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 corresp