, even though one can see the uncertainty... The visit didn't change my mind, however: I still support, for lack of choice, the unilateral withdrawal. We have no partner on the other side [the Arabs], and so we must take action. I do demand that the government make a decision as quickly as possible, because it's not fair to leave the residents hanging this way." Arutz-7:  "In light of yesterday's attack, which originated in Gaza despite the fence that surrounds the whole area, and which could have caused hundreds of deaths - are you not concerned with what is liable to happen in Gaza if the IDF leaves, with the terrorists doing whatever they want and manufacturing as many weapons as they please?" Ratzabi:  "No, the opposite is true: Even though we're saying that it will be unilateral, it will not stand on its own. There are [Israeli] contacts with Egypt and the U.S., and we will take the better people [in the PA] who can take control of the area - people like Muhammed Dahlan -" A-7:  "You want to rely on Dahlan? We haven't exactly had great experience with him fighting Hamas, or even the Al Aqsa Brigades..." Ratzabi:  "I believe in reality. If Dahlan wants to take control, as he says - not for peace but because he wants to be in charge - then he won't want to let Hamas disturb him." A-7:  "This is the same reasoning we heard when they wanted to sell us Oslo - that Arafat wants to rule and that he'll fight Hamas, etc. The fact is that they don't want civil war, so why do you think that Dahlan will act any differently?" Ratzabi:  "Because he wants to rule." A-7:  "Arafat also wanted to rule." Ratzabi:  "OK, he wants... don't forget that they come from different generations; Dahlan is younger, more ambitious, and possibly more educated. What other alternative do we have? I don't see any other alternative. We can't continue sitting there 'on the sword.' The Jewish residents are comfortable there because they're used to it, but we also have lots of army there, and children who might be in danger... I see no reason to stay there. Judea and Samaria might be a different story - it's the Land of our Fathers, and 1,000 other reasons. But not this area... A-7:  "Doesn't the State of Israel have obligations to the residents it sent to live there over the years?" Ratzabi:  "It certainly does, and I wanted to say this at the beginning: It must make a decision quickly, and must find them alternative housing that is worthy - not just compensation or money, but entire communities - and that's why I don't see this happening so quickly. A-7:  "It won't be so easy for 50- and 60-year-olds to start a new community at this stage in their lives." Ratzabi:  "They have no choice. What, should we just leave them there? The reality is stronger than everything." A-7:  "So from your standpoint, retreat is the answer." Ratzabi:  "I don't see it as retreat, but as evacuation." A-7:  "From your standpoint, can we also solve in this manner the problem of Arab towns that are located inconveniently?" Ratzabi:  "If you're talking about transfer of population - let's not talk about this, I don't see this happening, if not by agreement... YESHA COUNCIL TO LIKUD MINISTERS: WAKE UP ALREADY! In the wake of the murderous terrorist attack in Ashdod yesterday (ten killed; see next story), the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Yesha Council) has expressed a sharp protest against the Likud Party ministers still straddling the fence regarding Sharon's unilateral withdrawal plan. "Every child in N'vei Dekalim has already learned the plan by heart and has formed an opinion," reads the statement, "while the ministers seem to have learning difficulties... It's all in the newspapers: Sharon has decided to retreat under fire from Gaza, plans to uproot dozens of communities in Yesha and expel thousands of residents from their homes - all with nothing at all in return." The Council calls upon the Likud ministers to come out openly against the plan: "The Chief of Staff and the head of the GSS have found ways to show their opposition to the plan... The only way to get Sharon to give up this idea is if everything is stated openly - which will prevent an acute governmental crisis and a bitter split within the Likud. The time has come to end the 'silence of the sheep.' Don't let Weisglass continue dragging Sharon into the abyss. For G-d's sake, say something!" The ministers in question - some of whom have expressed guarded opposition to the plan - include: Ezra, Livnat, Livni, Katz, Naveh, Netanyahu, Shalom, and Sheetrit. Sharon, Mofaz, and Olmert are outspokenly in favor of the withdrawal/expulsion. The phone and fax numbers of all MKs appear at "http://www.knesset.gov.il/mk/eng/telephones_eng.asp". OTHER REACTIONS: Minister Uzi Landau (Likud): "The more talk we hear of a unilateral retreat and other Israeli concessions, the more the terrorists are motivated to respond with larger attacks. We must respond with strength against terrorism. During wartime, there must be no talk of evacuation and retreat. Only after a victory can there be talk of possible compromise." Likud MK Ehud Yatom said that the brazenness of the terrorists in planning to attack such a strategic target as the Ashdod port "is a result of the tailwind the withdrawal plan has given to the sails of terrorism. Talk of withdrawal must be stopped, and the all-out war against terrorism must be enhanced." Tourism Minister Benny Elon said that the Ashdod attack "proves that talk of uprooting communities encourages terrorism. Whoever thinks that he can run away from Gaza, will be pursued by Gaza into the heart of Israel. The Government of Israel must keep its promise to the public to uproot terrorism in Gaza and everywhere else." The extreme left-wing Peace Now organization feels differently: "There are no magical solutions to terrorism. The only way to get out of the mud is by a diplomatic arrangement... and uprooting the settlements, and using the armed forces that are freed up to protect Israel's new borders." LIKUD BILL TO DEMAND KNESSET MAJORITY FOR YESHA EVACUATIONS The Likud Knesset faction continues to show opposition to Prime Minister Sharon's plans to destroy Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Thanks to MKs of the Likud and the National Union, the Knesset's House Committee approved yesterday the speeding up of a pro-Yesha bill. The law in question, proposed by the Likud's Yesha representative MK Yechiel Chazan, stipulates that the destruction of a Jewish community may not be carried out unless an absolute majority of MKs - 61 - approves it. In general, a bill must "cool off" for 45 days before being tabled for a Knesset vote, but the House Committee decision of yesterday waived that requirement for this bill. For this reason, the bill will be brought for a Knesset vote as early as this Wednesday. Though the law will make life difficult for his father, the Prime Minister, committee member MK Omri Sharon (Likud) abstained in the vote. "The purpose of the bill," MK Chazan said, "is to curb the government, such that any Cabinet decision to evacuate Jewish communities must also receive Knesset approval. We are talking about decisions that touch on the very existence of our Jewish state." Chazan, who heads the Yesha lobby in the Knesset, said that the forum would "fight bitterly against the Prime Minister's disengagement plan, because it stands in the face of Israel's continued secure existence." EX-GSS OFFICIAL AGAINST WITHDRAWAL Menachem Landau, a former senior GSS official, told Arutz-7 today, "I am personally against the unilateral withdrawal plan, and especially its unilateral nature. You can't just leave a territory and abandon it to no one; that's a pure recipe for disaster. They will make weapons, and terrorism will increase, and we will certainly have to pay a high price. Just look at what happened in the areas from which we withdrew in the years of Oslo - when we returned in Operation Defensive Shield, we found giant arsenals of weapons." Asked if Sharon and Mofaz don't realize this, Landau said, "I have no idea what's going on in their heads, but I am sure they are aware of these dangers." Shlomo Ben-Ami - who served as Foreign Minister under Ehud Barak and who is known for his extreme left-wing views - also agrees that to leave Gaza with no one in charge is unthinkable: "A Hamas state will arise that will declare victory and form a Taliban-like society... What has to be done is to get a multi-national force to come in and take over..." PRIME MINISTER SHARON AT YESTERDAY'S CABINET MEETING "This terror attack [in Madrid] teaches us something, which we in Israel have known for many years: that there is no compromise with terror and there can be no situation which allows for such compromise. We must fight terror without restraint; this is Israel's position and I hope that the world is waking up and understands that we must all act together to fight terror." To Go To Top

FINALLY! THE NATIONAL NEWS PRINTS THE NEWS! Posted by Arlene Peck, March 15, 2004.

Wow!! The Los Angeles Times amazingly printed an article in their paper about the Palestinians and all about how "Law and Order breaks down in Nablus and amazingly enough, they didn't show the usual file photos of little Palestinians urchins throwing stones at the big bad Israeli tanks. In fact, for once they covered a story that the mayor of Nablus was quoted about how the once-thriving Palestinian business hub has been turned into a gun-crazy den of lawlessness. Gee! What a surprise! Gaza? Mubarak is already disavowing any connection and who could blame him? I was in El Arish during the Camp David settlement and Sadat wouldn't take take it back when everything was up for grabs. Even then he was calling Gaza a den of snakes and Israel was offering prime real estate and oil wells? According to this bastion of Arab "Political correctness - the Los Angeles Times " Gangs rule the streets of Nablus, the West Bank's largest city, shooting rivals, strong arming merchants and carrying out beatings and kidnappings. Residents have no faith in the toothless police force, which shows little stomach for stopping the disorder. The courts are a joke." Hmm, sounds as though the Palestinian security authority is once again turning guns against its own people, as it has so often in the past. I was violently against the arming of these dangerous men when Shimon Peres and the rest of those foolish men supplied the arms and gave Arafat and his thugs an army in the first place. Interesting, a year ago I met with Dr. Daniel Pipes () and he told me that we were winning the war. I didn't believe him then, but I do now. The Palestinian Authority has lost control. The next step is Civil War between different terrorists factions for the spoils of power. As the internal struggles increase in power throughout the West Bank and Gaza, it's only a matter of time before all hell breaks loose and the Palestinians realize that their violence is counterproductive. That evil old man, Arafat may be fading away but his damage has been done. When I traveled into Gaza years ago I saw what a cesspool it was then but, nothing to what it has become. I traveled throughout the maze of humanity in the Casbah of the old city section and thought then it should razed and the terrorist who filled it should be moved out. Otherwise, the future was clear. There are too many people with nothing to do but look for new ways to kill. Thugs walk through the shops, steal what they want and order the merchants to close during the funerals of their fellow terrorists. There is no one to stop them. Order is a thing of the past. Fatah is thriving, and it's obvious that a pull-out would leave terrorists groups like Hamas, Hizullah and Arafat's favorite, Al Aqusa martyr' brigade in charge Yet, with all of this, Sharon seems to be plunging ahead listening to dignitaries who have never had the good will of Israel in their sights. According to the L.A.Times, when speaking of the U.S. officials who are working with Sharon, "They want to ensure that Israel coordinates any moves with the Palestinians Authority." And, I feel ever so much safer now that Yasser Arafat was quoted as saying, "Any withdrawal should result from face-to-face talks under the peace plan, which has stalled in recent months." He continued, "The Palestinian Authority will maintain law and order in areas that Israel vacates." Gawd! Don't you feel ever so much better about Israel's security? I find it especially ironic in light of the most recent bombing in Ashdod where Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, militants with links to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah party, claimed joint responsibility for the attack. I notice though, the evening news is getting a little more strident concerning the plans of the Islamic fundamentalist. The realization is beginning to sink in that the end of Europe as we know it, seems to be on the horizon. It has been caused by the fundamental transformation in the political and economic institutions of the European Union and might have something to do with the feelings that are beginning to surface. France has been totally taken over and the character of their country will be probably be gone within the next decade. Couldn't have happened to nicer people but, are these the ones the United States or Israel should be listening to? Our public doesn't seem to be so concerned with the "plight of the poor Palestinians" after watching the carnage left over from commuter trains in Spain and the likes which has been done by their savage cousins,who think killing are the answers for everything. People finally, are just beginning to realize to realize that they are not immune. The Islamic Fundamentalist plan is in place and the Arab promise to come after the Sunday "infidentals" is already in progress. There is an element of world anger beginning to voice their concern and support and there are many 'good Christians' out there who have joined the fight. We are becoming united in our grief and anger. The time is coming for Israel to make its move. As usual, it has been easy for the world to be benevolent when it was only the Jews who were being slaughtered. People had a tendency to be far more politically correct. However, the new reality of terrorism has finally hit and hit hard. The millions in Spain who marched in a blinding rainstorm knew that they too now had their "Ground Zero" because of the same savage Islamic fundamentalist. It's time to do something. I'll wager that their open door policies and political correct mantras might be slamming shut. Although their recent vote caving into the Moslem friendly terrorist and voting the government which supported them into power makes me wonder if their march wasn't to protest the USA and it's policies instead. Not too many, I believe, are taking our President Bush too seriously when he rambles on about what a peaceful culture Israel's neighbors are. Especially since you can count on a handful out of the 1.3 billion they represent, who have come out to dispute these evil goals in their dysfunctional culture. It is becoming more obvious; I believe that to win the war on terror drastic measures must be taken. We Americans are idiots if we, in the United States continue to keep our borders open and be the welcoming beacon of light for these forces of dark. The European Union tried that and they are in serious trouble. Our President and those in the EU are 'concerned' with the security fence? They continue to push for the "Roadmap to Hell"? Who cares? Israel must do what it has to do. Although it's been at great cost to its citizens, Israel is winning the war of public opinion by continuing to systematically target the terrorists wherever they find them. Our country ought to be doing more of that instead of pandering to the oil interest that supports these terrorists. Building fences and closing our borders is something that the United States should emulate instead of criticizing the strong response that Israel must take. Transfer is a word that must be considered! It's not about land. Never has been. The Palestinians have a state. It's called Jordan. Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com To Go To Top

MANKIND AGAINST ISLAMIC TERROR Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, March 15, 2004.

President George W. Bush, both by intent and happenstance may have very well saved the world by giving her a fighting chance against global terror - in real time. After 9/11 America was awakened to the fact that she was no longer invulnerable to terror. We discovered that we have been methodically penetrated by Muslim enemies both from outside and within. Bush concluded that we were in a war. The terrorists had brought the terror war to our shores - dramatically. Granted, it was a different kind of war but a vicious war nonetheless. America invaded Afghanistan, the country from which the Saudi, Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda headquartered, broke the choke-hold of the fanatical Taliban from the throat of the Afghan people and disrupted Bin Laden's terror organization. Then President Bush sent another contingent of American forces into Iraq to dethrone the tyrant Saddam Hussein and this too was accomplished. America experienced painful losses but nothing compare to dozens of predictable 9/11s in the future had Bush not ignore the U.N., the E.U., and the conglomerate of Arab nations. In searching for the person, Osama bin Laden who set 9/11 in motion, President Bush stated plainly that he, in the name of America, had declared war against Global Terrorism. At the time he made that commitment, he based his plan on Intelligence from the CIA and a number of other Intel Agencies in some friendly countries. Regrettably, we had been warned before previous to 9/11 and yet, we ignored those warnings. What was eventually discovered or rather acknowledged was that the matrix of Terror and their organization(s) was spread far wider and much deeper that our Intel understood or at least cared to acknowledge. Although I started penning this overview several weeks before the Madrid atrocity, it coincides with an established Global Terror network. The Al Qaeda claimed it attacked Spain because it supported the war and freeing the people of Iraq but, there is more. Al Qaeda had been nesting in Spain for several years before 9/11 - establishing contacts, safe houses, accumulating explosives. There is little doubt Al Qaeda attempted to co-opt ETA, a Basque Separation group but a smaller terror operation. This is the M.O. (Modus Operandi) across all of Europe where Al Qaeda cross-links with local Terrorists and eventually absorbs them all - or at the very least, establishes working relations. However, the Terror attacks in Spain, killing at least 200 commuters, injuring 1500 holds a deeper meaning - which the Europeans have yet to grasp. According to Koranic law, any land that was once - ever - occupied by Muslims or their armies must be re-occupied as it is considered Holy Muslim Land. Spain had been conquered by Islam in 711 CE - as had half of France up to 732 CE. The march of conquering Muslims was stopped by the Battle at Tour (or Portier), France in 732 CE. (If Charles Martel had lost, then the Muslims could have easily conquered Europe.) France, like Spain, is therefore high on the agenda for Islamic conquest, regardless of its modest participation in supporting the war against Saddam. Spain was an important European center for Al Qaeda before 9/11. Spain, along with Germany were both important staging areas for the 9/11 hijackers. The email received by Al-Quds al-Arabi (Jerusalem in Arabic) claimed that the "Al Qaeda Brigade had penetrated one of the pillars of the crusade alliance, Spain, and carried out "Operation Death Trains". This is part of settling old accounts with Spain, the crusader, and America's ally in its war against Islam", the claim said. Please remember that 500,000 of Spain's 42 million people are Muslims. Neighboring France has an estimated 5 million Muslims. (1) And please note that the word: crusader is a code-word for Christian and the earlier Crusaders. In writing about events in the Middle East, I had frequently connected the dots tying a host of terrorist organizations into a close operational industry. I was correct but, underestimated the massive terrorist industry and their operational connections with each other and their penetration into government institutions all over the world. BUSH KICKED OVER THE ANT-HILL OF WORLD TERROR President Bush had kicked over a giant ant-hill of mostly underground terrorists and they began to scurry about either in attack mode or burrowing deeper underground. Terrorists, like Ants or locusts, can breed underground and out of sight for years. They build nests and send sentries and queens to other spots to breed and spread further. The world terrorists were doing this but, they surfaced in only a few areas in their earlier stages of development. Israel was and is one of those hot spots. The Israelis knew that the terrorists had not only attacked them but had operational bases in Europe, America, Africa - in brief - Globally. Their message of alert was received but not really heard or believed. Also ignored were the nations who sponsored their Terrorist proxies - such as Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, and, of course, Iraq. President Bush kicked them into prematurely revealing themselves after 9/11/01. Fortunately, these terrorist bases and underground networks had not reached the stage where they were fully operational. Bush, whether by accident or intent, pushed them into exposing their presence before they were sufficiently operational to threaten the world with WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction). Even here, American Intel fell short - as Pakistan, North Korea, China and Russia shipped components and pre-cursor or technology for these area-wide weapons. 9/11 proved to be more than a mistake for the terrorist organizations because it "awakened a sleeping giant" (as a Japanese Naval commander once foretold after Pearl Harbor). This sleeping and reluctant giant thought herself invulnerable to the kind of attacks which countries like Israel were experiencing on a daily basis. The reluctance to face the threat of terror was America's Achilles heel which flowed from her financial connection to Arab nations who either supplied oil or their alliance with other terrorist Arab nations and factions. Some pundits now and then (in 1991) say we should not have attacked Saddam when he invaded Kuwait to re-coup his debt of approximately $70-80 Billion from his 8 year war with Iran. The full story may never be told of Sec. of State Jim Baker's instructions to American Ambassador April Glaspie to tell Saddam "we have no interest in your border disputes" [with Kuwait]. This was the 'green light' for Saddam to invade Kuwait and loot Kuwait's banks and leaders for gold, money and jewels (with the aid of Arab Palestinians in Kuwait leading Saddam's forces to this loot). Today others - such as Senator Kerry, are attacking Bush because we engaged in another war with the same Saddam who, given time, would have been a nuclear threat, in addition to his chemical and biological weapons. We are experiencing the threat of a nuclear-ized North Korea because President Clinton though he could buy North Korea off with aid. The North Koreans broke every agreement and lied with impunity - much the same as Iran has done and continues to do as they buy time to complete their nuclear-ization. (I wonder if we can trust Libya') Numerous American Presidents and the U.S. State Department knew but closed their eyes to Pakistan's nuclear development. President Bush may very well have saved the world from a fully operational, global terrorist organizati