LENS, LIES AND VIDEOTAPES Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, May 31, 2004.

For they have directed evil against You and have concocted schemes they cannot carry out. (Psalm 21) "In one simple word: This is Hiroshima 2004," said Rafah Mayor Saed Zourab in an interview after viewing the Tel Sultan neighborhood last week. (The Associated Press) The deputy-mayor of Rafah, Omar al Naga, has urged the international community, particularly the European Union, to treat Israel as a "a Nazi state" following the recent concatenation of atrocities and home demolitions in southern Gaza, which left hundreds of civilians dead and injured..."Israel committed Nazi-like atrocities in my city. Gestapo-like crimes were perpetrated in Rafah by the Israeli army. The world must condemn this holocaust and treat Israel as a Nazi state...Our infrastructure has been completely destroyed. We need many years to recuperate from what happened." (The Palestine Information Center) Gosh Mr. Mayors, this all sounds mighty serious, but somehow the numbers and accusations just don't figure. Let's start with the people: Hundreds of thousands perished in Hiroshima and millions were systematically exterminated in the Holocaust. Sixty years ago, educational, religious and cultural institutions; centers of science and industry; transportation and infrastructure, as well as entire cities lay in ruins throughout Europe and Japan. Now before we access the damage done to your town, let's review the profile of Rafah which appears on the Palestinian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities site. In the section called places to visit, the city of Rafah is prominently featured on a page all its own. The following is the text in its entirety (there are no pictures): Located on the southern tip of Gaza, Rafah is a Canaanite town described as Rafia by the Greeks and the Romans. The town has some ancient mosques and archeological sites, including a mosaic floor. Rafah's beach is beautiful, offering sand dunes and date palms. After an unprecedented influx of financial and humanitarian assistance pouring into the PA from the UN, EU, US, Israel and numerous independent sources over the past several years, Rafah boasts of ancient ruins and they bluster over current ruins. They do, however, have date trees (Thank G-d for that). What kind of slaughter and infrastructure damage did the thriving cultural and industrial metropolis of Rafah have to endure which requires "many years to recuperate?" It seems the Israeli Defense Forces killed 41 terrorists. True, terrorism is Rafah's main export and industry. Israel also inflicted damage on your booming underground activities, by destroying some of the elaborate subterranean transportation infrastructure which is used to smuggle sophisticated weaponry from Egypt. In the process of discovering three of those tunnels and navigating through booby-trapped and explosive-laden neighborhoods, Israel destroyed 56 homes. There is an investigation pending with regards to 14 civilian casualties and we'll get to that. It was a military operation for sure, and yes there was some confined destruction. But what took place in Rafah surely doesn't rate as genocide nor does it compare with the aftermath of an atomic explosion. Why would a purported nation want to feign or orchestrate their own holocaust. Is it not and aberration to aspire to catastrophe? On one hand it would seem impossible to actualize this base fantasy - unless, of course, the foreign press, EU, UN, international courts and humanitarian agencies were in collusion with the Palestinian Authority. Sound far fetched? Well for starters, the UN's vehicles and ambulances have been conscripted to kidnap soldiers, steal body parts and smuggle terrorists and weapons. Rather than adhering to even the most basic of ethical standards, the international media's photojournalists behave like they're on some macabre fashion shoot for a high-gloss edition of Morbidity and Mortality. While perusing the online photo archives of Reuters, I couldn't help but notice that the same corpse of a child was repeatedly photographed with different people carrying it. Was it staged or candid? I really don't know, but deliberate or not, it does give the illusion of additional casualties. Suspicions are raised even further now that IMRA disclosed that two Palestinian children who died in the Rafah procession incident were murdered by Palestinian gunmen and that the IDF photographed the shooting. If you doubt the authenticity of this report, please note that it was first reported in Haaretz by Amir Oren on May 21st. Meanwhile in the oft photographed morgue, a lone child is repeatedly photographed in different locations of the room as he sits over assorted groupings of bodies. A spontaneous photographic opportunity or was it posed for propaganda purposes? Another morgue picture taken by the same photographer features a teenage brother and sister who were supposedly gunned -down by IDF troops. But an initial investigation indicates that their deaths were caused by an explosive device planted by the Palestinians. The photojournalists are a rather homogeneous bunch -hardly representative of an international press core. These are the names of the photographers and photojournalists from AP, Reuters and AFP who covered the action for the Palestinian side of the street in Gaza these past two weeks: Mohammed Salem, Suhaib Salem, Mohamed Azakir, Goran Tomasevic, Khalil Hamra, Adnan Hajj Ali, Nasser Nasser, Hussein Malla, Lefteris Pitarakis, Ahmed Khateib, Salah Malkawi, Abbas Momani, Said Khatib, Mohammed Abed, and Awad Awad. Perhaps more and more reporters like James Bennett, who narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt on May 19th, realize that the natives are no longer that friendly. So it seems that the news agencies have no choice but to issue press cards, lap tops and Nikons to the locals in order to get a story -any story - even fiction. (Just a note to the Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Rafah: During the Holocaust, we Jews were issued yellow stars and tattoo numbers, but camera equipment, film and assault rifles were off limits to us). Yes, I know that two of those photojournalists names sound a bit Greek or perhaps Serbian, which brings me to Goran Tomasevic of Reuters. Goren shot a whole series of old ladie -in-the-rubble pictures last week, which seem to have left a lasting impression on Justice Minister, Tommy Lapid. Tommy, these people are compiling an erroneous version of a Holocaust memorial album and you fell for it. Your carelessly chosen words are now being circulated throughout the world and are causing Israel untold damage. As a painter I can tell you that there's nothing like trying to capture the classic solitary figure in a moment of existential pain and loneliness. It makes us all realize how very vulnerable we are. Photo opportunities that expose the precarious human condition are, unfortunately, easy to come by in this world of ours. But Gaza is a crowded place and surely the old women have relatives, grandchildren or friends to help them gather their belongings. This was not a Caribbean flood, where entire families had been swept away. But then again, Gaza is a very cruel place and perhaps the other family members can't assist grandma, because they are busy preparing for martyrdom or the next Hamas parade. Or maybe the family is really there, but the photojournalists didn't want to spoil the moment. Go to http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/critiques/Photo_Op.asp for an honest look and judge the media's role for yourself. Check out the hand in the lower left-hand corner which holds back the man who appears to be headed to assist the old woman, who may or may not be crying real tears. There are little kids in the area too, but all of those cameras will end up portraying the lone Palestinian women who stands against the fence with a convenient graffiti message in English. Which brings me to Lefteris Pitarakis of the Associated Press. He filed a report on May 22nd which made world-wide headlines: Child Shot in Gaza As Incursion Continues : A 3-year-old Palestinian girl was shot and killed in this refugee camp on Saturday, the fifth day of Israeli searches and house demolitions that a senior U.N. official condemned as "completely, completely unacceptable." The article clearly implies that Israelis did the deed, but buried midway through the piece, we see a rather ambiguous sentence: A 3-year-old girl was shot dead Saturday in the camp's Brazil neighborhood, from which troops had withdrawn the day before, Palestinian hospital officials said. Relatives said Rawan Mohammed Abu Zeid was killed by a gunshot to the head as she walked to a shop. The IDF wasn't in the area, which means that Palestinians shot their own. Was it a friendly-fire incident or intentional? I don't know- but remember we're dealing with an enemy that straps suicide belts to their own children, as their mothers pray daily that their offspring will be martyred. Once again, the photo archives were filled with numerous pictures and angles of the dead child in the morgue and at burial. Mr. Pitarakis or some sharp bureau chief at AP must have picked up on that disturbing little inconsistency, because by May 23rd the offending sentence had been removed and it read like this.... A 3-year-old girl was killed Saturday in the Brazil neighborhood while Hansen's delegation was in the area. Relatives said Rawan Mohammed Abu Zeid was killed by a gunshot to the head as she walked to a shop to buy candy. Journalists and photographers who cannot be accountable have no credibility, except in the eyes of those who are either blind or evil. It seems that everybody's watching, but nobody's really seeing. The Palestinian Arabs are killing their own, and this is clearly the mark of Cain - killing his own brother and not accepting responsibility for his actions. As a punishment, Cain becomes a perpetual refugee. Statelessness is his destiny and neither the media nor the international courts and arenas will be able to overturn that decree. Prophets of demographic doom should think again, as your theories and statistics are vacant. We're far more likely to see the Palestinian Arabs self-destruct than to watch them strike permanent roots in our land. As for our military, well I always cringe when they apologize. But then I realize that the Israeli army is humble, contrite and accountable -in addition to being an excellent fighting force. Those are the qualities that will ensure our ultimate victory and keep us in possession of our Land. Self-inflicted Genocide. I suppose we will need to coin a new phrase (or perhaps one exists) for a people who are bent on using every method available to systematically destroy themselves. Rather than assist in our quest for truth, digital, video and computer technology often overloads our minds and obscures our vision. Contemporary photoshop tools in combination with journalistic deception will make a lot of evidence and claims impossible to authenticate and judge. Is the Iraqi Wedding video authentic or forged. Who knows? In today's world, justice is blind, as are our Justice Minsters (take note, Tommy). Which is why those who are interested in seeing and seeking the truth will eventually have to look inward and/or to the heavens. Because, the final verdict belongs to the True Judge. Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

SUE THE BARSTIDS! Posted by Beth Goodtree, May 31, 2004.

As in industry and commerce, a name can be everything. If someone in industry tries to use an established name, they get sued ten ways to Saturday (or Sunday). Well, 40 years ago someone stole a 2,000-year old name and claimed it for their own. Time to sue them, get them to cease and desist, recover damages, and set the record straight as to who is whom, who comes from where, who they are, and when they came. In other words, time to take back our names, our lives and our history. (Or as my mom, who avoided swearing the way she avoided insects would say, "Sue the Barstids!") We have trademark laws to prevent the theft of an established name. This is to stop some new-coming usurper who might try to trade on the good reputation and history established by an existing entity and thereby ruin the original owner of said name. And these trademark laws are not limited to the US; they are international. Because this theft of which I speak is unique in the annuls of history, there is no direct precedence. However, there is much case law regarding similar situations. And in law, similar situations may be used to extend a law which does not cover new or evolving circumstance. Take as an example the brand name and trademark 'McDonald's.' Everyone knows this as a chain of fast food restaurants with a certain style of service and type of food. Recently, a man named McDonald, with no affiliation to the restaurant chain, opened a store that he called 'McDonald's. Even though his store was not in competition with the fast food chain, even though he used his own name for the store, even though he wanted nothing associated with the McDonald's food chain, he was forced to stop calling his place of business 'McDonald's.' Now suppose some outside rogue group who wanted recognition, money and territory squatted on some sparsely populated land on the outskirts of the country of Iraq. Then they began calling themselves 'Sumerians' and their land 'Sumer,' while claiming to be the original Iraqi people from ancient times. While this may seem silly, this is exactly what was done in another place way back in the 1960s (although the roots of this theft began in the 1940s). The land that is now called Israel was, for 2,000 years, called Palestine. Although that was not its original name, it became the common accepted name of that land and the people living there.* And the people living there were the Jews (also called Hebrews) who had a history associated with that land going back many thousands of years prior, as well as a continuous presence. (Certainly no Muslims lived there because Islam is a late-comer in the world of religion and didn't even enter the scene until 4,300 years after the start of Judaism and 600 years after the Jews living in Palestine became known as 'Palestinian.') All during the past 2,000 years, there has never been an Arab country called Palestine. Nor have Arabs been known as Palestinians -- they have merely been known as 'Arab,' mostly because until the last century when oil became a commodity, they were nomadic tribes living a primitive life of following their flocks without regard to boundaries or the higher civilized concepts of governance, borders, etc. The Jewish homeland was always called Palestine (for the past 2,000 years) until the founding of Israel in 1948. However, by naming the new country 'Israel,' the name and history of Palestine and the Jewish people did not suddenly go up for grabs to the loudest, most violent, and biggest lying thief. And there are laws to protect such thievery, although no one has yet used them in this context. "Palestine' and 'Palestinian' can be considered similar to trademarks in that they refer to the name of a specific people as well as the products of that people -- a religion, an ethnicity, a culture, and a history. And international law does not require a trademark to be legally registered. The first one to use a name and to have its use be continual is the one who has proprietary rights to said name. Which brings us to the names of 'Palestine' and the 'Palestinians.' Since the Jews were the first, by 2,000 years, to continually use the appellation 'Palestine' and 'Palestinian' we have the rights to those names and all that they imply. And lest anyone think that the term 'Israel' has replaced such usage, it has not. As long as there are books in print and being printed that still refer to Jews as 'Palestinians,' and the Jewish homeland as 'Palestine,' this covers the 'continual usage' requirement. So it is long overdue for the Arabs who are falsely and dishonestly using the name 'Palestinian' to cease and desist, and pay a penalty to include all the monies and land they have garnered through the criminal theft of the name and the history of the original and only Palestinians: the Jews. And if they have no idea what to truthfully call themselves, one of their own said it best. Zahir Muhsein, Executive Committee member of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said the following in an interview with the Dutch newspaper "Trouw" March 31, 1977: "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism." In truth, those people now occupying Israeli land in Gaza, Judea and Samaria are just your average, common Arab, parasitically reaping the benefits of the stolen name and history of the Hebrew people. And even if the UN puts forth a mandate calling them the 'original' people, or the people who now 'own' the name, they cannot rewrite reality, legislate the truth, or negate centuries-old international law with an Islamist agenda and a swipe of the pen. *Even some of our older citizens still refer to Israel and the Jews, synonymously with Palestine and Palestinian. This point was hammered home to me when I adopted our dog. He came to America via Hong Kong, having been born in the Middle East. When I inquired as to where he was borne, I was told 'Palestine.' Upon further inquiry as to where, the original owners then said 'Israel.' Beth Goodtree is an award-winning writer, with a background in advertising. She writes political commentary and the occasional humor and science articles. To Go To Top

A CONFLICT OF INTERESTS? Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 31, 2004.

Plans are reportedly under way to build a Palestinian casino/resort in "Southern Gaza" where the Jewish communities of Katif now reside? It is an important point to remember that lawyers generally represent people. That is they hide the real persons behind the activities. Maybe now we can guess who is behind this casino in Gaza idea? Could it be anyone else other than the Generalissimo Sharon himself? Is that why he is so anxious to destroy the lives of thousands of Jews in Gaza and endanger Millions of others in Israel; so he can make his Billions of Dollars from a Gaza casino? Is such a thing believable? Yes! http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=63268 The following report was filed by David Bedein, bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency. It appeared in Arutz-7 (http://www.israelnationalnews.com). In December 2002, Israel Resource News Agency publicized the fact that Dov Weisglass the office manager and the long time private law counsel of the Prime Minister, was still listed in the Israel Corporate Registrar as the owner and operator of his law firm, Weisglass-Almagor. This finding was publicized in the weekly newspaper, Makor Rishon. That law firm in the past represented the financial interests of the PLO, through Muhammad Rashid, the treasurer of the PLO appointed by Yasser Arafat. That same law firm currently represents prominent Palestinian business interests, such as the Palestinian casino company which is in part owned by Jibril Rajoub and by Yasser Arafat. According to the Palestinian tourist publication THIS WEEK IN PALESTINE, plans are under way to build a new Palestinian casino and resort for tourists in "Southern Gaza". Is it a coincidence that this is where the Jewish communities of Katif now reside? In January 2 003, the spokesman for the Israel Civil Service Commission affirmed the finding that Weisglass was indeed still registered in the Israel Corporate Register as part of that law firm, but dismissed its importance, since Weisglass has divested himself from all financial interests in that firm. The Israel Civil Service Commission did ask that Weisglass go through the formal process of removing his name from the firm. A check with the Israel Corporate Authority in April 2003 showed that Weisglass' name had indeed been removed from the law firm in the Israel Corporate Authority and provided a document from the Israel Corporate Authority to prove it. However, it has now been confirmed by the Israel Corporate Authority that Weisglass is still registered as the lawyer of record for two other firms that bear virtually the same company name, located the same addresses and with the very same lawyers. One of these law firms where Weisglass remains registered is a business with a wide mandate to engage in local and international business. The other firm where Weisglass is active is, indeed, a law firm On May 11, 2004, the spokesman for the Israel Civil Service Commission wrote that Weisglass had divested himself of his law firm and had sold the shares of his business. Upon examination of the publicly available Israel Corporate Authority records of the Weisglass business, there is no record of any Weisglass activity to divest from this second law firm nor from his business. A spokesman for the Israel Prime Minister said that Weisglass has not been active in his law firm nor active in his business since entering office in April 2002 The facts speak otherwise. Questions remain: How much profits did Weisglass' law office and business accrue from Palestinian Authority interests before and after Weisglass assumed his position? What are the current profits of Weisglass' law office and business from Palestinian Authority interests? Is there a possibility of a conflict of interest, at a time when Weisglass conducts negotiations on behalf of the state of Israel with all official levels of the Palestinian Authority? These questions need to be addressed by the Knesset, the Attorney General, the State Comptroller and by the Israel Civil Service Commission. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

SAUDI ROYALS CAN'T KEEP SHIFTING BLAME Posted by IsrAlert, May 31, 2004.

This article was written by John R. Bradley and is archived at http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/commentary/ story/0,4386,253758,00.html The writer, now with The Straits Times' Foreign Desk, is a former managing editor of the Jeddah-based Arab News and author of the forthcoming book, "Saudi Arabia Exposed: Princes, Paupers & Puritans In The Wahhabi Kingdom" (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, March 2005). UNTIL recently, whenever a news article appeared in the Western press discussing Saudi Arabia, terrorism and Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif in the same breath, the latter's name would be followed by the sub-clause, 'who denied for six months after the Sept 11 attacks that they had involved any Saudi nationals'. The fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on Sept 11, 2001 had been Saudi nationals was crystal clear once the fog cleared, and such denials became absurd - especially when accompanied by vague allusions to a 'Zionist conspiracy'. When Prince Naif admitted that Saudi nationals had indeed been involved, his frankness corresponded only to a new state of denial regarding sleeping terror cells inside Saudi Arabia. According to Prince Naif, there simply weren't any. Nor were there Saudi extremists. How times have changed. Since the May 12 Riyadh bombings last year, when extremists carried out a series of coordinated attacks on Western residential compounds, there have not been enough hours in the day for Prince Naif to express his hatred of home-grown terrorist cells, which have clashed with his internal security forces on an almost weekly basis. They have lost more men to the militants, and killed more of the militants themselves, than any other security force in the world. The Al-Saud family's new resolve in dealing with the militants with an 'iron fist' was reinforced during the recent hostage drama in Khobar, during which militants killed more than a dozen Saudis and foreigners, before being killed or captured themselves. Alas, consistency has never been a factor in Saudi domestic politics, and Crown Prince Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler and a moderate, is now blaming 'Zionists' and 'followers of Satan' for recent terror attacks. 'We can be certain that Zionism is behind everything,' he said after the attack on Yanbu that killed five Westerners. The Crown Prince's chief ally, Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal, also a moderate, has since criticised the United States-led war on Iraq as a 'colonial' adventure aimed only at gaining control of Iraq's natural resources. While that argument could be made quite strongly by anyone else, it is a bit rich coming from any member of the Al-Saud family. During the Iraq war, Saudi Arabia secretly helped the US by allowing operations from at least three air bases, permitting special forces to stage attacks from Saudi soil and providing cheap fuel. The American air campaign against Iraq was essentially managed from inside Saudi borders, where military commanders operated an air command centre and launched refuelling tankers, F-16 fighter jets and sophisticated intelligence-gathering flights. Why all this musical chairs? Prince Naif changed his tune about the non-existence of extremism in Saudi Arabia partly because of pressure from the West. Before the Iraq war began, everyone seemed to be talking about how Saudi Arabia would be targeted for regime change after it ended. He was also partly motivated by the bombings in Riyadh and subsequent terror-related events, which left him with little choice but to face reality (especially as he had become a prime target). It was in the context of the Iraq war, too, that the so-called 'reform process' was initiated by Crown Prince Abdullah and Prince Saud. But now, Prince Naif is telling the reformers he is busy arresting when not cracking down on militants that he is acting on the orders of Crown Prince Abdullah. And the latter is refusing to meet those reformers, despite the fact that he had earlier accepted public petitions from them. It is now obvious that the 'liberals' in the Al-Saud family had merely been buying time with their 'reform' agenda, while arch-conservative Prince Naif's prime concern in finally acknowledging the Al-Qaeda threat was how to save his own skin. Historically, the ruling family has been a force for modernisation and liberalisation. But when it initiated earlier reforms, for example under King Faisal in the 1970s, it was in the process able to consolidate its power base, and that of the Wahhabi religious establishment it still rules in partnership with. It was the middle of the oil boom. What members of the ruling family have to do now, to save the kingdom from civil war, is sacrifice their infamous perks and their unchecked power, in the middle of an economic crisis, and for that, there is no historical precedent. The Iraq war has descended into chaos, and the immediate threat of a US invasion of Saudi Arabia has passed. The oil price hike has reminded the world of how catastrophic an Islamic revolution in the kingdom would be. So the Al-Saud royals are back to blaming Israel for everything that goes wrong in the kingdom, and attacking the US for executing a war that could not have been launched without their assistance. What neither the ageing royals nor the equally clueless Bush administration realised, however, was that their secret partnership during the Iraq war, though banned as a subject for discussion in the Saudi media (and largely ignored in the American media), was common knowledge to any Arab who surfed the Internet or tuned in to Al-Jazeera; and that the aid, denied by Defence Minister Prince Sultan then in the name of Islam, would become the primary catalyst for the subsequent violence. The Saudi royals are being punished for allowing the US to invade Iraq from Saudi Arabia's holy soil, and being outright liars about the fact in the name of a religion they claim to be the protectors of. Attacks like those in Yanbu and Khobar are likely to become more frequent in the lead-up to the first partial elections next February, which will give minimal power to municipal bodies that will, in any case, have no real power. A statement purported to be from the Al-Qaeda chief in Saudi Arabia, posted on a website last Thursday, urged his followers to continue an urban guerilla war of assassinations, kidnappings and bombings. Two days later, one cell acted on his command. There are many, many more waiting in the shadows. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

PETER HANSEN OF UNRWA Posted by David Frankfurter, May 31, 2004.

After the Jenin "massacre," Peter Hansen, the commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) told a Danish newspaper, the Internatavisen Jyllands-Posten, on April 19, that 300-400 Palestinians had been killed in Jenin. He told CNN: "I had, first of all, hoped the horror stories coming out were exaggerations as you often hear in this part of the world, but they were all too true" (CNN, April 19, 2002). We all know that Peter Hansen simply repeated the lies, acting as a mouthpiece for the Palestinian propaganda machine. He deliberately and maliciously promoted the myth of an Israeli massacre of civilians. When the truth was revealed, even Palestinian sources agreed that the body count was 54, that the deaths were largely of armed militants and were the result of a fierce battle and booby trapped houses that the Palestinians had deliberately contrived to occur in a residential neighbourhood - in contravention of the rules of war laid out in the Geneva conventions. When the truth was revealed, I do not recall any apology or retraction from Hansen. In fact, to this day, the UNRWA website has an interview with Hansen which, although it does not repeat specific numbers, has Hansen agreeing with the "fact" of "Israeli war crimes against the Palestinians" and implying promised UNRWA support for any legal case the Palestinians may wish to raise for the issue. It is not that the words 'retract' or 'apologise' are strangers to Hansen - for this is what he demanded this month that Israel do for the "baseless charge" that UNRWA ambulances in Gaza had been abused by terrorists. Without speculating on the reasons for the Reuters' videotape of the incident was not broadcast around the world, the tape was screened last week, on Israel's Channel 10. A picture from that tape of armed gunmen boarding the ambulances can be seen on the IDF website. UNRWA schools are a hotbed of incitement to terrorism. It is the place that many a child gains his initial indoctrination to hate the Jews. UNRWA teacher academies very carefully instruct their teachers how to present all aspects of the Middle East as having no legitimate Jewish or Israeli history or presence. UNICEF Executive Director, Carol Bellamy, is paying her first visit to the region since taking her post in 1995. She has suddenly discovered a concern Palestinian for children, and their education toward terror. "UNICEF," we are told, "has repeatedly called on both sides to do more to protect children from violence." Of course, this did not stop them from funding, along with UNRWA, summer camps, sporting teams and other activities which were used to promote terrorism amongst their young charges. One has to wonder whether any UN institutions are worthy of our support. As one of you pointed out, and I confirmed with a phone call, all Sheraton Hotel guests in Israel are encouraged to make a $1 donation to UNICEF at check out. Around the world, the Starwood hotel chain, which owns the Sheraton brand name, allows a choice of UNICEF, The Make A Wish Foundation, and The Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International. Both of the alternate foundations have operations in Israel. Maybe you would care to suggest to Sheraton Israel that they switch. Send an email to Sheraton hotels, using the following form http://www.starwood.com/sheraton/contact/email.html. Ask them to pass on your concerns to all their hotels - and to UNICEF. David Frankfurter is a writer on economic affairs in the Middle East and a regular contributor. To Go To Top

TEHILLIM REQUEST Posted by Shoshana Shamberg, May 31, 2004.

Dear Friends and Family This is an urgent request for prayers for the recovery of a little girl who has been fighting cancer for awhile but this week had a major relapse and is back in the hospital in Baltimore, MD and the situation is very bad. Her name for prayers is Odalia Chaya bat Gitta Sara. Her mother has requested that everyone who prays take on an extra mitzvah in her name such as tzadakah, visiting a sick person, helping someone in need, calling up someone to tell them you love them, anything to bring compassion into our world in this little girls name for healing. PLEASE PASS THIS EMAIL ON TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE!!!!! Thanks for this holy mitzvah SHabbat Shalom Shoshana To Go To Top

DUAL LOYALTY AMONG WHOM? Posted by Eilas Yrachmiel, May 31, 2004.

Prof. Paul Eidelberg is Founder and Director of the Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in Israel This article appeared on the Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaqer website (http://netzahyishrraeolorg/blogger.html). It is archived as http://www.netzahyisrael.org/dual_loyalty.htm Senator Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina), writing in the Charleston Post and Courier, has accused President George W. Bush of ousting Saddam Hussein to protect Israel, and that other Jewish officials and pundits are to blame for the present war in Iraq. Senator Hollings, who has a record of making anti-Semitic remarks, named Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, and Charles Krauthammer as the Jewish culprits. And so once again American Jews will be accused of "dual loyalty." Frankly, I have to laugh, both at Senator Hollings and at any Jew who reacts defensively to Hollings and his anti-Semitic canard. If the Senator is concerned about "dual loyalty" among American Jews, I suggest he first examine the phenomenon and consequences of "dual citizenship" among American immigrants, which is widespread in the United States. The first thing to be noted is that, as concerns these immigrants, dual citizenship constitutes a violation of American law! U.S. Code section 1448(a) prescribes the following oath for all naturalized citizens - suffice to mention only two clauses: "I do solemnly swear (1) to support the Constitution of the United States; (2) to renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen." The law has simply been ignored. Millions of foreign-born Americans in 2000 were also citizens of another country. Dual citizenship is also at odds with the American Constitution. According to the Fourteenth Amendment, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." This clearly implies, as Samuel Huntington points out, that Americans can be citizens of only one state and can vote in only one state, even if they have homes in two states. In contrast, under existing law and practice, whereas Americans can be citizens of two countries, with residences in Santo Domingo and Boston, and can vote in both American and Dominican elections, Americans with residences in New York and Boston cannot vote in both places! Moreover, dual citizens can run for and serve in elected offices in two countries! In fact, dual citizenship encourages ampersands not only to remit tens of billions of dollars to their relatives, localities, and businesses in their country of origin, but to help finance the campaigns of their homeland politicians. Talk about "dual loyalty"! The truth is that many American-born Hispanics, especially Mexicans, do not identify with America or American culture but rather with the culture of their homeland. In one 1992 study, when children of immigrants in Southern California and South Florida were asked, "How do you identify, that is, what do you call yourself?" - among Mexican American children born in the United States, only 3.9 percent responded "American" compared to 28.5 percent to 50.0 percent of those born in America with parents from elsewhere in Latin America. Hence it is not surprising that, in one study, a representative example of the American public viewed Hispanics as less patriotic than Jews, blacks, Asians, and Southern whites (like Senator Hollings). Now consider the Hispanization of Miami. By 2000 Spanish was not just the language spoken in most homes, it was also the principle language of commerce, business, and politics. But since language is the medium of culture, no one should be surprised that Miami has become a culturally Hispanic city. Indeed, by the late 1980s the Cubans in Miami had created their own banks, businesses, media, and voting blocs, which dominated the economy and politics and from which non-Hispanics were excluded. "They're outsiders," as one successful Hispanic put it. What has occurred in Miami is occurring in the Southwest, most significantly in Los Angeles. In 2000, 64 percent of the Hispanics in Los Angeles were of Mexican origin, and 46.5 percent of Los Angeles residents were Hispanic, while 29.7 percent were non-Hispanic. In 2003 for the first time since the 1850s, a majority of newborn children in California were Hispanic. Many identify themselves as Americans; many do not. I have been drawing this data from Huntington's "Who are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity". Perhaps Jews concerned about the canard of "dual loyalty" should send Senator Hollings a copy of this wonderful book. Post-Script: Above - I criticized Senator Ernest Hollings (D-South Carolina) for questioning the loyalty of American Jews, indeed, of accusing them of being responsible for America's war in Iraq. Professor of Law Ya'acov Golbert asked, why isn't Senator Hollings concerned about the loyalty of Moslem immigrants to America, who, he says, "actively hate America and American culture and political system, have contempt for the American people and institutions and actively seek to supplant it with an Islamic state. Ironically, the very thing the anti-Semites have always accused the Jews of is what they are getting in the form of another group of Semites - the Semites they deserve. Do we hear about dual loyalty as to the Islamic "citizens?" Not from the likes of Hollings. Then there is the question of the dual loyalties of former diplomats posted to the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia. The House of Saud takes good care of its friends and all of them remain good friends of the Saudis, spouting the Saudi line publicly and defending the Saudis from all attacks. And it is not only the Saudis. James Abingdon "served" as consul general in Jerusalem, where he was enthusiastically anti-Israel and pro-"Palestinian". He retired from the foreign service and became a lobbyist and the PR agent for the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, earning US$3 million a year. Why isn't Hollings concerned about their loyalties?" Another example. William Fulbright was one of the most energetically and consistently anti-Israel members of the US Senate. He was also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He was finally defeated for reelection by Dale Bumpers and immediately registered as an agent of the government of Saudi Arabia as their adviser and lobbyist, same as James Abingdon. It raises the question whether Fulbright always represented the House of Saud while he was a Senator but that question is never raised by people like Hollings (or General Zinni). Irish-Americans overwhelmingly side with the Catholics in Northern Ireland and, in any case, against the Brits. Greek-Americans overwhelmingly favor the Greek Cypriot position. Both groups are active and supportive of their chosen side in the conflict. And of course, Arab-Americans actively support the "Palestinian Cause" politically and raise money for pro-Palestinian groups, including terrorist organizations. Yet it would be unseemly, even bordering on racist, to question their loyalty to the US. (Prof. Ya'acov Golbert) Good questions! Professor Ya'akov Golbert and Elias Yrachmiel are co-directors of Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaqer. 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THE JEWISH "THEOLOGIAN" FROM WACO Posted by Steven Plaut, May 31, 2004.

Slightly edited versions of these two reviews appear in the Spring 2004 issue of Middle East Quarterly. (1) Review of Marc Ellis, "Out of the Ashes: The Search for Jewish Identity in the Twenty-First Century," Pluto Press, London, 2002 Reviewed by Steven Plaut The first hint one has of the real orientation of this atrocious little book, which purports to be a theological re-examination of what it means to be Jewish after the Holocaust, is that the only people Ellis and his publisher could find to endorse the book on the jacket are members of the Terrorism Lobby: Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and their ilk. Not a single Jewish theologian. Nation, the Far Left anti-Jewish American political magazine, recently praised the book's call for Israel to be eliminated, while expressing dislike for the fact that Ellis thinks religion still has some positive roles to play in the 21st century. Need we say more? That is about as much a work in theology as is New Age drugs-and-Marxism Tikkun Magazine, a venue where Ellis feels right at home. Ellis is University Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, a Baptist School in Waco, Texas. This is the same Waco we all recall as the home of some other peculiar forms of theology. Ellis has a long track record of using his Center there to proliferate leftist agitprop and Israel-bashing materials. This poorly-written book, the latest in the series of Israel-bashing propaganda tirades published by Pluto Press, is little more than a vicious anti-Israel broadside. The only thing of value that Ellis thinks Jews should derive from their experiences during the Holocaust is an unambiguous denunciation of Israel and total support for the demands and agenda of the Palestinians. For Ellis, Israel is the embodiment of all that is evil and all that is wrong with Judaism today. His concept of Israel is of a bunch of bullies riding about in helicopters and firing at poor innocent Palestinians for no reason at all (an image repeated ad nauseum in the book). Ellis' Israel is a belligerent selfish entity mistreating and enslaving the Palestinians as part of some sort of grand pursuit of the goals of the Jewish settlers in the "Palestinian" territories. While I did not test it with a computerized word count, I would wager that the word "bully" juxtaposed next to "Israel" is the most common word combination in the entire screed. Ellis apparently has never heard of the Oslo "peace process" and speaks about Israeli conquest and occupation of the Palestinians as being "complete", this a decade after Yitzhak Rabin and Bibi Netanyahu turned most of them over to the PLO's tender rule. Ellis makes it clear that he only feels comfortable with his fellow Jews when they are being victimized. When they stand up to defend themselves, they lose their Jewish soul and their legitimate right to exist. In his zeal to delegitimize Israel (he speaks blissfully of the "post-Israel era"), he goes even further than the "Rabbis" of Tikkun magazine, which Ellis lists as the greatest of ethical institutions in the Jewish world, and approaches the views of crackpot Norman Finkelstein. Like Finkelstein, Ellis thinks the Holocaust has been utilized by the Jews as a gimmick to grasp power and oppress the poor Arabs. The only real lesson Ellis wishes us to learn from the Holocaust is that Israelis are behaving like Nazis and that Jews who assist the Palestinians in achieving their aims are ethically equivalent to those few Germans who rescued Jews in World War II from the Gestapo. According to Ellis, Israel's original sin was to utilize the Holocaust as an excuse to occupy "Palestinian" land. Israel's existence is not justified by Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. The only "massacres" of any Holocaust-relevance are those Israel perpetrates. Jenin and Deir Yassin (neither of which was in fact a massacre) are the moral equivalents of the Holocaust of the Jews, insist Ellis. Ellis is openly contemptuous of any talk about Jews being in need of any national empowerment. Such things constitute "Constantinian Judaism", to use Ellis' term, which is nothing more than conscripting religion to serve the agenda of the militarist state and of those evil malicious "settlers". Jews can only fulfill their ethical role in history, which - Ellis is persuaded - is to promote socialism and leftist fads, if they are stateless and suffering. While crying his eyes out over the "inhumane" treatment of the Palestinians, Ellis never finds time in his discussion of the theological implications of the Holocaust to discuss the mass murder of Jewish children by his Palestinians. Jews certainly have no right to ride around in helicopters to prevent such things. Nor is he willing to acknowledge that any "mistreatment" of Palestinians, such as assassinating their leading terrorists, might have anything at all to do with the atrocities committed by the Palestinians. In a book supposedly about the lessons of the Holocaust for the Jews, there is not a single word about the Nazi-like demonization of Jews by the PLO and its affiliates, nor the calls for genocide against Jews. Ellis rejects even the political positions of Israel's Far Left. He is contemptuous of claims that Ehud Barak's offer to the Palestinians at Camp David II in 2000, in which Barak offered the PLO absolutely everything, was generous, not to mention suicidal. The offer did not come even close to what Ellis insists Israel must do, which is to cease to exist. Ellis is a passionate endorser of the "One-State Solution," also known as the Rwanda Solution, in which Israel will simply be eliminated as a Jewish state and will be enfolded within a larger Palestinian-dominated state that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan river. This insists Ellis, is the ultimate realization of the Jewish ethic mission. Ellis' explicit motivation for writing this book is that he got drubbed rather badly in a debate a few years back in New Zealand by Prof. Yossi Olmert, brother of the previous Mayor of Jerusalem. Olmert had the chutzpah to defeat Ellis mercilessly in argument. Hence Ellis opens his book by viciously stating that Olmert is the moral equivalent of Yigal Amir, the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin. He denounces Olmert as a bully because Olmert bested him in the debate. No doubt all of Israel also became a bully because it refuses to adopt the program for self-destruction advocated by this "theologian" from Waco. (2) Review of David Grossman's "Death as a Way of Life: Ten Years After Oslo", Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, NY, 2003 Try to imagine that one of those many people in Britain who had lauded the Munich Accord as a great breakthrough for peace and who were certain Hitler would never violate it had decided to publish his old articles, singling praises for Munich - printing them after World War II. Or imagine someone republishing his old Op-Eds from the late 1980s about how the Eastern European Soviet system was here to stay - as a new book in 2003. Well, if you can imagine such a thing, you have a pretty good picture of David Grossman's new book. Grossman is one of the more extreme members of Israel's Literary Left. He has published quite a few novels, and is regarded as a gifted writer of fiction. (Not by me, but then I am only an economist so what do I know about such things.) But Grossman also spends many a waking hour in turning out political agitprop and Far Leftist Op-Eds for the newspapers of Israel, the UK, Germany and France, including some of the worst Israel-bashing outfits. Grossman suddenly has decided to collect some of these moldy Op-Eds and recycle them as this book, and Farrar, Strauss and Giroux for some incomprehensible reason thought it could make them a few bucks. What we get are almost a score of Grossman's silliest and worst-written Op-Eds. Even worse, these pieces have been so thoroughly belied and debunked by actual events that one would have expected anyone with a minimal sense of shame to have buried them in his clippings box and never again make public mention of them. We have Grossman's early pieces singing the praises of the Oslo "peace process" and beatifying Yitzhak Rabin for his "courage" in establishing the foundations for a Palestinian state. Grossman repeatedly celebrates the fact that Arafat has abandoned his ambitions to see Israel attacked and destroyed, and clearly has renounced the so-called Palestinian "right of return". Palestinians, insists Grossman, are downright embarrassed when they read the irredentist contents of the PLO's "Covenant". Embarrassed indeed. Hardly controlling his ecstasy at the Rabin-Arafat handshake, he gushes: "I have always believed that when Israel agrees to grant this right (of self-determination) to the Palestinians, it will also win it for itself." How inconvenient for Grossman that Israel spent the past decade granting such a "right" and got 1300 murdered Israelis in exchange and nonstop war. Grossman does not feel the slightest shudder when exhibiting for us all his political cluelessness. He reprints his old piece about the Palestinian boy Muhammed al-Durrah killed in a firefight started by the PLO, a piece attacking Israel and Ehud Barak. He neglects to mention anywhere that it has since been learned that the boy was in fact killed by PLO fire. Grossman reprints his appeals to Palestinian writers and intellectuals, "ALL" of whom - he insists - seek peace with Israel (p.22), to condemn the violence. Grossman then sighs when they never do, but fails to contemplate the possibility that these folks just might be ENDORSING the jihadniks and murderers. While the Left's "concepts" turn out to have been completely wrong, one after the other, about absolutely everything in the era of the Oslo Euphoria, Grossman just gets irritable and insists Oslo collapsed because the Left was not stubborn enough and militant enough and extreme enough. After predicting that Prime Minister Ehud Barak would never offer the Palestinians any land in one of the reprinted Op-Eds, Barak then offered the PLO virtually the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip, an immediate state, parts of pre-1967 Israel, financial tribute, and East Jerusalem with the Western Wall. Being progressive means never having to say you are sorry. The PLO then launches the "Al-Aqsa Intifada" in response to Barak's offer. Naturally, Grossman sees the collapse of Camp David II as somehow all Israel's fault. Now while Grossman is possibly the most extremist among Israel's Literary Leftists, even HE dismisses out of hand any possibility of any Palestinian "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel. But that is precisely the little detail over which Ehud Barak's insane offer at Camp David failed! As my teenagers would say, Like Duh. Grossman never draws the conclusion from his own rejection of the PLO's insistence on a "Right of Return" that the PLO is seeking war and violence - not coexistence - always was, in spite of its posturing when Rabin was still around. Nor does he ever dwell on the meaning of those polls showing near-universal support among Palestinians for suicide bombings and atrocities against Jews. While throwing a couple of his pieces on the Holocaust into the volume, the only real lesson Grossman has learned from the Holocaust is how unwaveringly devoted today's Far Left must remain to their delusions. Grossman, who even today "understands" why the Palestinians loath Israel (page 7), also "understands" the PLO when it tries to smuggle in the Karin A ship of terror weapons (in another reprinted Op-Ed, p. 156), and unwaveringly believes that leftists never have to apologize for being wrong about just about everything they say or write. There is one redeeming aspect to this pathetic little book and that is its ability to serve as an interesting personal documentation of the delusions and fantasies of the Israeli Left, which directly produced the Olso Bloodbath. In the only new part of the book, Grossman writes a bland preface in which he admits he is no journalist at all, and then explains how it is quite understandable that Arabs wish to follow aggressive, bellicose leaders. How embarrassing for Grossman that this was written shortly before the Iraqis took to slapping Saddam's posters with their sandals. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

THIS IS THE ENEMY Posted by Women In Green, May 31, 2004.

This was written by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz and appeared in Arutz-Sheva yesterday. [WARNING: The following contains graphic descriptions of violence.] Nick Berg, an American from Philadelphia, was kidnapped and tortuously beheaded by Arabs in Iraq sometime in May. The murderers filmed the deed and proudly displayed the victim's severed head. After killing six Israeli soldiers in an attack on an armored vehicle in Gaza on May 11, the Arabs near the scene of the carnage gleefully held aloft human body parts in front of rolling cameras. One of the Arab terrorists was later interviewed on film with what appeared to be a human head in front of him. The week before, after shooting at Tali Hatuel's car, causing it to skid and stop, Arab terrorists walked over to the vehicle to finish the occupants off. They looked at the heavily pregnant mother and her four no-doubt frightened girls; the youngest was two years old. And then shot them all. At point-blank range. With sadistic satisfaction, they systematically murdered Tali Hatuel and her unborn son, as well as all of Tali's daughters - Hila, age 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav. In Fallujah in March, crowds of townspeople dragged four American civilians out of their vehicles, shot or beat them to death, mutilated their bodies, dragged them through the streets, suspended them from a bridge and burned them. And they danced and cheered. With their children. In Ramallah in 2000, two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped, beaten, stabbed countless times, had their eyes gouged out, and were literally disemboweled and dismembered by an Arab lynch mob. The people - and I use the term loosely - who carried out the initial beatings threw one of the victims down to the waiting mob, where his face was further crushed with stones, feet, fists and even a heavy metal window frame. One Jew was set on fire and dragged along the street as Arab onlookers danced and cheered. Some of the butchers celebrated their crimes with the victims' internal organs. One of the killers, famously captured on film, proudly displayed his blood-soaked hands to the cheering Ramallah crowd. And it gets worse. In 2003, nearly two years later, Arab parents in Gaza cheered again when their little children dressed up as members of the Ramallah lynch mob, complete with hands painted blood red, for a kindergarten graduation ceremony. According to a report by Dr. Michael Widlanski, an Israeli Arabic expert, the Voice of Palestine called the attack on the Hatuel girls "an act of heroic martyrdom". The targeted children and their mother, the PA radio reported only as "five settlers". Among the participants at the funerals of the Hatuel family members was President of Israel Moshe Katzav. He said, "This day of blood will be engraved in our history. An earthquake has happened. No one in the world can stand apathetically by in the face of these acts by such evil people. Where are those who speak in the name of Allah?" National Review contributing editor David Frum posed the same question in his May 12 "Diary" on NRO: "Where are the imams?" he asked. Some of "those who speak in the name of Allah," Mr. President, were busy sawing Nick Berg's head from his body in Iraq. "Allah is great!" they shouted in triumphal glee as they killed their bound and helpless victim. The imams are in the mosques, Mr. Frum, waving swords and exhorting their followers to behead a Jew: "Allah willing, we will cut off his head! Oh Jews! Allah is great! Allah is great!" They are also in Saudi Arabian palaces, telling their subjects that they are 95% certain Zionists are behind Islamist terrorism. They are also writing for the Arab media, explaining that Jews are behind all the evil in the world. And they are even organizing soccer matches, Mr. President, honoring mass murderers. This is the enemy. Don't look away. Perhaps when another rally is held in support of Iraqi "resistance" or "Palestinian liberation" somewhere in the world, counter-protesters can remind the ever-so-sensitive and progressive demonstrators of Nick Berg's scream of pain, or of two-year-old Meirav Hatuel cowering in her car seat, or of the Ramallah or Fallujah savages dancing with human entrails. During the lynch of the two IDF soldiers who had taken a wrong turn into Ramallah in 2000, one of the Arab murderers paused in his savage beating to answer a cell phone belonging to one of the dying soldiers. He told the worried voice on the other end of the line, "We are killing your husband." There is a Talmudic dictum that states, "One who is merciful to the cruel, will ultimately cause cruelty to the merciful." It seems to me that we, Israelis and Americans, have proven the Talmudic sages absolutely correct. Please, no more mercy. 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

A SHORT VERSION OF "PALESTINIAN" HISTORY Posted by Dafna Yee, May 31, 2004.

If an Arab identifies himself (or herself) as a 'Palestinian,' they are openly endorsing the 'Palestinian cause'. The PLO Charter states what this comprises very succinctly; the 'Palestinian cause' is nothing less than the total destruction of Israel. There is no room for compromise in that document; the founding document of the PLO does not even leave room for the possibility of two states side by side! So many people seem to be so determined to be 'fair' to both sides of the conflict that they automatically deny good things about the Jews and dismiss any distasteful information about the Arabs. They refuse to admit that both sides are NOT equally committed to Western philosophies of 'fair play'; in fact, the entire concept is foreign to the Arab culture. When the Jews came to Palestine in the late 19th and early 20th century, they found it as backward and neglected as every other territory of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks did not build hospitals, major roadways, or sewage systems anywhere! In fact, it was the British who established these things throughout the Middle East, but the first hospitals that they built came many years after Hadassah Hospital was established. It is not widely appreciated that when the Jews established Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, it was the first and for many years the ONLY hospital in the entire Middle East; indeed, some people have expressed outright disbelief of this historical fact. The major reasons that the Jews were welcomed in Palestine by the British AND the Arabs was that they brought money and skills -- and improved health care -- to an area that was grossly deficient in every modern aspect of those things. This was not uncommon; many rulers throughout the centuries had welcomed Jews because their money and skills were desirable (at least until later rulers expelled them). The Arabs themselves only began to have a national identity -- separate from the Turks and Europeans -- in 1903 (please note that this was AFTER the Zionist Conference in Basle, Switzerland)! Territorial borders within the Ottoman Empire were very fluid; just as they were in Europe throughout history. For more information on changing borders, please see Historical Maps at: http://www.epsaweb.org/historic_maps.htm For example, the border between Egypt and what became the Palestine Mandate was determined when the British sent forces to occupy Taba and much of the Sinai in 1906. At that time, of course, the British were very much involved in empire building in the Middle East, as well as everywhere else. (The exact dates for that bit of Middle East history may be found at: http://www.bartleby.com/67/1347.html.) Recitation of these basic facts about the important early Jewish contributions to the Middle East is often met with disbelief. The skeptics do not realize that their disbelief is a direct result of the Arab propaganda campaign against Israel. In fact, the Arab propaganda machine has been so successful that their enemies as well as their supporters accept many of their historical myths for both themselves and the State of Israel. There is a strong tendency among fair and reasonable people to project their sense of fairness and reason onto others, so that when presented with shocking facts about Arab aims and intentions, they will dismiss the facts as mere interpretation. Widespread acceptance of Arab mythology also results in favorable writings about Israel often being dismissed as exaggerated Zionist propaganda. However, no one has to 'interpret' what the Arabs' intentions are; THEY STATE THEIR OBJECTIVES OUTRIGHT! When someone who is considered to be pro-Israel states that total destruction of Israel was the reason that the PLO was established, indeed that it is the very purpose for it existence, too many people assume that such a statement is, at best, an exaggeration made out of 'loyalty'. Nevertheless, the PLO spells out their philosophy very clearly and succinctly in the PLO Charter as well as thousands of documented statements. It would be a good idea for everyone to read the PLO Charter -- which was 'ratified' at the Rabat Conference in 1974 -- before disregarding 'pro-Zionist' information; a good site for the actual document is: http://www.iris.org.il/plochart.htm (BTW, this might be an Israeli website site but the document was taken in its entirety from the Palestine Research Center in Beirut.) Moreover, the ONLY reason that the other Arab rulers -- especially Jordan's King Hussein -- agreed at the Rabat Conference to give over the West Bank to Arafat and the PLO was to have a base to destroy Israel, and Arafat convinced them that he could do it through the use of 'negotiations' and pretending to want peace. The collective Arab armies had failed to do so just the previous year, when they attacked Israel on Yom Kippur. (See the transcript of the Rabat Conference at: http://countrystudies.us/jordan/16.htm) That is why the PLO charter is written the way it is; to convince the Arab rulers of the PLO's potential force to eradicate Israel once and for all. (It didn't need or receive the approval of the Arab people themselves as the Arab countries are not democracies.) For more statements by the PLO and its followers, please see: http://www.iris.org.il/quotes.htm. Two excellent sites where one can learn exactly what the Arabs are teaching their children are: http://www.serve.com/lordgovernor/children/ and http://www.pmw.org.il/. An important contrast to these sites would be one which contains a poll of what Israeli teenagers want out of life that is found at: http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jewishsociety/ The_True_Face_of_Israeli_Youth.asp The Arab rulers have NEVER been interested in the fate of the masses of Arab people! (For that matter, most of the world is not interested in what happens anywhere when Jews are not involved.) Yet people all over the world accept the improbable notion that the Arab rulers were suddenly so concerned with the most despised Arabs of all -- those who lived in 'Palestine' -- that they decided to establish a new country just so the 'Palestinians' could be 'liberated'. These rulers did not even make that claim at the Rabat Conference; it was not until they put the idea before the UN that they dressed up their plan in pretty-sounding words. Unfortunately for Israeli victims of continued 'suicide bombings', the fact that the words that they give to the Western media are directly contradicted by their continued terrorist actions - as well as their own documented statements - makes no difference in people's willingness to believe the Arab propaganda and to reject any contradictory statements if they are perceived to be 'pro-Zionist'! It is not as if any 'Palestinian' leader has been looking out for the welfare of the Arabs in the disputed territories. In fact, part of the Rabat Conference 'deal' was that Jordan would continue to pay for municipal works and civil servants; this went on until 1988 when ISRAEL AND THE UN took over the expenses of keeping up the infrastructure. (Unfortunately, Arafat and his cronies have pocketed most of the money; what they haven't hidden away has been used to buy arms.) In the early 70's, the 'refugee camps' still resembled other small communities in Israel (although they are like slums -- not concentration camps -- today). Residents did NOT live behind barbed wire and no one needed to get permission to go in or out (this was true until three years ago when the latest intifada started.) In fact, they were a lot better than the Jewish refugee settlements (a great many Russian Jews were arriving then) because the Arab administrators of the camps received outside money -- a LOT of money -- from the UN to keep them going. In fact, they were a lot better than many American slum neighborhoods. Instead of the money being spent on infrastructure, though, the money was and is spent on hate indoctrination of their young people. That is the reason that the Arabs in the disputed territories live in such miserable conditions; their own leaders are cheating them! It is NOT because of the Israeli 'occupation' or the building of Jewish 'settlements'! Both of those commonly given (and too often accepted) reasons for Arab violence are as much a part of the deliberate Arab propaganda campaign against Israel as the rest of their 'history'. I will be glad to provide further corroborating evidence for any of my statements both in this article or any other of my writings. All anyone has to do is ask. However, please do not assume that I am just saying these things out of 'loyalty to the Zionist cause'; I find that assumption highly insulting both to the quality of my research and the integrity of my scholarship. Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

WHY CLEVER PLANS WON'T FIX THE MIDDLE EAST Posted by Barry Rubin, May 30, 2004.

The main causes of problems, goes a witticism, are solutions. Many readers have reacted to my columns by raising two questions: --How do I suggest the Middle East's issues can be fixed? -- Can I offer hope or belief that this can be done relatively fast? This is the first of a two-part column in response. Why is it wrong to demand "plans" that will "solve" the region's problems? Why do the careers of such "clever" people prosper while others pay with their lives for their failings? Why is time such a crucial element in making things better? The problem is that the "quick-fix" mentality has repeatedly made the region's situation become far more confused and generally worse. Ideas which seem sensible and obvious to their often-ignorant, sometimes prejudiced creators merely try to fit complex problems created by deliberately obstructive extremists into a reality-distorting framework of neat plans, cool gimmicks, and external responsibility for their problems. There have been enough such simple solutions already. Within the region, the main panaceas have been pan-Arab nationalism and radical Islamism. Both have failed miserably. The local ideologies have brought intoxicating intellectual addiction, powerful dictatorships, and demagogically driven publics, while killing the possibility--or even the very idea--of achieving progress through serious rethinking, structural change, hard work, and gradual development. Outside observers have pressed the notion that Israel's existence is the root cause of regional problems and so it should be eliminated (an idea contained in both "local" philosophies) or pushed fast and foremost for Arab-Israeli peace (as in the Oslo plan). When Westerners agree that the true root of the problem is the evil-doing of the United States and Israel it only intensifies this dominant system's stranglehold as European bashing of Israel and the United States encourages Arab and Iranian hardliners to fight harder and longer as well as making everyone else in those societies believe that this is the right approach, morally proper and leading to inevitable victory. Those who more correctly perceived that the real problem was caused by the dominant dictatorships and ideology in the region have then leaped to the idea that this roadblock could be dissolved by overthrowing regimes and replacing them with democracies (which led to the Iraq war). "Good" people were ruled by "bad" dictators. Remove the villains and the grateful masses will demand moderation, rights, and peace. Have any of these ideas contributed toward making the region better? In considering the damage done by well-intentioned folks who want to make everything right, let's focus on three big disasters: the Oslo process's material failure, its public relations' disaster and encouragement to subsequent extremism, and the recent effort to make the region democratic. Oslo process: In 1991, the PLO was badly weakened, having lost much Arab and Western support due to its long intransigence and backing for Saddam Hussein. Thanks to the Oslo process, it gained control over most of the West Bank and Gaza people and land. The organization received huge amounts of funds--much of it embezzled for political purposes--and built large military organizations. Aside from formal recognition of Israel (a controversial matter causing at least temporary internal splits), it made few sacrifices, irreversible commitments or efforts to implement its promises. The whole affair ended with the United States and Israel trying to push negotiations forward faster to "liberate" the Palestinians from occupation while Arafat opposed this effort. The greatest hasbara disaster in history: Why, many ask, did international attitudes turn so sharply and fiercely against Israel, even raising antisemitism to the highest point since the 1930s? While there are many factors involved, I would suggest the most important reason lay in the reinterpretation of the conflict engineered, ironically, by Israel and the United States during the Oslo process. Before that time, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was seen along familiar lines of external aggression and subversive terrorism trying to destroy an existing state, Israel. But Israel, Jews around the world, and the United States explained throughout the 1990s that the Palestinians simply wanted their own state and an end to occupation and if offered this would make peace. "Obviously," since it was inconceivable that anyone would reject such benefits the world concluded that the true bad guys would not really give them that alternative. Paradoxically, Israel's approach of taking risks and offering concessions for peace ended by transforming the paradigm to the equally familiar one of an evil occupying force brutally suppressing a people that simply wanted self-determination. The issue was no longer seen as extremist aggressors ruthlessly trying to destroy a smaller victim but rather as imperialists and colonialists greedily trying to oppress others. Iraq war 2003: Deciding that the region's deadlock needed a solution, various people--who almost all knew little or nothing about the Middle East--came up with the idea of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and installing a democracy in Iraq. They made foolish analogies to Germany and Japan after World War Two, disregarding little things like nationalism, Islamism, terrorism, the power of the existing Arab system to distort anything, xenophobia, ethnic hatreds, lack of local democratic experience or forces, and a dozen other issues. Yet there can be no doubt that if Senator John Kerry is elected president, one of the main criticisms of Bush will be that he did not solve the Arab-Israeli conflict and loud demands will be made on his successor to come up with a plan to do so within a year. But sometimes, contrary to many people's yearning for peace and stability or the ability of some to come up with new plans, progress or solutions simply take lots and lots of time. Next week, we'll discuss another aspect of the problem--the adversary's strategy--and the best available responses. Professor Barry Rubin is Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). To Go To Top

MENACHEM BEGIN'S CHOICE Posted by IsrAlert May 30, 2004.

This article was written by Danny Rubinstein and appeared today in Ha'aretz. It is archived at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/432861.html Every proposed Israeli plan for the evacuation of the Gaza Strip considers the fate of the Israeli homes and facilities to be left behind. This includes the homes of residents of the various communities, public buildings, water networks and electricity grids, the Erez industrial zone, workshops and agricultural facilities and military installations. All of them sprawl across a large area (Israel today controls almost one-third of the area of the Gaza Strip) and are very valuable. Now that a unilateral Israel plan is under consideration, with no negotiations, without an agreement and perhaps even with no coordination with the Palestinian Authority, many believe that all of these assets will be razed. Various spokesmen for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his aides recently confirmed this. The idea of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists doing a victory dance atop the settlers' homes stir disgust - certainly among those opposed to the withdrawal. At every discussion on the matter, mention is made of the actions of Sharon, then the defense minister, at the time of the complete bulldozing of the homes in Yamit and Rafah, when Israel withdrew from there in 1982. The withdrawal then took place when peace prevailed, on the basis of the treaty with Egyptians, who were on the verge of paying $80 million for the Israeli structures. Why then was such a barbaric act perpetrated at that time? Last week, the book L'lo Shulhan Agol (Without a Round Table) by Moshe Sasson, Israel's ambassador to Egypt at the time, came out. Among its interesting chapters is one relating to why we destroyed Yamit and other nearby places. Sasson writes that contrary to the prevailing public opinion, it was not Ariel Sharon who decided to bulldoze the Yamit bloc after its evacuation. It was the personal decision of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Urgent matter Sasson describes the following sequence of events: Three days before the withdrawal date, Yehiel Kadishai, the prime minister's secretary and confidant, phoned him in Cairo and informed him that Begin wanted to consult with him on something that could not wait. He immediately traveled to Jerusalem and went to the prime minister, who asked him: What would Mubarak's reaction be if we totally razed Yamit and the surrounding settlements? Ambassador Sasson was stunned. After all, there was already an agreement with Egypt stipulating payment of $80 million for the buildings there. Why suddenly leave behind scorched earth for the country with which we signed a peace agreement? Sasson was also surprised because during an earlier stage of withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula to the Ras Muhammad-El Arish line, the Israeli military installations there were left behind intact. The order to do so was issued by Ezer Weizman, who was the defense minister before Sharon, and Begin had approved it. Begin explained to Sasson that when Sharon began evacuating one of the settlements, the residents returned at night and infiltrated into their homes. They were reevacuated and this occurred repeatedly. Begin was convinced that the settlers would sneak back into their homes even after the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from the area and, therefore, bloody clashes could evolve between the Egyptians and the settlers. Sasson told Begin that razing Yamit would be a serious disappointment for the Egyptian leadership, especially Mubarak, whose aides had prepared buses and a list of Egyptians who were to go to Yamit and move into the settlers' homes. Ambassador Sasson returned to Cairo for an immediate meeting with Kamal Hassan Ali, who was the deputy prime minister and foreign minister. He made it clear to the Egyptian minister that Begin's decision was final and could not be changed. Kamal Ali told him that it would be very difficult to explain what had happened to the Egyptian public, which was prepared for the evacuation of settlements, but not for their bulldozing, but they understood the decision was final. From the office of the Egyptian foreign minister, Ambassador Sasson phoned Prime Minister Begin and told him that he could give Sharon the go-ahead to start razing the Yamit bloc. There were other appendices to the razing of Yamit. Several years later, there were discussions on an Israeli withdrawal from Taba, south of Eilat, where an Israeli hotel and resort had been built (the withdrawal from Taba was decided on in international arbitration, which ruled in favor of the Egyptians). Sasson recalls that in the talks on withdrawal from Taba, Benjamin Netanyahu, then the deputy foreign minister, wanted to raze the hotel and resort and leave the Egyptians only with ruins. Foreign Minister Moshe Arens rejected Netanyahu's proposal outright. When the razing of Yamit was nearly completed, Begin again telephoned Sasson and told him there was one other little problem. There was a synagogue in Yamit, which at Begin's request, Sharon had not yet razed. "Please contact Mubarak, right away, tonight, however you see fit to do it, and tell him that my request is that they also keep this small building standing," Begin said. Sasson asked: "But we're going to take out the mezuzahs and Torahs and other sacred objects and it will be just like any other building, why do you want to preserve it?" "It's a matter of sentiment," Begin answered. The Egyptians also thought the request was strange, but they consented. Sasson relates that he had forgotten about the whole thing. Only around a year later, during one of his many trips via Sinai, did he decide to go to Yamit and see what had become of the building that had been a synagogue. He saw the mounds of rubble from what had been Yamit and neighboring places. Among the ruins, stood the abandoned and neglected synagogue building, totally covered with anti-Jewish and anti-Israel graffiti. He told the Egyptian foreign minister about it and the latter promised to clean up the place. Sasson returned to Yamit around a month later and found nothing had changed. He again complained to the Egyptian foreign minister and yet again was promised that the matter would be taken care of. Sometime after, when he went to visit Yamit again, he found that the road leading there had simply been plowed over. Access was blocked. Begin was already ill then and Ambassador Sasson decided not to tell him about what had happened to the building he sought to preserve. One way or another, the razing of the homes in the Yamit bloc was perceived for a long time by the Egyptians as proof of the way the State of Israel viewed the peace treaty. The Egyptian press reported on the scorched earth that Israel leaves behind. Perhaps something can be learned from this episode about the fate of the homes in Netzarim, Kfar Darom and other places and perhaps not. It is possible that Sharon was eager then to raze Yamit and the neighboring towns and it is possible that he persuaded Begin to do so. The responsibility, in any event, according to the testimony of Ambassador Sasson, lies entirely with Menachem Begin. To Go To Top

WHAT'S NEW IN PARIS Posted by IsrAlert, May 30, 2004.

This was wrtten by Carole Raphaelle Davis and appeared today in the Jewish Journal. Janet Levy Ross, an IsrAlert subscriber, brought it to our attention. The spring 2004 fashions have arrived in the chic boutiques of Paris, and along with 50s-style full skirts and prim lace collars, anti-Semitism is back in fashion. In France this season, Jew-hating is all the rage - literally. Attacks against Jews and their property have escalated to an alarming extent. The French Jewish community (at 600,000, the second-largest Jewish population outside of Israel) is living in a state of anxiety. Hostile acts against Jews are posted weekly on the Web site of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (www.crif.org), and on www.consistoire.org/incidentsfr.html, a government hate-crime report center. Here are just a few examples from the last few weeks: A 14-year-old boy wearing a yarmulke came out of the Ourq metro station and was followed by two young men. They called him a "dirty Jew" and robbed him in front of a crowd of witnesses. The men knocked the boy down, beat him on the head and broke his nose. The boy begged for help from passers-by, who simply walked away. In central Paris, a teacher from a Jewish school was beaten up by young men, who ripped the Star of David from the teacher's neck and trampled her. They called her a "dirty Jew" and lit her hair on fire. They also told her, "We're going to burn all you Jews." A group of four young men interrupted a class in the auditorium of the University Medical School of Saint-Antoine in Paris. They yelled, "We're going to kill all the Jews" and, "We're armed and we're going to take you all down." When a Jewish student confronted the men they beat him and robbed him. The professor who was teaching the class said nothing and the men walked out without a care while the class looked on in silence. The dean of the University has been told of the situation but has not yet responded. On the walls of the Rue Des Rosiers (in the Marais, the Jewish quarter), once again there are signs of the Star of David in yellow paint accompanied by the slogan, "And don't forget the showers of Zyclon," referring to the gas used in Nazi death camps. Also in Paris, a 12-year-old girl coming out of a Jewish school was attacked by two men. They beat her, held her down and slashed her face with a box cutter. They carved a swastika into her face and walked away. Her parents have filed a police report. A swastika carved into the face of an innocent Jewish girl proves how anger directed at Jews in France has moved beyond mere hate-speech and racist vandalism. The symbols of hate have jumped from desecrated tombstones and subway walls to the actual skin of Jews. Unlike the last big wave of anti-Semitism in France, the people who are committing these crimes today are predominantly first-generation descendants of immigrants from the former French colonies in North Africa - Muslim Arabs. Radicalized Islam is taking root all over Europe, encouraged by the international Arab press, the successes of Al Qaeda and sympathy for the Palestinian intifada. This malignant hatred is fueled by the Internet, where thousands of French, European and Arabic-language sites give voice to and connect cyber-haters in Internet chat rooms. Virtual Jewish blood is flowing from ever-growing e-mail lists while live screaming for Jewish blood is heard at pro-Palestinian/anti-American demonstrations on the Grands Boulevards of Paris. A 12-year-old Jewish girl walking home from school in Paris is not an Israeli in "occupied territory," but these days she might as well be. She is defenseless and we must step forward to protect her. This new generation of anti-Semite "Arabullies," are also virulently anti-Israel. Sadly, but not surprisingly, if one speaks in support of Israel at French dinner parties, one is shouted down. Even at my own dinner table, when I told a guest of my fears about living in Paris in such a climate of anti-Semitism, he insisted, "There is no anti-Semitism in France, don't be ridiculous." When I told him about everything I had read about the rising tide of anti-Jewish hatred, he told me I was being "influenced by the Jew lobby" and that whatever I was reading was "Jewish propaganda." When I told him that among other papers, I was reading The New York Times, he said, "You know, The New York Times is a Jewish paper and Jews control all the media." He said it with a smile, even knowing that I am a Jew. What made his comments especially chilling is that he is on the Catholic Board of Education of Paris. So this spring in Paris, like every spring, the fashion runways are a jumbled mix of styles, as each designer angles to dominate the nouveau look of the season. This season, I'm afraid the designers of bigotry and hate are already having a good year. In fact, those long, belted black leather Waffen SS coats look an awful lot like Gucci's sexy new fall line. I wonder what will be modeled on the Paris runways next spring - striped pajamas? Starched black shirts? Europeans have always had a soft spot for this fascist garb; I just hope America doesn't follow suit. To Go To Top

ARAB LIES Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, May 28, 2004.

Dear friends, The entire debate about the euphemistic "unilateral disengagement" from Gaza is very simple: It is not "disengagement" but pure and simple the DISPELLING OF JEWS FROM THEIR HOMES. The entire world is "horrified" and in "shock" about Arab-Palestinians who are forced out of their homes in Rafah, yet morally accept the evacuation of entire Jewish villages and communities. Yet again, Jewish people are being evicted, this time not by Romans, Kazaks, Christians, 1491 Spaniards, 1933 Nazis, and 1950 Arab countries, but by Israel herself, the country designated for their refuge. NEVER AGAIN is thus transformed to YET AGAIN! If the Arabs really meant peace, a few Jewish villages would not have concerned them. What they mean is war, and the victory of chasing out Jews. This kind of immoral victory must be denied to them! Your Truth Provider, Yuval Yuval Zaliouk write the Truth Provider essays. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

TRYING TO TWIN MADISON WISCONSIN AND RAFAH GAZA - WHO IS BEHIND IT Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, May 28, 2004.

This article is from http://masada2000.org/list-L.html#Loewenstein In 1962 Madison, Wisconsin established its first sister city relationship with Oslo, Norway. In 1988, former Madison, Wisconsin, City Council member Judy P. Olson sponsored legislation to establish criteria for Madison's sister city program... "there must be areas of mutual interest with the prospective city in the areas of culture, business, education, agriculture and other goals." Four years later (1992) a new caveat was added, "Concerns about human rights or other government policies may be expressed by citizens or public officials from either city when considering the prospective sister city relationship or at any other time." Now, in 2004, there's an effort underway to formalize a sister city relationship between Madison and Rafah, Gaza Strip. For those unfamiliar with Rafah, it's the town with tunnels under the townspeople's houses, tunnels used to transport weapons from Egypt to equip the Arab terrorists. Was this simply a cruel example of the "Slippery Slope" phenomenon, a bad joke played on the citizens of Madison or was it a well-organized effort to demonize and discredit Israel? One of the initiators of this effort was Jennifer Sarin-Loewenstein, senior lecturer at the Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business and HER business is bashing Israel. It seems she went to Jenin [home of Islamic Jihad) and Gaza (home of Hamas) and didn't much like the way the Israeli Army was seeking out Arab/Muslim terrorists. It bothered her that so many "innocent civilians" [those who have not yet murdered Jews?] got killed. This sick Jew was so busy commiserating with Israel's Arab enemies that she never found time to visit a single Israeli hospitals, cemetery or morgue to see what some of those sweet folks from Jenin and Rafah were capable of doing to her fellow Jews! She is no new-comer to Israel-bashing. Previous to her present attempt to come in under Madison's radar with all her pro-Arab propaganda, she worked tirelessly in other ways to ruin Israel's reputation. On October, 2002 she signed a petition accusing Israel of "ever-escalating violence against Palestinians" and urged the U.S. Congress to "suspend all foreign aid to Israel." Nowhere on this petition was there any mention of a single act of Arab "Palestinian" terrorism. On another petition sponsored by the Arab website, Al-Wada, Jennifer Lowenstein supported the "Rights of the Palestinians" to return into Israel. [That's like inviting the Nazis back into Poland!] No mention was made that these so-called "Palestinians" were responsible for their own refugee status! She also signed a "Professors of Conscience" petition warning that Israel might be preparing for "ethnic cleansing" under the "fog of war" while American Troops were diverting the world's attention in Iraq. Jennifer is a "regular" on many Arab websites. But get this. Her anti-Israel crap is appreciated elsewhere. Perhaps the most vile of all Neo-Nazi, anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic white nationalist hate sites is StormFront. [http://www.stormfront.org/] They compiled a list of "Jews Against US Aid to Israel." Congratulations, Jennifer Loewenstein. You're on it! What the Hell is in that Wisconsin Cheese! One would have hoped that more sensible Jews around Jennifer Loewenstein could "rein her in" a bit. Sadly, even her husband, Professor David Loewenstein, hates Israel. David is also trying to join Madison and Rafah at the hip. He's a member of "Jews for Equal Justice (listed here http://www.eccmei.net/j/online.html which accuses Israel of "crimes against the Palestinian people, up to full-fledged ethnic cleansing." He's also an anti-war activist and signed a petition making US aid to Israel conditional on Israeli acceptance of an internationally agreed two-state settlement. He also signed an "Against the Bombing" website petition which also bashed Israel. And so there we have it... Jenny and David, a match made in Hell. Let's hope their infant daughter survives such a dysfunctional, hate-filled environment. Ahaaaa! Jennifer Loewenstien's maiden name is Jennifer Sarin. How perfect is that! Sarin, the deadly nerve gas used (along with Zyklon-B) to gas millions of Jews during the Holocaust! Note: We at Masada2000.org have a great idea (we have lots of them)! Instead of making Madison, Wisconsin and a terror cesspool like Rafah, Gaza, "sister cities," why not make Wisconsin and Israel "Sister States?" After all, consider this... Wisconsin became the 30th state of the Union in May of 1848 while Israel became the State of Israel in May of 1948. In conclusion, we can only hope that the holes in Wisconsin are in their cheese, NOT in their heads! To Go To Top

RIGHT OF RETURN A GREAT IDEA! Posted by Beth Goodtree, May 27, 2004.

The Muslim Arab war cry of 'right of return' tugs at the heartstrings of liberals and the media. Unfortunately, no one seems to realize that this 'right of return' demanded by the Muslim Arabs is not a true right of return, nor do they want it to be applied universally. So let's examine this whole idea of 'right of return' in the harsh light of fairness and see who gets to return where. According to the Muslim Arabs, there is no time limit on the 'right of return.' I happen to agree.? Anyone who was forced from their homes (forced -- not voluntarily left) should be allowed to return. Also, according to the Muslim Arabs, one's descendants inherit the right of return. I agree wholeheartedly. Therefore, let's examine the Muslim Arab version of 'right of return' in light of the latest Arab Summit held in Tunis recently. Cagily, perhaps too cagily, the wording in the preamble of the 'Tunis Declaration' seeks to lull the world into thinking that they are a bunch of peace-loving, law-abiding non-fascist, non-aggressive, non-dictatorships and non-tyrannies whose only goal is sweetness and light and not world domination and subjugation to Islam (1). And while the actual points made in the declaration push a decidedly biased agenda contrary to the preamble, the preamble itself is part of this declaration, so let's apply it in the evenhanded manner in which they want the civilized world to believe is their goal. (In other words, let's make them put their oil money where their mouths are.) In the preamble, the following is declared: "Reaffirming our attachment to the founding principles of the Arab League and the objectives of its charter, as well as the noble humanitarian values consecrated by the United Nations' charter and all provisions of international legality." How blithely they toss that off. Maybe they figured that no one would look up the Arab League Charter. However, I did and learned that it is based upon an earlier agreement, from 1944, called 'The Alexandria Protocol.' (2) Now the Alexandria Protocol is a very interesting document that seems to contradict the image that the Arab League tried to project at their May 2004 pow-wow. In this Alexandria Protocol, section 5 is called 'Special Resolution Concerning Palestine and states the following: " ...providing for the cessation of Jewish immigration, the preservation of Arab lands, and the achievement of independence for Palestine." (So how come no Arabs were screaming about occupation and humiliation, and demanding their own State of Palestine prior to the 1960s, when Egypt ruled Gaza and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria?) Notice that the date of this Alexandria Protocol, on which the Arab League is based, and upon which the 2004 Tunis Declaration cites as their basis (albeit convolutedly), comes before the UN mandate creating Israel. This means that the UN Mandate nullifies the above-quoted section, which oh-so-diplomatically called for the prevention of a State of Israel and the prevention of Jews returning to their aboriginal homeland. One can see that the 2004 Tunis Preamble is meant to confuse because it endorses a Judenrein Middle East by reference to some long forgotten documents (in Western memories but certainly not Arab's), and yet calls for "...humanitarian values consecrated by the United Nations' charter and all provisions of international legality." So let's look at those 'humanitarian values' cited in the 2004 Tunis Preamble, which reference UN mandates and international law. Since they do not specify anything in particular, I am choosing to look at the 'UN Fact Sheet No.9 (Rev.1), The Rights of Indigenous Peoples' (3). One does not even need to read the meat of this; the first sentence of the introduction is enough. It states "An objective...is the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous people." And while the Arabs occupying Israeli land in Gaza, Judea and Samaria are bellowing about 'occupation' and committing genocide-bombings to prove they are indigenous (despite their own statements to the contrary (4)), one of their respected own proved last year that the Jewish people are the aboriginal inhabitants. (And the Tunis Declaration of 2004 states its support of the rights of indigenous people by its endorsement of UN and international law.) To refresh your memories, this highly respected Arab is Dr. Nabil Hilmi, Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of al-Zaqaziq. He made a statement in the August 9, 2003 edition of the Egyptian weekly al-Ahram al-Arabi that he takes as fact the Bible's account of the Exodus. Because of this, he proposed suing every Jew on the planet for a bajillion dollars to pay for The Exodus. The suit, he said, "...is based on what is written in the Torah. It can be found in Exodus, [Chapter] 12, verses 35 through 36'"(5) This means that one of the Arab world's leading scholars takes as fact The Hebrew Bible and is willing to present it as incontrovertible evidence in a court of law. This also means that he can be the chief witness for the Jews of today who are the descendents of the indigenous people (as proven in that incontrovertible book of historical fact -- The Bible) in not merely what is now called Israel, but also Jordan, parts of Syria, Lebanon and other places. Therefore, if the Arab League really means what it says, they should immediately evacuate all the lands stolen from the Hebrew peoples, and return and restore our holy sites, to include, in the disputed territories and Israel: the entire Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the 38,000 tombstones on the Mount of Olives removed by the Jordanians for use as paving stones and urinals, The Tomb of Joseph, The Cave of the Patriarchs, and The Tomb of Rachel (6). And while they're at it, let them return Medina to the Jews! (7) (1) Tunis declaration. http://www.albawaba.com/news/index.php3?sid=277498&lang=e&dir=news (2) Alexandria Protocol. http://www.mideastweb.org/alexandria.htm (3) UN Fact Sheet No.9 (Rev.1). The Rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu6/2/fs9.htm (4) "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism." - Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member, in an interview with the Dutch newspaper "Trouw" March 31, 1977 and http://www.paktoday.com/expert.htm (5) Egyptian Jurists to Sue 'The Jews' for Compensation for 'Trillions' of Tons of Gold Allegedly Stolen During Exodus from Egypt. http://www.dangoor.com/issue76/articles/76087.htm (6) Captured Jewish holy sites Desecrated. http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_1948to1967_holysites.php, and Arafat Still Preventing Jews From Visiting Their Holy Site, The Tomb Of Joseph http://www.zoa.org/pressrel2001/20011226a.htm (7) Salo W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 3 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 1, pp. 308T Beth Goodtree is an award-winning writer, with a background in advertising. She writes political commentary and the occasional humor and science articles. To Go To Top

PICTURE OF ARMED ARAB PALESTINIANS BOARDING UNRWA AMBULANCE Posted by IsrAlert, May 27, 2004.

Truly there are war crimes being committed in Rafiah every day. Here is a photo of one in progress. Use of ambulances to transport combatants is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions and the reason is clear and logical. It makes all ambulances suspect of being used for hostile purpose, not humanitarian purpose, and therefore obliges the enemy to behave toward ambulances as hostile and threatening, thus magnifying the brutality of war. The responsibility for obstruction of ambulances, firing on ambulances and other hostile acts toward ambulances is squarely on the party that misused them for belligerent purpose, not on the party that fired on them, obstructed their functioning or other belligerent act toward them. It also belies UN neutrality. Counter the ubiquitous disinformation. Spread this around. You can view the picture on the IDF website (http://www1.idf.il/DOVER/site/mainpage.asp?sl=EN&id=7&docid=31540.EN) The first item below is from the IDF website, and is entitled: "Israel Channel 10: Armed Palestinians Use UN Ambulances in War against IDF," May 25, 2004. The second item is an article by Ellis Shuman. (1) This is the report by the IDF - Tuesday 25/05/2004 / 17:38 Israel channel 10 aired yesterday Inon Maga'l item showing armed Palestinians use UNRWA ambulances to flee undercover. Photographs taken at the Gaza Zeintun neighborhood about two weeks ago, on the same night the first APC was exploded, clearly show armed Palestinians boarding a UN-marked ambulance with a UN flag, and flee the scene. The reporter stressed that this was not a Palestinian Red Cross ambulance, known to have transported armored Palestinians since the outbreak of events, but rather a supposedly neutral ambulance of the UN. (2) This article is by Ellis Shuman and is entitled "Palestinians said continuing to use ambulances to transport terrorists". It appeared today at IsraelInsider. Israeli Police have uncovered a network that smuggled senior Palestinian Authority officials, including members of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's elite Force 17 presidential guard, into Israel in fake ambulances. United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Peter Hansen demanded that Israel apologize for suggesting that a UN ambulance had transported body parts of Israeli soldiers in Gaza. Israeli Channel Ten television broadcast video footage this week showing armed Palestinians using UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) ambulances to flee Israeli forces operating in the Gaza Strip. The television report, filmed in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood on May 11, on the same night the first IDF armored personnel carrier was destroyed, killing six Israeli soldiers, clearly showed armed Palestinians boarding a UN-marked ambulance with a UN flag, and fleeing the scene. The Channel Ten reporter stressed that this was not a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance, known to have transported armed Palestinians in the past, but rather a supposedly neutral ambulance of the UN. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on May 14 that the Palestinians had also used the UNRWA ambulances to transport the body parts of Israeli soldiers killed in the explosion of the APC. Speaking to Israel Radio, Mofaz mentioned "the inhumanity and depravity of Palestinians in violating the honor of Israeli soldiers and the fact that they used UN ambulances and UNRWA to spirit away body parts from the site of the attack." "I hope that the UN secretary-general will say his piece on this issue," Mofaz said. According to media reports, Reuters has a video cassette of pictures taken during the Israeli army operation in Zeitoun on May 11 showing armed Palestinians using UNRWA ambulances to transport terrorists and possibly also remains of fallen Israeli soldiers. It wasn't immediately clear if the Channel Ten report referred to the same video images. Earlier this month, UNRWA issued a statement saying that armed militants had threatened the lives of one of its ambulance crews and forced them to transport an injured gunman and two of his armed comrades to a Gaza City hospital. Even so, Hansen yesterday issued a statement demanding "an apology and retraction from the Israeli government and military for the damaging and baseless allegations they have made against UNRWA's ambulance drivers in the Gaza Strip." Fake ambulances and documents Meanwhile, police arrested a resident of Azariya, east of Jerusalem, on suspicion that he posed as an ambulance driver and illegally brought into Israel dozens of Palestinians disguised as sick patients. Other arrests are expected to follow. The "patients" were hooked up to medical devices inside the ambulances and presented soldiers or police officers with forged documents at Israeli checkpoints. Police said the network may also have smuggled terrorists into Israel using the same method. Police also raided a warehouse in Azariya, where the GMC vans were transformed into ambulances. They said they are investigating the possibility that the vans were stolen from Israeli hospitals. "There is a strong possibility that Yasser Arafat was directly involved in the ambulance smuggling ring," Judea and Samaria Police Spokesman Doron Ben-Hamo said, adding that documents allegedly signed by Arafat and connected to the ring were found during a raid on a Force 17 office in Azariya on Wednesday. Palestinian minister Saeb Erekat told Reuters that the accusations were "another attempt to undermine the Palestinian Red Cross and Red Crescent" and noted that Israel stops and thoroughly checks every ambulance that goes through a checkpoint. "I don't know why such accusations are being leveled at this time, when they are not even allowing patients to reach medical institutions," Erekat said. Previous misuse of UNRWA ambulances According to information provided by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies, Palestinian terrorists have in the past misused the neutral standing of the UNRWA organization and its ambulances. Nidal 'Abd al-Fataah 'Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist from Kalkilya who worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver and was arrested in August 2002, admitted he had used one such vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists and had also exploited the freedom of movement he enjoyed to transmit messages to and from Hamas activists in various places. Nahd Rashid Ahmad Atallah, a senior UNRWA employee working in the Gaza Strip who was in charge of distributing aid to refugees and who was arrested in August 2002, admitted that during June and July 2002 he had given rides in his car - an UNRWA vehicle - to armed terrorists belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees. The terrorists were on their way to attack Israeli soldiers at the Karni Checkpoint and to fire rockets at Israeli settlements in the northern Gaza Strip. Atallah also used his UNRWA car to transport a bomb weighing 12 kilograms (about 25 lbs) to his brother-in-law, a Popular Resistance Committees operative. To Go To Top

WHAT ISRAELI SOLDIERS THINK OF SETTLERS Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 27, 2004.

The Checkpoint Watch Women, ostensibly safeguard Arab rights. Actually, they curb Jewish rights. They interfere with security measures at checkpoints in a hostile way that demoralizes their own soldiers. Countering them in various ways are Women in Green (WIG). WIG wrote a flyer delineating the rights of soldiers. It distributed the flyers and refreshments to checkpoint inspectors. ("Refreshments" is a euphemism for light junk food.) As a result, troops at one checkpoint arrested the Watch Women. That group thereafter skirted that checkpoint. The Arabs who pass through the checkpoints commonly scream, "This is my country." Their hatred is apparent, if their national entitlement is not. Constantly hearing this, and having no recourse, since they can punish the enemy only for violations, the troops are crestfallen. When the Women in Green approached, the soldiers welcomed their patriotic support. Seven armed WIG people drove through Kalondia. Thousands of Arabs from their illegal 12-story houses in the hills were on the streets. The government's attitude is to let the thousands of Arabs build illegally, but drag a handful of Jews off hilltops. The Arabs expressed hatred for the little group of Jews. One screamed, "This is how you want peace, you come with guns." A WIG husband replied, "There is a bullet here especially for you." His idea was to show the Arab he is not afraid. (I would have said, probably to less effect, "You know that these guns keep a measure of peace." Upon reaching the checkpoint, they were hugged by the soldiers. About a month ago, an 18-year-old soldier was inhibited by the Checkpoint Watch Women's aggressive hostility. He held back from searching an Arab thoroughly enough. He did not order the Arab to lower his pants. Under the belt, the Arab hid an explosive device, with which he blew up that Israeli recruit (witness and reliable former associate). ISRAEL'S FEAR OF BAD PUBLIC RELATIONS The ruling class of Israel has widely been criticized for its poor understanding of the power and means of propaganda. I have criticized it for refusing to employ strong propaganda against the enemy because it thinks it can appease the Arabs or because some within it favor the Arabs. As politicians, the Prime Ministers do have a certain dread of adverse public commentary. They have been criticized for planning each day's announcements with an eye on the public relations effect for the next day. This, like their dependence upon polls, gives too much power to fleeting public opinion and the opinions of the enemies of Israel, to the neglect of long-term strategy. Israel's concern with world public opinion is not thought out. It has degenerated into an obsession with appeasing it. Since much of the world is bribed by the Arabs or hostile to the Jews, Israel cannot gain the favor of world public opinion. It certainly cannot do it by appeasement, which always fails. By its nature, appeasement emboldens bigots, increases their demands, raises the pressure on the victim, and fails to assuage their hatred. Their hatred is not objective, although they go through the motions of being objective by citing opposition to Israeli policies and actions as they come up. It wouldn't matter which policies and actions came up. when those policies and actions are favorable to the Arabs, such as by giving the Arabs supplies, the bigots do not applaud. If Israel cedes territories, they applaud - for Israel's death march. Israel can win over portions of world public opinion, mostly by acting firmly in its own interest and explaining its case rather than, as it usually does, apologizing for not undermining its position fast enough. Self-respect earns respect. That is why I always recommend that Israel plan what it needs to do for the long term and how to explain the actions' necessity and justification. Act and explain together. 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

WILL O' THE WISPS Posted by A Time to Speak, May 27, 2004.

This is issue #41 of A Time To Speak. Will O' The Wisp -- also called ignis fatuus [Latin for "silly fire"]: -- a mysterious light that moves away as one approaches it, leading one who follows it into danger or destruction At times a person of good intentions can be subject to hazardous delusions that permit them to believe nice and comforting things and evade or deny harsh and discomforting ones. A simple man believes anything. A clever man ponders his course. - Proverbs 14:15 "No man is exempt from saying silly things. The mischief is to say them deliberately. - Michel de Montaigne, 1588 "Any response to the latest Palestinian atrocity that involves 'ending the cycle of violence' and 'getting the piece process back on track' is also worthy of derision." - Mark Steyn, December 2003 A particularly pernicious will-o'-the-wisp lures the gullible into the morass of an Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process. Left to itself, this "silly light" would flicker out were it not refueled with suppositions that there is something Israel or anyone else can do to make the Arabs willing to live in peace with it. If only Israel will concede this or yield that . . . give more . . . and when that does not work give more still . . . All that is needed to keep rushing after this will-o'-the-wisp is the resolve to ignore the amply demonstrated truth that to the Arab it is permanently insufferable that Israel should exist in even the tiniest space or most degraded condition. The Peace Process Delusion inspires demands that "both sides exercise utmost restraint". Obviously, terrorists and their sponsors will not thereby be induced to restraint, so these are really demands that Israel should not respond when its citizens are murdered or threatened. The correct response is to admonish the murderers that the slaughter will not advance their "rightful aspirations" or their "just cause" -- as though that were the prime defect of the slaughters. But the "aspiration" and the "cause" are simply to kill Jews along the way to killing Israel. Official spokesmen for the Arabs and Iranians not only admit but proclaim it, stridently and ferociously. Those dancing after the will-o'-the-wisp ignore that inconvenient detail or frivolously dismiss it as mere rhetoric, while they go on rewinding tapes of roadmaps and touching up visions of Two-State-Solutions. Some are genuinely if unthinkingly beguiled. Others know well enough that this "silly light" can only lead Israel to the No-State-Dissolution. * * * * * * * Another will-o'-the-wisp is a naive sanguinity that hatred of Israel and anti-Israel programs might be ameliorated "if only they understood . . . ", if only Israel presents its case more effectively it will be less vilified. It is indeed true, especially in recent years, that individuals representing Israel before the world are conspicuously unqualified for the role and give a false impression of the character and quality of the country and its people. It is also true that public statements set the wrong tone; defensive when they should be self-confident, apologetic when it should be self-confident, flustered when it should be poised. If there are individuals who believe Israel is evil because they believe the reporting of irresponsible or even corrupt news media, then accurate information might enlighten some of these. But accurate information is abhorrent to the bulk of the news media. For example, in the current actions against terrorism and terrorist-smugglers in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) invited journalists to "embed" and thereby witness what was happening. They declined, preferring to invent reports untainted by accuracy, or indolently file PLO propaganda sheets in place of news reports. * * * * * * * Israel does indeed owe it to itself, to its friends, and to the historical record to present itself properly. Yet it is a vain expectation that upgrading information services and public relations can win over policymakers, academics, international organizations and others that have a vested interest in an anti-Israel agenda. That agenda is not formed by anything that Israel does or refrains from doing, or anything it says or how eloquently it is said. Rather, it is formed from political-economic-psychological components that are neither based on nor influenced by facts or fairness. Two plangent examples are the European Union (EU) and the United Nations (UN). I] The European Union began as an economic affiliation of six states and now subsumes twenty-seven states, with unelected commissioners dictating minutiae of national, domestic and even private life. Reasons enough come to mind why Europe collectively -- with some individual exceptions -- has a self-serving aversion to Israel -- the land of the Jews who survived and escaped the European regime and now outstrip Europe in most constructive accomplishments. . The foreign policy of the EU is collective and conformity is obligatory for all members. (A prime minister of the Czech Republic made some remarks mildly sympathetic to Israel, at a time when his country's membership in the EU was pending but not yet in effect. He was officially taken to task for the indiscretion and warned that such deviancy would not be tolerated.) On the Middle East, the mandatory policy is based exclusively on distaste for Israel. It is required in the formal international agreements by which Europe merged itself into Eurabia, and programmed into the hearts and minds of the populace with the cooperation of clergy, educators and news media. Israel is in no way responsible for the terms of those agreements or the design of the programs, and can in no way change them. The Egyptian-born historian who uses the name Bat Ye'or [Hebrew for "Daughter of the Nile"] now lives in Europe. She has traced the founding of Eurabia and its anti-Israel principles in several recent studies. From "The Road to Munich", National Review, 9 October 2002: "... After the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil blackmail in 1973, the then-European Community (EC) created a structure of Cooperation and Dialogue with the Arab League. The Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD) began as a French initiative composed of representatives from the EC and Arab League countries. From the outset the EAD was considered as a vast transaction: The EC agreed to support the Arab anti-Israeli policy in exchange for wide commercial agreements... "Over the years, Euro-Arab collaboration developed at all levels: political, economic, religious and in the transfer of technologies, education, universities, radio, television, press, publishers, and writers unions. This structure became the channel for Arab immigration into Europe, of anti-Americanism, and of Judeophobia, which -- linked with a general hatred of the West and its denigration -- constituted a pseudo-culture imported from Arab countries. The interpenetration of European and Arab policies determined Europe's relentless anti-Israel policy and its anti-Americanism. This politico-economic edifice, with minute details, is rooted in a multiform European symbiosis with the Arab world... "Europe's economic greed was instrumentalized by Arab League policy in a long-term political strategy targeting Israel, Europe, and America. Arab economical ascendancy over the EC influenced the latter's policy toward Israel. The EAD was the vehicle for legitimizing the propaganda of the PLO, procuring it international diplomatic recognition, and conferring on Arafat's terrorist movement honor and international stature by supporting Arafat's address to the General Assembly of the United Nations on November 13, 1974 . Through the labyrinth of the EAD system, a policy of Israel's delegitimization was planned at both the EC's national and international levels. Approved instructions from the highest political, religious, and academic authorities functioned within the EAD's multiple commissions, implicating the media, universities, and diverse cultural activities. The EAD was the mouthpiece which diffused and popularized throughout Europe the defamation of Israel. France, Belgium, and Luxembourg were then the most active agents of the EAD. "Strategically, the Euro-Arab Cooperation was a political instrument for anti-Americanism in Europe, whose aim was to separate and weaken the two continents by an incitement to hostility and the permanent denigration of American policy in the Middle East . The cultural infrastructure of the EAD allowed the traditional cultural baggage of Arab societies, with its anti-Christian and anti-Jewish prejudices and its hostility against Israel and the West, to be imported into Europe. The discredit heaped on the infidel Judeo-Christian culture was expressed by the claim of the superiority of the Islamic civilization, at which source European scholars, over the centuries -- it was said -- had humbly slaked their thirst for knowledge. Drowned in this wave of Arab cultural and religious expansionism that was integrated into the cultural activities of the EAD, Europeans adopted the Arab-Islamic conception of history. "The obsequiousness of certain academics, subjected to a political power dominated by economic materialism, is reminiscent of the worst periods of the decline of civilizations. The suppression of intellectual freedom imported from undemocratic Muslim countries, attached to a culture of hate against Israel, has recently led to the exclusion and boycott of Israeli academics by some of their European colleagues. "The cogs created by the EAD led the EC (later the European Union) to tolerate Palestinian terrorism on its own territory, to justify it, and finally to finance Palestinian infrastructure -- later to become the Palestinian Authority -- and hate-mongering educational system. The ministers and intellectuals who have created Eurabia deny the current wave of criminal attacks against European Jews, which they, themselves, have inspired. They deny the antisemitism, as they have neglected the attacks against the fundamental rights of their own citizens by delinquency and the terrorist threats, which they have allowed to develop with impunity in their countries, in exchange for financial profits. The silence and the negligence of the public authorities faced with this wave of antisemitic aggressions is but the tip of the emerged iceberg of a global policy. The EAD, which had tied Arab strategic policies for the destruction of Israel to the European economy was the Trojan horse for Europe's inclusion into the orbit of Arab-Muslim influence. "With the support of parliaments and ministries, the EAD concealed behind the Arab-Israel conflict the global jihad being perpetrated on all continents. Europe's subservience to Arab policy led the EU to give an artificial and absolute priority to the Arab-Israel conflict in international affairs... Europe's pathological obsession with the Arab-Palestinian conflict, has obscured the criminal ongoing persecution of Christians and other minorities in Muslim lands worldwide, and the sufferings and slavery of millions from jihad wars in Africa and Asia. " The recent anti-Jewish hysteria in Europe was an advertisement to neutralize diaspora Jews, and the Israeli self-defense mechanism against Palestinian terror, which is why it was so superbly overlooked by the highest authorities. This complacent attitude has scandalized many European friends of Israel, who are much more numerous than the EAD censorship organs and the Euro-Arab terrorist networks would have us believe. Yet the majority of Europeans, who are not antisemitic, are totally unaware of most of the EAD's policy, since its key deliberations are unrecorded. More research and publications are needed in this field. "The cracks between Europe and America reveal the divergences between the choice of liberty and the road back to Munich on which the European Union continues to caper to new Arab-Islamic tunes, now called 'occupation,' 'peace and justice,' and 'immigrants' rights' -- themes which were composed for Israel's burial. And for Europe's demise." Comment: So obedient is the EU vassal of Arabia that it does shrink from making itself absurd: On EU funds to the PLO: Israel has provided stacks of authentic documentation that this money is used to finance terrorism. The EU professes it does not prove anything. On violent assaults on the persons of Jews and their institutions in Europe: The EU ordered a study, and then suppressed the report because it concluded that the perpetrators are primarily Muslims. Instead, it made and adopted a second hasty report to show that the perpetrators are primarily European hoodlums. II] The United Nations was founded to supervise peace and international co-existence and has turned itself into the planet's Front Office for the war against Israel and the Jews. If one were to evaluate the condition of the world according to UN resolutions, it would appear that the country that is No. 100 in size with .0008 percent of the population is the source of all mischief. In its struggle against this pernicious entity, the UN invests billions of dollars that might have been put to use for health care, famine relief, education, or even cleaning up some of its own massive internal corruption. Israel has been a member for more than half-a-century. In all that time the UN has never given elementary protection to its rights. It has condoned and even encouraged a bloc of member states in their permanent campaign of aggression, terrorism and intent-to-destroy. Recently, the UN almost simultaneously decided (a) not to address the genocidal horrors the government of the Sudan is committing against its own citizen and (b) elected the government of the Sudan to membership on the Commission on Human Rights. That being done, the UN was free to turn its full focus and force on Israel's war crimes against tunnels used to smuggle weapons and long-range missiles to terrorists in Gaza. Its agency UNRWA turned its 56-year-old refugee camps into bases for recruitment and training of terrorists, and allows the use of UN facilities and equipment in terrorist enterprises. The UN peacekeepers in Lebanon abet incursions into Israel to abduct and murder Israeli soldiers, and Secretary-General Kofi Annan conceals the evidence as long as he can. Israel continues to waste its rhetoric, its reputation and its dues on this global epicenter of corruption and Judeophobia. In other democracies, there is still a tendency to ignore the scandals, the predominance of brutal dictatorships, the corruption of the secretariat and its employees, the gross misconduct of UN peacekeepers. It is even argued that nations dare not defend themselves or their vital interests without the permission of the UN or, even worse, that they should delegate the defense to the UN itself. Where Israel and the Jews are concerned, the EU and the UN have established records of unmistakable hostility and malevolent intent. They are members of the Quartet that drew the roadmap appointing themselves arbiters of Israel's fate. Any government of Israel that follows that "silly light" is following a roadmap into the quicksand. [See Issues 28 & 29] * * * * * * * "We are not fighting so you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." -- Hassan Massawi, Hezbollah A snare perhaps unique to present-day democracies -- especially Israel and the United States -- is being so fastidious about one's own moral purity that one is inhibited about recognizing much less confronting evil. The corollary is a self-defeating self-absorption that detracts attention from the nature and threats of the enemy. This tendency is addressed in "Stop Navel-Gazing," by Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 14 May 2004: "We are in a world war and yet we do not notice it. "[Islamist jihadi attacks on Christians in Africa] should be taken into account when we look at the bloody toll of the Palestinian offensive in Gaza and when we observe American confusion in Iraq today. It should be taken into account because we must realize that our enemies are engaged in a world war against the non-Muslim world. When we consider our daily battles on our limited terrain we must not allow our perceptions to be distorted by that directly before us. "Yet undermine our perceptive powers we have. Although the Palestinians, like their Iranian and Hizbullah overlords have consistently stated that their aim is to destroy Israel in stages, we Israelis refuse to see the overall picture of their strategy. They execute Tali Hatuel and her daughters on the day of the Likud poll and we fail to understand the message. It is not, 'Get out of Gaza, or else.' It is, 'Regardless of what you desire, we will push you out of Gaza as we pushed you out of Lebanon and as we will push you out of the rest of Palestine that you refer to as Israel.' "But we don't see it that way. Our press, like our beleaguered and vain politicians, pushes a different story. In their story, there is no enemy, only Israel... We do not see news analyses of Palestinian societal derangement that manifests itself in cannibalism. We do not see debates of what an Israeli defeat in Gaza means to a society bred from the cradle to the grave on global jihad and its requisite genocide of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel and beyond... "When we pay attention to our enemies and see the scope of their ambitions and depth of their hatred we must come to a revolutionary conclusion. We, Israelis, Americans, and indeed all non-fascistic Muslims constitute the frontline in the war wherever we are. It was not US military deployment in Saudi Arabia that precipitated the September 11 attacks anymore than it was the Israeli presence in Lebanon or in Gaza or Judea and Samaria or Jerusalem that precipitated the Palestinian-led jihad against Israel. It is our existence that provokes our enemy. "Our enemies, the forces of global jihad, be they Palestinian or Jordanian, Saudi, Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, Iranian or Iraqi use all the means at their disposal to wage their war against us. From their television and radio stations and newspapers they incite for our destruction and feed us fictions of our own culpability to both strengthen their forces' will to fight us and weaken our will to defend ourselves. "In the UN, the Arab League, the Organization of the Islamic Conference and on countless other international stages they seek to criminalize us for our crime of defending our existence. In this they find accomplices among our own self-absorbed elites who are only too happy to blame the war being waged against us on ourselves. "When we limit our gaze to ourselves not only do we fail to take notice of the nature of the war, we craft national policies that harm both ourselves and our allies. In Israel, our self-obsession has brought about plan after plan all of which have weakened us and our allies in the global struggle. From the Oslo initiative to the retreat from Lebanon to Sharon's pullout plan from Gaza and parts of Samaria we have hurt ourselves and our allies. "We have hurt ourselves by weakening our ability to recognize our enemies as such seeing them rather as erstwhile peace partners. We have hurt ourselves by discrediting our own right to live unmolested as large swathes of our elites have preferred our enemies the Palestinians to our own citizens in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. "In behaving as though the Palestinian branch of the global jihad is engaging in a war over a few kilometers in Gaza, Judea and Samaria rather than playing a central role in the global jihad against non-Muslims, we are making it harder for our allies, first and foremost the Americans, to see the true nature of the war they too are fighting. If it is only Israeli settlers who are preventing peace by living in mobile homes in Judea and Samaria then perhaps it is only America in its 'arrogance' that is preventing the jihadis from coming to a meeting of the minds with the West. "As the jihad spreads throughout the world, we must stop finally with our self-destructive self-absorption. The butchers in Zeitoun who kicked the remains of our soldiers like footballs on Tuesday, like the butchers in Baghdad, Karachi, Riyadh and beyond who kill with barbaric ecstasy and primordial hatred do so not because of anything we have done. They do so because they are barbarians. And if we do not wish to be destroyed, we must do everything to destroy them and nothing to give them hope for victory against us." * * * * * * * Even the aspiration to high moral standards can be a will-o'-the-wisp when it morphs into the singularly immoral tactic of putting Israel's own citizen-soldiers into needless danger out of humanitarian concern for "the other". When the IDF went into action against terrorist bases and nests in Jenin, this doctrine produced the order not to shell or bomb the bases, but to clear them room by room. The intent was to avoid casualties among non-combatants in those bases, but the effect was to enable a juvenile terrorist-in-training was able to lure the soldiers into a trap where 23 of them were killed. (That was the real Jenin Massacre, not the fictional one made-up by UN officials and British reporters.) This kind of sacrifice is not required by traditional Jewish ethics, common sense, or the "international humanitarian law" blithely invoked against Israel. It is standard practice for Arab terrorists and even soldiers of Arab states to ring themselves with civilians, preferably old women and young children, in part to protect themselves and in part to incur pathetic casualties to exploit for propaganda. The ruling in many quarters that this endows the combatants with immunity is itself contrary to the widely misconstrued Geneva Convention. It also contravenes the clear statement in Article 28: "The presence of a protected person [non-combatant] may not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations." Israel's young men in military service and older men called up for reserve duty do not inflict harm on non-combatants if it can possibly be avoided. But they are not obligated by any moral law to risk or waste their own lives to accommodate that enemy trick, and the country they are defending has not the right to impose that sacrifice upon them. From Issue No. 36: Avihu Keinan, z"l, a young soldier from the community re-established at biblical Shilo, lost his life when the military doctrine of humane restraint put him in unnecessary peril. His father, Moshe Keinan, speaks out in "A True Jewish Morality Not A False One," Reported by IMRA (Independent Review and Analysis) 11 October 2003: "Moshe Keinan, father of Givati Brigade reconnaissance unit soldier, Avihu Keinan, who was killed in action the day before Rosh Hashanah while searching for a terrorist commander, will be marching to Jerusalem from his home in Shiloh. He will depart from his son's grave in the Shiloh Cemetery on Sunday morning, October 12. "He is demanding that the Israeli armed forces be instructed to fight the war against terror in a manner consistent with true Jewish morality, and not the false morality which endangers our soldiers and citizens. "He is demanding that the army act in a truly moral way; it should not care more for the enemy and the enemy's supporters than it does for Israeli soldiers. "He is demanding a morality that is not perverted by unnecessary feelings of guilt, a morality that does not irresponsibly endanger our soldiers to the benefit of our enemy... Even the Geneva Convention acknowledges that civilians cannot be used as shields. The lives of these civilians are their own responsibility of those who place them in danger. "Those who support this false morality are themselves immoral; they are endangering and damaging the lives of Israeli civilians and soldiers..." * * * * * * * When Israeli soldiers on duty in the Gaza strip were killed in the explosion of a mine, local Arabs seized their body parts to make sport with them, display them in parades, and try to extract ransom for them. While their comrades painstakingly searched for and recovered the remains (including those hidden in a UN ambulance), local residents were placed under curfew, and the IDF delivered food and water to their houses. Staff Sergeants Alexei Hayat, age 20, of Beersheba, and Rotem Adam, age 21, of Rishon Letzion were on guard duty when one of them helped an old Arab woman to carry her food supply into her house. In the performance of that act, he was fatally shot by a sniper. When his comrade rushed to his aid, he too was killed by the sniper. Contact Time-To-Speak at www.israel.net/timetospeak or by email at speak@actcom.co.il To Go To Top

THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL CHARTER: THE BIG LIE THAT PLANTED THE SEEDS OF GLOBAL JIHAD Posted by Ruth Matar, May 27, 2004.

Dear Friends, This is probably the most important letter that I have ever written to you. I implore you to forward this letter or a letter in your own words, accompanied by the original PALESTINIAN NATIONAL CHARTER OF 1964, to President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, your Senators and Congressmen, your local newspaper, your family, friends and acquaintances. It would be preferable, when sending your letter to government officials, to print the accompanying Charter and send it by registered mail. E-mail, unfortunately, often does not get the proper attention of the recipient. THE PALESTINIAN NATIONAL CHARTER (Al-Mithaq Al-Kawmee Al-Philisteeni)* * "Al-Kawmee" has no exact equivalent in English but reflects the notion of Pan-Arabism INTRODUCTION We, the Palestinian Arab people, who waged fierce and continuous battles to safeguard its homeland, to defend its dignity and honor, and who offered all through the years continuous caravans of immortal martyrs, and who wrote the noblest pages of sacrifice, offering and giving. We, the Palestinian Arab people, who faced the forces of evil, injustice and aggression, against whom the forces of international Zionism and colonialism conspire and worked to displace it, dispossess it from its homeland and property, abused what is holy in it and who in spite of all this refused to weaken or submit. We, the Palestinian Arab people, who believe in its Arabism and in its right to regain its homeland, to realize its freedom and dignity, and who have determined to amass its forces and mobilize its efforts and capabilities in order to continue its struggle and to move forward on the path of holy war (al-jihad) until complete and final victory has been attained, We, the Palestinian Arab people, based on our right of self-defense and the complete restoration of our lost homeland- a right that has been recognized by international covenants and common practices including the Charter of the United Nations-and in implementation of the principles of human rights, and comprehending the international political relations, with its various ramifications and dimensions, and considering the past experiences in all that pertains to the causes of the catastrophe, and the means to face it, And embarking from the Palestinian Arab reality, and for the sake of the honor of the Palestinian individual and his right to free and dignified life, And realizing the national grave responsibility placed upon our shoulders, for the sake of all this, We, the Palestinian Arab people, dictate and declare this Palestinian National Charter and swear to realize it. Article 1. Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the rest of the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab homeland. Article 2: Palestine, with its boundaries at the time of the British Mandate, is a indivisible territorial unit. Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab Nation. It shares the sufferings and aspirations of the Arab Nation and its struggle for freedom, sovereignty, progress and unity. Article 4: The people of Palestine determine its destiny when it completes the liberation of its homeland in accordance with its own wishes and free will and choice. Article 5: The Palestinian personality is a permanent and genuine characteristic that does not disappear. It is transferred from fathers to sons. Article 6: The Palestinians are those Arab citizens who were living normally in Palestine up to 1947, whether they remained or were expelled. Every child who was born to a Palestinian Arab father after this date, whether in Palestine or outside, is a Palestinian. Article 7: Jews of Palestinian origin are considered Palestinians if they are willing to live peacefully and loyally in Palestine. Article 8: Bringing up Palestinian youth in an Arab and nationalist manner is a fundamental national duty. All means of guidance, education and enlightenment should be utilized to introduce the youth to its homeland in a deep spiritual way that will constantly and firmly bind them together. Article 9: Ideological doctrines, whether political, social, or economic, shall not distract the people of Palestine from the primary duty of liberating their homeland. All Palestinian constitute one national front and work with all their feelings and material potentialities to free their homeland. Article 10: Palestinians have three mottos: National Unity, National Mobilization, and Liberation. Once liberation is completed, the people of Palestine shall choose for its public life whatever political, economic, or social system they want. Article 11: The Palestinian people firmly believe in Arab unity, and in order to play its role in realizing this goal, it must, at this stage of its struggle, preserve its Palestinian personality and all its constituents. It must strengthen the consciousness of its existence and stance and stand against any attempt or plan that may weaken or disintegrate its personality. Article 12: Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary goals; each prepares for the attainment of the other. Arab unity leads to the liberation of Palestine, and the liberation of Palestine leads to Arab unity. Working for both must go side by side. Article 13: The destiny of the Arab Nation and even the essence of Arab existence are firmly tied to the destiny of the Palestine question. From this firm bond stems the effort and struggle of the Arab Nation to liberate Palestine. The people of Palestine assume a vanguard role in achieving this sacred national goal. Article 14: The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty. Its responsibilities fall upon the entire Arab nation, governments and peoples, the Palestinian peoples being in the forefront. For this purpose, the Arab nation must mobilize its military, spiritual and material potentialities; specifically, it must give to the Palestinian Arab people all possible support and backing and place at its disposal all opportunities and means to enable them to perform their role in liberating their homeland. Article 15: The liberation of Palestine, from a spiritual viewpoint, prepares for the Holy Land an atmosphere of tranquillity and peace, in which all the Holy Places will be safeguarded, and the freedom to worship and to visit will be guaranteed for all, without any discrimination of race, color, language, or religion. For all this, the Palestinian people look forward to the support of all the spiritual forces in the world. Article 16: The liberation of Palestine, from an international viewpoint, is a defensive act necessitated by the demands of self-defense as stated in the Charter of the United Nations. For that, the people of Palestine, desiring to befriend all nations which love freedom, justice, and peace, look forward to their support in restoring the legitimate situation to Palestine, establishing peace and security in its territory, and enabling its people to exercise national sovereignty and freedom. Article 17: The partitioning of Palestine, which took place in 1947, and the establishment of Israel are illegal and null and void, regardless of the loss of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and its natural right to its homeland, and were in violation of the basic principles embodied in the Charter of the United Nations, foremost among which is the right to self-determination. Article 18: The Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate System, and all that has been based on them are considered null and void. The claims of historic and spiritual ties between Jews and Palestine are not in agreement with the facts of history or with the true basis of sound statehood. Judaism, because it is a divine religion, is not a nationality with independent existence. Furthermore, the Jews are not one people with an independent personality because they are citizens to their states. Article 19: Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in its means and aims. Israel, in its capacity as the spearhead of this destructive movement and as the pillar of colonialism, is a permanent source of tension and turmoil in the Middle East, in particular, and to the international community in general. Because of this, the people of Palestine are worthy of the support and sustenance of the community of nations. Article 20: The causes of peace and security and the requirements of right and justice demand from all nations, in order to safeguard true relationships among peoples and to maintain the loyalty of citizens to their homeland, that they consider Zionism an illegal movement and outlaw its presence and activities. Article 21: The Palestinian people believes in the principles of justice, freedom, sovereignty, self-determination, human dignity, and the right of peoples to practice these principles. It also supports all international efforts to bring about peace on the basis of justice and free international cooperation. Article 22: The Palestinian people believe in peaceful co-existence on the basis of legal existence, for there can be no coexistence with aggression, nor can there be peace with occupation and colonialism. Article 23: In realizing the goals and principles of this Convent, the Palestine Liberation Organization carries out its full role to liberate Palestine in accordance with the basic law of this Organization. Article 24: This Organization does not exercise any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip or in the Himmah Area. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields. Article 25: This Organization is in charge of the movement of the Palestinian people in its struggle to liberate its homeland in all liberational, organizational, and financial matters, and in all other needs of the Palestine Question in the Arab and international spheres. Article 26: The Liberation Organization cooperates with all Arab governments, each according to its ability, and does not interfere in the internal affairs of any Arab states. Article 27: This Organization shall have its flag, oath and a national anthem. All this shall be resolved in accordance with special regulations. Article 28: The basic law for the Palestine Liberation Organization is attached to this Charter. This law defines the manner of establishing the Organization, its organs, institutions, the specialties of each one of them, and all the needed duties thrust upon it in accordance with this Charter. Article 29: This Charter cannot be amended except by two-thirds majority of the members of the National Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization in a special session called for this purpose. *Adopted in 1964 by the 1st Palestinian Conference ***** Dear Friends, the question is often asked: since the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization) was founded in 1964, what were the Arabs liberating at that time? The answer is: that part of the Holy Land which the Jews were able to hold on to when five armies, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Transjordan, attacked Israel in the bitterly fought War of Independence, in 1948. 6,000 Jews were killed in the War of Independence, 1% of the nation's total population. As a result of the War, Egypt took over the Gaza Strip. TransJordan illegally occupied Judea and Samaria, which it then named the "West Bank." At that time, King Hussein of Jordan significantly changed the name of TransJordan (across the Jordan) to just plain Jordan. By the way, this illegal occupation of Judea and Samaria, was recognized by only two countries, Britain and Pakistan. It is important to pay great attention to article 24 of the PLO National Charter of 1964, which reads as follows: "THIS ORGANIZATION DOES NOT EXERCISE ANY TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY OVER THE WEST BANK IN THE HASHEMITE KINGDOM OF JORDAN, ON THE GAZA STRIP OR IN THE HIMMAH AREA. Its activities will be on the national popular level in the liberational, organizational, political and financial fields." When did the PLO discover its passionate attachment to the Biblical Homeland of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, declaring it to be their fictional Palestinian homeland, even though these areas are repeatedly mentioned in the Judeo-Christian Bible as promised to the Jewish People by Hashem? Of course, there never was such a country called Palestine, or a nation called Palestinians. The Arabs themselves make it clear in this 1964 Palestinian National Charter (in the Introduction of the Charter) that they are part of a larger Arab people (Arabism), and that it is incumbent on all Arab people to move forward on the path of HOLY WAR (AL-JIHAD) until complete and final victory has been attained. Here in this 1964 Palestinian National Charter we see the planting of the seeds of "global Jihad." Specifically: "Article 1: Palestine is an Arab homeland bound by strong Arab national ties to the Arab Countries and which together form the great Arab homeland" "Article 3: The Palestinian Arab people has the legitimate right to its homeland and is an inseparable part of the Arab Nation..." "Article 12: Arab unity and the liberation of Palestine are two complementary goals; each prepares for the attainment of the other..." "Article 13: The destiny of the Arab Nation and even the essence of Arab existence are firmly tied to the destiny of the Palestine question..." And finally, article 14 clearly spells out the necessity of Jihad: "The liberation of Palestine, from an Arab viewpoint, is a national duty. Its responsibilities fall upon the entire Arab nation, governments and peoples, the Palestinian peoples being in the forefront. For this purpose, the Arab nation must mobilize its military, spiritual and material potentialities; specifically, it must give to the Palestinian Arab people all possible support and backing and place at its disposal all opportunities and means to enable them to perform their role in liberating their homeland." Unfortunately, the United Nations and the European Union have bought into the fantasy of a Palestinian nation and a Palestinian state, to replace the Jewish Homeland. Tragically, even the United States, supposedly Israel's best friend, is working with the Arab world to make the realization of another Arab state a reality. Shouldn't the US State Department and the rest of the Unites States government take a good thorough look at the PLO National Charter of 1964 and the lies contained therein? In the Jerusalem Post of May 5, 2004 there was an article by Michael Freund about the U.S. National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice fundraising for the PA. "According to a May 3 article in The Washington Post, the Bush administration has launched a 'diplomatic offensive' aimed at allaying Arab concerns regarding the president's recent embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan. "Among other things, the paper notes, 'the administration in recent days has tried to emphasize its concern for the Palestinians.' This has included an effort to drum up financial support for the PA. 'As part of the diplomatic offensive,' the report says, 'national security adviser Condoleezza Rice last week called some Arab countries that were behind in making payments to shore up the Palestinian Authority.' "Isn't that thoughtful of her. With American casualties mounting daily in Iraq, Osama Bin-Laden still on the run, and North Korea threatening to develop more nuclear weapons, doesn't Rice have better things to do than making sure Arafat can balance his checkbook? Indeed, Rice's telethon on behalf of the PA is particularly astonishing in light of some of the Palestinians' recent actions. "Just this past weekend the PA transferred funds to Hamas-affiliated organizations in Gaza, claiming that economic conditions in the territories were the reason for the move. But if the PA itself is truly in such need of funds that the US national security adviser must intervene, why is it showering money on Hamas terrorists?" The pressure on Ariel Sharon from the United States Government to evacuate Jewish Communities to make possible the establishment of another Arab state within the Promised Land, has been enormous. This coming Sunday, May 30, Prime Minister Sharon is trying to force the Israeli Cabinet to approve his unilateral disengagement plan to abandon the Jewish Communities in Gaza, as well as some in Samaria. In Gaza alone, this plan, without any reciprocal agreement from the Arabs, will hand over hothouses, factories, homes, schools and synagogues to the Arabs, making at least 8,000 people homeless. Sharon has said that even if the Cabinet does not support him, and even though his own Likud party overwhelmingly in a referendum rejected his plan, he will go ahead, because he knows best! Now the question is, will the most important democracy in the world, the United States, support such blatantly undemocratic behavior? It is up to you dear friends, to remind the United States Government of the intentions of the Arab world as spelled out in the Palestinian National Charter of 1964, which were the seeds planted for the Muslim Global Jihad, which the Judeo-Christian world will have to defeat in order to survive. With Blessings and Love for Israel, Ruth Matar P.S. Next week I will discuss the Palestinian National Charter as revised in 1968. 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

MADISON CITY COUNCIL IS CONSIDERING SISTER CITY STATUS WITH RAFAH IN GAZA Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, May 26, 2004.

Mayor David J. Cieslewicz Room 403, 210 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard Madison, Wisconsin 53703 (Phone) 608 266 4611 (TTY) 608 266 4443 (FAX) 608 267 8671 email: mayor@cityofmadison.com Geneva, Switzerland, May 24th. 2004 Dear Mayor David J. Cieslewicz: I was appalled to learn that the Madison City Council is considering sister city status with Rafah in Gaza, a city, that contains the bases of Islamic terrorism, e.g. suicide/homicide bombers, missiles used to attack innocent Israeli (and American) civilians. Gaza, having been the very place where the Palestinian assault on an American convoy took place. The Palestinian attack aimed at undermining not only the American initiative but also the efforts of diplomats and aid workers posted in the region by the United Nations and Europeans. The explosion that blasted a CIA vehicle in the Gaza Strip, by Palestinian terrorist aggression. What does Gaza equal...it = Strikes against U.S. targets in Palestinian-controlled regions and Israel. The convoy consisted of three armor-plated vehicles with two Palestinian police escort cars. The bombers detonated their charge precisely to hit the one carrying CIA guards, the last in line. Fox TV's Col.(ret.) David Hunt described it as a Chevy Suburban with level 5 armor built to stand RPG hits to the doors and landmine explosions from the bottom. He estimated the landmine that struck the car as between 30 and 50 pounds, similar to the devices used against coalition forces in Iraq. It is possible that an RPG was fired first to crack the heavy armor and make the vehicle susceptible to the landmine. It is clear that Arafat is determined to go out on a blaze of Palestinian terror - not just against Israelis but Americans, too. The State Department's first response was to order Americans to leave the Gaza Strip. Israel has thus far uncovered and destroyed over 85 weapons smuggling tunnels on the Philadelphia route along the Egyptian border with Gaza since the beginning of the Intifada - 34 in 2002, over 40 in 2003, and 11 since January 2004. Terrorist groups such as Hamas and PFLP, as well as the "rearmament network" of the Palestinian Authority, use the Rafah tunnels to smuggle illegal weapons and explosives into the Gaza Strip and to arm their members. The same and worse kind of weapons your very own AMERICAN CITIZENS were murdered with. According to the IDF, dozens of RPG rockets and launchers, hundreds of kilograms of explosives, hundreds of AK-47 Kalashnikovs, tens of thousands of bullets, and thousands of cartridges have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip via the tunnels. There have also been efforts to smuggle in more advanced weapons via the tunnels. According to the IDF, Israel's military actions are not to demolish homes but are aimed at stopping the transfer of smuggled weapons, arresting the tunnel builders, and ending the large-scale smuggling of dangerous weapons used against Israelis.... Used as well against American citizens. The Palestinian Arabs languish today in numerous UNRWA refugee camps, where they've been trained in barbaric terrorism by the PLO, Hamas. Hizbullah, etc. They also support al-Qaida and attacks against the U.S. They dance in the streets and on the rooftops for each American soldier killed in Iraq and elsewhere. When American bodies were desecrated and mutilated (and Israelis) in the past, they celebrated. Arafat's current quest to destroy Israel, is related to the original Palestinian Arab alliance with the Nazis going back to the times of Hitler, the favorite and most read book by them is "Mein Kampf," Hitler's own memoirs..being used as a great Manual. Twenty-two Arab states comprise about 99.8 percent of Middle East lands. If their lands are like a football field, Israel is like a pack of matches...that they would like to set alight and burn to the ground and cause the second Holocaust in history, only this time in Israel's homeland. Would giving the Arabs part of the pack of matches create peace? NO...they had that choice over and again. Their answer is terrorism. They want it all, to inflame Israel with terrorism, and drive her out of the Middle East. Just look at an official Palestinian Authority map of Palestine. When the Palestinians say "End of occupation," what do they mean? http://www.frontpagemag.com/media/slideshowimages/slide1.html You'll see Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa as occupied territories. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and an important U.S. ally. Peace activists in Madison have fallen for Palestinian false victimology and propaganda. Should Madison ally herself with an evil, terrorist-ridden entity? This would be a disgrace to Wisconsin and to the democratic nation, the United States of America. This would be a slap in the face of the honest American electorate. Sincerely, Ms. G. Goldwater Switzerland, Geneva iii44@aol.com Internet Correspondent and Commentator http://goldwater.mideastreality.com/ To Go To Top

THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZINNI Posted by IsrAlert, May 26, 2004.

This was written by Richard Baehr, and appeared today in "The American Thinker" (http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3562). A few months back, leftist Jewish critics, such as Frank Rich, Abraham Foxman and Leon Wieseltier, trashed Mel Gibson's movie, The Passion of the Christ, for what they called its blatant anti-Semitism, warning of the danger the movie could create for Jews wherever the movie was shown. So far, 50 million people have seen the movie in America, and nobody has been seen running out of a cineplex calling for Jewish blood. They are yelling for Jewish blood however, in many countries around the world, especially Muslims leaving their mosques after furious incitement by their Wahhabi-trained imams. On this subject, we hear less from some of these same critics, particularly Frank Rich, who this week found the time to laud the latest Michael Moore screed, presumably for its dedication to truthfulness. The Passion has not generated any pogroms in America, but a new insidious strand of Jew-hatred is creeping out of the closet and making its appearance in widely broadcast mainstream media. In an utterly shameful program on CBS's 60 Minutes last night, Steve Kroft conducted a fawning interview (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/ JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1085375921743&p=1078397702269) with retired General Anthony Zinni, the latest in the collection of recent authors brought onto the show to trash the Bush administration over Iraq, the war or terror, tax cuts, you name it. First was former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, then Richard Clarke, and then Bob Woodward. Credit some of this to sleaziness -- other Viacom companies publish some of these authors' books (not always mentioned during 60 Minutes). So these plugs which are broadcast before millions of viewers are a boost to sales, as well as a blow to Bush, creating real political and commercial synergy for CBS. In years past, ABC news, and its anchorman Peter Jennings, were the kings of disdain for the Bush Administration, and of course for Israel. A few weeks back, Ted Koppel devoted a longer-than-usual segment of Nightline to showing the faces and reading the names of all the soldiers killed in Iraq. To accompany the many caustic programs about Israel's security measures, Koppel broadcast a puff piece on Palestinian suicide bombers last year. But CBS has lapped the field this year. The Woodward interview was of interest, since Woodward's book is not, on balance, a body slam on the Administration. In fact the Bush campaign links to it on its website. But interviewer Mike Wallace made a point of pushing Woodward on only the sections of the book where the Administration came off unfavorably. Despite having 15 minutes for a story, instead of the 30 seconds to a minute on the nightly news, 60 Minutes has always been a program lacking in nuance, or (hold the laughter) balance. Within about 15 seconds, each segment's slant is obvious. Last night featured three puff pieces: one with Zinni, one with a convicted murderer of four people who has become a "good guy" on death row, and one with a philanthropist who sponsors inner city kids for college. But the Zinni piece was the lead, and the most important. Zinni has been a critic of the war with Iraq for some time. He believes Iraq was successfully contained before we went to war. This, in itself, is a reasonable position to take. This was a war of choice. Zinni also argues that if we chose to go to war, we needed more force strength. So he agrees with the Powell doctrine that you need lots of manpower, to insure a successful military campaign and post war outcome. Zinni says we had too few men at the start, and for the post war period. He also says that Ambassador Bremer has made some mistakes (I guess Zinni never has), including dismissing the Iraqi army, which he says eliminated any ability to get Iraqis to help secure the country, and was responsible for our forces being viewed as an occupation army. In itself, these criticisms are nothing new, and in fact, if this is the sum of what Zinni had to say, one wonders what contribution to the debate CBS thought he was making. Some supporters of the war effort agree with part of the Zinni critique -- particularly on the size of our force commitment. But Zinni is not comfortable just with criticism of how the war or post war effort was run. He needs to blame people, and he wants heads to fall. And he names names -- in particular the group he calls the "neocons", naming five men: Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Richard Perle, and Ellot Abrams, as the key ideologues who caused this war to occur. And their real justification for pushing the US to war, we learn from Zinni, were not the three stated by the Administration -- weapons of mass destruction, terror links, or gross human rights violations. Rather, it was to secure Israel, and to remake the Middle East in our image, a noble but unrealistic vision, according to the General. The fact that the named neocons are all Jewish, Zinni says, is accidental. He says this is irrelevant to him. But if it is irrelevant, why does he only provide the names of Jewish neocons? Are there no others? How Jewish is Jeanne Kirkpatrick or Bill Bennett? And what evidence does he have for his charge that the war was fought for Israel? Zinni never even touches on the three justifications the Administration offered for the war in the 60 Minutes segment. But Steve Kroft repeats the neocon slander, and the link to Israel, and names the Jewish names. This after all is the important part of the story. In late 2002, the earth collapsed below Senator Trent Lott, for making a joke about Strom Thurmond at a dinner gala that appeared to excuse his segregationist past. When Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd did the same thing, whitewashing former Klansman and now Senator Robert Bryd of West Virginia a few weeks back, the major media ignored the story. Then two weeks ago, the doddering and thankfully retiring Senator Fritz Hollings penned an op-ed for a South Carolina newspaper charging that the war in Iraq was fought for Israel, and to win Jewish votes for the Bush administration, and blaming three Jews for pushing us to war: Perle, Wolfowitz, and columnist Charles Krauthammer (if you are scoring, Perle and Wolfowitz now lead the villainy derby with two mentions each). With few exceptions, the mainstream media failed to report on Hollings's original charge, or his incoherent speech in Congress defending the article last week. None of this Jew-baiting is accidental. The road is being prepared for an ugly smear campaign against Jews and Israel. If the war is lost, then the American dead, and all the money spent, will be laid at the feet of a few Jewish political writers and government officials, most of whom are completely unknown to the vast majority of Americans, who can rarely name their Senators or Congressman. Part of this is simply politics, albeit an unusually ugly and dangerous politics. Think of the ads in the 2000 campaign run by the NAACP, about James Byrd being dragged from a truck in Jasper, Texas with the money line read by the murdered man's daughter: "when George Bush did not support new hates crimes legislation in Texas, it was like my father was lynched a second time". It is telling, and unfortunate, that the Jewish voices who feared the passions aroused by The Passion, are silent about the Jew-baiting over the war. We have not yet heard from Leon Wieseltier or Frank Rich about this (and with Rich, you know you won't). Abe Foxman, to his credit, was quick to denounce Hollings for his rant. For many Jews on the left, policy differences with the administration and the need to defeat George Bush trump any need for consistency in their responses to threats to America's Jews. The absurdity of the charge that the Jewish neocons led us to war requires one to believe that Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice are push-overs, without real views of their own, and they were therefore easily manipulated by the nefarious neocons. So Lewis Libby is the power behind Cheney, and Elliot Abrams the man behind Condoleeza Rice (how un-feminist to make this charge). Feith and Wolfowitz need only whisper in Rummy's ear, and he marches soldiers off to war. And masterminding all of it from afar, is the Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle. Now we have all learned these last few years that Dick Cheney tells George Bush what to do, so there is no need for Zinni to link any of the neocons directly to Bush. It is remarkable that people could buy such nonsense. We are not dealing here with an unusually cautious Presidency. That was the last one, except when it came to undergarments. But this Administration, if anything, has thrown caution to the wind. George Bush has risked his Presidency on Iraq. Bill Clinton feared losing a single man in battle, and had Dick Morris conduct a poll to determine how the public would react to his potential vacation locations one year. The leaders of this Administration appear to have great confidence in the actions they have taken and to believe in the justifications they have provided for their actions. There is a lot less self-doubt with this team than the last one. One may think this is a good thing or a bad thing. That is beside the point. But to argue that the leaders -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice -- are a bunch of wimps, manipulated by underlings, would be pretty far-fetched, even without the Jewish conspiracy charge. But the Jewish conspiracy charge is not accidental. Zinni, and his ilk do not have any serious hope that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or Rice will resign. Rumsfeld seems to have weathered the attacks against him for now. But the underlings are more vulnerable, and so are the Jews. For decades, Jews were not welcome in the State Department or intelligence agencies because of the professed fear by others in these agencies or departments that they would be a fifth column for Israel. The real problem of course, is that a fifth column already exists: generations of diplomats and politicians, in thrall to Arabia, who follow their government service by joining the Saudi sponsored think tanks, and Middle East institutes on campus, or as journalists penning the Arab party line. This was considered a natural and positive (lucrative) phenomenon. Of course, keep these oily wallets open for the next generation. But these pesky Jews have upset the natural order. They are threatening the money train, and have hijacked foreign policy, all for Ariel Sharon, of course. So in the end, these attacks have a more insidious purpose: not just to tar the Jews in America, but to undermine support for Israel, by the malicious suggestion that Israel is really creating American foreign policy through its neocon strike force, and that Sharon is responsible for sending American boys off to die for Israel. The left was happy to call Pat Buchanan on the rug for similar anti-Semitic slanders during the first Gulf War (given the elder Bush's frosty relationship with Israel, the Buchanan charge was laughable). Now the charges are being made by mainstream voices and aired on national television to wide audiences. The purveyors of this trash (the Steve Krofts of the world) are either knaves, or accomplices. Somewhere, Pat Buchanan is smiling. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

HOW ARAB CIVILIANS GOT KILLED IN GAZA Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 26, 2004.

The P.A. organized hundreds of demonstrators in a combat zone. Among them were gunmen. The crowd advanced on the Israeli soldiers. First the IDF fired a missile as a warning. Then it fired flares, as a safe warning. The crowd advanced. Then the IDF fired a machine gun at an abandoned wall, to show it was serious. Then it knocked down the wall with tank shells, lest its view of the mob be obstructed. Although the troops did not aim at the crowd, five armed Arabs and two civilians were killed in an explosion. The IDF regrets this, is investigating, and offered medial assistance. The P.A. (as usual) exaggerated the casualties and blames Israel instead of its own mob tactics and war crime of concealing gunmen among civilians as human shields. The IDF believes that the tank shells must have set off one of the many explosives with which the Arabs booby-trap their buildings and alleys (IMRA, 5/19). Then what is there to apologize for? What do you think the "protestors" would have done if the IDF had not dispersed them? Apology implies guilt. Instead, Israel should take the propaganda offensive against these Arab tactics. OTHER ARAB EXAGGERATION In the Arab world, the IDF razing of a few houses is likened to the scorched earth policy of Sherman's march through Georgia. Actually, most of the recent damage to buildings in Gaza is from combat, not pre-planned demolition (Ibid.). Besides, the Arabs implant so many explosives, that many buildings are bound to blow up. Hence the frequent Arab "work accidents" in their arms laboratories and the extra destruction in the famous battle at Jenin, not that there was that much. ARAB SELF-DEMOLITION Arabs in Rafah have done some demolition on their own. They removed 30 rooftops, then applied for compensation from the P.A. or international relief organizations (Prof. Steven Plaut, 5/20, email). Remember, economic crime is an Arab cultural tradition. U.S. LETS UNO CONDEMN ISRAEL OVER DEATHS IN GAZA The U.S. abstained from a one-sided United Nations Organizations Security Council condemnation of Israel for killing Arab civilians in the crowd menacing Israeli troops. The UNO did not condemn the Arab civilians for staying in the crowd with gunmen advancing on the Israeli troops and sure to force a shooting confrontation with those troops. At the same time, the US was being accused of doing the same in Iraq, killing even more people. The US said that the slain wedding party was in a suspected safe house for terrorists it had to bomb. Israel explained that if it didn't exercise initiative against terrorism, Gaza would become a terrorist missile base (Arutz-7, 5/20). That explanation is unassailable. Then why would Sharon withdraw? Speculation is that the Left is forcing him to, on pain of being indicted for bribery. The civilians knowingly risked their lives when they gave the Israeli troops no choice. 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

ARAB SUMMIT Posted by Barry Rubin, May 25, 2004.

The long-awaited Arab League summit being held in Tunis may not produce anything of substance but is a marvelous index on the current state of Arab politics. The attempt to hold a summit in late March collapsed when the governments could not even organize the meeting. This time, the leaders of eight of the twenty-two member states failed to come at all and a ninth, Libyan ruler Muammar Qadhafi, walked out of the opening session, criticizing the summit as meaningless, while Jordan's King Abdallah didn't stay for the whole meeting. In short, the Arab League summit is the greatest proof of the lack of Arab unity or cooperation and the inability of Arab states to do anything effective. After all, the Arab world faces a myriad of massive problems including dictatorships, economic stagnation, low living standards and high population growth, conflicts with Israel, crisis in Iraq, and terrorism. The summit did not deal seriously with any of these issues. What was most significant, however, was that the meeting did not simply take the usual course of agreeing to blame the United States and Israel for all these problems. This outcome may in part reflect the growing difficulty of sweeping issues under the rug and some need to react to an era in which the United States and Britain have overthrown the ruler of Iraq, one of the League's formerly most powerful members. Yet the final communique, called the Pledge of Accord and Solidarity, while not fiery and radical, was also vague even by the Arab League's usual standards. Sensitive to accusations of the League's ineffectiveness and its members' autocracy, the resolution pledged four things that everyone knows will not happen: that the regimes will work together, act to benefit their people, carry out reforms, and implement the League's resolutions. Regarding democratization, the document promises "broader participation in public affairs" for the people, "responsible freedom of expression," human rights, and the strengthening of the role of women "in line with our faith, values and traditions." Members would "continue the steps of comprehensive reform in political, economic, social and educational fields in order to achieve sustained development." This is in response to U.S. demands for change and some internal criticism from Arab liberals. Presumably, Arab governments can now say that they do not need any outside pressure, advice, or help since they are already taking care of the problem themselves. Perhaps more revealing was a phrase promising that Arab governments would strive to "avoid the ordeals of sedition, division and infighting." Presumably, these words represent the view that too much openness and democracy will bring internal chaos, ethnic strife, partisanship, and the possibility of a radical Islamist takeover. These are arguments for maintaining the status quo. The situation in Iraq only makes such fears more credible. Similarly, the document advocates more of the same on the regional level. The members promise to work toward "strengthening our collective potential in order to safeguard the sovereignty, security and safety of Arab lands" and resolving inter-Arab disputes peacefully. The subtext here is that otherwise Western states might intervene to impose their own solutions. But that's about it. Other than calling for a return to negotiations to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict, there is no action plan, new ideas, or calls for compromise on that question. In general, then, the communique can be viewed either as a vague statement designed to satisfy everyone or as a relatively moderate response to the region's explosive situation. No doubt the League's ineffectiveness and empty words will be widely ridiculed throughout the Arab world. Yet the governments have proven adept at playing both sides in this debate. Participants in a small demonstration outside the Arab League's headquarters in Cairo shouted, "We do not want condemnations. We want missiles!" Most Arab regimes easily combine moderate official statements aimed at the West with continual incitement in domestically directed speeches as well as state-controlled media, schools, and mosques which demand greater militancy. Professor Barry Rubin is Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). To Go To Top

"PEACE NOW" UNDER SECURITY INVESTIGATION Posted by David Bedein, May 25, 2004.

This week, the Israeli "Peace Now" organization revealed that it has been conducting aerial surveillance of Israeli Jewish communities in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria in order to determine the extent of settlement expansion. At the same time, the Israeli Knesset Parliamentary Interior Committee held a special session to discuss foreign government funding of Israeli leftwing movements. Documents shared with the Knesset Interior Committee confirmed that the Peace Now organization received a budget in the amount of 50,000 Euros from the government of Finland to conduct intelligence activities in Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan, Gaza and Jerusalem. The Knesset Committee examined a Peace Now grant application to the government of Finland that indicated how Peace Now intended to use the grant. This included regular bi-monthly ground surveys to be conducted with the purpose of documenting the numbers of empty houses in settlements and ongoing construction in settlements. This work engages tens of volunteers, who travel around the West Bank in cars (armored if possible) tracking developments. Also included was a provision for aerial photography: twice a month a light plane is rented in order to allow "settlement" watch staff to ascertain the extent of ongoing physical expansion in existing "settlements." Once a baseline survey is completed, subsequent surveys can be used to measure expansion using GIS satellite positioning overlays. The document stated that this "mechanism will yield tangible graphic and quantitative data for the public." Peace Now defined its objectives to the government of Finland in the following manner: "To monitor settlement developments on the ground, accurately and reliably; to make this information available to the Israeli and international publics; to advance the fulfillment of the Road Map." Peace Now identifies the "target groups" for the government of Finland as the "Israeli public, the Israeli political leadership, International Diplomatic Corps and Israeli and international press." Peace Now defined the "final result of the activities" for the government of Finland as "Regular and reliable reports, in real time, disclosing the situation of settlement construction; regular and reliable reports, in real times, monitoring the dismantlement of outposts and settlements according to requirements of the Road Map; contacts with diplomats, leaders and press in order to convey reliable information on all aspect of settlement issues." Despite its insistence that it is an "educational foundation" that seeks to serve the Israeli public, it is obvious that Peace Now is far from being an indigenous Israeli organization, functioning instead as an agent for foreign governments. In fact, it indicated in the Finnish grant request that it also received $100,000 from the "Americans for Peace Now" and 150,000 Euros from "European Foundations" for its "settlement watch project." A spokesperson for Peace Now stated that the "European Foundations" mentioned in their grant request to the Finnish government were actually funds from the European Union. In other words, Peace Now receives the bulk of its funding from other foreign European governments, few of which have been favorable to Israel's plight in the War on Terror. The Israel Penal Code for Espionage was distributed to Knesset Interior Committees, and clause 3 defines "photography of sensitive areas of Israel for any foreign power" as an act of espionage, punishable by ten years imprisonment if convicted. Dr. Yuri Stern, Chairman of the Knesset Interior Committee, announced that he would ask his legal counsel to examine the matter and report back to the committee if there were indeed grounds for application of the Israel Penal Code's special clauses on espionage against Peace Now. While the Knesset interior committee members carefully listened and examined the documents relating to allegations of felonious activity by Peace Now, the Peace Now lobbyist, Behira Bardugo, screamed at Committee Chairman Dr. Stern and accused the committee of not investigating those who financed the campaign to defeat Ariel Sharon in the recent referendum campaign over the Prime Minister's unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza. When Stern explained that there is a difference between funding from a private individual and funding that is received from a government, Bardugo reacted with surprise, and simply said that there is no difference. Apart from the matter of funding, the major problem is that Peace Now documents sensitive information that can be used to jeopardize not only Israel's public, but also its military. The Peace Now settlement expansion maps include military installations and the maps are featured in all PLO offices. Israeli army bases have been attacked and Israeli soldiers killed. These are the sons and daughters of Israel drafted to protect the country against a dangerous and heinous enemy. Thus, Peace Now is not engaged in a simple matter of documenting settlements; rather, the organization provides information that can easily used against Israel. In these cases, every bit of information counts. Everything is relevant when it comes to protecting the people of Israel. For instance, in late May 2002, a settlement watch group organized by the "Christian Peace Makers Team" reported to its e-mail list that it had successfully photographed the fence surrounding the Carmei Tzur settlement. The CPT proudly reported that it had shown several breaches in the fence. The next day, the CSM met with the Fateh (Arafat's mainstream terror group) in Bethlehem. Two days later, late at night, armed members of the Fateh infiltrated the Carmei Tzur settlement at the precise breach that the CPT had photographed. The Fateh used that breach to murder a civilian couple in their bed. The wife was eight months pregnant. The decision will now rest with Israel's legal system whether and how to enforce the espionage clauses of the Israel Penal Code for those organizations who choose to photograph the most sensitive landscapes of Israel on the payroll and at the behest of foreign governments. David Bedein is the bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency, located at the Beit Agron International Press Center in Jerusalem and a Fellow, Center for Near East Policy Research, Wellesley, Mass. This article appeared on Front Page Magazine (www.FrontPageMagazine.com) May 21, 2004. It is archived as www.israelunitycoalition.org/html/article.html?id=3676 To Go To Top

DO THEY UNDERSTAND WHAT ZIONISM IS ALL ABOUT? Posted by Michael Anbar, May 25, 2004.

I had an interesting discussion with a Jewish friend. He considers himself a Zionist. He supports the Jewish State in many ways - he visited the country a number of times, he contributes to several fund raising drives, he bought Israel bonds, and so on. When it comes to the Israeli-Arab conflict, he laments about the failure of Camp David. He hates Arafat for not accepting the far-reaching concessions offered to him by President Clinton and endorsed by Ehud Barak, including establishing a Palestinian capital in part of Jerusalem. When I asked him why should Arafat have accepted those offers, he answered that Arafat should have understood that the Jews are there to stay, because they have no other place to go. 'After all,' he said 'the Israelis do not ask the Arabs to leave, just to share their land with the Jews.' 'What about the right of return?' I asked. He looked at me and said: 'This is impossible. There is no room for them. Israel must remain a Jewish state. It is the only independent state the Jews have. Having an independent Jewish state has always been the goal of Zionism.' 'Is that so?' I asked 'Then why not have a Jewish independent state in Uganda?' You are nuts', he said 'Just imagine living under Idi Amin or falling a victim to tribal warfare, they would kill all the Jews, look at what is happening in Kenya these days.' 'Well, then why are you surprised by the Arabs killing Jews in Tel Aviv?' 'This is different.' He said 'Tel Aviv is a Jewish city. Besides, the State of Israel was recognized by the United Nations.' 'So why should Jerusalem become the capital of an Arab state?' 'We don't want more trouble with those Arabs,' he answered 'There are whole quarters of Jerusalem populated with Arabs. Who needs this headache?' 'Then why not declare part of New York City a Jewish capital? There are more Jews in some quarters of New York City than in Jewish Jerusalem.' 'You don't know what you are talking! Lets stop talking nonsense.' So we stopped. We got into this absurd discussion because my friend does not understand what Zionism is all about. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding, which is quite common, justifies the hostile position of the Arab and their sympathizers. Genuine Zionism is aimed at reestablishing sovereignty of the Jewish people over their ancient homeland. Deeply ingrained in Jewish culture is the craving of Jews to regain sovereignty over Jerusalem their ancient capital. This is true 'Zionism'. This term has been adopted by a political movement established by the turn of the 20th Century, aimed to meet this goal. Zionism is not a political movement aimed at establishing a homeland for homeless Jews. It is not setting up a Jewish 'reservation', no matter on which continent (Grand Island, Uganda, or Tasmania). To fully understand the cultural meaning of Zionism, without knowing Jewish history, may not be trivial. Even Theodore Herzl, the founder of the Zionist movement, who came from a secular assimilatory background and was moved by the urgent need to find a home for Eastern European Jewish refugees, did not understand this early on. It became clear to him only when he needed popular Jewish support for his new movement. Zionism was not invented in the First Zionist Congress in Basle in 1897. Psalm 137 'Besides the streams of Babylon we sat and wept at the memory of Zion ' Jerusalem, if I forget you, may my right hand wither, may I never speak again, if I forget you!' is a twenty-five hundred years old Zionist expression. Nehemiah, who came to Jerusalem about 440 BCE, giving up a high position in the Persian court, was a Zionist and so was Hillel who emigrated from Mesopotamia four hundred years later. So was Judah Halevi, the philosopher-poet who wrote: 'My heart is in the East and I am in the depths of the West' How can I fulfill the pledges and vows, when Zion is in the power of Edom and I am in the fetters of Arabia? It will be nothing for me to leave all the goodness of Spain. So good it will be to see the dust of the ruined sanctuary.' Halevi immigrated to Israel in 1141 AD. The hundreds of Jewish Rabbis who immigrated to Israel in 1211, followed by Nahmanides is 1267, were all Zionists. And so were hundreds of other Jewish spiritual leaders and scholars and thousands of their followers who came to the Land of Israel over hundreds of years, way before the modern political Zionist movement was even conceived. The 1878 establishment of Petah Tikvah, the first 'modern' agricultural settlement in the Land of Israel, preceded Herzl's political Zionism by more than a decade. While modern political Zionism is of secular nature, its origins are deeply rooted in traditional Judaism. The traditional Jewish Passover Seder has ended with 'Next year in Jerusalem'probably since the destruction of the Second Temple. Zionism is a characteristic manifestation of Jewish culture and not a political movement to solve the 'Jewish problem.' Zionism is definitely not looking for territory to settle displaced Jews, as claimed by the Arabs and even by some socialist Israeli 'modern historians'. Socialism, as a political movement, has considered Zionism an anachronistic ideology because Zionism is rooted in religion, disdained by 'true' socialists. Even today, you find members of the Israeli political left who hardly care if Jerusalem, the ancient capital of the Jewish People, would become a capital of an Arab state. They may even realize that the Arabs' demand to divide Jerusalem, is just the first step in eventual banishing the Jews from their ancient capital (the historical existence of which Arabs openly deny). Still the leadership of the Israeli leftists is ready to accept such a humiliating political solution because adherence to biblical or Rabbinic Judaism, to which Jerusalem is central, has religious connotations, and these do not suit 'pure' secular socialism. In this context one can understand why socialistic Israeli youth movements in the 30's replaced 'Hatikvah', Israel's Zionist national anthem by 'Tehezakna', a poem that glorifies agricultural work. Since the national anthem refers to the two-thousand-year-old Jewish yearning to be a free nation in the Land of Zion, it had to be replaced. My friend considers himself a liberal, i.e., a secular socialistic Zionist. However, these two ideologies do not harmonize. True cosmo-political Socialism and genuine Zionism do not mix. My friend sees the presence of five and a half million Jews in Israel as a wonderful solution for all those Jewish refugees, who came from Europe, the Arab countries, former Russia and South America. He gladly supports them materially. However, religious American Jews who immigrate to Israel for genuine Zionist ideological reasons, many of whom settle in the 'disputed territories,' might trouble him. 'These are not refugees.' he thinks, 'Why are they doing this?' Moreover, 'Why do they cause political trouble over there with their 'zealous' ideas?' 'Socialistic Zionism' is full of internal contradictions. Like in the dialog I had with my friend, one can reach absurd conclusions. Some of these conclusions match the Arab claims that Jews have no special right to the Land of Israel, that they are racists by arbitrarily giving priority to Jewish immigrants, that they even encourage such a biased immigration, that they do not implement 'affirmative action' to prefer impoverished Arab workers in the job market, etc. Socialists in Norway and the rest of Europe, who are 'enlightened' by their Israeli colleagues and look critically at the situation, readily discover these contradictions. They then try to 'straighten out' the 'confused' Israelis by putting economic and political pressure on the more conservative but deeply divided 'National Unity' government of Israel. What is even worse, the Israeli 'socialistic Zionists' now look at the Camp David concessions as an ideal political solution, in spite of their suicidal shortcomings from a traditional Zionist standpoint. After more than 600 Israeli fatalities, victims of indiscriminate Arab terror, they seem to be ready again to reward the Arabs by giving up their exclusive right to the Jewish capital, which they might lose altogether in a few years in a renewed wave of terror. If Jerusalem has no historical-religious value for the Jews, why should it not become an Arab city? There is just one kind of true Zionism imbedded in Jewish national culture. Zionism does mandate sovereignty over the Land of Israel, the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, including Jerusalem its capital. In any political settlement, the Palestinian Arabs and Arabs in the neighboring countries must recognize the Land of Israel as the ancient homeland of the Jewish people, with Jerusalem as its capital. This is what true Zionism is all about. The creation of a demilitarized independent Arab state in parts of the Land of Israel, in order to alleviate conflicts between Arabs and Jews, is not in variance with Zionism, as long as Jews have the right to live anywhere within the Arab state as its citizens, just like Israeli Arabs have now the right to live anywhere within the Jewish state. Coming back to socialism and liberalism, a Zionist state can readily adhere to the basic premises of equality and social welfare irrespective of religious affiliation, which are socialistic fundamentals. It can also implement separation between synagogue and state, like in practically all modern democracies, without giving up the historical ties to its homeland (personally, I hope this happens soon). Let us remember that biblical Judaism has often denounced institutional religion and religious hypocrisy; unfortunately, we have a lot of it in Israel today. Biblical Judaism established the foundations of social welfare and equal treatment of resident aliens. Christianity, secular democracy, and later Marxism and socialism, emulated those originally Jewish basic principles of social behavior. For the sake of survival of the Jewish people worldwide, I hope that genuine Zionism, based on the historical yearning of Jews for their homeland, prevails in the one and only Jewish state. Accepting these tenets of Zionism by all people, Jews and non-Jews alike, is the only guaranty for long-term peace and prosperity in the Middle East. Michael Anbar , Ph.D., is a Professor of Biophysics and Chairman of Dept. of Biophysical Sciences at the School of Medicine, University of Buffalo (1977-2002, now retired). Previously, he was Director of Technical Program Development, at the Stanford Research Institute. To Go To Top

GRASSROOTS DEMOCRACY IN GAZA Posted by Bryna Berch, May 25, 2004.

This was a news item from Arutz-7 (www.IsraelNationalRadio.com) today. This is democracy in effective action. And for those who say it's only the Likud that wants to hold onto Yesha, may I remind them that in the last election Israelis voted for Sharon because he promised to get tough on terrorism. It was his opponent, Amram Mitzna, who wanted to give up the Jewish towns in Gaza. He lost. "Face-to-Face, Part Two" is underway. Following the success, on several levels, of last month's campaign in which thousands of Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza) residents visited tens of thousands of Likud members, a "new, improved and more concentrated" version of the program has now taken off. In the framework of the grassroots struggle to ensure that the Likud membership turned down Prime Minister Sharon's "disengagement/eviction/retreat" plan earlier this month, thousands of people visited the homes of most of the 200,000 Likud members, explaining to them the physical and ideological dangers of the withdrawal. In addition to the many who were persuaded to see the wisdom of retaining a Jewish presence in Gaza, many people also said they were happy to have the chance to meet and exchange ideas with other Jews whom they generally do not encounter. Some of the points that were raised in the face-to-face discussions included: * the display of national despair and lack of faith involved in retreating from our homeland in the face of the threat of violence * the "ethical crime" involved in throwing out from their homes the thousands of people who for decades have braved the inconvenience and dangers of living on the frontlines * the dangerous precedent of running away in the face of terrorism * the lack of control that Israel will have over terrorist activities in Gaza * the increased dangers of terrorists acting in the Erez Crossing, which will remain under Israeli control * the unilateral nature of the withdrawal leaves the Arabs of Gaza with no obligations * the verbal guarantees from the United States that do not bind the Congress or future American Presidents * the economic costs of the evacuation and expulsion * the national disgrace of giving over the homes and synagogues of the victims to those who shot at and killed them. Part Two of the program began last Thursday, when hundreds of people from Gush Katif and many other towns in Yesha visited the homes of some of the 3,000 Likud Central Committee members. As opposed to the earlier version, when people would try to visit 10-15 homes in an evening, the visitors set off this time - as well as last night and the night before - with only six names and addresses to visit. "The goal now," explained one organizer, "is to build not only short-range relationships, but also long-lasting ones. We want to discuss with them the immediate dangers of the evacuation of outposts and full-fledged communities - but we also want to go way beyond that. We want to say that the problem of the Arabs and terrorism is a long-standing one that will not be solved in one day, and that meanwhile we have many other fronts on which to work. We must not let this one issue stand in the way of advancing ourselves in many other areas, such as education, and economics, and Aliyah (immigration to Israel). We must - all of us, together - begin to look at issues not just from one-day-to-the-next, but how we want our society to look in a decade from now. We have to restore vision, faith and our links with our Jewish roots to the way in which we plan our future." The Likud Central Committee comprises some 3,000 party stalwarts who determine the Likud's list of Knesset candidates and, indirectly, those who will become Cabinet ministers. In the framework of the "shorter-range" goals of the current campaign, they are being asked to "use their influence." One of the visitors explained, "We ask them to sign a petition against the uprooting of outposts and the unilateral withdrawal, and to send faxes to the ministers and MKs. These faxes either say straight out, or merely imply - depending on each person's style - that they will not support those who vote against the party platform..." "I came with my wife and baby," said one visitor, "and happened to meet 'our man' as he was about to set off on a walk with his dog. When he saw my wife and baby, and realized why we had come, he immediately turned around and invited us in. We stayed for an hour... We invited him to visit us in our home - either on a personal visit, or on an organized bus tour together with others. I'll call him back in a week or two to finalize the details." To Go To Top

TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS EXPLOIT UNRWA VEHICLES Posted by Aaron Lerner, May 25, 2004.

This is Special Information Bulletin May 2004 from the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Center for Special Studies (C.S.S) Terrorist organizations exploit UNRWA vehicles: during the Israeli army operation in the Zeitun quarter of Gaza, UNWRA vehicles were used to smuggle armed terrorists out of the area and in all probability remains of Israeli soldiers as well (www.intelligence.org.il/eng/sib/5_04/unrwa.htm) 1.Reuters has a video cassette of pictures taken during the Israeli army operation in the Zeitun quarter of Gaza City on May 11, 2004. It shows armed Palestinians using UNRWA ambulances to transport terrorists and possibly also remains of fallen Israeli soldiers. 2.Partial confirmation came from the statement made on May 13 by a UN spokesman, that during the incident (which occurred in Gaza on May 11), armed Palestinians threatened an UNRWA ambulance team and forced them to transport an armed and wounded Palestinian and his two armed escorts to a Gaza hospital. The spokesman noted that UNRWA censured the action "in the strongest terms possible." He also noted that armed personnel are not permitted to enter UNRWA vehicles on any pretext whatsoever, and called upon Israel and the Palestinians to respect the agency's neutrality. 3.In addition, since the beginning of the current ongoing hostilities, several incidents have been recorded in which terrorist organizations have used UNRWA facilities and vehicles (including ambulances) to facilitate their terrorist operations. Two prominent examples are: a.Nidal 'Abd al-Fataah 'Abdallah Nizal, a Hamas activist from Qalqiliya who worked as an UNRWA ambulance driver (arrested in August 2002), admitted he had used one such vehicle to transport munitions to terrorists and had also exploited the freedom of movement he enjoyed to transmit messages to and from Hamas activists in various places. b.Nahd Rashid Ahmad Atallah, a senior UNRWA employee working in the Gaza Strip who was in charge of distributing aid to refugees (arrested in August 2002), admitted that during June and July 2002 he had given rides in his car - an UNRWA vehicle - to armed terrorists belonging to the Popular Resistance Committees. The terrorists were on their way to attack Israeli soldiers at the Karni Checkpoint and to fire rockets at Israeli settlement in the northern Gaza Strip. He also used his UNRWA car to transport a bomb weighing 12 kg (about 25 lbs) to his brother-in-law, a Popular Resistance Committees operative (Note: the Popluar Resistance Committees are a militant faction of Fatah and are active primarily in the Gaza Strip). 4.Nahd Atallah explained that he had used his car to transport terrorists to their targets because it belonged to the United Nations, and since the Israeli army did not search such vehicles, he could travel freely. His admission is a striking example of the way terrorist organizations exploit the privileges of relaxed security restrictions accorded UNRWA vehicles by Israeli forces. Such privileges are the result of humanitarian considerations and the Israeli desire to maintain correct relations with UN representatives active in the Palestinian Authority-administered territories. 5.Additional information about past exploitation by terrorists of UNRWA personnel, vehicles and facilities can be found at the Center for Special Studies Website. Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis). Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il This article is archived as http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20955 To Go To Top

"OCCUPIED TERRITORIES?" Posted by Dr. Asher Eder, May 25, 2004.

Using common Arab parlance, many people refer to the so-called "West Bank" as "occupied territories". Both these terms --"West Bank" and "occupied territories" -- were invented for purposes of Arab propaganda. The term "West Bank" describes a certain geographic entity, a small strip of land west of the Jordan River, roughly the area known as Judea and Samaria. In contrast, the term occupied territory (or territories) is generally applied to the occupied part, or the whole of, another nation. Since 1967, Arab propaganda, and in its wake the media of the world, have applied it to the "West Bank", without justification. The Turkish (Ottoman) Empire collapsed in 1917, and its former territory became independent nations: Turkey proper, Egypt, Trans-Jordan, etc, -- with one exception: The land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. In 1922 the League of Nations granted Great Britain a "Mandate" to pursue the "Balfour Declaration" of l917 and to administer that land accordingly. The British named it Palestine, taking this name from the Romans. (In the 2nd century C.E., the Emperor Hadrian wished to erase the term "Land of Israel" -- cf. Matthew 2:20 -- and renamed the country after Israel's arch-enemy, the Philistines). Interestingly enough, "Palestine" was legally never part of the British Empire (although the British treated it as if it were, particularly Haifa). It remained administered territory, but legally ownerless. When Arab hostilities against Jewish immigration reached new peaks after World War Two, the United Nations came forward with their "Partition Plan" of November 29, 1947. In the ensuing civil war, England gave up its "Mandate" and withdrew its last soldiers on May 14, 1948. The following day Israel declared its independence, and 24 hours later the armies of seven Arab nations attacked the newly born state. These nations did not declare war, as that would have implied a recognition of Israel's existence as a state. They saw -- and still see -- the whole land (of Palestine) as part of the Dar-es-Salam (the "Residence of Peace/Islam") which the P.L.O. (= Palestine Liberation Organization) has vowed to restore to the rule of Islam. The concept of Dar-es-Salam, however, is an internal theological concept of Islam which may entail political consequences for its adherents, but there is no political entity, not even the Arab League, which would or could represent it in an international forum). Israel emerged from this war with cease fire lines with its neighbors determined by the armistice agreements of 1948/9. Later, these lines became known as the "1967 borders", a term which outlines Israel's territory before the Six Day War. In the War of 1948, the Emirate of Trans-Jordan conquered the greater portion of the area which the U.N.O.'s Partition Plan of 1947 had designated to become an Arab Palestinian state. Trans-Jordan then annexed this territory, including East Jerusalem, and re-named itself The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. As Jordan had previously existed for several decades on the East bank of the Jordan River, it coined the term, "West Bank" to lend legitimacy to this land grab. While the majority of the United Nations recognized the State of Israel officially and accepted her as a member state, no nation of the world, not even Arab nations, officially recognized Jordan's annexation of the "West Bank". The sole exceptions were England and Pakistan, and the legality of the recognition by the latter seems to have some serious question marks. In other words, the so-called "West Bank" is still ownerless from the legal point of view. Israel's military operation in 1967 against Jordan was triggered by the latter's hostilities (shelling of West Jerusalem, etc), and as self-defense, was legal within the frame of international law. The new cease fire lines brought Judea and Samaria -- the so-called "West Bank" -- under Israel's military and later civil administration. If the "West Bank" was ever occupied illegally, it was done so by Trans-Jordan in 1948, as pointed out above. In contrast, the people of Israel returned to the "Land of the Fathers" in accordance with the Divine Prophecies -- without any violation of international law. We should not senselessly repeat Arab propaganda slogans. Under the prevailing circumstances, we should refer to these territories by their Biblical names: Judea and Samaria. Dr. Asher Eder is Jewish Co-Founder and Co-Chairman, Islam-Israel Fellowship, Root & Branch Association, Ltd. He is author of "The Star of David: An Ancient Symbol of Integration" (Rubin Mass, Jerusalem, 1987). Send email to: avrason@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

PEACEFUL RELIGION IS NOT SPELLED I-S-L-A-M Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 25, 2004.

This article was written by Mychal S. Massie and appeared on the World Net Daily website (www.wnd.com). Mychal Massie is an op-ed columnist and talk-radio guest host. He also makes regular appearances on political and community-oriented programs in the Philadelphia, Pa. area, is a self-employed business owner of 30 years and a frequent inspirational speaker. Certainly there are those within Islam who do not subscribe to the atrocities I am about to discuss, but their peaceful practice of Islam doesn't make it a peaceful religion. A peaceful religion is similar to that of Richard Gere and his Buddhist brethren. Professor Moshe Sharon (see Think-Israel, January-February 2004 issue) of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem writes: Islam was born with the idea that it should rule the world ... Judaism speaks about national salvation - namely that at the end of the story, when the world becomes a better place, Israel will be in its own land, ruled by its own king and serving God. Christianity speaks about the idea that every single person in the world can be saved from his sins, while Islam speaks about ruling the world ... quoting a verse in English ... 'Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions.' The idea, then, is not that the whole world would become a Muslim world at this time, but that the whole world would be subdued under the rule of Islam ... Wherever you have Islam, you will have war. It grows out of the attitude of Islamic civilization. Consider: There are about 400 recognized terrorist groups in the world. Over 90 percent of these are Islamist groups. Over 90 percent of the current world fighting involves Islamist terror movements. The vast majority of world terrorism is religiously motivated by Islam. This includes Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan, Lebanon, Indonesia, all of the Emirates, Sudan, Philippines, India, Libya, Algeria, Malaysia, Spain, Morocco, Yemen, Syria, Tunisia, Jordan and, finally, what they call the "occupied territory" - Israel. Louis Farrakhan is the face of Islam in America. Is his message one of peace? According to a recent story in WorldNetDaily (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38552), "A British Muslim convert characterized an alleged mission to bomb the Israeli embassy in Australia as his obligation to Allah to perform jihad ..." The man went on to say, "As Muslims we are obligated to perform jihad to uphold the laws of Allah, the truth on his earth." There have been Baptists calling for Hollywood to produce programming fit for family consumption - but I cannot point to Baptists calling for Hollywood to be destroyed because it is comprised of Jews and infidels. There exist doctrinal differences between Wesleyans, Nazarenes and charistmatics - most notably on the subject of glossolalia - but I have never heard these groups refer to one another as infidels or call for annihilation. But true followers of Islam cannot make that claim. According to Dr. Mark Gabriel ("Islam and Terrorism"), "There are 114 verses in the Quran that speak of love, forgiveness and peace (Meccan verses). All are abrogated by Sudah 9:5, known as 'The Verse of The Sword,' which came later in Muhammad's life (Medina): Find and slay the pagans [non-Muslims] wherever you find them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them, in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent [convert to Islam], and establish regular prayers and practice regular charity, them open up a way for them: for Allah is oft forgiving, most merciful ... Surah 9:5 I cannot think of any practicing Catholics I know who would be overjoyed if their daughter married an unrepentant atheist. But I am unwaveringly confident that their priest would not call for her to be stabbed or axed to death for having brought dishonor to the family. Yet, as WorldNetDaily reported in April (http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38173) , that is exactly what a Muslim Jordanian man did to his 8-months pregnant sister. And a Muslim Kurd murdered his 16-year-old daughter for starting a relationship with a Lebanese Christian boy in September 2003. WND further reported "an anthropologist's study said dozens and probably hundreds of brutal 'honor killings' of Palestinian women and girls ... annually go unreported." Such occurrences have taken place in the United States. Some may try to dismiss or argue away these examples as anecdotal, but they are anything but. The recent beheading of Nick Berg sickened us, but this act was practiced and sanctioned by Muhammad himself. In an article published by Barnabas Fund on May 14, "Hundreds of Christians die in bloody massacres in Kano," the Christian Association of Nigeria reported Muslim rioters had murdered 600-plus Christians and burned 12 Christian churches in one night. Pregnant women were "ripped open and their bodies burned." In Jersey City and Newark, N.J., it wasn't Mennonites or Methodists who celebrated in the streets as 3,000-plus Americans (Muslims included) were murdered. Every morning of every day we read and hear of atrocities committed by fanatical Muslims. Christians are commonly politicized as being hardcore and fanatical; but decapitation is not Christian theology. Many Muslims in this country may be peaceful, but apart from the radical activities of groups like the Council of Arab Islamic Relations, I've not heard a cacophony of their voices. But we should. After all it wasn't Mormons standing on a bridge in Fallujah shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great) while the remains of innocent mutilated Americans burned. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

THE STATE OF ISRAEL FROM THE RIO-GRANDE TO THE HUANHE Posted by Rabbi Avraham Shmulevich, May 24, 2004.

Virtually no one in the entire world believes that the demolition of Jewish villages in the Gaza Strip and ZAHAL's withdraw behind the "green line" (the border of the seize-fire during the Independence war) will reconcile Israel with the Arabs. Nor does anyone believe that the mass-media dream from the time of the "Oslo process" -- one of tranquil tourist trips to Damascus or the markets of Shechem and Gaza, one of the P.L.O. and the HAMAS publicly renouncing their violent struggle against Israel and disbanding -- will ever come true. On the contrary, after the Israeli retreat, the degree of terror will most certainly increase, especially as the terrorist organizations operating within Gaza are already under the strong influence of the Hizbollah and Iran, receiving money and instructors from them. After Israel's withdrawal, the presence of our country's worst enemies in a ten minutes' drive from Ashdod and Ashkelon will grow. Since the beginning of the "peace process", terrorist attacks have started to take place with a fearful regularity. They have almost become the daily norm, and our leadership has simply accepted the fact that this will also be the case in the future. Furthermore, the "world public", along with the European countries, demand that Israel must stop the "unlawful liquidation of terrorists", which practically means giving up the fight against terror altogether. The same position is held by the U.S.A. Is America really that blind? Or is it naively seeing the Islamic fanatics as fighters for freedom and independence? Neither. The Americans, the Europeans and the rest of the world simply pursue their own interests, orientating themselves towards the strongest, and in the current situation, the Arabs, the HAMAS and the P.L.O. appear to them to be the strongest, the most dynamic and the most promising side. Samuel Huntington, one of the main ideologists of modern American foreign policy, wrote in The Clash of Civilizations: "As revolutions unfold, moderates, Girondists and Mensheviks lose to radicals, Jacobeans and Bolsheviks. Similar processes usually take place along the break-up lines of civilizations. Those who are moderate and have narrow aims (for example, autonomy instead of independence) are unable to succeed by means of negotiations, which usually fail right at the beginning. They are therefore displaced and forced out by radicals, who aim at far more remote targets using violent methods." It is he who sets himself daring tasks on a global scale who wins in the eyes of the public opinion, too. Arafat, the P.L.O. and the HAMAS have set themselves such a target: To create their own state where Israel now stands. That being done, the whole world will hold its breath to lend them an ear. Israel, at the same time, is in a state of crisis. This is primarily a crisis of ideas and of ideology. It resembles the one happening a hundred years ago, when the question about the re-creation of Israeli was raised for the first time. The path then taken -- the creation of an independent Jewish state as a solution to the problems of security and the economic existence of the Jewish people -- has justified itself fully. Towards the end of the 19 century, everyone had already realized that the Jewish nation had been pushed into crisis conditions: apart from a rise in economic and political discrimination in nearly all of the countries, the threat against the very existence and physical security of the Jews had risen considerably. Moderate Jewish circles then suggested some accordingly moderate options, namely to fight for the improvement of living conditions in their dwelling places and/or to move to other countries where these would be better. In this case, the term "moderate" was to include liberals as well as autonomists, bund-supporters and communists as well as assimilators. One factor united them: All of the proposed solutions were traditional and had no radical novelties in them. From the age of the Assyrian expulsion onwards, the Jews have always acted within the usual limits: They would bribe the king, kill the king, organize a mass revolt or just slip away from the country to a milder one. Only the Zionists turned out to be real radicals, proposing a seemingly mad idea: To regain the land of Israel, where practically no Jews were left. A land ruled by Arabs and Turks, with the English, the French and the Russians preparing to take their place. To regain it, and to build an independent state. The "normal" Jews twirled their fingers around their temples and did everything to stop the madmen, anxious not to get hit when the latter would get beaten with sticks. And yet, although the builders of the Israeli state did not read Huntington, they acted correctly: To win, one needs to smash the enemy's capital, the control center. To think about the seizure of the next line of trenches alone means to suffer a guaranteed defeat in the war. Only a global radical aim allows to reform fully for war and to use all the available resources with maximum efficiency. By the way, "radical" originally meant "fundamental" or "deeply rooted". Today, just like a century ago, the Jewish people are facing the same problems: Physical security and economic survival. If the Arabs won't shoot Israel dead, the economic crisis will finish it off. Here is an axiom: To cure an illness, one needs to reach its initial cause. However, the causes that led to these crises and brought us to the edge of the abyss can only be found far away from our borders. And we are also unable to get out of the economic crisis: After all, it is not the Tel-Aviv stock exchange that is tied up with our economy and our material well being. Along with interests in the military sphere, Israel's economic interests are simply being sacrificed by the more powerful forces, America and Europe, while the Muslim world uses Israel as a punching bag to redirect the attention of their people away from urgent internal problems. Thus, as far as both military and economical spheres are concerned, we are involved in global processes. We will only achieve the state of affairs we desire and the decisions we desire if we will be able to have a decisive influence on the way these decisions will be reached. He who is not able to impose his will on others is doomed to carry out the will of others forever. Our fire needs to be centered on the headquarters: This is the only way in which wars, not skirmishes, are won. That's actually an elementary idea. Just like a century ago, moderate half-and-half approaches have outlived themselves. We have to go beyond the limits of usual borders and obvious concepts. Once again, a global aim, a global strategy, a radical (that is, a fundamental) solution is needed. It is not the decisions reached in Jerusalem and Ramallah that determine which route the events in the Near East will take, be it peace or war. Those who are actually in control of the power levers are sitting in offices far away from us, spread out from Rio-Grande to the Huanhe. Thus, if we want to stop being a puppet in their hands, Israel needs to be capable of influencing the processes going on in these very cabinets. "A State of Israel from Rio-Grande to the Huanhe" is by no means a utopia. The Jews are already there, ready to be found in virtually every important university around the world, in the intellectual centers, the media, at every big stock exchange. All that is needed is to clench the whole economic and intellectual power of the Jewish people into one great fist. Why did the communists, after Hong Kong's annexation to China, not alter anything in the way of life of this former part of the British Empire, why did they refrain from dispossessing Hong Kong in the same way as the Soviets dispossessed the Russian kulaks? Obviously, because Hong Kong is one of the world's top five stock exchanges, so that any local shock would lead to a crisis, or even a collapse, of world economy. If Israel would actually possess a comparable economic power, the level of terror we witness today would appear solely in our nightmares. A utopia? Maybe be, but definitely less of a utopia than the idea of an Israeli Renaissance after two thousand years of banishment, an idea that appeared in the heads of Jewish boys, hiding from pogroms in the Pale of Settlement. Moreover, if Hong Kong, which was an opium trans-shipment point off the Chinese coast only hundred years ago, managed to become what it is now, then we can definitely do it, too. The Jews are by no means dumber than the Chinese or Malaysian population of Singapore. At a certain point in time, classical Zionism has set itself the task of building a "protective refuge", basically a place where the Jews would be able to sit snug during the pogroms. This task was fulfilled, but the place turned out be offering a rather uncomfortable form of existence; and now the neighbors who want to liquidate it altogether and appropriate its property have also appeared. Well, everything comes to end, as men are not capable of creating everlasting theories; thus Zionism has to be replaced by Hyperzionism, "tsionut-al". "Hyper" means "outwards", "beyond". The idea of the "New Near East" did have a rational core. In the coming century, economic influence will indeed be more effective than political or military authority. And yet long ago it has been said that "you can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone". A retreat is always a poor strategy, and especially in our conditions. Moreover, the concepts of "territory" and "land" have by no means lost their importance. In order to rise high up, one needs to have firm roots. The "Luftmensch", "the man of the air", is an ugly by-product of the decay of Eastern European villages. And it is the more impossible to build a dynamic society, able to withstand influences from without, if it is torn away from its spiritual roots. The essence of successful modernization is not a denial of national traditions or models, but their translation into the language of modernity. "Old wine in new wineskins". Japan, Korea, Taiwan and other regions populated by the Chinese were the "tigers" that managed to leap into the future out of their backward and decaying conditions but at the same time they were guided by their ancient history and culture. By cautiously changing the branches but preserving the roots, they managed to express the reality of the industrial age through their cultural language. The history of the last century has not witnessed any examples of successful approaches differing from this one. At the core of all Jewish national aspirations during the last two millenniums was the dream of the return to the Land of Israel, the land promised by G-d to forefather Abraham within the borders from the Nile to the Euphrates. The national tradition consists of elements closely fused together. By knocking out one brick, we destroy the whole laying. Similarly, by renouncing one of the elements of the national identity, we are running the risk of undermining the whole edifice of the national spirit, especially as now we are unable to prevent the territories we have deserted from being used by the forces hostile to us. When starting the Oslo process, Israel was planning to create an autonomy in the true sense of the word: A formation within our interest zone, with full control over the processes running within it. And yet what came out of it was a lever designed to destroy our state, a lever having its driving gears far away from our borders, in hostile hands. The same will inevitably occur in Gaza, and generally in every piece of land which Israel will from now on hand over to external forces. The rise of Israel and its transformation into a powerful economic and spiritual power of the post-industrial world is not possible without us controlling the processes going on in our region. The latter's borders, natural from a geopolitical and a geographical point of view, are the very water boundaries of the Nile and the Euphrates. At the same time, the matter at hand must not necessarily be military control. In the long run, economic and cultural expansion is more effective than tanks (especially if tanks are available, too, and are looming nearby). The State of Israel, controlling a territory from the Nile to the Euphrates and capable of defending its interests by exerting influence over processes taking place everywhere from Rio-Grande up to the Huanhe, this is the only realistic imperative of our survival in the coming century. One should obviously not forget about the spiritual side while dealing with the material one. The way out of a crisis is always a spurt, a fundamental change in the way we think and the way we live. A state that is incapable of changing is doomed. All the nations and states that have once existed have left the historic scene: At some point they turned out incapable of finding a way out of the cul-de-sac to which they were led by a new turn of history's progress. The difference between the Jews and the other nations is that we always managed to get out of crises, though the price paid was sometimes very high. Let us hope that today, too, we will be able to cope with the problems facing us, without letting Jewish blood flow in rivers again. Especially as G-d exists, and is on our side. The days are surely coming, says the L-rd, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. And this is the name by which it will be called: "The LORD is our righteousness." [Yirmiyahu/Jeremiah 33:14-16] This essay was distributed by the Root and Branch Association, which is based in Jerusalem. It originally appeared on May 6, 2004 in "Vesti", Israel's largest circulation daily Russian language newspaper. To Go To Top

TUNNEL VISION IN GAZA Posted by Honest Reporting, May 24, 2004.

The six-day IDF operation in southern Gaza to eliminate terrorists' weapons-smuggling tunnels and snipers' havens has triggered a wave of international media condemnation. As documented in the last HonestReporting communique, media reports have given disproportionate weight to dubious Palestinian claims. Journalists' reliance on Palestinian sources with questionable credibility is particularly ironic in light of an event last week that must have shaken the entire regional press corp. Veteran NY Times reporter James Bennet was victim of an attempted kidnapping in Gaza on May 19. Bennet appended this description to his own report that day: at least three Palestinian men attempted to kidnap this reporter here Wednesday night. The reporter, who had identified himself at Al Najar hospital as an American, was speaking on a cellular telephone in the street in front of the hospital when a stranger approached offering a handshake, a smile and the word, "Welcome." When the reporter took his hand, the stranger and another man grabbed him and attempted to shove him into an aging Mercedes sedan that pulled up, its rear door open. A struggle and cries for help brought Palestinian police officers at the hospital running, and after a further struggle, the men jumped in the car and disappeared. Then, as reported in the Jerusalem Post, Palestinian journalist eyewitnesses denied Bennet's account, and PA officials called Bennet to try to convince him that he wasn't really the victim of an attempted kidnapping: Zakariya Talmas, a senior member of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate in the Gaza Strip, described Bennet's claim as "baseless." He said that the syndicate looked into the case and discovered that there had been no attempt to kidnap the journalist. The gunmen only wanted to check his identity, Talmas added. [PA daily] Al-Quds said a number of senior PA officials phoned Bennet to explain to him what had happened. Bennet's ordeal underscores the problems faced by Western reporters operating in Palestinian areas, trying to objectively report the news when they are subject to not only the intimidation of Palestinian thugs, but also PA officials who insist on a creative 'reassessment' of what the reporter personally witnesses. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Bennet, in his future stories, grants legitimacy to the very PA figures who are now 'explaining' to him that his own terrifying ordeal was 'baseless.' At the very least, this episode should rattle foreign correspondents who routinely quote non-credible Palestinian sources to fill out their reports. THE MISSING INFO Absent from nearly all reports from Gaza were (1) the extraordinary measures taken by the IDF for the sake of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire, and (2) any significant examination of the Rafah smuggling tunnels. The IDF commander in charge of Gaza forces, Col. Eyal Eisenberg, shared this story with the Israeli daily Maariv on May 18: I haven't told this to anyone but in the midst of this operation, we assisted a baby being born and evacuated an elderly woman who was injured and summoned a local ambulance for her. Terrorists ran and fired from behind the ambulance. If my soldiers can assist a Palestinian woman giving birth when six of their comrades have been blown to bits in the street but, at the same time, they fire at us from behind an ambulance, you must understand that we [and the Palestinians] are at opposite ends of the scales of values. The IDF described further humanitarian care in Rafah during the operation: During the operation, 70 ambulances, more than 40 trucks loaded with food, water, medical supplies, mattresses and blankets flowed into the combat zone. 490 oxygen tanks were delivered to hospitals in Gaza. Although the IDF coordination office offered to treat the wounded in Israeli hospitals, the Palestinians declined and only two of the wounded were transported to Israeli hospitals for further medical care. Due to intensive fighting and the fact the Palestinians rigged the roads and alleys with explosive devices; heavy damage was inflicted to the civilian infrastructure in the area. The IDF facilitated Palestinian professional teams to attend to the electricity, sewage and water systems. Most readers were left unaware of the fact that since September 2000, the IDF has uncovered and demolished approximately 90 tunnels. Despite these efforts, the tunnels have continued to be built (due to tremendous financial incentive), and have become, as one IDF officer described them, "the very lifeblood of the terrorist organizations. This operation is not punitive, but rather military and preventive." Another IDF spokesman added that Palestinians had dug tunnels inside mosques and schools and under children's beds in private homes. Kudos to the BBC for breaking from the media's focus on Palestinian difficulties to provide a photo essay on recent IDF actions to uncover weapons-smuggling tunnels in Rafah. For more background information on the smuggling tunnels, see these IDF presentations: "Weapons Smuggling through the Rafah Tunnels," href="http://www1.idf.il/SIP_STORAGE/DOVER/files/2/31362.pdf, (.pdf, 1.3 mb) "Rafah: A Weapons Factory and Gateway," http://www1.idf.il/SIP_STORAGE/DOVER/files/5/31365.pdf (.pdf, 1.3 mb). Also, see the report on the tunnels from the Israeli Foreign Ministry: http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ Terrorism-+Obstacle+to+Peace/Terror+Groups/ Weapon+Smuggling+Tunnels+in+Rafah+May+2004.htm HonestReporting encourages subscribers to monitor your local papers for 'tunnel-vision' coverage of the IDF operation in Rafah, including the reliance upon questionable Palestinian claims, the omission of IDF humanitarian efforts, and disregarding the core issue - the massive terrorist infrastructure for smuggling deadly weapons. Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167. To Go To Top

RECENT BIASED STATEMENTS BY NGOS ABOUT THE VIOLENCE IN GAZA Posted by NGO Monitor Organization, May 24, 2004.

NGOs are non-governmental organizations that have special footing in the UN. With the violence continuing in Gaza, particularly along the narrow border area with Egypt, and details still unclear, a number of human rights NGOs have nonetheless issued strong condemnations of Israel. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty have accused Israel of "war crimes" and "gross violations of international humanitarian law." As in the case of Jenin (Defensive Shield) and other examples, such accusations reflect political and ideological agendas, rather than a careful weighing of the evidence. Furthermore, heavy reliance on anonymous and largely Palestinian eyewitnesses reflects a lack of detached and professional reporting standards, which further undermines the credibility of these claims and condemnations. In their reports, these NGOs largely ignore the background of the current violence, including the deliberate location of Palestinian tunnels to smuggle explosives and weapons, including missiles, beneath the homes and property of civilians, some of whom are willing participants in the smuggling operations. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/middle_east/04/gazas_tunnels/html/1.stm). Other structures in Gaza have been used to fire upon Israeli soldiers and civilians, including the horrific terrorist shooting of seven-month pregnant Tali Hatuel and her four small daughters on 2 May at point blank range. (To its credit, Amnesty issued a condemnation of this terror attack. http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150492004 ) Mourners who attended a memorial service for the slain family came under Palestinian gunfire from terrorists hiding in nearby homes from a distance of some 300 meters. In their highly politicized assessments, HRW and Amnesty use the rhetoric of international law selectively, failing to note that structures used by armed combatants lose their neutrality within a war zone. Instead, in a report released during Israel's Gaza operations on 18 May - Israel and the Occupied Territories. Under the rubble: House demolition and destruction of land and property - Amnesty stated: "The grounds invoked by Israel to justify the destruction are overly broad and based on discriminatory policies and practices." Amnesty went on to accuse Israel of "war crimes". (http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150402004) Similarly, in a press statement of May 20, Human Rights Watch, declared Israel's actions as "part of the IDF's policy of collective punishment, which international humanitarian law strictly forbids." (http://www.humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2004/05/19/isrlpa8601.htm) In both cases, the demonization of Israeli policy, without including the context of the Israeli actions, highlights the continued political exploitation of the rhetoric of human rights and the terminology of international law. It is also consistent with the active role of these groups at the 2001 Durban conference, and in other cases since then. (http://www.ngo-monitor.org/issues/durban.htm) The May 20 HRW statement also relied solely on unnamed "eyewitnesses" to justify its criticism of the accidental deaths of a number of Palestinian civilians hit by IDF fire during a mass march in the Tel al-Sultan area of the Gaza Strip on 19 May. HRW's repeats the Palestinian claim that the victims were "peaceful marchers", but then acknowledges that the "demonstrators might have been armed", while failing to draw the conclusions following from this possibility. HRW thus followed a pattern previously demonstrated by NGOs during Israel's April 2002 Operation Defensive Shield. During that time, a member of the Amnesty International team, Professor Derrick Pounder was quoted by the BBC as saying the signs pointed to a massacre in Jenin. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1937048.stm) Even though Amnesty later conceded that there was no massacre, its premature condemnations, repeated by the international media and many diplomats, contributed to the quick spread of the lie of the massacre that is still being exploited by anti-Israel organizations. The accusations of a "massacre" resurfaced following the incident in Gaza, with wildly inflated casualty claims presented by the Palestinians and repeated for many hours by the media and NGOs without serious question or independent verification. There was also no verification or investigation into IDF claims to have evidence that gunmen had been present at the demonstration, and the very real possibility that the mass march was a cover for attacks on Israeli soldiers, 13 of whom had been killed in attacks the week earlier. http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20933 In addition, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Physicians for Human Rights, Moked and Betselem have asserted that Israeli forces prevented Palestinian casualties from receiving medical treatment, particularly with regard to blocking of ambulances. (http://www.phr.org.il/Phr/Pages/PhrArticle_Unit.asp?Cat=11&art=673) These groups petitioned Israel's Supreme Court, alleging that the IDF opened fire as a matter of policy on Palestinian ambulances. As noted in previous NGO Monitor analyses (http://www.ngo-monitor.org/archives/infofile.htm), these groups have consistently used such claims to advanced a highly politicized anti-Israel agenda In this case, such claims were contradicted by the Israeli offers to treat injured Palestinians in Israeli hospitals, which were rejected by Palestinian officials. Israel has also provided evidence that Palestinian gunmen used the cover of ambulances during the Rafah operation, continuing a well-documented pattern of exploitation of medical resources for terrorist activities during the Palestinian war of terror. Thus, these charges also continue the pattern of abuse of unsubstantiated human rights claims to promote a clear political agenda. Once again, human rights groups and NGOs have contributed significantly to the distortion of events and the demonization of Israel during its anti-terror operations in Gaza. While, undoubtedly, Israel's activities have caused hardship to the Palestinian population, the one-sided public relations activities of the NGO community continue to distort exploit human rights concerns. The NGO Monitor orgamization (www.ngo-monitor.org) promotes critical debate and accountability of human rights NGOs in the Arab Israeli Conflict. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs / Institute of Contemporary Affairs founded jointly with the Wechsler Family Foundation To Go To Top

ARAB ANTISEMITISM; AMERICAN DOUBLE STANDARD Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 24, 2004.

IS ANTI-ZIONISM ANTI-SEMITIC? The answer depends on the nature of the particular anti-Zionism. It also depends on the person's views of the Jews. Some Jews who oppose Zionism are antisemitic and some are not. The antisemitic ones who oppose it have all sorts of neuroses, such as self-hatred and fear of being accused of dual loyalty, and are biased against Jewish nationalism but not other nations' nationalism. The non-antisemitic ones think that Jews could maintain freedom in the Diaspora and do not have a sense of Jewish national solidarity. I think the latter ones are mistaken. Continuing persecution argues against them. As for gentile anti-Zionists, examine their motives and their arguments. If they are vicious and one-sided about it, and are advancing the cause of the barbaric Arabs regardless of the suffering those Arabs wish to perpetrate upon the Jews, then they are antisemitic. The burden of denying national recognition to the Jewish people rests upon those who would deny it, since such denial usually is exclusively against the Jewish nationality. A clue to identifying the opponent of Zionism as antisemitic is the excuse for being against "only certain Israeli policies." When those policies turn out to be the ones that would preserve Israel from being conquered by genocidal Arabs, the excuse may be dismissed. Paradoxically, in this age of widespread literacy and college graduation, ignorance has become so widespread, that most people don't know much about civilization. They know how to work and consume but not how to think about social issues. They are like soft-bodied robots. They follow anti-Zionism as "progressive" fashion. NEGOTIATIONS: AN ARTICLE OF FAITH Both the US and Israel are fighting against terrorists equally fanatical and barbaric. The US fights effectively, but urges Israel to risk its people's lives by fighting less effectively. The US demolishes terrorists' houses, but tells Israel it shouldn't foul the diplomatic "atmosphere. The US targets terrorist leaders, but demands Israel not do so. The US unleashes heavy firepower against an entrenched enemy, but finds it disproportionate when Israel does so. People are starting to notice and question the US double standard towards Israel's war on terrorism. Another double standard less noticed and less questioned is the one on negotiations. The US refused to negotiate with Iraq after it proved to be a habitual violator of agreements, but insists that Israel negotiate with the PLO after it proved to be a habitual violator of agreements even with Arab states. This observation is not a partisan one, for it is applied regardless of who is President. Except for Iraq and the WWII Axis, negotiations generally are perceived as the path to a solution. That is an American article of faith. The trouble with political articles of faith is, once formed, seldom analyzed. Americans negotiate to resolve matters for mutual benefit. In certain other cultures, such as the N. Vietnamese who taught the PLO how to negotiate, and in Islamic tradition, negotiations are another means of war. For them, agreements are made to further their position before resuming war. Such enemies do not intend to keep agreements when no longer providing an advantage. It is pointless for a Western country to negotiate with deceitful, mortal enemies. Instead of calling on Israel to negotiate with the PLO, the US should urge Israel to defeat it and stake its own claims to that part of the Land of Israel run by Arafat. If Israel wins its war against the anti-US PLO terrorists, the US struggle against international terrorism would be advanced. THOMAS FRIEDMAN BLAMES & MALIGNS THE JEWS Thomas Friedman's view of democracy is that Pres. Bush would have had Jews removed from Yesha and earned credibility in the Mideast, but for Jewish votes in Florida. He wrote that "'the extremist Jewish settlers in Israel' 'have more in common' with 'the Shiite extremist leader Mokata al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army' than you might think." "Both movements combine religious messianism, and a willingness to sacrifice their followers and others for absolutist visions, along with certain disdain for man-made laws." But Pres. Bush "never lift a finger or utter a word to stop Ariel Sharon's massive building of the illegal settlements n the W. Bank." The "NY Sun" editorial then explained: (1) Four times Bush demanded settlement activity cease and rescinded loan guarantees, and proposed the Road Map for Israeli withdrawal; (2) The increase in the Jewish population of Yesha during PM Sharon's regime was the usual percentage and a fraction of the Arab population there (and less than the Arab increase); (3) Settlements are legal under international, Israeli, and even US law, and if not, the law would have to be challenged for denying a Jew on the basis of his religion the right to live in Hebron where Jews have lived for thousands of years; (4) The settlers are willing to live in peace with the Arabs, whereas al-Sadr is not willing to live in peace with the Americans, Jews, or Muslims who do not accept his dictates; and (5) Friedman often blames the Jews for Arab violence (5/18) instead of admitting that the Arabs are a violent, intolerant people who need to be contained. Friedman's notion of US credibility in the Mideast is catering to our Arab enemies there. Catering to them I futile. Those enemies want to destroy Israel and then us. Therefore, they would keep accepting concessions until we stop offering them, but they would not stop plotting and attacking, at least through terrorist surrogates. His notion of the evil influence of the Jewish vote in Florida reeks of antisemitism. His casual likening of mostly different groups is sophistry, part of his style. By showing something minor in common, he gives the impression that the groups have something major in common. But the Shiite militia are terrorists and the Jews are not. That is the significant fact. His charge that the settlers are willing to sacrifice their followers and others for absolutist visions, applies not to them but to himself. He is willing to sacrifice the Jews to the Arabs, engaged in jihad against them. And for what? The Arabs would push on, war on. The Arab war on Israel had nothing to do with settlements, since it precedes modern settlement and derives from religious intolerance. Friedman would accomplish nothing but weaken the West. His appeasement is harmful to his own country. POLL DEFICIENCY Some polls do not specify whether the Israeli would approve of a unilateral withdrawal or anticipates one being done in the framework of a peace agreement (Arutz-7, 5/16). Even if there were a peace agreement, the Arabs do not keep peace agreements. TURKEY TURNING Turkey is helping to develop Syria. Its Prime Minister (an Islamist) has ordered his military to sign no deals with Israeli companies. He also ordered it to switch from US to EU companies, probably to help win acceptance into the EU. Turkey criticizes Israel's killing of terrorists. It expressed amazement that Israel declined Turkey's offer to mediate with Syria. This news brief is not confirmed (IMRA, 5/6). Turkey was quite harsh on its own terrorists. It had invaded Syria in pursuit of them. Based on Turkey's current favoring of Syria and souring on Israel, should Turkish officials be surprised that Israel declines Turkey's offer to mediate between Israel and Syria? Proper mediation is neutral. It would be foolish for Israel to accept mediation between it and Syria. Syria is an aggressor and terrorist state; it remains a diehard enemy of Israel. Its purpose in negotiations would be to get the upper hand against Israel. Syria's negotiation demands include Israeli territory. The territory includes part of the original State of Israel and also the Golan, incorporated into Israel for security reasons after against repeated Syrian attacks from the Golan, part of the Land of Israel. International law allows for such incorporation. Back in Syrian hands, the Golan would make Israel's northern border unsafe, again. It also would remove a major source of Israel's water supply. With the original part of Israel in its hands, Syria would gain rights to Israel's main water reservoir. Since Israel is short of water, this demand not only is baseless, it is a threat to national survival. CONFLICTING TESTIMONY ON P.A. BIGOTRY The US Senate held a hearing on P.A. indoctrination in hatred and violence against Israel and Jews. A film was shown of P.A. schoolchildren, P.A. officials' speeches, P.A. TV, and P.A. textbooks, all inciting to murder. P.A. representative Rahman dismissed the film as a mistranslation. The Senators challenged him on that. He ducked the challenge, contending that since it is a religious belief, it does not matter. (Did that Muslim realize he was acknowledging a murderously intolerant side to his own religion? Did the Senate? Of course religious sentiment matters when rousing a fanatical and violent people at war!) For each claim by P.A. representative Rahman, ZOA Pres. Klein had the disproof. Rahman claimed that the P.A. wants peace with Israel. Klein displayed: (1) The official P.A. letterhead, which shows Israel absorbed into its proposed state of "Palestine;" and (2) A poster showing that the P.A. hires, distributes, and glorifies suicide bombers. Rahman said that most Americans and Israelis favor setting up a PLO state. Klein cited polls of large majorities in both countries against it. (Will the US and Israeli governments follow majority will or find ways to manipulate it? Why do these governments want to do the wrong thing?) Most Palestinian Arabs oppose terrorism, said Rahman. Again, Klein cited polls. At least two--thirds approve of suicide bombing and most want Israel attacked even if Israel surrendered all of Yesha and part of Jerusalem. He also quoted parents praising their suicide-bomber children. Who is stealing the country from whom? Rahman said Israel stole Arab land from "Palestine." Klein explained there never was such a country. For centuries it had largely been uninhabited. "Name one Palestinian king or queen," asked Klein. Silent was Rahman. The bigoted indoctrination is to help eventually destroy the State of Israel (current ZOA magazine). Why elicit Arab testimony, invariably false? THE CALL GOES OUT FROM ARAFAT Arafat exhorted his people to: (1) "Terrorize your enemy;" and (2) Be steadfast and ready for peace. CNN and BBC reported the call for steadfastness and peace but not for terrorism (IMRA, 5/16). CNN and BBC still do not want their audiences to see that the Arabs and not the Israelis are the aggressors. Truth is not of concern to these broadcasters. They don't present news but mold it. It is like "1984" and "Brave New World," but with private distortion of most of the data presented to most of the people. POWELL'S "GOOD FRIENDS" The P.A. keeps striving for a ceasefire. Sec. Powell opposes it -- ceasefires don't last. The P.A. doesn't enforce them, he pointed out. Any terrorist is free to violate it and end it. He wants the P.A. to gear up for taking over Gaza (Op. Cit.). He is putting over an unjust and rejected plan that would enable the P.A. to make trouble both for the US and for Israel. The Arabs want a ceasefire when outfought or out of ammunition. When their forces are replenished, they break the ceasefire. They break it earlier, if they think that their opponents would be shamed by political correctness to wait for more violations before resuming warfare. Sec. Powell calls P.A. leaders his "good friends." He disregarded their murders of hundreds of innocents. At a press conference with PM Qurei, he did not mention terrorism. The next day he criticized Israel for razing P.A. buildings used for ambushing Israeli soldiers come to intercept terrorist arms smuggling. He called that interception "not productive" for peace, although he intoned, "Israel has a right for self-defense." Is the arms smuggling conducive to peace? Must be. He didn't criticize it. Neither did he criticize Egypt for allowing the smuggling. What is Powell's own record? He oversaw the destruction of a Panamanian neighborhood near the headquarters of the Panamanian Army, when the US had a falling out with Gen. Noriega. Thousands of civilians were affected (IMRA, 5/18). Whatever its misconceived motive, US policy would get innocent Jews killed and guilty Arabs preserved. Like the Arabs, the US criticizes in Israel what it condones in itself. SOCIALIZING AT AL AQSA MOSQUE At Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, an Israeli Arab met an Arab from Judea-Samaria. The pair rendezvoused there several times, to plan terrorism for Hamas. The P.A. Arab wished to exploit the other's Israeli citizenship, for ease of access to target areas. They discussed possible crimes, including kidnapping a Jew from whom the Israeli Arab had done some work (IMRA, 5/17). As Israeli Arabs continue to radicalize, Israel needs to reexamine its policies of allowing that defeated enemy citizenship ease of access to places and employment in Israel. Reconsideration would not be politically correct, but would save innocent lives. The Arabs have forced upon Israel a war of survival. Israel must stop pretending that Israeli Arabs are loyal citizens or can be trusted friends and employees. Only a few are, besides some Bedouin and Druse. ISRAEL FIGHTING ARMS SMUGGLING To prevent the arms smuggled from Egyptian Rafah into P.A. Rafah being distributed throughout Gaza, the IDF has isolated P.A. Rafah from the rest of Gaza. The IDF head accused Egypt of ignoring the smuggling. Terrorists now are trying to smuggle Katyusha rockets in. Katyusha's have a longer range than the current ones (Arutz-7, 5/7). When the IDF announces intent to raze a house, the Arabs booby-trap it (IMRA, 5/17). That is the result of misapplying the judicial process to wartime. Politically correct but dead wrong. What is the difference between the statements about Egypt by the Chief of Staff and those by the Foreign Minister? The Chief of Staff complains about Egyptian illegalities that cost Israeli lives. The Foreign Minister praises Egypt for vague statements to the P.A. about terrorism and peace. Idle praise does not move hard-bitten Arabs. The Chief of Staff would by force. He is realistic. 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

LEFTISTS AND "HUMILIATION" Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, May 24, 2004.

Dear friends, In view of the frenzy over Michael Moore and other President Bush haters, including much of the media, please find an important letter for you to read. It is clear to me that the art of rational debate has been totally lost by those on the far liberal left (thankfully, a minority, but with sufficient vocal means to give an impression disproportionate to their true number). They are motivated by hate rather than by rational debate and careful examination of the facts. They are totally incapable of engaging in meaningful discussions, and believe me, I am talking from personal experience. Their hatred towards those who disagree with them blinds them and reduces them to the level of the mob and the enemies who strive to destroy us. How to achieve true and just peace for all, is the last and least item on their agenda. This herd of little Chamberlains are motivated by nothing else than the dictatorship of their narrow agenda. More than anything else, their despicable behavior poses a grave danger to our democracy and our western values. This articles was written by Phyllis Chesler and appeared in the FrontPage Magazine website (http://www.frontpagemagazine.com) today. Phyllis Chesler is Emerita Professor of Psychology and the author of twelve books including "The New Anti-Semitism. The Current Crisis And What We Must Do About It." She may be reached at her website www.phyllis-chesler.com. Given that we are under attack and at war, a certain fraying of nerves is understandable, but outright insanity is not. Lately, I have observed some fairly psychotic behavior in public places, mainly among the chattering classes, not among ordinary civilians who better understand that the terrorists mean to kill us and that appeasement is not an option. For example, in the midst of a quiet cafe dinner, a soft-spoken artist friend suddenly began screaming: "I hate President Bush, I wish he was dead." Her face got red, and she screwed up her eyes. I was taken aback. Her rage was irrational and out of context; we had not been discussing the upcoming election or the ongoing war in Iraq. And, how could anyone be so angry, or rather so irrational, about a political figure? Once, while lecturing in England, I found myself dining out with an anti-Apartheid activist at the very moment that Nelson Mandela was released from jail. This scholar literally climbed onto the table and roared for more than 5 full minutes. She kept pumping the air with her fist. Her voice became coarse. I could not understand such ferocity and pent-up emotion unleashed so bizarrely in public. I can understand marshalling arguments, point by point, against a particular political policy. I can understand faulting President Bush for either not going far enough to win the war in Iraq or daring to begin that war at all--as long as the person is speaking in a reasonable, rational way. I can respect a balanced analysis--such as the recent one by Mark Helprin in the pages of the Wall Street Journal (5/17/04) in which he describes "the Democrats (as) guilty of ideological confusion about self-defense, the Republicans of willful disdain for reflection, and both... for subjecting the serious business in the life of a nation to coarse partisanship." But I cannot understand what is going on when presumably enlightened artists and scholars reduce complex realities to slogans, and create straw men against which to vent vast, irrational rage. This is precisely what frenzied Islamist mobs do when they burn the American flag and lynch and mutilate corpses of American soldiers. The western multiculturalists insist that we have dangerously "humiliated" the Iraqi male prisoners because we put women in charge of naked men and then subjected those naked men to further humiliation by posing them in pornography-like photographs, and forcing some men to wear pink women's undergarments. In my view, this is possibly the result of a culture saturated with runaway pornography. It is disgusting and I oppose it, but it does not compare to the be-heading of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg or to the real torture practiced by Saddam Hussein in Abu Graib and most Arab and Muslim despots against their own people. The multiculturalists do not protest at all when male Palestinian terrorists dress as women in order to kill Israelis (which they have done at many an Israeli checkpoint). They did not condemn the Palestinian terrorists who shot and killed an eight-month pregnant Israeli woman and her four children, aged 2 to 11 at point-blank range; rather, they blamed the woman for "provoking" her own murder by living in Gaza. The multi-cultis did not cry "humiliation foul" when two other Palestinian terrorists dressed as women in order to shoot down the mourners at this poor woman's funeral. The left-liberal Western media (heavily influenced by the Left Academy) is not behaving objectively or rationally when it not only fails to note that "pornography" is really "torture," but ardently defends the rights of pornographers and traffickers; our Talking Heads worship the First Amendment and are "sex-positive" in outlook. They do not condemn torture when Arabs or Muslims practice it, only when it is practiced, even to a much lesser extent, by America. (By the way, I oppose torture in all but the most extreme of circumstances. I am demanding that our intellectuals eschew double standards and be even-handed with their condemnations). Something has gone very wrong in America among its Thinking Classes who hate the very country that allows them to publicly criticize its policies and who love those countries in which dissent is punished by torture and execution. Stalinism, Hitlerism, totalitarianism--long nurtured by the former Soviet Union through both the United Nations, the Arab League, and the PLO--are living and breathing among our intellectuals, academics, and left-liberal media. American intellectuals also slavishly follow the lead of their European counterparts. As a psychologist, I must ask: are our intellectuals brainwashed? What cult has done this to them? How might they be de-programmed? Are such accomplished and privileged adults still angry at their parents, spouses, or employers or are they angry at themselves for having failed to "overthrow capitalism" in their lifetime? If so, do they think that we all deserve to die for their failure? Do they honestly believe that the jihadists will provide the socialist or feminist Paradise for which they long? I do not think I can persuade such intellectuals to understand that their lives and ways of life are in serious danger and that self-defense is crucial; that there is nothing we can do that will "appease" Islamist rage (sacrifice Israel, retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, veil our women, allow Arab honor killings to be carried out in both Eurabia and North America). It is clear: The terrorists have embarked on a program to kill all non-Muslim infidels--it's precisely what al-Zarquawi said on the video before he be-headed Nicholas Berg--and the danger coming our way is even greater from Muslim Indonesia. What I can and must do is suggest--no implore--President Bush to send more troops to Iraq immediately and to use all means at our disposal to stop the Islamists in their tracks--at least for another 500 years. Otherwise, we will be annihilated. Yuval Zaliouk write the Truth Provider essays. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

DAHLAN - A TARGET,NOT A PROTEGE Posted by Ron Breiman, May 24, 2004.

A number of proposals have appeared lately for handing over control of the Gaza Strip to terrorist commander Muhammad Dahlan. Professors for a Strong Israel sees this as just another pathetic attempt to put Israel's security in the hands of those who seek its destruction. This approach failed at Oslo, and there is no justification now for looking for a new terrorist crutch to replace Arafat. The courtship of Dahlan is merely more evidence of the leadership crisis in Israel and the concomitant lack of policy. We call on the Prime Minister to fight terrorism and its leaders - including Dahlan - and not to coddle them. The disengagement that is truly needed is a disengagement from the Palestinian occupation army and its offshoots. Dr. Ron Breiman is Chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel (PSI). To Go To Top

A DOUBLE STANDARD ON GAZA Posted by Steven Plaut, May 23, 2004.

This was an Editorial today in the "Wall Street Journal". Once again the otherwise fractured "international community" has come together in one of those rare moments of unity, made possible only by the time-honored ritual of condemning whatever policy Israel is currently pursuing to protect its citizens from terrorism. Last Wednesday, the United Nations Security Council criticized Israel's demolition of homes in Gaza but failed to condemn the Palestinian terror that brought about the offensive in the first place. The U.S. refused to lend its support to such an unbalanced resolution but didn't use its veto power to stop it. The U.N.'s text must be considered a real showcase of even-handedness when compared to the statement by the Irish foreign minister who currently speaks for the European Union. Brian Cowen's comments came after an Israeli shell accidentally hit Palestinian demonstrators. Mr. Cowen was so eager to bash Israel that he didn't even bother to check Palestinian casualty claims. "Initial reports suggest that at least 23 people, many of them schoolchildren, were killed," he said. In reality, only eight Palestinians died. Mr. Cowen went on to accuse Israel of "reckless disregard for human life." His words bear no resemblance to reality. Israel takes more care not to harm Palestinian civilians than the Palestinian Authority, let alone Hamas. In so doing, Israeli soldiers often risk their own lives, as the death of 13 ground troops earlier this month shows. If Israel really had such a "disregard" for Palestinians, it wouldn't send its young soldiers in harm's way but bomb terrorist positions safely from the air. In contrast to that, the death of Palestinian civilians caught in the cross-fire appears to be part of the terrorists' strategy. The terrorists, who deliberately hide among the general population, know that every civilian death will be blamed on Israel, no matter what the circumstances and no matter whether the bullet actually came from an Israeli rifle. Mr. Cowen even had the gall to liken the demonstrators' death to a Palestinian terrorist attack earlier this month, where members of Yasser Arafat's Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades shot four children, aged 2 to 11, at point blank range before the eyes of their eight-months-pregnant mother before killing her too. Neither these murders nor any other of the Palestinian terrorist attacks have ever prompted a single U.N. resolution. As a matter of fact, the U.N. Security Council has yet to convene to even discuss Palestinian terrorism. The Israeli operation in Gaza is designed to root out the arms smuggling in Rafah, which is at the border with Egypt. The whole area is honeycombed with tunnels that surface in private homes, built often with the open encouragement of the PA. Just recently, Arafat called on his people to "terrorize the enemy." The terrorists also use the private houses as hiding places to attack Israeli soldiers. The problem wouldn't even exist if the PA fulfilled its obligation to fight terror instead of colluding with it. Also, the smugglers wouldn't have it so easy if Egypt, officially at peace with Israel, didn't turn a blind eye to this problem. Maybe it's time Washington asks Cairo to remind Americans why they are propping up President Hosni Mubarak's regime with almost $2 billion a year. Contrary to popular opinion, international law is on Israel's side. Art. 53 of the fourth Geneva Convention indeed prohibits the destruction of private property by an occupying power. But Israel's critics as well as the U.N. resolution fail to quote the text in its entirety. Such actions are illegal, "except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations." Preventing terrorists from firing at Israelis from these houses and putting an end to the smuggling of explosives and rockets appear to us to be "absolutely necessary" operations. Particularly as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seems determined to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. It is the use of civilian structures by Palestinian terrorists for military attacks which violates international law. Those really concerned for Palestinian welfare should speak these truths instead of criticizing Israel for trying to defend itself. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

THE NEW PLAN Posted by Anita Tucker, May 24, 2004.

This was written by Caroline Glick and appeared in the Jerusalem Post, May 21, 2004. Caroline Glick is is Deputy Managing Editor and a columnist at the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com). Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now tentatively set to bring his "new plan" for withdrawing IDF troops from the Gaza Strip and uprooting Israeli settlements there and in Samaria to the cabinet for its approval next Sunday. The new plan, we are told, is simply an incremental variation on Sharon's previous plan which was overwhelmingly rejected by Likud party members at the beginning of the month. The new plan calls for IDF withdrawal from Gaza and uprooting of Israeli communities in three stages with each distinct stage coming before the cabinet for approval before implementation. Aside from this, the plan also contains two additional novelties. The first is a call for amending the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt to enable the Egyptian military, as opposed to Egyptian border guards to deploy along the Egyptian side of the border with Gaza. The second new component of the plan that the prime minister's office is currently floating is the deployment of an international force into Gaza. From a domestic standpoint, what stands out about the new plan is its author. Whereas authorship of the plan to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza belonged to former Labor party leader Amram Mitzna, the new plan comes straight from Yossi Beilin's drawing board. In crafting the Oslo plan, Beilin came up with the idea of establishing a PLO state in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem on an incremental basis. So it was that Israel first removed its troops from Gaza and Jericho and only later from the other major cities and villages in Judea and Samaria. As well, over the past two years, Beilin has been pushing the idea of bringing foreign forces, including Arab armies, into the territories together with his American supporter, former US ambassador Martin Indyk. The idea of amending the peace treaty with Egypt is bizarre on the face of it. The current IDF operation in Rafah was necessitated by Egypt's abject refusal or failure to prevent weapons smuggling into Gaza through subterranean tunnels burrowed across the Egypt-Gaza border. If Egypt were upholding its commitments to Israel in the peace treaty, it would have been actively and continuously working to prevent weapons flow from its territory to Gaza. It has not. It is argued that an amendment of the 1979 treaty to allow regular Egyptian military units to deploy along the border will empower Egypt to take action against the weapons smugglers. This is ridiculous. As it stands the treaty enables Egyptian border guards to deploy along the border and places no restrictions on the size of such a force. These border guards can be armed with assault rifles for the dispatch of their duties and there is no reason why such armaments would be insufficient for stemming the arms trafficking. More importantly, given the virulence of hatred of Israel in Egypt - hatred that is encouraged by the Egyptian government - the long term implications of an Israeli move to allow Egypt to deploy regular army forces along the border could be disastrous. Indeed, rather than look to Egypt for a solution to a problem it is largely responsible for creating, Israel should be leading a diplomatic campaign against Egypt to force it to act responsibly. Up until this week when the idea of bringing foreign troops into Gaza in the framework of an Israeli withdrawal was first introduced by the prime minister's office, it had been the policy of all Israeli governments to reject out of hand any thought of bringing in foreign troops aside perhaps from US forces. This has been Israel's consistent policy because the our successive governments have understood that the hostility towards Israel in the international community - from the Arab world to the EU to the UN to the international human rights organizations - is so inbred that any foreign troop presence in the area would automatically harm Israel's national interest of ensuring the security of its citizens and the inviolability of its territory. The understanding was that foreign troops in Judea, Samaria and Gaza would not work to bring order and quell terrorism but would rather protect terrorists operating in these areas from Israeli military operations. This view was based not only on the knee-jerk anti-Israel positions taken by these governments and international organizations but also on Israel's experience with UN forces in southern Lebanon. There UN peacekeepers allowed themselves to be exploited, repeatedly and consistently by Hizbullah and other terrorist organizations that used UN cover to commit terrorist attacks against Israel. It should not be forgotten that almost a year after IDF soldiers Benny Avraham, Omar Sawayid and Adi Avitan were kidnapped by Hizbullah in October 2000, Israel discovered that the UN had been hiding information about their abduction. Arguably in contravention of international law, the UN had hidden from the IDF videotapes it had of the soldiers' abduction as well as operational and personal effects of the soldiers. The Hizbullah terrorists who carried out the kidnapping traveled in a vehicle with UN plates and a UN flag. UN forces in Lebanon who found the vehicle while its engine was still running, removed the equipment from it, including several articles that were stained with blood. After the information was revealed, the UN still insisted that Israel could not analyze the blood samples but rather that the analysis would have to be done by the World Health Organization. Until Israel discovered this information the government and the IDF were operating under the assumption that the soldiers were still alive. Early access to the information could have given the IDF the opportunity to discover that in fact the soldiers were murdered by their kidnappers. The rationale for the current plan of bringing foreign troops into Gaza is that the prime minister and his advisors are attempting to find a way to negotiate the Gaza withdrawal with someone. In the absence of a responsible Palestinian interlocutor, the thinking goes, Israel must invent a partner with which it can implement the withdrawal plan from Gaza. Indeed, although the full-blown campaign launched by the Israeli media to delegitimize the results of the Likud vote has resulted in a majority of public support now for a withdrawal from Gaza, the public is still evenly split as to whether Israel can leave Gaza without handing over its responsibility for security to a responsible party. The hope no doubt is that if the international community has an active role to play in Sharon's retreat plan, it will have a stake in the plan's success. Yet the international community's reaction to this week's IDF operation in Rafah has shown unequivocally that this hope is based on absolutely nothing. Even before Israel had committed its troops to Rafah, Amnesty International had already accused Israel of committing war crimes in destroying houses in Rafah along the border. Never mind that the claim has no basis whatsoever in international law as states have a right to view as military targets any structure that is used to conduct military operations against it and these houses were used specifically for that purpose. Amnesty's condemnation came without the organization even bothering to check the facts. Just as was the case of the battle in Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, Amnesty reached its conclusion without launching an inquiry. Amnesty's libelous attack on Israel was immediately picked up by media organizations worldwide as well as by the UN and the EU. These then repeated the condemnation of Israel verbatim. On Tuesday, no greater moral authority than the Church of Sweden called for its members to wage an economic boycott against Israel. And it isn't that the UN and the EU, the media and the human rights organizations do not know the truth. They do. They have all received documented proof, not only from Israel but from their own people that have shown them conclusively that the Palestinian Authority is a terrorist organization and that its method of fighting Israel while hiding behind civilians is by its very nature a war crime. They know everything, but they do not care. They believe that their national and institutional interests are best served by condemning Israel and embracing Palestinian war crimes as justified. In an attempt to get the foreign media to report what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, the IDF's spokesman's unit pleaded with foreign news agencies to join IDF forces in their operations and see for themselves. By mid-week, the IDF had to admit that the attempt was an abject failure. Almost no one took them up on the offer. The foreign media is not interested in showing the truth. They simply want to criminalize Israel. The most abject and obnoxious instance of this is the reaction to the IDF's apparent inadvertent killing of five Palestinian gunmen and two teenagers during a PA organized march towards IDF forces stationed in Rafah on Wednesday. Without bothering to check the facts, just as was the case in Jenin, the international media gushingly reported that IDF troops had "massacred" Palestinian civilians in a peaceful march in Gaza. The Palestinian press releases on the matter were indulgently quoted as fact as news organization after new organization dismissed the IDF's explanations as lies. In a matter of hours, the UN Security Council passed a resolution condemning Israel and the US, due no doubt to its current self-destructive wooing of the UN and France in Iraq declined to veto the decision. The sad and terrible thing about Sharon's newest plan is that he actually thinks he needs a plan in the first place. If our experience over the past 11 years has taught us anything, it is that no matter what Israel proposes to do in the interest of peace and Palestinian independence, it is always blamed when the Palestinians continue to make war against us - regardless of the barbarism of their actions. The simple truth of the matter was made clear this week by COS Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon. Speaking of the military necessity of the operation in Gaza to the Knesset, Ya'alon said, "Only the IDF can secure Gaza." No plan, no matter how new can change this basic truth. Anita Tucker lives in Netzer Hazani, Gush Katif, Israel. To Go To Top

UNDERSTANDING THE MIDDLE EAST Posted by Barry Rubin, May 24, 2004.

How do supposedly intelligent people view the Middle East? Recently: --The Australian Broadcasting Company's former news director called for Israel's destruction --A majority of "quality" British newspapers falsely claimed Israel deliberately massacred large numbers of children in Gaza after two were killed by accident. --A Canadian Broadcasting Company correspondent maliciously concocted a report to convince his viewers that Israel was responsible for the torture of Iraqis by U.S. soldiers. That's in the moderate, Western, English-speaking democracies. Rather than easing the Middle East's madness, the West has caught the disease itself. What's truly remarkable is that the more the region's dominant system fails and abandons reality, the stronger its ideological defenses and the more successful its export of these ideas. In a no doubt futile attempt to inject some sanity into the debate, here is a set of principles which better fit the facts. Throw away the above paragraphs--which will soon no doubt be a fading memory in a happier world--and save the rest as a guide to understanding the Middle East: --Failed dictatorships: The region is run by dictatorial regimes which are incompetent at doing anything but staying in power. Their citizens lack human, civil, and democratic rights. Their foreign policies lead to disaster and defeat; their economic policies bring stagnation and low living standards. --Failed ideologies: The dominant ideology for regimes is Arab nationalism; for oppositions and Iran, radical Islamism. These ideas don't fulfill their promises and make things worse. Yet they keep control through demagoguery and lies plus a near-monopoly over institutions. --The elites' self-interest: Since much of the political, economic, and intellectual elite benefit from this system it passionately supports it. Keeping this structure in power is vital to retaining not only their privileges but perhaps their very lives. For the masses, indoctrination over many years plus traditionalism, repression, and fear of an Islamist regime or anarchy as the most likely alternatives are powerful inducements to stand by their dictator. --The successful use of scapegoats: A critical element in the system's ability to convince the people that their real enemies are the United States, Israel, and the West in general (along with modernization, democratization, globalism, Westernization, etc). One should either support the dictatorship as a pious and patriotic action against satanic forces or join the opposition which promises to fight them better. Thus, even moderate regimes, needing anti-Americanism and the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to survive, promote them in their propaganda and behavior. --The real origins of terrorism: The failure of Islamists to take over Arab countries in the quarter-century following Iran's Islamist revolution convinced some radicals in each country that a new strategy was needed. They thus went from the idea of trying to seize power in one state at a time to the global Jihadist movement. Rather than fight Arab nationalist ideology they would steal its program, concluding that murdering Jews and Christians would be more popular than killing fellow Muslims. The regimes collaborated in this process by going easy on movements--and even reinforcing this ideology--as long as the violence was being perpetrated on someone else. --Refusal to end the Arab-Israeli conflict: When offered serious proposals for peace in 2000 (at Camp David and the Clinton plan), Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat rejected them because his goal is: a) keep the conflict going until final total victory is achieved in eliminating Israel or b) accept only an agreement easy to use for launching another round to achieve that result. Syria rejected the entire Golan Heights' return. However strange it might seem, Arab regimes and elites want to sustain a conflict they need to preserve themselves. --Israel: is a victim and not the cause of this situation. It is ready for a real peace based on a Palestinian state and an end to violence, suffering now from the risks it has taken in this effort. --The United States: is truly trying to help the region because it believes that to do so is not only right but also in its own self-interest. --Whatever mistakes they make, the United States and Israel are democratic countries trying to cope with extraordinarily difficult situations with far more restraint and conscience than anyone else would have in these circumstances. As in World War Two and the Cold War, their adversaries are far worse forces using the most misleading propaganda to portray them as evil. Those in the West who buy these lies are fools. --The problem in Iraq: In Iraq, too, former and would-be rulers have used the same tools and strategy discussed above. Rather than let the United States withdraw and peacefully work out their own differences democratically, they use violence and demagoguery to try to seize power by blaming everything on an external enemy. --The lack of a solution: There is no ideal policy or great solution to all these problems. Democratization is not going to happen because the forces that support it are too weak and those which oppose it are too strong. In fact, trying to impose some external solution by diplomatic gimmick, appeasement, military force or any other means is not going to work. This system is going to continue until it is defeated from within and that day is far off. Indeed, ill-conceived attempts to solve the region's problems by ignoring all of the above have repeatedly made things worse. Is this a pessimistic assessment? That is irrelevant. What is important is that people hold an accurate view of the situation and act accordingly. Professor Barry Rubin is Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). To Go To Top

SHARON'S LAST HURRAH Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 24, 2004.

Israel current Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon's attack on the staging area for Arab Muslim Palestinian Terrorists is welcome - although it is too late and too twisty. Only when Sharon needed a big gesture does he make such moves to make the disillusioned Right think: "Hurrah, the old warrior has returned!" The problem is that his attack on the Terrorist infrastructure in Gaza and the weapons' smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Rafah precedes his planned Withdrawal/Retreat from the 21 Jewish communities in Gaza. Closing up the present tunnels dug by the Arab Muslims with the approval of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak, will soon become meaningless - except as a gesture to President George Bush in order to assist his November election campaign. When Sharon withdraws the IDF troops and the 8,000 Jews, the Arab Muslims will no longer need tunnels. They can then transport all the equipment they want from Sinai into Gaza over land. While the assault on the Terrorists who have made Gaza an operational base is long overdue, it makes that assault merely political theatrics. Bush wants and needs a "win" in Gaza for his very close election campaign. Sharon has become a "Bubba" (doll) for Bush. As a mere toy, anything Sharon does has a second side. In this case, Sharon is risking Israeli soldiers NOT to close the door on incoming Terrorists but, rather to open the gates wider after Sharon's pull-out. Granted, he will kill some Terrorists, simply because there are so many. But, after he stages his "Big Show", he will empty the area of Jews (Ethnic Cleansing), leaving the "Jihadists" to pour in and fill the vacuum. They will fill up Gaza as they are presently doing in Iraq and as they previously did in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets. They will follow Yassir Arafat's M.O.' (Modus Operandi). Arafat created a Terror State and tried to take over Jordan before King Hussein fought against him and evicted him and his men during the Black September operation of 1970. From there he went to Lebanon where his caused a 12 year Civil War when 100,000 Muslims and Christians Lebanese were killed - brutally. After the Israelis defeated his Terror forces in 1982, he moved on to Tunisia - until he was resurrected by Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin's Also Accords, bringing him and his now better trained Terrorists back into Israel. We will hear all those threats that, if the Terrorists dare to cross over Sharon's line-in-the-sand, he will know what to do. We have been listening to these vague, boastful pledges each time one of our Israeli Prime Ministers gives Jewish territory to the Arab Muslim Palestinians. They invariably fail in real time. Only when the situation becomes intolerable in terms of Israelis killed and a politician trying to keep his behind glued to the Prime Minister's chair, do we see any real action. By then we have another grieving family or several. This time I believe the fuse was the murders of Tali Hatuel, 8 months pregnant and her four young daughters from age 2 to 11. Even then military action is short-lived, inconclusive and lots of empty buildings are bombed at great expense. Invariably, civilians are killed, likely from Arab Muslim Palestinians firing from within the crowds of civilians, including children, used as their "Human Shields". We can expect a lot of bombast and speeches about how this great general came to life, urged on by Bush and Powell. But, his retreat/withdrawal will be even more spectacular as the propaganda machines in Israel and the White House crank up to claim a brilliant victory. Politicians invariably try to cast retreat and failure into propaganda of heroic success. In the meantime, "Jihadists" who will come from all over Muslim-land will be packing their bags, guns and explosives to be prepared to 'vacation' in the beautiful homes and farms built by the pioneering settlers of Gush Katif in Gaza. At the insistence of Bush and the Arabist U.S. State Department, everything is to be left in place. Homes, gardens, farms, factories, water and sewage pipes, electricity and phone lines - so the Terrorists may set up camp quickly and in comfort. Bush and Sharon have agreed that Israel will continue to supply clean water, electricity, phone service and anything else the Terrorists may need. Some may wonder why the settlers don't march to Jerusalem again and this time wrap Sharon in Saran Wrap to ship him over to Bush. Bush is desperately trying to hoodwink his Christian Zionist supporters into believing that it is not he and the State Department who are thwarting G-d's promise of the Land to the Jews. Regretfully, Jewish activists who know better and the Christian Zionists who believe sometimes even more that the Jews, know that Bush is bringing G-d's condemnation on all Americans because of his selfish and foolish policy of appeasing his father's Arab oil friends. I fear we will all pay a terrible price for the Bush-Sharon self-serving betrayal of G-d's final word. But, then again, neither are believers in G-d except in the breach, and then only to trick the body politic. In summation, I am sorry to say that the canny old warrior has not returned as he once was. Sharon has returned as a witless Golem, a creature who belongs to Bush and the Arabist U.S. State Department. Like a dumb doll made of mud, he now walks the earth when called upon by his masters. Surely, this is Sharon's Last Hurrah as he pulls the Jewish nation of Israel down into the abyss into which he is sinking. Bush also pulls the American nation down, too weak to resist the black powers allied so closely with the Muslim "Jihadists". Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). To Go To Top

A REVIEW OF "THE FORCE OF REASON" BY ORIANA FALLACI Posted by Israel BenAmi, May 23, 2004.

This review of Oriana Fallaci's book "The Force of Reason" ("La Forza Della Ragione") was written by Lorenzo Vidino. "Oriana Fallaci" is not a household name in the United States, but it cannot be uttered in Europe without generating a heated reaction. Even though her 2002 book, "The Rage and the Pride", was translated into English (by Fallaci herself) and sold many copies in the U.S., it was on the other side of the ocean that intellectuals, politicians, and ordinary citizens passionately debated the views of the celebrated Italian journalist. "The Rage and the Pride" is either loved or hated; the positions Fallaci takes in it leave no middle ground. "Outraged" by the events of 9/11, Fallaci criticizes both Muslims (bent, according to her, on conquering the West and annihilating its culture) and Europeans (described as spoiled, hypocritical, and blind to the mortal threat represented by Islamic expansionism). Fallaci's views as expressed in "The Rage and the Pride" caused an uproar in politically correct Europe, death threats and lawsuits included. Now, two years later, Fallaci has published a new book, entitled La Forza della Ragione ("The Force of Reason"), which continues the discourse she began in "The Rage and the Pride." As its title suggests, "The Force of Reason" is not dictated by the (sometimes excessive) fury that inspired "The Rage and the Pride", but it gives a more accurate explanation of why Europe has decided not to defend its identity and to surrender to what she calls the "Islamic invasion." With the sarcasm and uniquely direct style that characterizes her work, Fallaci carefully examines the historic and political reasons that have led Europeans to vilify their own culture, consistently embrace anti-Americanism, and pander to every request from the increasingly powerful Muslim communities that populate the dying Old Continent. Her analysis does not leave much hope for the future of Europe, although she takes a far more optimistic position on her adoptive country, the United States (Fallaci currently lives in New York). The long introduction to "The Force of Reason" recounts the intellectual lynching to which Fallaci was subjected following the publication of "The Rage and the Pride". The PC establishment, which she refers to as the "Modern Inquisition," crucified her, submerging her with lawsuits and accusations of being racist and fomenting a religious war. But all of this publicity just played into Fallaci's hands, as sales of "The Rage and the Pride" soared into the millions. But what has really struck Fallaci in the wake of "The Rage and the Pride" are the letters she has received from readers throughout the world. One of the most significant was written by an Italian, who thanked her for "helping me to understand the things I thought without realizing I was thinking them." And this is Fallaci's goal: provoking Europeans into realizing what is going on right under their noses and getting rid of their fear to say something that goes against the PC dogma. According to Fallaci, the "Modern Inquisition" has managed to keep individuals in fear of expressing what they believe: "If you are a Westerner and you say that your civilization is superior, the most developed that this planet has ever seen, you go to the stake. But if you are a son of Allah or one of their collaborationists and you say that Islam has always been a superior civilization, a ray of light...nobody touches you. Nobody sues you. Nobody condemns you." Fallaci has her own interpretation of the massive Islamic immigration that is rapidly changing the face of European cities. She sees it as part of the expansionism that has characterized Islam since its birth. After reminding the reader how Islamic armies have aimed for centuries at the heart of Europe (a part of history that is not taught anymore in Europe, since it would offend the sensitivity of Muslim pupils), reaching France, Poland, and Vienna, she lays out her case, claiming that the current flood of immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa is part of a carefully planned strategy. Fallaci uses the words of Muslim leaders to support this thesis. In 1974, former Algerian President Houari Boumedienne said in a speech at the U.N.: "One day millions of men will leave the southern hemisphere to go to the northern hemisphere. And they will not go there as friends. Because they will go there to conquer it. And they will conquer it with their sons. The wombs of our women will give us victory." In other words, says Fallaci, what Islamic armies have not been able to do with force in more than 1,000 years can be achieved in less than a century through high birth rates. She cites as evidence a 1975 meeting of Islamic countries in Lahore, in which they announced their project to transform the flow of Muslim immigrants in Europe in "demographic preponderance." The "sons of Allah," as Fallaci calls them, do not make a secret of their plans. A Catholic bishop recounted that, during an interfaith meeting in Turkey, a respected Muslim cleric told the crowd: "Thanks to your democratic laws we will invade you. Thanks to our Islamic laws we will conquer you." But what really makes Fallaci's blood boil is the West's inability to even acknowledge this aggression. A large part of her book is dedicated to analyzing how the main European countries pander to the arrogant demands of radical Muslim organizations, how they are unable to defend their Jewish citizens from acts of Islamic militant violence (often blamed on neo-Nazis and almost never on the Muslim perpetrators, even when the evidence clearly proves otherwise), and said countries' unwillingness to be proud of their cultures and identities. But when and why did Europe become so weak and submissive in the face of its new Islamic masters, a "province of Islam," as Fallaci calls it? She points the finger squarely at the 1973 oil crisis. Europeans were so afraid of losing their supplies of oil that they decided to pander to the requests of OPEC, discarding Israel and beginning an intense dialogue with Arab countries. From that year on, intellectuals, the media, and politicians have been showered with money for their support of Arab and Islamic causes and numerous lobbying organizations have been created in several European countries. A publication with the ominous title of "Eurabia [about which Bat Yeor has written at length] was created in Paris, and the European parliament established the Parliamentary Association for the Euro-Arabian Cooperation, all part of an Arab-financed effort to influence European politics. The last chapters of "The Force of Reason" are dedicated to explaining why Europe's three main political and social forces (Left, Right, and the Church) gave in to what she calls "the Islamic invasion." While Fallaci accuses the Left and Right mostly of ignorance and opportunism, her harshest words are left for the Church. Fallaci has been known throughout her long career for her strong anti-clericalism (she is a long-time leftist, daughter of an Italian partisan who fought the Fascists), but describes herself as a "Christian atheist." While stating that she does not believe in God, she claims that the West cannot ignore its Christian origin and identity. Even if we deny God's existence, Fallaci says, Christianity has shaped the Western world. It defines "who we are, where we are coming from, and where we are going." But the Church, she says, "is not able or worse, not willing" to defend Christianity. Fallaci accuses the Church of helping the expansion of the "Islamic empire," lobbying for more Muslims to come to Europe. She points out that Christianity offers its churches as shelters to Muslim immigrants, who immediately turn them into mosques, as it has happened repeatedly in France and Italy. It continuously apologizes for the Crusades, but never expects an apology for what Muslims are doing now to Christians in Sudan or Indonesia. Amid Fallaci's bleak vision for Europe, however, a ray of hope comes from America. In a very emotional last chapter, Fallaci describes her admiration in witnessing the 2004 New Year's Eve celebrations in Times Square. In a sharp contrast with the fear-constrained Europeans, thousands of New Yorkers decided to defy the Code Orange terror alert and party hard in the face of the terrorists. Proud to honor itself, young and determined, America is perceived by Fallaci as the only hope for the West. In this unprovoked cultural war that has been waged on the West, America should lead the way, but it cannot do it alone. According to Fallaci, the West has not realized that it is under attack, and that this war "wants to hit our soul rather than our body. Our way of life, our philosophy of life. Our way of thinking, acting and loving. Our freedom. Do not be fooled by their explosives. That is just a strategy. The terrorists, the kamikazes, do not kill us just for the sake of killing us. They kill us to bend us. To intimidate us, tire us, demoralize us, blackmail us." Movingly passionate, "The Force of Reason" is a desperate wake-up call for the West and for Europe in particular. In Italy, despite a complete silence from the media (who have decided not to make the same mistake they made with "The Rage and the Pride", when their criticism made the book's sales skyrocket) the book has sold a half million copies in just two weeks. A translation into English is imminent, making "The Force of Reason" readily accessible for those in the U.S . who want to learn more about the dire situation Europe faces. To Go To Top

IDF HAS PIX OF ARAB PALESTINIANS KILLING THEIR OWN KIDS Posted by IsrAlert, May 23, 2004.

These are three articles on this topic: (1) Aaron Lerner, "Official IDF Source Confirms: Have Photos of Palestinians Killing 2 Palestinian Children"; (2) Brig. Gen. Shmuel Zakai's summary, "IDF Spokesperson Announcement 23"; and (3) Aaron Lerner, "PA Opens Gaza Armories To Arm Hamas, Al Aqsa Brigade, etc. To Fight IDF," 23 May 2004. Lerner's article includes excerpts from "Inside Track/Rafah is a Nightmare" by Amir Oren, in Ha'aretz (www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/430200.html), 21 May 2004,. (1) Aaron Lerner, "Official IDF Source Confirms: Have Photos of Palestinians Killing 2 Palestinian Children." An official IDF source confirmed Amir Orens' 21 May story this afternoon to IMRA that two Palestinian children who died in the Rafah procession incident were murdered by Palestinian gunmen and that the IDF photographed the shooting. The official IDF source explained that the pictures have not been released to the media because information derived from the photographs would compromise security in the field at this time. These are excerpts from Oren's original article: ... When the procession with armed men in its midst set out in the direction of the forces, (the commander of the Gaza Division, Brigadier General Shmuel) Zakaii tried to speak with the community leaders in Rafah. The head of the Liaison and Coordination Administration, Colonel Poli Mordecai, phoned Nasser Saraj, the head of the Civil Committee in the city. Had the Liaison and Coordination Administration sufficed, they would not have needed the tank commander. Saraj, a respected individual, formerly the director-general of the Ministry of Trade and Industry in the Palestinian Authority, listened to Colonel Mordecai's pleas, but took no steps to prevent the disaster. When men obeyed the calls over the loudspeakers to turn themselves in to the IDF authorities (and to the intelligence people who wanted to question them), they were confronted by members of the terror organizations, who opened fire on them and killed two children. A senior officer in Gaza reported yesterday that the IDF have in their possession pictures of this incident, of Palestinians killing their children. He expressed amazement as to why the army has refrained from publishing them. It is difficult to explain what has been going on during this operation without background on the last week's events. Last week 13 IDF soldiers were killed as a result of RPGs which have been fired at our forces in Gaza. A bus full of children was hit by another RPG which was fired a month ago. Miraculously, no one was hurt. The weapons that have been smuggled through the tunnels are becoming a higher endangerment, and there is also the risk of smugglings of other weapons into the Gaza strip. We decided to initiate this operation in order to take action against the weapons smuggling tunnels as well as the terrorists themselves. The terrorist organizations are making tremendous efforts in order to smuggle weapons which are a great threat to Israel. This was an operation to protect the lives of our soldiers stationed in Gaza and Israeli civilians living inside and outside the Gaza Strip. We do not want that civilians living outside the Gaza Strip will be within striking range. This is a complicated mission, made more so by the fact that we are fighting within densely-populated areas. We are operating in such way that along with hitting the terrorists, we will preserve lives and prevent humanitarian disaster in Rafah. We understand that in the present military intensity, the terrorist don't have an actual way to handle us. The pictures they spread are mainly a reconstruction of pictures previously released. As an result of our understanding of the need to provide humanitarian aid to the civilian population, we have been enabling a steady flow of humanitarian aid into the city including 40 truckloads of food, medicine and oxygen tanks, ambulances, electricity repair trucks, and other necessary supplies. In this operation we are taking under consideration the need to prevent a humanitarian disaster. There is no lack of water or other means. We distributed flyers, which explained the purpose of the operation. We have asked the civilians to enter their houses and not to stay in the streets so they won't get hurt. Damage to roads was necessary to prevent the planting of explosive devices on the roads. Terrorists have planted before explosive devices underneath the roads and inside buildings' walls. The movement of the forces through yards is in order to protect the lives of our soldiers. Until now the operation went on as expected. There is a changing military intensity. So far we achieved all the goals we set to this operation and right now the operation continues. We uncovered an opening of a large tunnel which used apparently to smuggle RPG missiles, hit terrorist who are protecting these tunnels and arrested terrorists who are terrorist organization operatives. So far dozens of gunmen were killed. Unfortunately, the gunmen also hit civilians, for example an incident occurred on the second day of the operation in which the forces called several suspects to get out of the houses and when those came out, they were fired by gunmen from a house nearby and killed. Fire was returned against those who opened fire and they were killed. It is a long time that we are operating against the tunnels infrastructure. In the current terrorist activity there is a clear danger and a big threat of smuggling weapons into the Gaza Strip. Approximately 40 terrorists were killed during the operation up until now. The terror organizations are conducting a very sophisticated propaganda, campaign. For example, in the incident of the procession, the primary report by Palestinians was about 23 who were killed and they published pictures which were not related to this incident in order to mislead who ever sees them. Regarding the number of houses that have been demolished- the large numbers which were released relate to the ongoing fighting of the last three years and not only to the past few weeks. The structures were demolished only to protect our forces. We are taking all means to prevent unnecessary damage. For example, we are endangering our soldiers and sending them into houses in order to make sure that they are clear from residents. We have decided to reduce the intensity of the operation in order to allow the civilian population in Rafah to get supplies. The need for such an operation comes from the intelligence we have, that on the edge of Sinai the terror organizations are arming themselves with weapons that are designated to be smuggled into the Gaza Strip and we see this as a real threat. The operation will end as soon as we will achieve our goals, it is clear that when we are operating in such a large magnitude, the duration of the operation is limited and that is why we have to allow the civilian population equip themselves. We knew about the procession previously and we contacted the coordination and Liaison offices with the request to prevent the procession. The procession begun at the center of Rafah toward the Tel- Sultan neighborhood. We fired flares from helicopter in order to prevent the procession from getting near the forces. Shots fired a distance from the crowd had no effect nor did machine gun fire, so we decided to fire a shell in order to cause an effect of a distanced explosion. From the point where the tank was located the procession could not be seen. There was no intention of hurting the demonstrators at any stage. Several gunmen were among those seven demonstrators who killed, what actually shows that the terrorists are exploiting opportunities. We know that the method of terrorists is to take innocent children and use them as a human shield while attacking the forces. It should be noted that residents of Rafah exposed a tunnel in order to prevent themselves from suffering. They went to the owner of the tunnel, destroyed his house and even shot him dead. Most residents are against terror activity among them. The Palestinians didn't bury the bodies of those killed, they put the bodies aside in an intention to show that we made terrible actions and they even started doing this three days before the operation began. Israel Television Channel Two Arab Affairs Correspondent Ehud Yaari reported this evening that according to a senior Israeli security official, the Palestinian Authority has opened its armories in Gaza to distribute weapons to the various illegal Palestinian militias - Hamas, Al Aqsa Brigade, etc. to battle against the IDF. With the exception of Preventive Security's armory, the armories of all the various PA security forces, including the civil police, were opened to the illegal militias to arm them. Yaari noted that the very same Palestinian police forces that are supposed to be strengthened by international contributions were transferring weapons to the terrorists that they are ostensibly to be strengthened to fight against. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

THE ISLAMIC BARBARIANS ARE AT THE GATES OF JERUSALEM Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, May 23, 2004.

The Arabic Satellite TV station al-Jazeera shows footage of two Islamic Jihad leaders sitting at a table, speaking about the recent Israeli operation in Gaza against the terrorist infrastructure there, with the head of an Israeli soldier sitting in front of them on the table. Later, a video appears on an al-Qaeda-linked website showing the beheading of an American civilian in Iraq, Nick Berg, who was a Jew. In a grisly gesture, the executioners hold up the man's head for the camera. The decapitation recalled the kidnapping and videotaped beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl - another Jew - in 2002 in Pakistan. Then, al-Jazeera re-broadcasts this beheading scene, like the earlier scene of an Israeli soldier's head sitting on a table, throughout the Arab world. What's going on here? The executioner in Iraq, claimed his killing of a random American civilian, was revenge for the mis-treatment of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. But one can wonder if Nick Berg was picked out because he was Jewish? The photos and reports of abuse and degrading behavior toward the Iraqi prisoners need to be investigated, and properly punished. But was "revenge" against an innocent American civilian justified? As the American President, George Bush stated, "There will be a full accounting for the cruel and disgraceful abuse of the Iraqi detainees. The conduct that has come to light is an insult to the Iraqi people and an affront to the most basic standards of morality and decency. One basic difference between democracies and dictatorships is that free countries confront such abuses openly and directly...Today several formal investigations, led by senior military officials are underway...Some soldiers have already been charged, and those involved will answer for their conduct in an orderly and transparent process." What we all know is that the behavior of a few American soldiers in Iraq, does not represent the values of America, or the West in general. Every once in a great while, an Israeli soldier is disciplined for abuses toward the enemy also. But that's the point; it's not very often and they're being disciplined, in Israel and in America. These stressed-out behaviors by men and women put by their governments into very difficult situations aren't tolerated, and they are held accountable for their behavior. Contrast this with the outrages perpetrated at the end of March in Fallujah, Iraq. The bodies of four murdered American security contractors are mutilated, then burned and displayed in public. Crowds gathered around to joyously view the dead Americans. In Gaza they also celebrated the mutilation of the Americans... And now this; the Israeli Army entered Zeitoun in Gaza recently, to destroy "Palestinian" weapons factories. In the operation, the soldiers blew up some 20 workshops that were used by terror groups to make weapons. The operation encountered resistance from hundreds of "Palestinian" fighters, but the Israeli troops suffered no casualties. After dawn, as the operation was being wrapped up, the soldiers began to withdraw from Zeitoun, when a bomb containing approximately 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of explosives was detonated against an Israeli armored personnel carrier carrying six members of the Givati Brigade's engineering corps. The vehicle was carrying explosives for use in demolishing the weapons manufactories, which intensified the effects of the blast. Pieces of the APC and of the soldiers' bodies were scattered for hundreds of meters roundabout, even landing on the rooftops of neighboring buildings. Soon after the blast, Hamas terrorists excitedly displayed and played with the body parts in front of cameras. Gazan Arabs were seen dancing in the streets with pieces of the destroyed Israeli APC and pieces of dead Israeli soldiers. In another scene, shown on Israel's Channel Two TV, a Hamas gunman on a motorcycle held a bloodied burlap bag with body parts. An armed Hamas barbarian bragged how he had human remains from the APC blast, he proceeded to pull a finger out of the bag and shouted, "This is for Sheikh Yassin, and for the rest you'll pay in liberated prisoners." Fatah - Arafat's group - Hamas, and Islamic Jihad all competed to claim responsibility for the attack. It seemed like everyone in the neighborhood had a piece of metal they claimed came from the APC, or a piece of human remains that they said belonged to the Israeli soldiers. And then, this macabre scene on al-Jazeera TV, hooded Islamic Jihad spokesmen, sitting and talking on camera, with a human head from a dead Israeli soldier sitting in front of them on the table, as if nothing strange was happening. It was like a scene right out of a Hollywood horror flick, with the demented evil ones right before our eyes, except this was real... Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, participating in a Knesset ceremony commemorating the 59th anniversary since the end of World War II, responded to the APC blast by describing Israel's enemy as "cruel and inhumane." Sharon told the Knesset that "We are fighting a ruthless enemy, without human feelings," and that Israel would strike back hard. "We will not stop fighting [the enemy] and hitting him, wherever he operates and hides," Sharon said, he added that Israel must continue striking out until the enemy is defeated. In a quickly convened security cabinet meeting, it was reported that Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the families of the slain soldiers should be asked for permission to distribute abroad the grisly footage of the "Palestinians" desecrating the bodies, so that the world will have a clear picture of the "monsters we are dealing with." Even funerals, and memorial services apparently are no longer sacred... Recently, a pregnant Israeli mother and her four young daughters were shot to death in their car on a Gazan road. First the terrorist barbarians shot at the car, then as it veered off the road, and came to a stop, they ran over to the car and at point-blank range, shot each of the occupants to death: Tali, the 8-month pregnant mother, Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav. The murderers then continued to fire dozens of more bullets into their bodies. When mourners came to the site of the murder, for a memorial service a week later, the terrorist barbarians, one of them apparently dressed as a woman, opened fire at the hundreds of Jews who came to participate. "Bullets whistled past our ears, and between our legs, and miraculously, no one was hurt," said the Gazan Jewish Community spokesman Eran Sternberg. IDF soldiers managed to kill two of the attackers. "It was a humiliating experience for Jews who come to remember a slaughtered family to have to crouch and lie down while terrorists shoot wildly around," said David Hatuel - husband and father of those murdered - after the attack. But these are the "New Barbarians"... Even the Palestinian Authority understood that it wouldn't look good for them. They called on the terror groups and residents of the Gaza Strip who hold remains of the IDF soldiers to return the parts. In the statement, released after a meeting of PA officials in Ramallah, the Palestinian leadership called on the groups to treat the bodies "according to Islamic law, and not to hurt Islamic values." The PA condemned the "criminal" IDF operation, but called on the groups not to "tarnish the image and values of the Palestinians." My question is, since mutilation of the enemy, and the degrading display of body parts is so widespread in the Arab world, is it really "against" Islamic values to do? What about the fact that Arafat's own group Fatah vied for claiming responsibility? And what about suicidal-genocidal bombing of innocent civilians, which certainly seems to have the go ahead of Islamic clerics? Then along comes Prof. Yonah Alexander, a leading expert on terrorism and director of the Inter-Universities Center for Terrorism Studies, who in an interview recently said he believes it is only a matter of time before groups like al-Qaeda will use non-conventional weapons to propagate their Jihadist ideology and undermine Western Society. Alexander feels that al-Qaeda's next theater of operations will be Europe, where they have established an extensive network. What he doesn't say is that besides the terror network they've set up, Muslims have been converting Europeans in droves to Islam. In the United Kingdom, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon, carried by the Sunday Times on February 22, some of Britain's top landowners, celebrities, and the offspring of senior establishment figures, have embraced Islam after being disillusioned with Western values. For example, Jonathan Birt, the son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, and Emma Clark, the granddaughter of former liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, are only two of 14,000 mostly-elite white Britons who have converted to Islam recently, according to the Sunday Times. Emma Clark said, "We're all the rage, I hope it's not a passing fashion." Islam has even received formal acceptance at the heart of the British Establishment. The Queen recently approved new arrangements to allow Muslim staff at Buckingham Palace time off to attend Friday prayers at a mosque. A member of staff in the finance department was the first to take advantage of it. Many converts have been inspired by the pro-Islamic writings of Charles Le Gai Eaton, a former Foreign Office diplomat. "I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world," said Eaton, who is author of "Islam and the Destiny of Man". "Not compromise too much with the modern world," or attempt to destroy it? There have been several cases in the last couple of years, of converts to Islam helping in the terror effort. For example, the British "shoe bomber," the British convert that planned on carrying out an attack for Hizbollah in Israel, and the British-born Australian convert working for al-Qaeda (he met with bin Laden), who was caught planning to truck bomb the Israeli embassy in Canberra. At least, they were captured before they could carry out their operations. But, the two Pakistani-born British Muslims who bombed Mike's Place in Tel Aviv not long ago, were successful. And don't forget, the American converts, an al-Qaeda fighter caught in Afghanistan, and the convert soldier who fired on his own troops in Iraq. Western converts to Islam are just as dangerous as any other Muslim. Alexander continued, "We can expect to see an escalation in terrorism on a global scale with a continuation of conventional acts of terror, such as suicide bombings and shooting, as well as mega-terror like September 11 in the US and March 11 in Spain. There will also be a move towards the use of non-conventional weapons: biological, chemical, nuclear as in dirty bombs, and cyber-terrorism, whereby perpetrators will try to disrupt power supplies and air traffic, for example, at the touch of a button." He cited the examples of the anthrax attacks in the US after September 11, 2001, reports that al-Qaeda was trying to produce ricin, and the unsuccessful attempt to blow up the Pi Glilot fuel and gas storage depot in Israel as an indication toward the future. "According to the studies we have conducted, we can expect a continuation of bus bombings like the ones that have occurred in Israel, as well as attempts to strike at chemical plants and infrastructure targets and super-terrorism with non-conventional weapons," said Alexander. Beheadings, disgusting abuse of human remains, suicide bombings, and now mass genocidal terror? In predicting that international terrorism will expand and intensify, Alexander referred to numerous disputes throughout the world, such as those in Chechnya, Kashmir, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South America. He forgot to mention the Philippines and South Asia. Notice most of these places include Muslims on one side of the conflict... But, I feel Alexander is mistaken when he said, "Islam has been hijacked and taken hostage by extremists who are using it to serve their own interests." Suicide bombings against Israelis regularly garner 50-80% support amongst "Palestinians". This is the same line of reasoning that George Bush and others have been using to divide the Arab/Islamic world into friends and foes. I don't agree. I believe the Jihadists speak for real Islam, as originally set out by Mohammed and his barbarian hordes. Islam started out as an Arab Imperialist movement, and has only put a "thin veneer" of "religion" over it. Notice, they started in Arabia and ended up ruling everything throughout the Middle East and North Africa, up to Spain and Southern France by the 700s. The Jihadists openly state that they want to introduce a worldwide caliphate, i.e. global Islamic conquest. But this has always been "traditional" Islam's ultimate goal too. "What concerns many is the expansion of international networks as seen after the Madrid bombings, when links were discovered between Spanish citizens and people in North Africa, Asia, and with various other groups like Hamas," Alexander explained. Because they draw from Muslim communities throughout the world; every Muslim is a potential Jihadist. Discussing why experts feel that international terrorism will continue to expand, Alexander pointed to, "the education of hatred, including anti-Semitism, that we see all the time on various Internet sites." Recent studies in Europe have show that anti-Israel activities by Arabs and Muslims have led to greater anti-Semitism in Europe. Arabs and Muslims carry out most attacks on Jews throughout Europe, and the atmosphere of Judeopathy they create, encourages both indigenous far-right elements and far-left anti-globalization activists to voice their own hatred of Jews and Israel. Alexander asked whether nations should give in to terrorism and whether civilization would survive in the event of the use of non-conventional weapons. He answered that submission only further motivates the terrorists and their leaders, while survival would depend on nations taking all necessary steps to reduce the risks. "Dealing with terrorism requires a broad range of responses, starting with clear and coherent policies. It is necessary to have quality intelligence, as well as law enforcement, the military, and the means to counter technological and cyber-terrorism." What he doesn't suggest is the need to suppress Islam itself... "To this end some innocent civilians might be harmed but, make no mistake, this is war and to fight it nations have to pool their resources. No nation can deal with the problem unilaterally. In the past, terrorism was regarded as a tactical rather than a strategic threat but it has become a permanent fixture and a challenge to the strategic interests of nations. In fact," said Alexander, "it represents the most threatening challenge to civilization in the 21st century. The question of survival will depend to a great extent on how civilized society tackles this threat." There you have it, the ultimate question, "How will civilized society tackle this threat?" Jews and especially Israel are on the front lines of this global war against Jihadist terror. Israel, in its battles with the "Palestinians" is showing leadership. The Muslims have a saying, "First they'll get the Saturday people (the Jews), and then they'll get the Sunday people (the Christians)." Europe till now has sat relatively quiet, trying to wait it out, hoping it will go away. But America, who has been attacked, is fighting back also. The Islamic barbarians are knocking at the gates of Jerusalem, the gates of Europe, and have attacked the towers of America... Will we let them in? Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations and Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko To Go To Top

DOES OPPRESSION CAUSE SUICIDE BOMBING? Posted by IsrAlert, May 23, 2004.

This was written by Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor of law at Harvard. His latest book is "The Case for Israel." This article appeared in the Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2004. Some overprivileged Muslims support a culture of death, while impoverished Tibetans celebrate life As suicide bombings increase in Iraq, in Saudi Arabia, and in Israel, more and more people have come to believe that this tactic is a result of desperation. They see a direct link between oppression, occupation, poverty, and humiliation on the one hand, and a willingness to blow oneself up for the cause on the other hand. It follows from this premise that the obvious remedy for suicide bombing is to address its root cause - namely, our oppression of the terrorists. But the underlying premise is demonstrably false: There is no such link as a matter of fact or history. Suicide bombing is a tactic that is selected by privileged, educated, and wealthy elitists because it has proven successful. Moreover, even some of the suicide bombers themselves defy the stereotype of the impoverished victims of occupation driven to desperate measures by American or Israeli oppression. Remember the 9/11 bombers, several of whom were university students and none of whom were oppressed by the US. They were dispatched by a Saudi millionaire named Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden has now become the hero of many other upper-class Saudis who are volunteering to become shahids (martyrs) in Iraq, Israel, and other parts of the globe. Majid al-Enezi, a Saudi student training to become a computer technician, recently changed career plans and decided to become a martyr; he crossed over into Iraq, where he died. His brother Abdullah celebrated that decision. "People are calling all the time to congratulate us, crying from happiness and envy. There are many young men who wish they could cross over into Iraq, but they can't. Thank God he was able to." These rich kids glorify the culture of suicide, even in distant places. As Tufful al-Oqbi, a student at the elite King Saud University, described this situation, young people are wearing T-shirts with bin Laden's picture on them just the way people used to wear pictures of Che Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary. According to a recent news account, wealthy women students sport Osama bin Laden T-shirts under their enveloping abayas to show their approval for his calls to resist the United States. Why do these overprivileged and well-educated young men and women support this culture of death, while impoverished and oppressed Tibetans continue to celebrate life despite their occupation by China for half a century? WHY HAVE other oppressed people throughout history not resorted to suicide bombings and terrorism? The answer lies in differences among the elite leadership of various groups and causes. The leaders of Islamic radical causes, especially the Wahhabis, advocate and incite suicide terrorism, while the leaders of other causes advocate different means. Recall Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., whose people were truly oppressed but who advocated non-violent means of resistance. It is the leaders who send suicide bombers to blow themselves up. No suicide bomber ever sent himself to be blown up. The bombers accept death because they have been incited into a frenzy of hatred by imams preaching "Kill the infidels." Sheikh Muhammad Sayed Tantawi, the leading Islamic scholar at the elite Al-Azhar University in Cairo (which is not occupied), has declared that martyrdom operations - which means suicide bombings - are the highest form of jihad and an Islamic commandment. Even more mainstream role models, such as Yasser Arafat's wife, who lives in a multimillion-dollar residence in Paris, has said that if she had a son, she would want him to become a suicide bomber because there is no greater honor than to become a martyr. Young children, some as young as 12 and 13, are incited and seduced into strapping bombs around themselves by these older and better-educated elitist leaders. The children are promised virgins in heaven, praise and money for their families here on Earth, and posters portraying them as rock stars. It is an irresistible combination for some, and the blame lies squarely at the feet of the elitists who exploit them, use them, and eventually kill them. There is absolutely no evidence to support the claim of a direct relationship between occupation and suicide bombing. If anything, occupation makes it more difficult to launch successful terrorist attacks. This is not to argue for occupation; it is to separate the arguments regarding occupation from the claim that it is the fact of occupation, and the oppression it brings, that causes suicide bombing. Indeed, were Israel to end its occupation of Gaza and most of the West Bank (as I have long believed it should), it is likely that terrorism would actually increase as terrorist commanders secure more freedom to plan and implement terrorist actions. The same might well be true in Iraq, were the United States to pick up and run. The time has come to address the real root cause of suicide bombing: elitist incitement by certain religious and political leaders who are creating a culture of death and exploiting the ambiguous teachings of an important religion. Abu Hamza - the cleric who tutored Richard Reid, the convicted shoe bomber - recently urged a large crowd to embrace death. Islamic young people are in love with death, claim some influential imams; but it is these leaders who are arranging the marriages between the children and the bomb belts. Perhaps, now that suicide bombers have attacked Saudi Arabia, responsible Islamic leaders will better understand that it is their people who will be the ultimate victims of this tactically imposed culture of death. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

TOM FRIEDMAN'S DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ANTI-ISRAEL TERRORISTS AND ANTI-IRAQ TERRORISTS! Posted by Leo Rennert, May 23, 2004.

This was written in response to "The Search for P.M.D.s", an op-ed May 23, in the New York Times. Columnist Tom Friedman is wrong in distinguishing between Palestinian terrorists who kill little children in Israel and suicide bombers who do the same thing in Iraq. He apparently can understand the former, he says, because of Israel's "occupation" of Palestinian areas and because Hamas at least has a political agenda to get rid of Israel and provides social services. In contrast, he's unable to comprehend what drives terrorists in Iraq and concludes that they belong to a worse category of terrorists -- a bunch of "nihilists." Actually, both types are products of the same cookie-cutter -- indoctrination into a fanatical belief that the region must be purged of Westerners and any vestiges of Western civilization. Just as Israelis must be ousted from Palestine, Americans must be driven out of Iraq and other parts of the Middle East to make room for a pure Islamist theocracy that can then expand into Europe and beyond as the only legitimate religious and political entity in the world. To Go To Top

EGYPT DISREGARDS ITS OBLIGATIONS Posted by H.Z. Bornstein, May 23, 2004.

Egypt, as all independent nations, has the duty both under International Law as well as under its Peace Treaty with Israel, to ensure that its borders are not used for criminal activities. Whether for simple crimes, drugs, arms or other smuggling activities. Egypt violated these obligations which are incumbent on it. Would Egypt have done so, no illegal smuggling of arms would have been possible from its territory into Gaza. Israel would then have had no cause to institute actions preventing such crimes which were Egypt's duty to prevent. Nevertheless, the U.N. Security Council (as well as the E.U.) condemned Israel for its action which necessitated destroying buildings located near the Egyptian border at Rafah and which, together with tunnels illegally dug under the border, gave cover for arms smuggling. And so, the U.N. and the E.U. blamed the victim rather than the culprit. In this case - Egypt. But then, it is always easier to blame Jews? H.Z. Bornstein is with Justice For Jews (justiceforjews@juno.com). To Go To Top

POOR CHRISTOPHER PATTEN Posted by David Frankfurter, May 23, 2004.

Recent newspaper reports suggest that the EU anti fraud unit - OLAF - is preparing a damning report on the way the EU has negligently handed out billions of EU money to the Palestinian Authority. I question whether we should blame Mr. Patten, Brussel's "monsieur supreme" of foreign affairs. This was published in "The Sprout", May 2004 print edition (www.thesprout.net). Whatever his other failings, European Commission for External Relations, Mr. Christopher Patten cannot be accused of beating around the bush. He evidently means what he says. Take the stance he adopted on the repeated allegations of financial impropriety, relating to European funding of the Palestinians. On June 19, 2002, Patten stated: "I repeat. The documents presented to us by Israel do not prove that EU funds have been misused... (nor) has financed terrorism." Things look much less clear today. Officials from the EU's anti-fraud OLAF office were in Jerusalem recently, reviewing evidence. Has EU financial aid for the Palestinian Authority (PA) been diverted? However, OLAF is not the only inquiry in progress. French authorities have announced an investigation into mysterious transfers to Mrs. Arafat's personal bank balance. This might account for some - 9 million. Where is the rest? The scale of the alleged fraud is immense. Brussels has handed around - 4 billion to the PA since 1993, directly and via non-government organisations like UNRWA. This excludes significant contributions from individual European countries, from the USA, Canada, and from Arab League states. In 2003, EU transfers reached - 245m. Some suggest that total foreign aid to the PA has finally exceeded the level of funding provided to Israel by the United States. It's an open secret that the flow of money to the Palestinians has often lacked appropriate controls. This inherent weakness in the EU's budget structure is waiting to be tapped by the unscrupulous. At least some of that cash has funded terrorists and gunrunning, even through the misuse of ambulances. Sadly, the victims of misplaced investment of this kind include citizens of the EU like Marianne Zaoui, murdered by Palestinian activists. The weight of evidence confirms that much of the EU money paid to the PA has disappeared, with no benefit to the man on the street. Instead of investigating its own channels and procedures, the EC continues to wave an accusatory finger in every other direction. As Europe's chief civil servant for foreign affairs, Mr. Patten is in the firing line over these allegations. Fair-minded people are entitled to ask whether the charges against Patten stand up to scrutiny. Patten himself has long complained that it's not easy tracking money transfers to the PA. In that 2002 speech, he compared the situation to a previous career posting in Northern Ireland, where he feared that money was also being diverted. An interesting career record. In his defence, Patten has argued for years that the IMF monitored the distribution of EU funding to the Palestinians. The IMF's own website did clarify that point, way back in 2002 - unfortunately not by backing the Commissioner but by contradicting him: "... the IMF does not and cannot control downstream spending by the various Palestinian agencies. This matter remains between the PA and the donors." Patten's distinguished team of advisors includes Mr. Alan Seatter, the Head of Division for the Near East Region. In evidence to a UK Parliamentary committee last September, Mr. Seatter gave assurances about the "improved" procedures by the PA's Ministry of Finance, largely on the basis that the new Palestinian finance minister has introduced proper controls. Sadly, the minister, Mr. Salam Fayyad, an internationally respected economist, has also spoken clearly. He has repeatedly reported that the PA's finances remain under a cloud of suspicion. Three short months after Seatter's conjectures, Fayyad stated: "Unfortunately, the documents related to the revenues from oil products - or how the money was used - can't be found. They have disappeared from the ministry." Fayyad knows that these revenues, rightfully a resource of the Palestinian Authority, were deposited in a bank account under Chairman Arafat's personal name and sole control. Meanwhile, Seatter was openly stating the case in London for the PA and how it prefers to request general budget support rather than aid for specific infrastructure projects. What causes Patten's staff to ignore facts like these? But there's more. Last year, Patten and others publicly praised on the management improvements proposed by Arafat's handpicked prime minister, Abu Mazen. Abu Mazen, another clear speaker, complained at length in his resignation speech of illegal tamperings with Palestinian civil servants' salaries, a payroll largely funded from contributions by the EU taxpayer. He abhorred the way that tens of millions were siphoned off annually from Palestinian monopolies. All this and more was simply a 'cover for theft'. The EC's response to the speech: utter silence. Abu Mazen's statement came some weeks before Seatter's testimony. At least, the EC is being consistent. It has just released a statement, sponsored by EC chief Romano Prodi, committing "to review its block on 40m EUR in aid to the PA following concerted reform efforts." Should we expect better? Patten's workload is immense. So, it's understandable that he apparently did not manage to review fully the IMF findings published in September 2003. Had he done so, he would have seen that $900m was 'diverted' (using the IMF's term) from PA tax revenues. He would also have noticed that these same 'diverters' manage the EU-funded PA budgets - which, the IMF says, suffer from a long list of control flaws. And Patten's officials have been up to their eyeballs with Afghanistan and Iraq. Does this explain their failure to appreciate the severity of the evidentiary material previously shown to them by the Israelis, very probably the same documents proffered to the OLAF officials? And as for checking out the myriad of reports available documenting the theft of UNRWA contributions and misappropriation of European donated hospital equipment by PA officials - well, how many hours are there in a day? Let us not even ask about the EU millions sent to the PA to cover the budgetary gap, stemming from Israel suspending tax transfers collected on behalf of the PA. When the Israelis cleared the backlog and resumed the payments, several members of EU Foreign Affairs committees complained that no attempt was made to recover those EU loans. Some now assert that the Parliament had not actually approved the payments in the first place. Are Parliamentarians trying to shift the blame to Patten, now that the money seems irrecoverable? Let's be clear. Hundreds of millions of Euros have gone missing, but it's unfair to blame it all on Patten. But let's ask this: How in the name of everything decent in Europe is it that a veritable library of verbal, written and circumstantial evidence, all pointing to the same conclusion - massive misappropriation of vast amounts of money intended for the Palestinian Arab people - has been ignored and denied for years? Some plain answers are urgently needed. Patten's office no longer seems the place to go. Maybe the EC is just hoping the issue will be filibustered until the summer elections. As Patten always explained, they were all just following the orders of the EU Parliament. Weren't they? David Frankfurter is a writer on economic affairs in the Middle East and a regular contributor. To Go To Top

SAY NO TO SONIA Posted by Bob-Martin, May 23, 2004.

What's been happening in Bharat (India) since the creation of Pakistan illustrates what will eventually happen everywhere the Muslims are allowed to gain social and political control. This was written by Rohit Vyasmaan, Chairman, Hindu Unity Organization (www.HinduUnity.org). It was published May 17, 2004. [Note: Sonia Gandhi and her Congress party won the election May 14, 2004 but turned down the post of Prime Minister on May 18th.] What a great victory for the anti-nationals, the terrorists and Pakistan. The latest elections in Bharat (India) are indeed a low blow to the Hindus from which we may never recover. It was indeed a sad day to see people on the streets of Pakistan celebrating the defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The festivities in Pakistan are due to the fact that Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) will now at least work peacefully without any hurdles. They will now be able to concentrate on cross border terrorism and expand their terror network all across India. It was an accomplishment to see how Muslims of India who were somewhat kept in check by the previous lead BJP government were celebrating with a sigh of relief. Rumors of cows being slaughtered at Jama Majid in Delhi over the defeat of BJP put an arrow in our hearts. The same Muslims know that the coming government will give them special privileges, allowing them to join in the efforts to terrorize India to the fullest while keeping Hindus and democracy at bay. We Hindus have failed to protect our own Matru-Bhoomi. We have failed our Mother land and once again we have ended up as slaves to the Muslims and foreign rule. Some very hard times are coming for us Hindus in our own lands. Be prepared for the worst. Even under the BJP rule, the Muslims were bold enough to burn a trainload full of Hindu women and children. Now it will be an everyday affair. We will soon get used to terror attacks on a daily basis. This reminds me of Israel and how daily bombings have become a part of their lives. Just like young innocent Jewish children die on a daily basis, we Hindus will also come to the same fate. Oh! How we have sweated blood to build our India from the grass roots to the political levels will now be destroyed in a single heartbeat What we built for our own generations will now end up in the wrong hands. The same hands that will now break our lands into further divisions. The same evil hands of these anti-nationals that will enslave us Hindus Reports are already coming in about how the new government will reintroduce the distorted history of India, which was stopped by the previous government. Hindu children are already en-route to being brainwashed once again under Sonia's rule. The list of evil that will be perpetrated on us Hindus now will be endless. Be prepared. The traitors amongst us who didn't vote for the Hindu regime can now prepare themselves to give their daughters to the Muslims, their wives to the Christian missionaries and their own pathetic selves to the demands of communism. These are same traitors that will weep blood, gasping for air when Muslim butchers behead their loved ones and burn them alive perhaps - Godhra style. Few days ago we received a call that Shri Mahesh Prahu, a RSS activist from Hiriyur of Chitradurga district committed suicide. A suicide note left by him clearly described how upset he was at the defeat over the elections but the final straw was Sonia 'Maino' Gandhi (the foreign born Italian) becoming the next prime minister of India. What happened here cannot be classified as an isolated event but this is what's going through the minds of millions of Hindus in India now. To die free rather than to be enslaved in your own country. Committing suicide may be the last resolve for the very few, but there are millions of others who will fight the decision to come. With elections lost, Hindus are now hoping for one last relief - that the country will NOT be ruled by a foreigner. If so, this will fuel the anger even further as the wounds of foreign rule are still ever fresh in the minds of the Hindu people. Let's be honest to ourselves. Hindus want leaders of their own to rule their nation. Who is to say what can happen to the newly elected Sonia Gandhi? The pressure in our country is building and the Hindu minds are restless. Hindus cannot and should not accept her, as the newly elected Prime Minister to rule the Hindu nation of India Political unrest in the country will be eminent as soon as she is crowned. No Hindu organization will be able to stop the unrest caused by this event and the outcome could have dire consequences for Sonia Gandhi. Hindus of India have come a long way from the enslaved mentality that the Muslims generously forced upon us during their rule of India. Hindutva has brought back and sparked the engines of freedom, pride and honor amongst us Hindus. We cannot go back and accept the same injustices perpetrated on our forefathers who died fighting to liberate India from the clutches of foreign rule. I urge our brothers and sisters who still have pride in being Hindus not to accept Sonia and her government at all costs even if it means political instability. Let it be known to her and the evil party that she represents, that Hindus will not be ruled by a dynasty that was guilty of Hindu slavery. We urgently call upon the Hindu youth of India to take steps with appropriate action as the honor of our country is at stake. We Hindus are still the ruling majority and we still have enough strength to decide the stability of the newly elected government of India. The action we take in the coming days and weeks will decide the fate of Bharat We have lost the election but we have not lost our identities. The amount of resistance put in by each of us will determine the outcome of the eventual victory or defeat. The choice is ours. This was distributed by the Communaute-Juive-France. To Go To Top

ARAB LEAGUE WRAPS FIERCE ANTI-ISRAEL AGENDA IN PACKAGE OF OLIVE BRANCHES Posted by Leo Rennert, May 23, 2004.

Initial reports of the Arab summit communique in Tunis point to an Arab League attempt to create a new image of moving toward democratic reforms and condemning all forms of terrorism, including murders of Israeli civilians. In case Western media allow themselves to be fooled, please keep the following in mind: 1. Arab League doesn't speak for the Arab world; it's an empty shell. The summit was boycotted by several important heads of state; several others left early and Qadafi stormed out. 2. With regard to Israel, the summit condemned attacks against civilians. So does Arafat on a regular basis. But the summit immediately stressed that resistance to occupation is legitimate. So does Arafat. 3. Which brings us to what Arafat and the Arab League mean by "occupation." The communique makes it amply clear that, as with Arafat, it means "occupation" of Israel by Israel. The summit, while talking about peace offers to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said it could ONLY be settled on the basis of ALL U.N. resolutions. Very cute, because this means not just Security Council Resolution 242 (which Israel and the U.S. accept because it doesn't call for a TOTAL Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank let alone from Israel proper) but all resolutions passed by the bitterly anti-Israel U.N. General Assembly, including an early one that has been interpreted in modern times by Arabs and Palestinians as giving millions of Palestinians the "right of return" to Israel (actually a curious reversal by the Arab world since all Arab countries voted AGAINST that resolution because it also referenced partition of Palestine). 4. Some news reports from Tunis suggest that the nicey-nice section of the communique condemning attacks against Israeli civilians was part of a deal with the Bush administration, presumably to lessen its support of Israel (although exactly what kind of a deal it might be and whether there was a deal in the first place appears to be a very murky proposition). 5. As for all the summit pledges about internal Arab reforms to empower their own people, early reactions show that neither human-rights groups nor Arab commentators are taking this as a serious step since there's no accompanying plan for implementation or enforcement. In other words, a PR exercise pure and simple, but so transparent as to evaporate immediately into nothingness. To Go To Top

WISEACRES AND PRAGMATISTS Posted by IsrAlert, May 23, 2004.

This was written by Shmuel Katz, who co-founded the Herut Party with Menachem Begin and was a member of the first Knesset. He is a biographer and essayist. This article appeared on the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies website (http://www.freeman.org). It was Weizmann who was the dreamer, while Jabotinsky was the ultimate practical thinker Sholem Asch, one of the great Yiddish writers of the last century, was not a politician but he was convinced, like many others, that in the ongoing Zionist conflict of the Twenties and Thirties between Chaim Weizmann and Ze'ev Jabotinsky, Weizmann was the rational, levelheaded statesman while Jabotinsky was an impractical dreamer. When I met Asch in the early 1950s, he told me of his pre-Holocaust opinions on Zionist politics. "But," he added, "it turned out that I was all wrong. After all that happened, it became clear to me that the roles were completely reversed. It was Weizmann who was the dreamer, while Jabotinsky was the ultimate practical thinker." We should not now need a national disaster to discover how wrongheaded are the people who persist in supporting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan. They indeed preen themselves as the hard-headed people who think with their brains, while those who oppose it are clueless people, thinking with their emotions, their hearts, with their ossified ideologies. Now Sharon is on the horns of a dilemma. Feverishly he is seeking a "formula" that will satisfy everybody. At the cabinet meeting on May 9 he asked the ministers a number of "key" questions, to which he wanted a reply. What should Israel do with the homes and synagogues in settlements that are to be evacuated? What should Israel do with the Erez Industrial Zone? How should Israel deal with the demographic situation in Gaza? With whom should Israel be negotiating? Asking these questions at this stage strongly supports the charge that the disengagement policy was not carefully thought out but merely a showy quick fix for "running from Gaza." There are, moreover, several more weighty questions for which he evidently did not find answers. THE WISEACRES who were ready with their sneers and their jibes at the poor impractical ideologists who opposed the "rational" and "sensible" disengagement plan as the only game in town should stop their sneering and jibing; they should pause and reflect the very serious - perfectly pragmatic - grounds for opposing the disengagement plan that evidently moved the majority in the Likud Party referendum. True pragmatists understand that the settlements are not the reason for the terror, so getting rid of settlements will not rid Israel of the terror - which began long, long before the settlements of our day were established. Otherwise, how come the pogrom in Jerusalem 84 years ago? How come the attack on Jews in 1921, beginning with the Immigrants' Hostel in Jaffa? How come the massacre of the Hebron Jews in 1929, and the three-year-long riots of 1936-1939? And then the full-scale wars, beginning with 1948? When the realization of the Zionist dream of the reconstitution of Jewish statehood came onto the political horizon, the Arabs states declared, and repeated in one formulation or another, that they would not tolerate a sovereign Jewish state even in a part of Palestine. That, after all, is why the members of the Arab League, formed after WWII, determined to destroy Israel at its birth. They said so too, in 1947, even before the UN General Assembly had decided on the partition of Palestine - and in 1948 launched war to that end. Not succeeding then, they tried once more in 1967. Then Abdul Nasser, president of Egypt, boastfully declared that the object of the war was the "annihilation" of Israel. It isn't the dreamers but the hard-headed who recall why the Arab League, failing to destroy Israel at one blow, decided on the policy of "phases," getting Israel at each phase - by terror, propaganda, and friendly relations with Europe - to hand over a part of its territory and then, with enhanced energy and motivation, fighting for the next phase. What can the Arabs see in Sharon's disengagement idea if not an obvious realization of the Arab policy? Here is a piece of the country given to them free as a result of their terror. Is this not an ideal prelude to the next "phase"? There is a plethora of declarations on Arab intent, emphasized day after day by articles and cartoons in the press, by sermons in the mosques, by teachers in the schools, and in the textbooks for the schoolchildren. The youthful suicide bombers are not killing Jews because of settlers but because they have had it drummed into their heads since their childhood days that this is their country and the Jews came and stole it from them. The Israeli people are told, and many seem innocently to believe, that handing over Gaza and expelling Jews from Gush Katif and from several settlements in Samaria will somehow stop the terror. All the significant signs are inflexibly pointing in the opposite direction. The Israeli leadership, instead of basking in compliments from Washington and from Europe for being so generous with Jewish land, should wake up and tell the people that we are at war, that in war a surrender of land is a victory to the enemy. This victory the Arabs, becoming ever more sophisticated militarily, will exploit to the full. So, in that context, who is being levelheaded and who is being emotional? IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

THOU SHALT NOT BE FOUND INNOCENT Posted by David J. Heimowitz, May 23, 2004.

On July 8, 2002 David Ha'Ivri was indicted for possession for purposes of distribution of a publication which incited to racism, in order to cause racism. The publication was a t-shirt on the front of which appeared a picture of Rabbi Meir Kahane, of blessed memory, and on the back of which was written the words "no arabs - no terror attacks". No lesser person than the then Attorney General of Israel, Mr. Elyakim Rubenshtein, himself gave his permission that this most important of indictments be submitted to court. On May 20, 2004, Mr. Ha'Ivri, after almost two years of battle, was found innocent of the charge appearing in the indictment. He was, however, found guilty of a completely alien crime, to wit, obstruction of justice, which crime of course did not appear in the indictment. There are those who believe that the obstruction of justice that Mr. Ha'Ivri was guilty of was being found innocent in a court of law (?). When it comes to the so-called "extreme right" the extreme left establishment, whether they believe in G-d or not, have added an 11th commandment, to wit, "Thou Shalt Not Be Found Innocent". In the matter of Noam Federman, the extreme left establishment has honed its hypocrisy to a new and impressive height by adding a 12th commandment. "Thou shalt languish in jail indefinitely without being charged of anything so that we need not take the chance that you be found innocent as David Ha'Ivri was." To Go To Top

AL QAEDA'S NEXT STRIKE Posted by Fred Burton, May 23, 2004.

This is distributed by the Stratfor group (http://stratfor.com). Fred Burton is a member of Stratfor and an expert in security and counterterrorism. Summary Al Qaeda likely has a number of sleeper cells still embedded in the United States, and logic dictates that Houston, Texas, is high on their target list. Analysis In our last Terrorism Intelligence Weekly, Stratfor discussed improvements in intelligence-gathering efforts that have aided the ability of Western governments to predict or pre-empt attacks. At the same time, however, the threat within the continental United States -- where al Qaeda is likely to attempt a major strike before the presidential elections -- also has intensified. Logic dictates that Washington, New York, Dallas, Houston or Austin, Texas, could be targeted in an attack that quite possibly would involve a "dirty bomb." Continuing with this line of reasoning, Houston appears to be the most likely target. Sleeper Cell Tactics Concerns over the safety of U.S. citizens are legitimate. Well- placed U.S. government counterterrorism sources have confirmed the presence of al Qaeda "sleeper cells" within the country. Although it is not known how many cells could be in place, intelligence indicates that militant operatives are in place, to be deployed for the next Sept. 11- or Madrid-style attacks. Analysis leads us to believe that a cell could be in place in Houston. Sleeper cells are difficult to ferret out -- with profiles that do not differ greatly from those of the rest of the public. Like the Sept. 11 attackers, militant operatives do not hesitate to violate Islamic custom by shaving, dressing and behaving so as to blend into their temporary communities. As a group, they are overwhelmingly male, they are typically physically fit, and they often practice martial arts -- sometimes in formal school settings. Their identities may be false, but not always. However, it is their actions -- not their appearance, ethnicity or religion -- that can expose sleeper cells and help intelligence and law enforcement agencies to disrupt attacks. First, these militant units are not totally independent: Courier services are used to send money and orders to operatives, whose leaders frequently have had contact with members of other cells. If one operative is arrested, pocket litter and phone records can lead authorities to other cells. And there certainly are opportunities for arrests. Sleeper cells fund some of their activities through credit card and financial fraud, and members often use false identification documents. Elements of these crimes are much easier than terrorism charges to prove in court, which gives police and federal officials some traction in disrupting attack planning. Other activities also provide clues: The premier example, of course, is that the Sept. 11 team had to learn how to fly airplanes -- but more universally, virtually all terrorist attacks follow a period of eyes-on surveillance of the target. At the tactical level, counterterrorism experts have observed that members of al Qaeda's sleeper cells carry out many duties within their units -- which increases the chances that an arrest could throw off a planned attack. For example, analysis of past attacks has revealed that the same members tasked with carrying out preoperational surveillance for a strike also work on the logistics and attack teams. Operationally, this places them at greater risk than groups who use highly trained, specialized cells for each function. Moreover, a study of past al Qaeda attacks and training manuals reveals that the group carries out extensive preoperational surveillance. This renders militants vulnerable to detection by countersurveillance teams, who could trail them back to the rest of their cells -- the bomb-makers and attack teams. For intelligence and law enforcement agencies, this is the best time to pre-empt a terrorist attack: If one militant can be caught conducting preoperational surveillance, the entire cell can be uncovered and destroyed. In the two-and-a-half years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the efforts of the FBI and CIA to root out these cells have paid dividends. FBI Director Robert Mueller asserts that federal officials have disrupted dozens of planned attacks, and sleeper agents have been uncovered and deported. However, we do not believe that all of al Qaeda's sleeper cells have been identified or crippled. In addition to pre-existing cells, al Qaeda also has had plenty of time to infiltrate more operatives into the United States. In the span since Sept. 11, al Qaeda also has had opportunities to conduct surveillance of its next target, plan out the attack and fine-tune operational details. In the past, al Qaeda attacks have occurred at a particular pace: Stratfor on several occasions has noted a two- to three-year span between major actions by "al Qaeda prime," interspersed with numerous, smaller strikes that likely are carried out by affiliated groups, with or without al Qaeda's support. Within those operations, there also are predictable patterns of activity. The pre-operational surveillance period is the most effective phase in which to interrupt an attack -- but few law enforcement and corporate security agencies have the expertise to take advantage of this weakness. Why Houston -- and How? For the next major al Qaeda strike, preoperational surveillance is likely under way. The timing for an attack within the United States is nearly perfect: while Americans are engrossed with Iraq, presidential politics and the rising price of oil. Logic dictates that cells are in place and awaiting a signal to act; as in the recent attack in the Saudi city of Yanbu, operatives could have had time to infiltrate the potential target, observing the lay of the land and the routines of security forces. Although Stratfor believes that strikes could be carried out against multiple targets of opportunity, certain factors -- including time and al Qaeda's targeting criteria -- lead us to conclude that Houston, Texas, is near the top of the list. Not only is it home to much of the nation's oil infrastructure, which carries significant economic implications, but it also is a city of 5 million people -- and the home of former President George H.W. Bush. A strike here would lend a personal nature to the attack that would send a clear message across the desk of President George W. Bush. In our view, the strike would be sophisticated and spectacular. It likely would involve either a dirty bomb deployed within the city, or a conventional attack against oil infrastructure, carried out on the scale of Sept. 11. In this case, we believe a truck bomb is the most likely delivery mechanism -- perhaps a stolen delivery van, helping to mask the driver's intentions. This scenario was discussed by a sleeper cell in New York City before the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, and al Qaeda has shown a tendency to return to previous attack plans. The assailants might use a ramming car to break through perimeter fences while either shooting or running over security guards. However, it also is feasible that they could use legitimate company identification cards in order to slip past the guards. Once near the target, the explosive would be detonated, killing the attack team. A truck bombing would succeed in taking out only a small portion of an oil complex, whereas a stolen or hijacked airplane could cause much greater damage. At an oil processing facility, this type of strike would have a psychological impact on the American public -- creating a smoky explosion that would be broadcast far and wide. Strikes against supertankers also are plausible. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden recognize that oil drives the U.S. economy. Returning again to proven tactics, they could choose to strike at platforms in the Houston Ship Channel -- much like the successful strikes against the French tanker Limburg and the USS Cole, and the failed attempt against the USS The Sullivans. This scenario is a classic asymmetrical operation: The sleeper cell, roused to activity, will operate as a military unit and will overcome the immediate response by police or security forces. A short time is all the militants will need. Because it is asymmetrical, the strike will target and overcome security forces at their weakest point. It would be over before a strong response could be mounted. This forecast is not cheerful, but if corporate security forces can learn new skills -- quickly -- that allow them to disrupt attacks early in the surveillance stage, this outcome could be thwarted. To Go To Top

BEWARE OF GREEKS, ER ARABS, BEARING GIFTS.. Posted by Honigman, May 23, 2004.

I had to see this movie. As a decades' long student of classical history as well as contemporary Middle Eastern Affairs, the chance to see the tragic clash between Achilles and Hector on the big screen was too much to resist. With all the fuss over Brad Pitt as Achilles in Troy, I didn't realize that one of my favorite actors, Peter O'Toole, starred in the movie as well as Priam, the Trojan king. I had recently been able to locate a set of video tapes of a made-for-television movie starring a much younger O'Toole as the Roman general who besieged the Jews in their last stronghold at Masada in 73 C.E., during the first of two major revolts the Jews launched for their independence from the Empire...another tragic war, but one fought for far more important reasons than raging sexual hormones. The contemporary Roman-sponsored historians such as Tacitus, Josephus, Dio Cassius, and others lived right around the time of those latter revolts. A reading of their extensive works shows that the amazing story of the quest of the Jews for their freedom against the conqueror of much of the known world played second to none. The fortress of Masada overlooks the Dead Sea to this very day and appears just as those ancient historians described it. The Arch of Titus stands tall in Rome as well, depicting the Roman victory over the Jews and the conquest of Jerusalem. Judea Capta coins can be found in museums all over the world, minted by Rome to also commemorate its subjugation of the Jewish nation. So, if anything, there's far more historical corroboration for this story than that told by the Greek's Homer. All that awaits it is for some producer doing it justice and putting it on the big screen. But briefly, for now at least, back to the Greeks... Virgil, the most famous poet in Ancient Rome, wrote one of the greatest epics of all time, the Aeneid. In Book II, the priest Laocoon warns the Trojans not to accept the giant wooden horse placed outside the impenetrable walls and gates of Troy. His legendary speech has been paraphrased in the now common saying, Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. We all know how ignoring Laocoon's advice turned out for Troy. Now let's turn the clock ahead some three thousand years for a look at another Trojan Horse. On June 24, 2001, the much-showcased model "moderate" of the Palestinian Arab team, the late Faysal al-Husseini, gave an interview in the Egyptian newspaper, Al Arabi. He was commenting about the so-called Oslo Agreements in which Israel was largely expected to yield concrete tangibles, essential to its security, in return for vague Arab promises. As it turned out, the more Israel gave and ceded for the sake of peace, the more it bled. Arabs predictably interpreted the moves of the Jews as a sign of weakness. More Jews were deliberately disemboweled and butchered by Arab terrorism--blown up at Passover Seders, at Bar Mitzvahs, on buses, in pizza parlors, teen night clubs, etc--during this time of the Oslo "peace" than at any other. Arabs see the currently much touted, if moribund, roadmap as Oslo II. Listen to how al-Husseini himself described the earlier unfolding events: "...When we are asking all the Palestinian forces and factions to look at the Oslo agreement and other agreements as 'temporay procedures,' or 'phased goals,' this means that we are ambushing the Israelis and cheating them...Our ultimate goal is the liberation of all of historical Palestine from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea, even if...the conflict will last for another thousand years..." Now I'd like to ask all of those many international critics and hypocritical masters of the double standard (including our own State Department and other American officials as well), who still insist that Israel cave in to all that Arabs demand for the creation of their state #22 or #23, if they really believe that those currently running the Arafatian/Hamas good cop/bad cop team have changed their approach towards "peace making" with the Jews for the better since Faysal al-Husseini gave his by now infamous quote. Any fair, sane person knows what the answer to this is. If amnesia has set in and one needs an additional reminder, just look at the well-publicized Arab "rage" at President Bush's fleeting April 2004 remarks--since largely and pathetically retracted--which suggested that, just maybe, the sole, microscopic state of the Jews shouldn't have to return to its 1949, U.N.-imposed, 9-mile wide armistice line existence again, or be overwhelmed by absorbing millions of real or fudged Arab refugees after all. Half of Israel's Jews were refugees from Arab/Muslim lands but without some two dozen other states to potentially choose from. While it's long past due for a fair and just peace to finally be worked out between Arab and Jew in the Middle East, true justice does not demand that the resurrected state of the Jews deliver itself on a silver platter, a la Czechoslovakia 1938, so that the Arabs can have their 22nd or 23rd state, and second--not first--one in "Palestine." In case you don't know, just ask the Hashemites in "Jordan" what this last comment is all about. And in case you can't get an audience with the young Abdullah II or find other "Jordanians" to be deaf, dumb, and blind regarding your question, just find yourself a map of the original Mandate for Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920, before Colonial Secretary Churchill decided to give his Hashemite World War I allies from the Arabian Peninsula (who were in the process of getting their own derrieres booted out of the Peninsula by the rival clan of Ibn Saud) a "reward" in 1922. As for now, unfortunately, there's a good piece of advice Israel simply cannot afford to ignore. And shame on those calling themselves Israel's "friends" or even just objective observers if this is what they demand the Jews to do. Beware of Arabs bearing gifts. Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites around the world. To Go To Top

A 56-YEAR UN OUTRAGE Posted by Stand For Israel, May 21, 2004.

Jonathan Friendly is the national editor of Jewish Renaissance Media, which owns the weekly Jewish newspapers in Detroit and Atlanta. He is a former journalism professor at the University of Michigan and a former reporter and editor at The New York Times. Lost in the 56-year-long outcry by Palestinians over their 1948 uprooting when Israel became a state and their subsequent hardship in Mideast refugee camps is the United Nations' responsibility for the camps. Palestinian propaganda is far more effective than Israel's. It has managed to hoodwink the world into believing Israel's existence is the reason for squalor and hopelessness in the camps. Joblessness and poverty, meanwhile, top 60 percent. Talk about make-believe. Deranged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat must be blamed for inhuman conditions in what are essentially welfare camps. The refugees' plight fuels hatred toward Israel, a situation Arafat needs to maintain to rouse the masses against "the Zionist scourge." America helps finance the 59 UN refugee camps for Palestinian Arabs. Of this total, 28 camps are in Palestinian-inhabited parts of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and eastern Jerusalem. The rest are in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The camps were started in 1949 as UN-monitored havens for 500,000 Arabs displaced from Israel. The population in the camps has mushroomed to 4 million, doubling about every 15 years. At a time when Israeli soldiers hunting for terrorists and their factories are picked off frequently by snipers and roadside bombs in the Gaza war zone, the truth about the camps is of utmost importance. In the camps, Arabs unemployed their whole life are freely supported, weapons and explosives are stored and children learn that all of Israel - not just Gaza, Judea and Samaria -- is their Palestine. The title page of the widely used camp textbook Our Country, Palestine reads: "There is no alternative to destroying Israel." It is in these camps most of the suicide bombers have been recruited and given lethal belts to blow up as many Israelis as possible. Most of the rifles, anti-tank rockets, mortars and explosives used to kill, maim or wound Israelis come to the Gaza camps from Egypt through tunnels. The Israel Defense Forces have destroyed dozens of tunnels in a race against time. Israel fears that terrorists might acquire shoulder-held surface-to-air missiles to shoot down military and civilian aircraft over Israel. On June 1, the Massachusetts-based Center for Near East Policy Research, working with the Israel Resource News Agency in Jerusalem, will issue a study claiming that the Islamic terrorist group Hamas is now a key player in the camps insofar as the terrorist group controls the workers and teachers. Stunningly, the camps are a collective terrorist breeding ground while the West largely funds their administrative umbrella. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East draws 32 percent of its budget from America, 11 percent from Canada and 40 percent from the European Union. The agency is doing what it can for the most vulnerable refugees, but the war fomented by Palestinian terrorists has intensified the lack of food, medicine and sanitation in the camps. The United Nations could learn from Israel about making refugees productive. After failing to destroy Israel in 1948, Arab states persecuted and finally ousted their Jewish citizens, pillaging their businesses and possessions along the way. At first, the 860,000 Jewish refugees in Israel had to live in tents and be rationed food. The vast majority became productive citizens of Israel with the will to live, not die a "martyr." The UN camps overflowing with Palestinian refugees are a flashpoint in the Middle East. Conditions are so bleak, refugees have responded to indoctrination and risen up against their perceived aggressors. A lie remarkable in its ability to spread like cancer gives Jews that undeserving tag. The United States, to the tune of $75 million each year, helps underwrite these camps. Where's our outrage? Stand for Israel (http://www.standforisrael.org) is a project of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. To Go To Top

KILL FASTER! Posted by IsrAlert, May 21, 2004.

This was written by Ralph Peters and appeared in the New York Post yesterday. Retired Army officer Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad." In Iraq last month, I learned a great deal about the future of combat. By watching TV. During the initial fighting in Fallujah, I tuned in al-Jazeera and the BBC. At the same time, I was getting insider reports from the battlefield, from a U.S. military source on the scene and through Kurdish intelligence. I saw two different battles. The media weren't reporting. They were taking sides. With our enemies. And our enemies won. Because, under media assault, we lost our will to fight on. During the combat operations, al-Jazeera constantly aired trumped-up footage and insisted that U.S. Marines were destroying Fallujah and purposely targeting women and children, causing hundreds of innocent casualties as part of an American crusade against Arabs. It was entirely untrue. But the truth didn't matter. Al-Jazeera told a receptive audience what it wanted to believe. Oh, and the "Arab CNN" immediately followed the Fallujah clips with video of Israeli "atrocities." Connecting the dots was easy for those nurtured on hatred. The Marines in Fallujah weren't beaten by the terrorists and insurgents, who were being eliminated effectively and accurately. They were beaten by al-Jazeera. By lies. Get used to it. This is the new reality of combat. Not only in Iraq. But in every broken country, plague pit and terrorist refuge to which our troops will have to go in the future. And we can't change it. So we had better roll up our camouflage sleeves and deal with it. The media is often referred to off-handedly as a strategic factor. But we still don't fully appreciate its fatal power. Conditioned by the relative objectivity and ultimate respect for facts of the U.S. media, we fail to understand that, even in Europe, the media has become little more than a tool of propaganda. That propaganda is increasingly, viciously, mindlessly anti-American. When our forces engage in tactical combat, dishonest media reporting immediately creates drag on the chain of command all the way up to the president. Real atrocities aren't required. Everything American soldiers do is portrayed as an atrocity. World opinion is outraged, no matter how judiciously we fight. With each passing day - sometimes with each hour - the pressure builds on our government to halt combat operations, to offer the enemy a pause, to negotiate . . . in essence, to give up. We saw it in Fallujah, where slow-paced tactical success led only to cease-fires that comforted the enemy and gave the global media time to pound us even harder. Those cease-fires were worrisomely reminiscent of the bombing halts during the Vietnam War - except that everything happens faster now. Even in Operation Desert Storm, the effect of images trumped reality and purpose. The exaggerated carnage of the "highway of death" north from Kuwait City led us to stop the war before we had sufficiently punished the truly guilty - Saddam's Republican Guard and the regime's leadership. We're still paying for that mistake. In Fallujah, we allowed a bonanza of hundreds of terrorists and insurgents to escape us - despite promising that we would bring them to justice. We stopped because we were worried about what already hostile populations might think of us. The global media disrupted the U.S. and Coalition chains of command. Foreign media reporting even sparked bureaucratic infighting within our own government. The result was a disintegraton of our will - first from decisive commitment to worsening hestitation, then to a "compromise" that returned Sunni-Arab Ba'athist officers to power. That deal not only horrifed Iraq's Kurds and Shi'a Arabs, it inspired expanded attacks by Muqtada al-Sadr's Shi'a thugs hoping to rival the success of the Sunni-Arab murderers in Fallujah. We could have won militarily. Instead, we surrendered politically and called it a success. Our enemies won the information war. We literally didn't know what hit us. The implication for tactical combat - war at the bayonet level - is clear: We must direct our doctrine, training, equipment, organization and plans toward winning low-level fights much faster. Before the global media can do what enemy forces cannot do and stop us short. We can still win the big campaigns. But we're apt to lose thereafter, in the dirty end-game fights. We have to speed the kill. For two decades, our military has concentrated on deploying forces swiftly around the world, as well as on fighting fast-paced conventional wars - with the positive results we saw during Operation Iraqi Freedom. But at the infantry level, we've lagged behind - despite the unrivaled quality of our troops. We've concentrated on critical soldier skills, but ignored the emerging requirements of battle. We've worked on almost everything except accelerating urban combat - because increasing the pace is dangerous and very hard to do. Now we have no choice. We must learn to strike much faster at the ground-truth level, to accomplish the tough tactical missions at speeds an order of magnitude faster than in past conflicts. If we can't win the Fallujahs of the future swiftly, we will lose them. Our military must rise to its responsibility to reduce the pressure on the National Command Authority - in essence, the president - by rapidly and effectively executing orders to root out enemy resistance or nests of terrorists. To do so, we must develop the capabilities to fight within the "media cycle," before journalists sympathetic to terrorists and murderers can twist the facts and portray us as the villains. Before the combat encounter is politicized globally. Before allied leaders panic. And before such reporting exacerbates bureaucratic rivalries within our own system. Time is the new enemy. Fighting faster at the dirty-boots level is going to be tough. As we develop new techniques, we'll initially see higher casualties in the short term, perhaps on both sides. But as we should have learned long ago, if we are not willing to face up to casualties sooner, the cumulative tally will be much, much higher later. We're bleeding in Iraq now because a year ago we were unwilling even to shed the blood of our enemies. The Global War on Terror is going to be a decades-long struggle. The military will not always be the appropriate tool to apply. But when a situation demands a military response, our forces must bring to bear such focused, hyper-fast power that our enemies are overwhelmed and destroyed before hostile cameras can defeat us. If we do not learn to kill very, very swiftly, we will continue to lose slowly. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

ARAB CRUDE Posted by Bruce S. Ticker, May 21, 2004.

"In outlining the rules of war, the Prophet Muhammad said: 'Do not kill any old person, any child or any woman.' 'Do not kill the monks in monasteries.' 'Do not kill people who are sitting in places of worship.' 'Do not attack a wounded person.' 'No prisoner should be put to the sword.' The Prophet also outlawed mutilating the corpses of enemies. Any violation of these edicts is a clear violation of core Islamic principles." - from op-ed piece in the May 18 New York Daily News If the historical events depicted in the films "Braveheart," "Gladiator" and "The Passion of the Christ" are crude and bloody, Hollywood could have a field day with the current Israeli conflict. The level of gore produced by Arab terrorists during the last 31/2 years cannot be ignored. While both sides must share blame for this crisis, Israel has yet to come close to rivaling the Arabs for disgusting behavior. At least the Israelis don't lynch and tear apart the body parts of a group of soldiers. They don't murder 30 innocent people at a religious ceremony as part of an organized killing campaign. And they do not fire a gun point-blank at a 2-year-old girl and her three older sisters. What should be striking to most observers is the style, attitude and intensity for violence toward Israelis. It has been extremely gruesome since the start of this senseless war, and in recent days the Arabs took steps which seemed to outdo their past excesses. It was not enough for the terrorists to take the lives of David Hatuel's pregnant wife, Tali, and their four daughters when they shot them at close range while they were trapped in a car on a road in Gaza. Two more terrorists could not allow David Hatuel to memorialize them in peace. These thugs dressed as women in their attempt to infiltrate a memorial service for the victims on May 9 at the site of the original attack, according to news accounts. They got close enough to fire upon the mourners, who ran for cover. Some were holding babies. The pair met the same fate as their cohorts in the May 2 ambush - Israeli soldiers killed them. Two days later, the remains of six Israeli soldiers killed in an explosion in Gaza were collected by Arabs, displayed on television and held for ransom. A 17-year-old boy carrying a black nylon bag told The New York Daily News, "This is part of the chest and guts. I found it in an orange grove near the blown-up Israeli vehicle." The New York Post led an account with this passage: "Palestinian goons kicked the severed head of a murdered Israeli like a soccer ball yesterday, as terrorists said they'd release the remains of six soldiers killed in an attack only if Israel negotiates to free Palestinian prisoners." Islamic Jihad and al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades issued this joint statement: "We possess the remains of your bodies that were thrown into the streets of Gaza. We have our demands to hand them over." Egypt subsequently brokered a deal to return the remains to Israel. When thousands of Arabs march through the streets in massive funeral processions, does Israel interfere? Israel can easily disrupt them, but it does nothing of the sort. Advocates for the Gazans could argue that they are desperate and have limited means at their disposal to resist the Israeli occupation. That argument does not wash. Whatever criticism one can level at Israel, former Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered them a plan which would have created an independent Palestinian state, and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat not only rebuffed the offer but responded by participating in the initiation of a war against Israel which lasts to this day. What's more, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman stated some months ago that Arafat rejected the offer partly as a matter of Muslim honor: He believed it was a humiliation to accept the land as if it was a gift. A proud Muslim would have won the land through a military confrontation. The rest is history. Plus, there is clearly a hard core of Arabs who seek only to destroy Israel. It is impossible to quantify how many feel that way. How is Israel supposed to respond to such an outlook? How does anyone reason with someone whose declared goal is to kill you? The authors of the passage quoted at the top, both officials of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, were debunking abuses by both Arabs and Americans in their Daily News commentary. Parvez Ahmed and Arsalan Iftikhar also wrote, "Muslims who claim to kill in the name of Islam are, in fact, defiling its essence. The extremists and militants who try to hide behind Islam are in reality violating many of its founding teachings... Barbarism is always irreligious and unpatriotic in any culture or religion." Part of the tragedy is that thousands of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank are caught in the middle. All they probably want to do is survive, and feed and house their families. Yet even many of them likely buy into the extremists' line that Israel is the villain and the terrorist groups are freedom fighters. The reality is that, though Israel is not faultless, Arab leaders are ignoring or exploiting their brethrens' poverty and spending ample amounts of money on a military struggle and themselves. Suppose the Israelis choose a prime minister who is far more reasonable and competent than Ariel Sharon? And Israel does mostly everything right? Will Arab extremists continue to fire guns at 2-year-old girls and mutilate the corpses of soldiers? What will their excuses be then? To Go To Top

RETREAT - MORE DANGEROUS THAN RUSSIAN ROULETTE Posted by Aaron Lerner, May 21, 2004.

It would be unfair to compare retreat advocates to Russian roulette players. At least Russian roulette players don't keep adding more bullets to the chambers of the guns. Retreat advocates cite post-retreat Lebanon as proof that retreat works since the 12,000 rockets deployed since the retreat haven't yet been fired at Haifa. That's a quantum leap in the danger Israel faces from Lebanon. They make light of the Palestinian's continuously improving Qassam rockets since casualties from them have, so far, been low. And now, with anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles and Katyusha rockets already on the Egyptian side of the Egypt-Gaza terror pipeline, they press for Israel to retreat from the border rather than do what is needed to prevent these weapons from crossing under the Philadelphi Corridor and reaching Gaza. Weapons that, once deployed by the Palestinians, will radically change the balance. The current IDF operation in Gaza is, at best, a temporary stopgap measure. The tunnels discovered and destroyed can be replaced by new tunnels and new smuggling teams will, in time, take the place of those detained by Israel. In the continuous absence of a serious anti-smuggling operation on the Egyptian side of the border, Israel has no choice but to widen the Philadelphi Corridor so that patrols can concentrate on hunting for tunnels rather than ducking from bullets. The widened Corridor will also force the tunnel builders to employ equipment that the patrols can more readily detect. Why then the stop-gap operation instead of the widening operation already? After all, the world condemns Israel for razing ten buildings or five hundred. In fact, the duration of an operation may be just as significant as its scope. That's why it is so puzzling that the legal team formed to work on the widening of the Corridor had their initial meeting only today - almost a week after it was decided to widen the Philadelphi Corridor. One major issue the legal team is studying is the question of compensating Palestinians affected by the widening of the Corridor. Innocent Palestinians affected by the widening project certainly deserve monetary compensation, but there is no reason that this should hold up the project. Israel could, for example, calculate the total gross square meters of floor space it has to raze and apply an above-market compensation per square meter to arrive at a compensation fund Israel could set aside for the building owners, thus removing, a priori, the compensation issue as an impediment. Time is the last thing that Israel can afford to fritter away on this matter. Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis). Its website address is http://www.imra.org.il To Go To Top

DISMANTLING OF OUTPOSTS IS ILLEGAL Posted by IsrAlert, May 21, 2004.

"There's no such thing as an illegal outpost." So said Likud MK Naomi Blumental in a session of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in January of this year - and grassroots activist Susie Dym is trying to bring this point home to all of the right-wing MKs and Cabinet ministers. "Calling the outposts 'illegal' was the brainchild of the left-wing public relations experts," Dym writes, "whose goal it is to de-legitimize the entire right-wing camp. It is therefore important for all Cabinet and Knesset representatives to know the truth in order to be able to defend themselves - and the best media defense is always a good offense." Dym, spokesperson for Mattot Arim (Cities of Israel), continues, "The truth is that the outposts are not 'illegal' - because in a country or area that is run by law, whatever is not 'illegal' is therefore legal. The residents don't have to prove that they are legal; those who object to the outposts must prove precisely which law is violated by the outpost... Why, if the outposts are illegal, was there a need for a special governmental decision against them?" Dym also notes that the recent dismantling of several outposts stands in blatant opposition to a decision by the Cabinet itself. On May 23, 2003, the government resolved that it would not proceed to dismantle any outposts until Palestinian terrorism had completely stopped and only once the PA took concrete steps against the terrorist infrastructures. The decision was made in the framework of the Cabinet's approval of the Road Map, with the addition of 14 reservations. "This means that legally, the dismantling of outposts, as well as other components of the Road Map plan, can only be executed according to the stipulations set out by the Cabinet," Dym concludes. "It is therefore vital," Dym writes, "that the right-wing ministers and MKs pressure the Prime Minister and the Defense Minister to dismantle outposts only if the terrorism and incitement cease. They must be pressured to put in writing any counter-claims and have these pass the test of legal and judicial investigation - which they have not done in the past." Ministers' fax numbers and email addresses can be found at . The relevant Cabinet decision can be read at . Two major outposts are threatened with dismantling next week: Givat Assaf, with 14 families, located at a strategic junction along the Jerusalem-Shilo highway, and Givat HaRoeh, with 17 families, situated opposite Eli in the southern Shomron. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

RAFAH: A TURBULENT HISTORY Posted by Michael Freund, May 20, 2004.

The intense fighting in Rafah over the past few days has thrust this relatively unknown border town to international prominence, but not many people are aware of its long and rich history. The late historian and geographer Zeev Vilnai notes that the first mention of Rafah dates back to an inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Seti I in the year 1303 BCE, meaning that the town was first inhabited over 3000 years ago. Although Rafah is not mentioned explicitly in the Torah, the Targum Onkelos, one of the great Aramaic commentaries, interprets the place-name "Chatzerim" in Deuteronomy 2:23 as referring to it. Due to its location as a gateway to the Land of Israel, Rafah served as an important transit and commercial point for international trade and seafaring. Not surprisingly, the town was also the site of many great battles, including a decisive one in which the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy defeated the Syrian emperor Antiochus III in 217 BCE. In the wake of this battle, in which both sides deployed elephants of war, Ptolemy went on to capture the land of Israel. Rafah was also home to an ancient Jewish presence. As Josephus recounts in his book, The Jewish Wars, the city was captured by the Hasmonean ruler Alexander Yannai, and it remained in Jewish hands until the coming of the Roman armies. Centuries later, a thriving Jewish community lived in Rafah, where it flourished for nearly three hundred years until the arrival of the Crusaders in the twelfth century, who brutally destroyed the city and left it in ruins. A number of Jewish relics from this period, including letters and correspondence by community members, were later found in the famed Cairo Genizah. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, however, Rafah remained little more than a nearly deserted outpost under Ottoman control. In the early 1900s, Zionist groups made a number of attempts to purchase land in the area and settle Jews there. This included a plan by a group of Jews in Bessarabia to purchase 40,000 dunams in Rafah and settle 30 Eastern European Jewish families there. But the proposal was rejected by the Turkish authorities, who were apparently not keen on having a Jewish community established along the border. In 1925, during the British mandate, the Zionist Organization (the precursor of the Jewish Agency), conducted negotiations with the British with the aim of renting tens of thousands of dunams of land in Rafah, again for the purpose of settling Jews there. But the talks went nowhere. It was around this time, in the 1920s, that Arabs began settling there, including many from Khan Yunis, who were attracted by the employment opportunities created by the establishment of British military camps nearby. These camps were later used to imprison various leaders of the Haganah and Irgun prior to the establishment of the State. Under the British, Rafah grew rapidly. Whereas in 1922, the town had just 600 residents, this number more than quadrupled in the following two decades, reaching 2,500 by 1945. During Israel's War of Independence, some 40,000 Arabs from Beersheba and the Negev fled the fighting and settled in Rafah, serving as the nucleus of today's current Palestinian population in the area. In 1972, Israel sought to alleviate the plight of some of the town's refugees by building permanent housing for them. Some 240 of Rafah's Arab families were given new apartments in Machane Avraham, which was named after Rafah's first Israeli military governor, Avraham Zaks, who had died three years earlier. While Israel now finds itself compelled to demolish Palestinian homes in Rafah for reasons of security, at least one thing has not changed with the passage of time. Then, as now, Israel was condemned for its actions. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the UN General Assembly actually passed an annual resolution criticizing Israel's "resettlement of Palestine refugees in the Gaza Strip", as though building permanent housing for Palestinians was a crime of some sort. And so, decades later, Israeli soldiers comb the area, searching for weapons and smuggling routes used by Palestinian terrorists. After centuries in obscurity, Rafah finds itself once again a place of conflict. Michael Freund served as Deputy Director of Communications and Policy Planning under former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. To Go To Top

BIASED "NEWS"? KNOW THE SOURCE: KHALIL HAMRA Posted by American Chin High, May 20, 2004.

Today's front page newspaper story about 30 "innocent palestinian civilian victims" of the situation being killed was written by the Associated Press' Khalil Hamra. Do a search on him with "bias" included and this is a paragraph from the first piece that came up: The Associated Press article does attempt to substantiate its claims with independent, non-ISM eyewitnesses, a refreshing change from the past. They quote both a Khalil Abdullah and a Khalil Hamra, who concur with the ISM's story. But neither of these individuals are without bias. Khalil Abdullah reported that, although not a member, he works with the group. And Khalil Hamra, of Gaza-stan Fabricated "news" & Assoc. with a cut CLEAR "mission"? A photographer on assignment for the Associated Press, Hamra works out of Rafah, specializing in pictures of armed Palestinian militants, the bodies of Palestinians killed by the IDF, and anti-Israeli protests. He seems to have enjoyed a particularly close relationship with the International Solidarity Movement, taking many of the pictures in the aftermath of Rachel Corrie's death and Tom Hurndall's shooting, as well as pictures of the ISM at anti-American protests - most notably, the infamous shot of Rachel Corrie screaming in rage as, surrounded by Palestinian children, she lights on fire a paper American flag. While the subjects of a photographer do not necessarily indicate his sympathies, we note from a 10 June 2002 statement by the Foreign Press Association that Khalil Hamra of Rafah was jailed for several days in 2002 by the Israeli Defense Force while working for Reuters in Ramallah. IDF spokesmen explained that the arrest was due to suspicions that linked him to terror activities. Read "Solidarity with Terrorists" by Greg Yardley in Front Page Magazine (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7361), April 17, 2003. To Go To Top

10 KILLED AS TERRORISTS USE HUMAN SHIELDS Posted by Jerusalem Newswire Staff, May 20, 2004.

Jerusalem (jnewswire.com) - At least 10 "Palestinians" were killed Wednesday afternoon when a group of armed terrorists used a hundreds-strong mob of civilians as cover to advance on IDF troops conducting operations in the southern Gaza border town of Rafiah. Aerial video surveillance of the area showed an Israeli Apache gunship fired a warning missile into an empty field in order to deter the procession, according to an official statement released by the IDF. When the mob continued to move on Israeli soldiers, field commanders, fearing a major assault on their troops that would have turned into a bloody pitched battle, directed machine gun fire and four tank shells at an abandoned building near the marchers. At that point, several people were killed and many more wounded, but the IDF Spokesman said after reviewing the surveillance tapes it seemed highly unlikely the casualties were caused by Israeli fire. The army did note the path taken by the mob was an area "rigged with explosive charges planted by the Palestinians." Taking the humanitarian initiative, Israel immediately following the incident "approached the Palestinians and offered medical assistance, including the evacuation of the casualties to Israeli hospitals," the army said. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids armed combatants to use unarmed civilians as cover in a combat situation. Responsibility for any civilian deaths in such a situation lies solely with the offending party. Jerusalem Newswire is the only independent Jerusalem-based, Christian-operated news service providing daily coverage and commentary on events in and relating to Israel. To Go To Top

ARAFAT AT HEART OF RIGHTS ABUSE REPORT Posted by IsrAlert, May 20, 2004.

This was written by Gethin Chambrelain, Diplomatic Correspondent for "The Scotsman," May 20, 2004. It is archived at http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=554042004 ARAB prisoners beaten and tortured, innocent bystanders killed by gunfire - another damning human rights report. But the difference this time is that the violence is being perpetrated not by coalition forces in Iraq, but by the Palestinian Authority, and the victims are its own people. The report, partly funded by the Finnish government, claims Palestinian cities are in a state of near anarchy, with people on the payroll of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed for 90 per cent of gangland violence. It highlights numerous incidents of torture of prisoners and refers to the killing of civilians in gunbattles between Palestinian factions. It is another blow for Mr Arafat's organisation, which was recently accused of misusing L 134 million of European Union funds. Mr Arafat was accused of signing cheques to people linked with terrorist activity. The organisation behind the latest report, the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group (PHRMG), has won few friends for its work documenting human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Although it has been strongly critical of Israeli treatment of Palestinians, its criticism of the PA has seen its funding by European governments slashed. Its latest report describes the situation in PA areas as "the Intra'fada" or "the chaos of the weapons", and paints a picture of a society where the proliferation of guns has brought grave consequences for the people. It says: "PA security forces do not live up to international laws and regulations concerning the treatment of individuals under arrest. "There have been several cases in which Palestinian civilians were arrested without proper reason, and suffered beatings and other forms of torture at the hands of the police." It cites an incident in July last year in which a worker from Bethlehem was forcibly taken from his house and interrogated by members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, working with the PA, who accused him of collaborating with Israel. "Under threat of violence [including firing at his feet] the man confessed to having committed certain thefts, but insisted that he was not responsible for Israeli assassinations of Palestinians in Bethlehem. "When he finished his 'confession', the militants broke his hand and leg, smashed his teeth and hit him with an iron bar on his back. He was then dumped into a garbage container where he was found the next day." The report says the examples quoted are the tip of the iceberg. "Violence permeates the security forces, and it is worsened by legal confusions. Unless and until more accountability and order is introduced, the problem will remain and could worsen as PA control continues to deteriorate," it says. Just as the Red Cross and Amnesty investigators focused on cases in Iraq where civilians had been caught in gunbattles, the PHRMG identifies incidents in PA-controlled areas in which innocent bystanders have been struck by bullets. "Sometimes violence erupts between police members and loyalists of political factions," it says. The report does lay some of the blame for the violence at the feet of Israel. It says that the failure to reach a substantive and acceptable peace agreement has led Palestinians to vent their feelings of futility against Palestinians. According to the US-based Middle East Media Research Institute, Basem Eid, the man who set up the PHRMG after years investigating Israeli human rights abuses, has struggled to find funding because his former backers were concerned about the political implications of being seen to support a group that exposes Palestinian abuses. Yesterday, MEMRI's director, Yigal Carmon, said that as soon as Basem Eid decided to investigate Palestinian abuses as well as Israeli abuses, his support dried up. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

COALITION KILLS 10,000 IRAQI CIVILIANS. ISRAELIS KILL 10 AND WORLD GOES MAD Posted by Jock L. Falkson, May 20, 2004.

I was saddened to see Ra'anan Gissin's mournful face on CNN apologizing on behalf of the government for the firing mistakes of the IDF which led to 8 Arab deaths and some 40 casualties. Gissin is Senior Foreign Office advisor to Prime Minister Sharon. Like a great many in Israel I shared Gissin's sadness. Civilian loss of life as a consequence of military action is always unfortunate and deplorable, especially when children are among the fallen. One thing is clear however, if these particular civilians hadn't been demonstrating in a war zone, nothing would have happened to them. As it is and despite Israel's every attempt to avoid civilian casualties, shit happens (you should excuse the expression). In a war situation everyone makes mistakes, Israel is no exception. Palestinian Terrorist Authority Makes War On Israeli Civilians There is a clear difference of intent however: the Palestinian Terrorist Authority and its terrorist groups are engaged in a terrorist war targeted against Israeli civilians. Israel's IDF is engaged in a war of self defense against these terrorists whose savagery does not balk at killing our women and children, and sacrificing their own to protect their skins. In Defense of Demolitions The latest IDF push into Rajah is intended to wipe out terrorists nests, to destroy their bomb, chemical, explosives and missile factories, and to find and demolish their tunnels for smuggling war materiel into Gaza. The only way to ensure that the terrorists do not use these houses as safe havens, bases, tunnel exits, hideouts, sniper and ambush sites is to take them down. The way to ensure that these safe houses continue to be used for terrorist purposes is to leave them standing. In defense of the Jewish State, Israel has only one choice: demolition. Civilians Guilty Of Aiding And Abetting The civilians displaced are not innocent. They have permitted their homes to be used by the terrorists and in doing so have become their aiders and abettors. They are equally guilty of the crime of terrorism and must be held responsible and accountable. Buildings near the Egyptian border are used by terrorists to conceal tunnels that allow them to smuggle arms, explosives and other supplies into Gaza for the express purpose of killing Israelis. US Confiscates Money and Property President Bush has frequently made this clear in many public addresses. He has not hesitated to confiscate the property and funds of organizations on the Foreign Terrorist Organizations List among which are these familiar names: *  Abu Nidal Organization *  Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade *  Ansar al-Islam *  Asbat al-Ansar *  HAMAS (Islamic Resistance Movement) *  Hizballah (Party of God) No Apologies For 10,000 Iraqi Civilian Deaths I was proud that Israel wasted no time in issuing it's apology for 10 Arab children killed. I don't think I've ever heard an apology* from the US or Britain whose military actions have led to the death of over 10,000 (no exaggeration) civilians in Iraq since the war began. There were probably over 30,000 wounded too. *(In a strange about-face they did apologize for humiliating a few Iraqi prisoners.) Since deciding to clean up the terrorist nests in Fallujah, the coalition has killed 600 to 700, and wounded 2,000 to 3,000 wounded civilians. This in the last month alone. Hippocrates and Hypocrisy Have you heard any US or British apology in this regard? Has the EU blathered its condemnation? Has Mr. Solange lost his tongue? Terre Larsen and Mary Robinson theirs? What about the Red Cross and the Human Rights Commission? Are they not warning the US and UK they will have to face charges under War Crimes and Geneva Convention rules? Has International Law not been breached? Why have the global TV networks' analysts and Hard Talkers not gone to town on this lot? Why hasn't Koffi Anan called the Security Council to condemn the American led coalition? Has Mr. Powell expressed his personal indignation or official sorrow over this massive loss of life and limb? Has this stopped him from heavy pressure and criticism of Israel for its minor tragedy? The same day the US coalition killed 40 Iraqis attending a wedding. Among them 15 children and 10 women. Accidentally of course. Shit happens - and not always in a war zone. Jock Falkson is an Israeli writer and translator. He can be reached by email at falkson@barak-online.net. To Go To Top

GAZA POLITICIZED Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 20, 2004.

UNRWA COMPLICITY WITH TERRORISTS? The Defense Minister of Israel accused UNRWA of letting its ambulances be used to hide Israeli troops' body parts (so the P.A. could demand ransom). He asked the Secretary-General to intervene (IMRA, 5/14). EXPLOITING DEATHS FOR RETREAT PROPAGANDA The Israeli leftist media is exploiting the deaths of Israeli troops in Gaza to campaign for Israel to abandon Jewish communities in Gaza, although those deaths were not related to the presence of those communities and although Israeli withdrawals from parts of the territories enable terrorism to incubate and eventually draw the IDF back in. Two grieving Israeli fathers had opposite reactions to the deaths of their warrior sons there. One demanded that PM Sharon not abandon the Jewish communities to murderers. The other blamed the Likud referendum's rejection of the retreat (which could not have been implemented in time even if the communities' presence were related to the son's death). The media gave prominent and frequent coverage to the father that demanded withdrawal. It gave minor and infrequent coverage to the father who opposed withdrawal. Will Israelis get taken in by biased media management of the news? (IMRA, 5/13.) Some always get taken in. My hope and belief is that over time they come to their senses. One reads assertions in the US media that Israel is democratic, because it has a "vibrant press." This must be a kind of group-think, for they all use that same term, "vibrant press." "Vibrant" means energetic. It does not mean honest, fair, thoughtful, or patriotic. So what if it is vibrant? DENIGRATING SETTLERS FOR RETREAT PROPAGANDA "Haaretz" claims that settler delegates in the Knesset now feel drunk with power. They impose "tyranny." IMRA denies it. They realize that a hard time for them is ahead. "Haaretz" claims that the settlers "conspired against the Israeli majority, and escaped unpunished. Middle-of-the-road Israelis accepted the violent act perpetrated against them with a bizarre equanimity." IMRA replies, "No conspiracy." (IMRA should add: "No violence." "Haaretz" threatens the settlers that the Prime Minister and the US President "will not forget" the Likud referendum vote. IMRA observes: If Bush is angry, it would be with Sharon for involving him in this fiasco. The soldiers killed recently in the P.A. war "are no longer victims of extremist Islam" of Arafat's insanity. They are the victims of the settlement enterprise." IMRA responds: "The recent fatalities were against arms manufacturing shops -- settlements are irrelevant to that. Let us no longer show "understanding towards the settlers." They "force" a war on Israelis. The settlers have turned citizens into their "cannon fodder." "Unforgivable." I left out half the emotional harangue (Op. Cit.). The settlers didn't cause war, Arab war caused settlement! What hysterical hyperbole! All libelous, but "vibrant." One expects it in Arab papers and used to find it in Communist and Nazi papers. The rant blames the victims, not the imperialists. What settler "conspiracy?" PM Sharon arranged for the referendum, lest he be accused of alienating parts of the Jewish patrimony unilaterally. He could have made it national rather than within his Party. Most in Likud are not settlers, but heard and accepted their arguments. That is not tyranny. Nor is a vote something to punish. Since when did the Left show understanding for the settlers, whom they have reviled for years and whose deaths they accept with "equanimity?" The settlements suffered as a breakwater, protecting Israel from waves of terrorism. The Left's slander of its fellow Jews is as bad as the Arabs'. PROBLEMS WITH ISRAELI DEFENSE Israelis are not trained in civil defense. Last time Israel was attacked, chaos erupted, although the war was a minor one. If the P.A. became independent, jihadists would pour in, as they do in other trouble spots. Terrorist harassment never would cease. Israel needs to take preemptive action against its enemies, as the US has come to realize that America needs to do. Unfortunately, the price of US aid is to forego preemptive action (Winston Mid East Analysis, 5/14, e-mail). US aid is too small a proportion of the Israeli budget to warrant such leverage. Moreover, it gives the US power to veto Israeli arms exports, thereby costing Israel as much as the aid is worth. Israel should forego not preemptive action but US aid. 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

HEIL EUROPA! BEFUDDLED BUSH HAILS END OF FREE NATIONS Posted by Rodney Atkinson, May 20, 2004.

There can be few more embarrassing sights in politics than to see an American president claiming to "understand" Europe. Even in two world wars when everything that the British and Americans stood for was under the gravest threat it took three years of war for the American political establishment to: 1. Stop supporting their enemies and 2. Start defeating them In the 1990s the situation became even more tragic as the U.S., at the instigation of Germany and the European Union, turned its back on their traditional allies in Serbia and joined Muslim bigotry in Albania and fascist bigotry in Croatia in the destruction of Yugoslavia. Equally the use of N.A.T.O. by the democracy-destroying European Union in its expansion to the East, wiping out those very embryo constitutions to which N.A.T.O's defeat of Soviet communism had so recently given birth is just unbelievable. The U.S. administrations of Bush Senior, Clinton and Bush Junior have all praised the destruction of the free nations of Europe for whose liberation from communism and fascism their own soldiers fought and died. On the accession of 10 new member states of the European Union on May 1, 2004, President George W. Bush hailed the enlargement of the E.U. and called for three other countries to be admitted. In a statement released by the White House, Mr Bush said, "I applaud the action by the European Union (E.U.) to welcome into their membership ten new countries from Central Europe and the Mediterranean. This enlargement will bring opportunity and hope to millions of Europeans". "Along with N.A.T.O.'s expansion, the E.U.'s enlargement further unites the new and the established democracies of Europe, and helps create a Europe whole, free, and at peace. We welcome the prospect of further enlargement of the E.U. to qualified countries, including Romania and Bulgaria, and we support Turkey's European Union aspirations". Of course these countries have not voluntarily given up their sovereignty, democracy and parliaments. They were forced to in order to travel, invest and trade freely with their European neighbours. The choice was democracy and sovereignty or prosperity and trade! They could not have both. There were of course many American supporters of Hitler when France, Italy and Germany achieved a similar "united Europe" in the 1940s. Those countries' fascist leaders formed the so called "Continental System" which was proud to attack "Anglo-Saxon democracy". Leading U.S. corporations like General Motors, Ford and U.S. Banks were either great admirers of Hitler or were considerable contributors to the German war effort. Indeed at one point the U.S. Ambassador to Berlin warned the U.S. State Department that General Motors was a "war danger". And of course it was the father of president John F. Kennedy (who pushed the U.K. into the European Union in the 1960s) Joseph Kennedy who was such a sympathiser of the Hitler regime in the 1930s. Perhaps the word "Hail" is appropriate to describe Bush's praise of the new Europe. Heil Europa! When will the U.S. political Establishment learn that the European Union is NOT an association of free nations. It is NOT designed to enhance the prosperity of its members. It is NOT designed to spread democracy. It is NOT an ally of the United States (surely Iraq demonstrated that). The European Union is a Superstate with a flag, a national anthem, a Supreme Court, an embryo army, a "Parliament" which has little power and a centralised supreme bureaucracy which decides virtually everything. It has a currency which is disastrous for its peoples but is seen by the euro-political elite as a rival to the U.S. Dollar (perhaps that is why it is admired by Cuba's Castro!). In China, in Russia, in the Caucusus, in Europe, in South America, and in the Balkans the E.U. seeks to expand its influence and rival, not cooperate with the U.S.A. Even in space and satellite communication rivalry not alliance is the main aim of the German French Euro-elite. Britain, America's long term and most reliable ally, has lost its parliament (800 years old), its constitution, its agricultural and fishing rights, its territorial waters and will doubtless also soon lose its North Sea oil and gas. The wisdom of its common law and the power of its courts and the sovereignty of its people and the democratic rights of its parliament are all being superseded by the rule of the new Leviathan based apparently in Brussels but in fact along the Paris-Berlin Axis. No one could imagine the U.S. political class succumbing to a "North American Union" in which most of the political, military and strategic decisions were made in Ottawa and Mexico City, and in which regulatory decisions affecting the whole of U.S. business was made by an unelected bureaucracy in Honduras and whose Supreme Court overruled the U.S. Courts from, say, Cuba. To praise the expansion of this scandalous European Super-State and its absorption of the new democracies of countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia and Hungary who suffered so cruelly under the Soviet Communist yoke and the European Fascism which preceded it beggars belief. America has few friends in the world today. It has surely now lost even those that remained. Shabbat Shalom from England, Rodney Atkinson can be reached by email at freenations@freeuk.com or visit www.freenations.freeuk.com This article was distributed by the Root and Branch Association of Jerusalem. To Go To Top

AN ISRAELI SOLDIER NEEDS YOUR HELP -- AN APPEAL FROM ATTY. NITSANA DARSHAN-LEITNER Posted by Shurat HaDin (Israel Law Center), May 20, 2004.

Dear Supporter of Israel, I write to you on behalf of a 20 year-old Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officer who is facing long years in prison on trumped-up charges. In the course of IDF combat operations against Palestinian terrorists last year, the young officer was alleged to have shot a British anti-Israel militant who was aiding the Palestinians. The IDF conducted a thorough investigation, and ruled that the officer acted correctly and lawfully. However, following an outrageous campaign of pressure, intimidation and diplomatic threats by the British government, the officer was arrested and falsely charged with homicide. If convicted, he faces life imprisonment. For decades, Israeli soldiers have risked and given their lives to defend the Jewish homeland. Now, you have the opportunity - and the privilege and duty - of defending an Israeli soldier. Since the outbreak of the current round of Palestinian violence in September 2000, Israeli troops have conducted thousands of counter-terrorism operations in the towns and villages of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, in the heart of hostile and dangerous Palestinian population centers. The IDF's ability to operate effectively in these areas against the Palestinian terrorists has been systematically and intentionally obstructed by groups of foreign volunteers, who are used by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority as ''human shields''. The most dangerous of these groups is the Palestinian-financed "International Solidarity Movement" (ISM). The ISM recruits anti-Israel radicals, primarily from Europe, and sends them to Judea, Samaria and Gaza to disrupt Israeli military operations. The presence of these foreign civilians in the midst of the Palestinian population obstructs the IDF's ability to fight Palestinian terrorists. By interfering with Israeli counter-terrorism operations, the ISM directly endangers the lives of Israeli civilians. In April 2003, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that: "ISM members take an active part in illegal and violent actions against IDF soldiers. At times, their activity in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip is under the auspices of Palestinian terrorist organizations." * ISM encourages its members to enter Israel on fraudulent visa applications and illegally cross into the territories * ISM demonstrators regularly disrupt IDF patrols in Judea, Samaria and Gaza * ISM members have been arrested vandalizing and destroying Israeli security fences and equipment * On March 27, 2003 fugitive Islamic Jihad terrorist, Shadi Sukiya, was arrested in a house in Jenin rented by the ISM * On April 30, 2003, two British Muslims blew themselves up at a popular Tel Aviv nightspot, Mike's Place, killing three and injuring fifty. The terrorist had spent the weeks before the attack living with the ISM in Gaza On April 11, 2003, a group of ISM operatives were interfering with IDF operations in Rafah, in the Gaza Strip. Tom Hurndall, an ISM member from England, was among a group of ISM and other foreign militants who had taken up positions among a mob of Palestinians who had illegally congregated in a closed military zone. Hurndall was allegedly shot and injured when the mob resisted an IDF operation to clear the zone. After being evacuated by the IDF to an Israeli hospital for treatment, Hurndall was flown by his parents to a London medical facility for further care. Nine months later, on January 13, 2004 he died of pneumonia in the London hospital. At the time of the incident a young Israeli officer was questioned about the shooting. The IDF found no misconduct or breach of regulations regarding the use of live fire. However, under furious pressure from the British government and a sophisticated propaganda campaign launched by Hurndall's parents, and despite the finding by the IDF that the officer had acted correctly, cowed Israeli prosecutors did an about-face and charged the officer with "intent to cause injury." After Hurndall died of pneumonia, the charge was amended to "homicide." The young IDF officer, 20 years old, now faces the prospect of life in prison. Not surprisingly, the case against the IDF officer has become a cause celebre for Israel's opponents in England. Britain's anti-Israeli press has tried to depict Hurndall as an innocent volunteer, who died trying to save Palestinians from Israeli military aggression. They do not question what Hurndall was doing in Gaza in the first place, nor why he was interfering with an IDF operation in Rafah. Hurndall's family has repeatedly flown to Israel to pursue the case, and has retained radical left-wing attorneys to advise them on ensuring that the soldier receives the maximum penalty. They are carrying out a loud public campaign to convict the officer. Representatives of the British Embassy attend all the court hearings, as a crude but effective means of intimidating and influencing the judges. And who in the Jewish community is standing up to defend this Israeli soldier? The Jewish People has a long-standing tradition of not abandoning its soldiers on the battlefield. We must not allow this IDF officer to be turned into a scapegoat, his young life thrown away to appease the British Foreign Office. Shurat HaDin has organized a campaign to assist in his legal defense. Only a strong IDF can safeguard the Jewish State. If you care about Israel's future and security then you must not remain silent while our soldiers are falsely prosecuted and imprisoned. We must give every soldier serving in the IDF the solidarity and support he deserves. I call upon you to join in the legal defense campaign being organized by Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center on behalf of this IDF officer. This is your opportunity to defend a defender of the Jewish people To make a tax-deductible donation in the United States, please make your check payable to: PEF - Israel Endowment Fund (earmark it "soldier defense fund") and send it to: Shurat HaDin c/o PEF - Israel Endowment Fund 317 Madison Avenue Suite 607 New York, NY 10017 To donate outside the United States, please make check payable to: Shurat Hadin - Israel Law Center (earmark it "soldier defense fund") and mail it to: Shurat HaDin - Israel Law center 11 Havatikim St. Petach Tikva, 49389 Israel "Shurat HaDin - Israel Law Center (http://www.israellawcenter.org/public.shtml) has launched a public campaign to assist in the legal defense of the IDF officer accused of shooting ISM militant Tom Hurndall. Do not permit the ISM and other Palestinian financed agitators to interefere with the security of the Israeli public." To Go To Top

'PEACE NOW' TREASON UNDER INVESTIGATION Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 20, 2004.

This is really just an exercise in posturing and empty gestures on the part of the committee. There is no way that Israel's anti-Jewish unJustice system will prosecute these people. Nevertheless, it will be useful in the near future when there is a regime change in Israel and we will have a Jewish Government. All of the ground work for bringing these criminal to book will have been done. This is from Arutz-7 (http://www.israelbehindthenews.com/#research) May 16, 2004. Knesset Committee Conducts Investigation of Alleged Espionage Activities of "Peace" This week, the Israeli "Peace Now" organization revealed that it has been conducting aerial surveillance of Israeli Jewish communities in Judea, Jerusalem and Samaria, to determine the extent of settlement expansion. At the same time, the Israeli Knesset Parliamentary Interior Committee held a special session to discuss foreign government funding of Israeli left wing movements Documents shared with the Knesset Interior Committee confirmed that the Peace Now organization received a budget in the amount of 50,000 Euros from the government of Finland to conduct intelligence activity in the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, the Golan , Gaza and Jerusalem. Peace Now is a political organization in Israel with an IRS tax deductible affiliate in the United States. The Knesset Committee examined a Peace Now grant application to the government of Finland, that indicated how Peace Now intended to use the grant. This included regular bi-monthly ground surveys to be conducted with the purpose of documenting the numbers of empty houses in settlements and ongoing construction in settlements. This work engages tens of volunteers, who travel around the West Bank in cars (armored if possible) tracking developments. "Settlements" has come to be used in the press now as a euphemism for Jewish communities and towns, no matter how big or developed. Also included was a provision for aerial photography: Twice a month a light plane is rented in order to allow "settlement" watch staff to ascertain the extent of ongoing physical expansion in existing "settlements." Once a baseline survey is completed, subsequent surveys can be used to measure expansion using GIS satellite positioning overlays. The document stated that this "mechanism will yield tangible graphic and quantitative data for the public." Peace Now defined its objectives to the government of Finland in the following manner: "To monitor settlement developments on the ground, accurately and reliably; To make this information available to the Israeli and international publics; To advance the fulfillment of the Road Map." Peace Now identifies the "target groups" for the government of Finland as the "Israeli public, The Israeli political leadership, International Diplomatic Corps and Israeli and international press." Peace Now defined the "final result of the activities" for the government of Finland as "Regular and reliable reports, in real time, disclosing the situation of settlement construction; Regular and reliable reports, in real times, monitoring the dismantlement of outposts and settlements according to requirements of the Road Map; Contacts with diplomats, leaders and press in order to convey reliable information on all aspect of settlement issues." Peace Now further informed the government of Finland that it would use the $50,000 grant in the following manner: "$17,000 Coordinator, $13,000 Jeep, $20,000 Aerial Surveys." Peace Now informed the government of Finland that "funding is necessary to support the staff and rent the vehicles for aerial photography. Peace Now defineed itself for the government of Finland as an "educational foundation". Peace Now indicated in that grant request that it also received $100,000 from the Americans for Peace Now and 150,000 Euros from "European Foundations" for its "settlement watch project." A spokesperson for Peace Now indicated that the "European Foundations" mentioned in their grant request to the Finnish government were actually funds from the European Union. In other words, from other foreign European governments, few of which have been favorable to Israel's plight in the war On Terror. Far from being an indigenous Israeli organization, Peace Now it is obvious actually acts as an agent for foreign governments. The Israel Penal Code for Espionage was distributed to Knesset Interior Committees. Clause 3 of that code defines "photography of sensitive areas of Israel for any foreign power" as an act of espionage, punishable by ten years imprisonment if convicted. Dr. Yuri Stern, Chairman of the Knesset Interior Committee, announced that he would ask his legal counsel to examine the matter and report back to the committee if there were indeed grounds for application of the Israel Penal Code's special clauses on espionage against Peace Now. While the Knesset interior committee members from across the political spectrum carefully listened and examined the documents relating to allegations of felonious activity by Peace Now, the Peace Now lobbyist in the Knesset, Behira Bardugo, screamed at Committee Chairman Dr. Stern and accused the committee of not investigating those who financed the campaign to defeat Ariel Sharon in the recent referendum campaign over the Prime Minister's unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza. When Stern explained that there is a difference between funding from a private individual and funding that is received from a government, Bardugo reacted with surprise, and simply said that there is no difference. The Peace Now settlement expansion maps do not only wind up in the hands of European governments and they do not only include the civilian expansion. The Peace Now settlement expansion maps also include military installations and the maps are featured in all PLO offices. Israeli army bases have been attacked and Israeli soldiers killed. These are the sons and daughters of Israel drafted to protect the country, not, for the most part, even professional soldiers. And how else can these maps become lethal? One example will suffice: In late May, 2002 , a settlement watch group organized by the "Christian Peace Makers Team" reported to its e-mail list that it had successfully photographed the fence surrounding the Carmei Tzur settlement. The CPT proudly reported that it had shown several breaches in the fence. The next day, the CSM met with the Fateh (Arafat's mainstream terror group) in Bethlehem. Two days later, late at night, armed members of the Fateh infiltrated the Carmei Tzur settlement at the precise breach that the CPT had photographed. The Fateh used that breach to murder a civilian couple in their bed. The wife was eight months pregnant. The decision will now rest with Israel's legal system whether and how to enforce the espionage clauses of the Israel Penal Code for those organizations who choose to photograph the most sensitive landscapes of Israel on the payroll and at the behest of foreign governments. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

JERUSALEM DAY, 2004 Posted by Judy Lash Balint, May 20, 2004.

Yesterday was Jerusalem Day, marking the 37th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. There were many festivities here, so we'll be running several articles written by Jerusalemites who experienced different facets of the celebration. Here are two, one written by David and the other by Moshe. By David, member of the Kumah aliya organization (david@kcholmim.org) I had the foresight to call my friend Ezra HaLevi (co-founder of Kumah and a fellow former Albanian) last night to see what he was doing today. So after talking for a few minutes we decided to go up to har habayit this morning, in celebration of yom yerushalayim. For those who don't know, yom yerushalayim is the 28th of Iyar, the day that the Jewish People's army defeated our enemies in the six day war and liberated the Old City of Jerusalem along with our most holy of holies har habayit, The Temple Mount. I will not go into why har habayit is holy to us. For those who don't know we will hopefully post an article explaining this issue shortly. Anyway, Ezra and his brother Ari and I met this morning at about 8 a.m. We walked from Ezra's house outside the Old City through the Damascus Gate (Sh'ar Shechem) through the Arab shuk which was full of the morning's aroma from mints, teas, and other yummy smelling foods and spices. Right before entering into the `Jewish Quarter' we turned to go into the Breslav Yeshiva in the so called Muslim Quarter (where 70,000 Jews lived until they were expelled in 1948). There we all three went to the mikva having prepared ourselves the previous night. I hadn't been inside the breslov compound before. They've remade a mikva in a very old room with the beautiful four cornered arab architecture that one finds throughout much of the middle east. Finally, after having prepared the previous night (there are many preparations one must make before going up to har habayit) and having gone to mikva we went to join our holy nation at the Kotel to daven the morning's prayers. There I saw thousands and thousands of our fellow brothers and sisters praying and singing praise and thanks to the Holy One for this special day and victory for our embittered people. We all chanted Hallel with a bracha, paraded around, danced, sung, and finished our prayers of thanks. Till now, it had seemed like a joyous Yom Yerushalayim indeed. Just look! Thousands of Jews, celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem, our victory, and our new found sovereignty of our holiest site, the temple mount. As the famous words we all remember (either having heard them or having heard the recording) "har habayit beyadanu har habayit beyadanu!" as the Jewish soldiers who conquered the temple mount sent out this message which was replayed over every Israeli and Jewish radio in the world. "The Temple Mount is in our hands! The Temple Mount is in our hands!" We had reason to rejoice. But then. But then, we met up with 30 or 40 other Jewish men who had prepared to ascend the Temple Mount. And here the story begins. This was my second time onto har habayit. It is an awesome, but humiliating experience. The police guards and Israeli government only allow JEWS to enter har habayit for an hour or so each morning. Sometimes, if they decide for any reason, they can deny even this. Often only 2 or 3 are allowed up at one time, though groups have been gaining access as groups more often. We were told strictly by the police what the rules were. No prayer books, no tallit, no moving of the lips as in prayer, no praying at all, no shuckling, no bowing down. At this, the Jewish People's holiest site, the place where the holy Jewish Temple stood (both the first and second) for a combined 1,000 years, here, a Jew, with the Temple Mount "in our hands" and under "Israeli sovereignty" can not pray. A Christian can. A Muslim can. In fact, any non-Jew can. Just not a Jew. But then. The police did not even bother with the pretense of being polite. In fact, when an officer warned us not to `move our lips' and someone said `are you serious?' the officer immediately removed this yid. He was denied entry onto har habayit at all, being pushed violently away. Why? Was he a danger? A security threat? Because he wanted to pray? Or move his lips? Because this Jew wished to ascend to the place where the Akeda (Binding of Jacob) took place? To ascend to a place where a Jewish Temple stood for 1,000 years? Because this yid dared to speak back to the mighty Israeli police officer ruler of the Temple Mount? This is what we meant when we sang praise to God only an hour ago? This is what was meant when we declared "beyadanu"? Ah, but then. Then we finally ascended minus one. And so the rest of us ascended and gathered together to begin listening to our tour guide. But then. One of our fellow brothers had ascended with the wish to walk around himself. Something that even according to this `waqf guidelines' and the Israeli Police we are supposed to be allowed to do. But he forgot God doesn't control har habayit, the Jewish People don't control har habayit, Arab-Israeli policemen do. So when this holy yid said, "but I am just going to walk alone I'm not part of the group" he was shoved hard in the chest. Told not to make trouble and to `get the hell out of here'. And was then forcibly removed being pushed the whole way and asking `what did I do? just let me stay'. But then. Our tour continued. But who could concentrate with all of this? Who could concentrate on prayers with all the Arabs around us giving us dirty looks, swearing at us, making gestures, and so forth? Who could not notice the humiliation? Ah so we stood on the Eastern Wall of har habayit, facing the mikdash the place where the temple once and will again stood. And someone `moved their lips'. The chutzpah. And so, in addition to the Israeli Police guarding us (to protect us? It didn't seem so I guess the 30 Jews are a real security threat to all those thousands of angry armed Arab Muslims) there were waqf officials representatives of the Muslim's religious organization. The Jewish People don't control har habayit the waqf does. So it would seem. For when the waqf official watching us smugly, saw someone moving their lips he informed the police officer and requested this Jew be removed. He wasn't but that is hardly the point. The point is that a yid a Jew standing on har habayit was pointed out was SINGLED OUT FOR PRAYING AT THE SITE OF OUR HOLY TEMPLE! And was nearly kicked out for it. The waqf official smiled at me. I gave him a look that I hope communicated the harm I wish to inflict on him. This is `beyadanu'. I reflected on the waqf official for some time. What motivates him? Why should he care if a Jew prays on har habayit? What could make him so happy to see himself deny us this right this privilege? Does our praying there endanger his ability to set up a state called Palestine? Does it endanger his people's national ambitions? Perhaps it harms him in some way? Let's even suggest that, God forbid, the Temple Mount was given over to a terror state called Palestine. So what? That means Jews shouldn't be able to pray there then? Should Israel then deny Arabs the right to pray in churches or mosques in "Israel proper"? No folks. The answer to all these questions is no. What makes that official tick? what gave him that sick smile? Hatred, pure hatred for the Jews. Towards the Jews. The evil Jews. I have seen that sick smile, that enraging hateful look before, in Poland, in Krakow, in Warsaw, when we traveled to the graves of our grandparents and bear witness to the Holocaust, I saw smiles like those, looks like those, on 80 year old Polish men, women, even on children, on those who helped annihilate our people. Or tried to anyway. This is not a war for land, it is not a national fight. This is a religious war bred by a systematic perverse level of hatred that the entire Arab world and especially the Palestinians have for Jews. Nothing more, but nothing less. I couldn't pray openly because I am a Jew. Period. I shouldn't have the right to live in parts of Biblical Israel because I am a Jew. Period. This, my friends, is cold blooded hatred of the worst degree. But then. We had made our way around the area of the Temple Mount, not entering the areas that a Jew is today not permitted (according to most Rabbis) to enter for reasons of ritual purity and impurity. We were now standing on the western side of the Temple Mount the closest we would be to the foundation rock only about 100 meters away. And so we all stood, and davened in our heads, in our hearts, if not with our lips. I prayed for many things. For peace. For real peace. For an end to this hatred for a proud and intelligent Jewish Nation. For a People who will stand up for itself and not tolerate such humiliations. But then. My prayers were interrupted. For an Arab women could simply not tolerate us Jews standing here. So she came over and yelled. "Leave! This is not yours dirty Jews! Leave!" Most of the Jews with us had already walked on, I had lingered. Three other people from our group were still with me all staring at this women in shock. Perhaps I am naive, but it is hard to accept that this women, with her 7 year old child standing next to her, would have no shame in expressing such pure hatred for me simply because I am a Jew. No shame in teaching her child hate. No shame in condemning herself and her people to an evil existence. What should I do? What can I do? Yell back? That wouldn't achieve anything. Spit on her? I won't debase myself I am better than that. What should I do? Bow down and get arrested but at least proclaim out loud for all to hear that "Shema Yisrael hashem elokenu hashem echad! Listen Israel, God is our Lord God is one". I considered it but didn't wish to endanger the chance of other Jews being able to ascend tomorrow. But then. I realized a police officer had been yelling at me for a good 30 seconds. I had spaced out in thought about this problem about hatred, the Arab women, teaching hate, a response. He shoved me "move". So after considering my options again quickly, I began to move. Head down. Ashamed. This is `beyadanu'. Forgive me, God! I prayed for that very hard. Don't be mad! We care. We do wish to show You respect, to build Your temple, to proclaim Your existence. But it is hard. And then... we left. But everyone had clearly felt the same way. Bottled up energy, having felt the presence of God, the temple, having seen where my forefathers, the Levites, sang the song of ascents, and helped our cousins the kohanic priests to offer sacrifices to our God, having bottled up all this rage and anger and humiliation, the moment we left the Temple Mount, har habayit that is `in our hands' and stepped onto the other side, at that moment, we could pray we could sing, we could call out to God. And so we did. "Yebaneh hamikdash yebaneh hamidash ir tzion temaleh. "We shall rebuild the temple, rebuild the temple, the city of Zion shall again be full/complete... and there we shall sing together a new song". That new song is the song of peace of mashiach of completion. And we sang loudly for all those on the other side of the gate on har habayit to hear us for God to hear us. We are not going anywhere, the temple is ours and we shall always remember, shall always lay claim to her, shall await the time when we can reassert control over a 4,000 year old inheritance. And let me tell you what else. The only thing that keeps har habayit `beyadanu' at all is that some Jews still go up. We help keep the doors open for all the other millions of Jews who chose not to. The presence of the few keeps it open for the many. And if Jews didn't go up it would be totally out of our control, with no access to Jews for the simple reason they are Jews. So what do we learn from this? That sovereignty requires presence, that ownership requires presence. If we own it we must demonstrate that ownership, care, love. "Melody Of The Soul" by Moshe Kempinski (http://www.shorashim2u.net) We all measure our steps in this world to the tune of melodies playing in our heads . These tunes either reflect our inner moods or serve to uplift us into varying spheres of emotions. They at times act as a trigger for emotions experienced in our youth. Yet in other situations they trigger deep feelings of sadness that lay hidden just beyond our psychological awareness . These melodies all reflect the inner workings of our souls .They can even times arrive from an external source and yet speak to our very being. Thirty seven years ago I was sitting in my high school laboratory writing a chemistry exam. It was very difficult to concentrate while across the oceans my people were engaged in a life and death struggle. All the Arab nations surrounding the small state of Israel had conspired to destroy this enclave of the remnant. As the professor walked the aisles to ensure that none of the students were cheating on the exam , I had succeeded in threading a small earphone wire through my sleeve . As I lay my head in my hand I listened to the radio reports from the battlefront. I remember hearing the reporter breathing heavily as he ran with the soldiers entering the Lion's Gate. One could hear sniper fire in the background. One also could hear soldiers crying out, "where is it?" which way to the kotel? (the wall)". I remember feeling their sense of urgency as these soldiers rushed headlong through the winding alleys of the old city in search of the Wall. In those moments, these battle scarred young soldiers ceased being warriors and became three thousand year old Jews rushing forward to their destiny. Suddenly we heard General Motta Gur over his walkie talkie speaking the words that were waiting to be spoken 2000 years, "the Temple Mount is in our hands... I repeat, The Temple Mount is in our hands". The earth moved under me as I heard those words. The reporter and the soldiers continued in their dash towards the Kotel. As they approached, the reporter's voice trembled. He said, "I have never been a religious man, but here I am standing at the Kotel. I am standing at the place where so many of my ancestors dreamt of standing, of touching the stones. I am touching those stones!" And he paused. And he began weeping. Several of the soldiers that had gathered around as the legendary Rabbi Shlomo Goren hoarsely yelled out the "Shehecheyanu" blessing: "Blessed art Thou L-rd G-d King of the Universe who has sustained us and kept us and has brought us to this day." The reporter, weepingly whispered "amen". Then Rabbi Goren took a shofar in his lips and blew the tekiyah. That shofar blast crossed the oceans. That piercing cry was a sound that shook my very essence. Though I was thousands of miles away, at that instant I was transported to the dusty stones in the middle of Jerusalem . In that instant that sound tore open the gates of Heaven , even if only for a period of time. But once they were open they would never totally close again. The sound of that shofar began to play in my head. It began to move through my soul. It permeated all that I had secretly desired and all that I fervently hoped for. At that instant I vowed to myself that I would become a Jerusalemite . I knew that at one point in the future I would be able to declare Ani Yerushalmi , I Am A Jerusalemite. In the midst of all the great and tragic things that have occured since then, the melody of that shofar blast has never left me. That melody is deeply engraved in my soul .It is deeply embedded in the souls of all those that heard it .Some have taken great pains to try to forget the sound.The implications of that shofar blast is too life transforming for these people. But it is a sound that will not be silenced , even in these people . At times it is but a whisper but at times it is a loud and triumphant call. Throughout this Jerusalem day the streets of the old city will be filled with thousands of Jews, young and old , singing and dancing . These thousands have not forgotten the sound of that shofar . It resonates in their souls even though many of them were born years after its sounding. That is the quality of the melody of the soul. It is everpresent. Kumah is a grassroots activist organization whose mission is encouraging mass Aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) from Western countries. It recently help restore the ancient burial site of the father and grandmother of King David in honor of the upcoming Jewish holiday of Shavuot - during which Megillat Ruth, the Scroll of Ruth, is read. The Jerusalem Diarists group is a group of people who are recording their experiences living in Israel today. "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" by Judy Lash Balint (Gefen) is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com To Go To Top

DEAR SENATOR SHELBY - DON'T COUNT ON MY VOTE Posted by Kitty Carr, May 19, 2004.

[Background: I had written Senator Shelby asking why America was funding the PA.] Senator Shelby's 'Response' to my Letter: Dear Ms. Carr: Thank you for taking the time to contact me regarding the situation in the Middle East. I share your interest in this important matter. Israel and the United States have maintained an extremely strong and beneficial alliance for nearly fifty years, and I believe we should continue to do so. Today, our relationship continues to provide us with a strategic presence in the region, ensuring, among other things, access to important petroleum reserves. Additionally, Israel shares a similar political ideology with the U.S., and our continued support furthers the cause of democratic reform in the Middle East. I firmly believe that the most effective way for the U.S. to encourage peace in the region is to encourage a return to peace talks. The U.S. is perhaps the only country with the credibility to mediate such talks, and it is thus our responsibility to do so. We must use this opportunity and our influence to ensure a regional stability which will advance the interests of both Israel and the Arab nations. Ultimately, a lasting peace in the Middle East will be beneficial to the United States, and I remain committed to seeing the peace restored. You may rest assured that I will keep your thoughts foremost in mind as the Senate addresses legislation related to this matter. My Next Letter To Senator Shelby: Round 2 Dear Senator Shelby, Thanks for your response to my letter. However, I was confused because you didn't answer one question I asked. To refresh your memory, I wanted to know why, during a War On Terror in which we said we would not distinguish between terrorists and the nations that harbor terrorists, America funded the PA through USAID/WBG to the tune of $249 million in 2003, and why, during almost daily suicide bombings, president Bush transferred $20 million to the PA in June of 2003. (It is against U.S. law to give money to the PA, so this transfer required a Presidential waiver. As a Senator, I'm sure you know that.) Palestinian terrorrists in the PA areas, who were arrested and interrogated by Israeli security forces during 2002, admitted that UNRWA facilities, equipment, and vehicles were used for assisting in carrying out terror attacks. I specificallly did not mention the words "peace" or "peace process," because only a fool still clings to the idea of a 'return to the peace process' as the answer to "the situation in the Middle East," as you put it. Your 'response' is on your website under the heading "Middle East," also shown below. Word-for-word, not a comma misplaced. And what's on your website about the Middle East is nothing but unfactual GovSpeak. For instance, you said you remain committed to seeing the peace 'restored' in the Middle East. As I'm sure you know, Senator, the United Nations recognized the state of Israel on May 14, 1948. The next day, five Arab armies attacked her and lost, the "Palestinian" Refugee Hoax was born, followed by five more wars waged against Israel by Arab countries. What 'peace' are you committed to restoring? While you were writing this nonsense, how many suicide attacks occurred? How many occurred the days before or the days after? You and the rest of the Congress referred to Iraqi "insurgents" as animals and subhuman barbarians. Almost simultaneously, Colin Powell "chided" or "scolded" Israel for taking measures to protect herself against animals and subhuman barbarians. Senator Shelby's Webpage under "Middle East": Middle East: Israel and the United States have maintained an extremely strong and beneficial alliance for nearly fifty years, and I believe we should continue to do so. Today, our relationship continues to provide us with a strategic presence in the region, ensuring, among other things, access to important petroleum reserves. Additionally, Israel shares a similar political ideology with the U.S., and our continued support furthers the cause of democratic reform in the Middle East. I firmly believe that the most effective way for the U.S. to encourage peace in the region is to encourage a return to peace talks. The U.S. is perhaps the only country with the credibility to mediate such talks, and it is thus our responsibility to do so. We must use this opportunity and our influence to ensure a regional stability which will advance the interests of both Israel and the Arab nations. Ultimately, a lasting peace in the Middle East will be beneficial to the United States, and I remain committed to seeing the peace restored. You may rest assured that I will keep your thoughts foremost in mind as the Senate addresses legislation related to this matter. Kitty Carr lives in Alabama. To Go To Top

NPR TURNS TO GUARDIAN Posted by Leah Green, May 19, 2004.

This was written by Ricki Hollander, Senior Research Analyst, CAMERA. London's Guardian newspaper is notorious for its anti-Israel bias. Apparently indifferent to journalism's code of ethics, many Guardian reporters tend to value advocacy journalism over unembellished fact. For example, correspondent Chris McGreal routinely uses his reports from the Middle East to blame, deprecate, and attack Israel and its leader, presenting Palestinian claims as fact. His articles, with such titles as "The Real Obstacle to Peace is Not Terror, But Sabotage by Sharon-Backed Army" (6/20/03), "Caged" (9/3/03), "Israel's Deadly Thirst" (1/13/04), and "Land Grab in Gaza Casts Doubt on Pullout" (2/27/2004) are frequently reprinted on Palestinian websites. It is to this partisan journalist, however, that NPR turned on Tuesday morning, May 18, 2004, to discuss Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip. There was not a single Israeli voice heard on this segment to explain Israel's perspective. McGreal was introduced as a reporter for London's Guardian in Rafah, giving listeners the impression that they would be hearing an objective journalistic account of events in the region. The segment was anything but that. McGreal presented Israel as a brute aggressor, ignoring the context of Israel's military action and attempting to cast doubt on Israel's stated motives. When asked about the network of weapons-smuggling tunnels which were the target of Israel's actions, McGreal replied: "Well they're not finding very many, and critics of Israeli policy say that the level of destruction bears no relation to the number of tunnels found. I think that over the past year, in the Rafah area, they discovered perhaps a dozen tunnels. In the past eight months, they destroyed more than 600 homes." In fact, Israel has thus far uncovered and destroyed over 85 weapons smuggling tunnels on the Philadelphia route along the Egyptian border with Gaza since the beginning of the intifada -- 34 in 2002, over 40 in 2003, and 11 since January 2004. Terrorist groups such as Hamas and PFLP, as well as the "rearmament network" of the Palestinian Authority use the Rafah tunnels to import illegal weapons and explosives into the Gaza Strip and to arm their members. According to the IDF, dozens of RPG rockets and launchers, hundreds of kilograms of explosives, hundreds of AK-47 Kalashnikovs, tens of thousands of bullets, and thousands of cartridges have been smuggled into the Gaza Strip via the tunnels. There have also been efforts to smuggle in more advanced weapons via the tunnels. According to the IDF, Israel's military actions are not to demolish homes but are aimed at stopping the transfer of smuggled weap ons, arresting the tunnel builders, and ending the large-scale smuggling of dangerous weapons used against Israelis. McGreal's numbers are suspect, aimed at minimizing the threat to Israel and maximizing the effect of Israel's military measures on Palestinians. For example, he states that on Friday, May 14 alone, "the Israelis destroyed about 200 homes in an assault on 2 areas of the refugee camp.."However, on Sunday, May 15, the United Nations stated that the IDF had demolished 88 homes in the Rafah refugee camp, and a later UN report stated that fewer than 200 homes (191) were demolished in all of Gaza during the first 15 days of May. The Israeli army differed, saying that it had demolished 40 houses that Palestinian gunmen had used for cover. But McGreal does not allow facts to get in the way. He proclaims to listeners his opinion of the true motives behind the military actions in Gaza, vaguely attributing it to Israel's critics. "I think that there is a consensus among Palestinians and amongst many Israelis, including left-wing MP's who describe what's going on as illegal, as a war crime, that, in fact, the excuse that they are hunting for weapons-smuggling tunnels is actually a cover for the wholesale destruction of parts of the refugee camp, and what the Palestinian prime minister actually described as ethnic cleansing." With no Israeli to refute or supply context to McGreal's reporting, listeners are left with a one-sided, anti-Israel account of events and a repetition of McGreal's credentials as a Western journalist. Just in case NPR listeners did not catch McGreal's biased report on Morning Edition, the network's evening "All Things Considered" featured him once more, again casting doubt on the Israeli military's purpose by misleadingly suggesting that Israel changes its plans as it goes along and again with no Israeli speaker to present another perspective. McGreal said: "Well, the stated goal of the Israelis has actually changed. On Sunday, the Israeli army chief of staff, Moshe Yaalon, said that the government intended to demolish hundreds more houses in Rafah refugee camp...The stated goal of the operation now, according to the Israelis, is to discover tunnels used for smuggling weapons from Egypt into the camp, and also to capture or kill Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leaders." In fact, reports on that Sunday, May 16, 2004 indicated that Israel even then was stating its goal to be the halting of weapons smuggling operations. On Sunday, May 16, Israel Radio reported that while Lt. General Moshe Yaalon said that hundreds of Palestinian houses were targeted for demolition in the area, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the cabinet that the army would take these actions to create "a different reality" along the Gaza-Egypt (Philadelphia) corridor to prevent arms smuggling by Palestinian terrorists across the border. And Israel TV's Channel Two stated that same day that the army was considering the possiblity of digging a trench between the camp and patrol road in order to prevent Palestinians from digging tunnels through which weapons are smuggled. Also, according to a May 16 AP article, Yaalon told the Cabinet that the army only carries out demolitions when the house in question conceals the mouth of a weapons-smuggling tunnel or is used as cover by gunmen. ("Israeli army chief says plans in place to destroy hundreds of Palestinian homes", Laurie Copans, AP, May 16, 2004.) Nevertheless, McGreal portrayed Israel's statements as ever-changing, thus casting doubt on their veracity. Similarly, McGreal attempted to question Israel's claim that most of those dead were Palestinian gunmen by making it seem like an unsubstantiated assumption. He said: "A lot of the dead are men, youth or men. They would be widely likely to be seen by the Israelis as gunmen." NPR has taken a further step in the wrong direction as it turns to a known Israel-basher to provide its material. CAMERA - Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America - monitors the news and TV media for how fair they are in reporting on Israel. Their website address is www.camera.org To Go To Top

HELP KEEP JERUSALEM UNITED! Posted by Deb Kotz, May 10, 2004.

Happy Yom Yerushalayim! Please sign the petition in the link provided by One Jerusalem. It was written by Allen Roth, President of One Jerusalem (http://www.OneJerusalem.org) Today is Jerusalem Day, commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem, Israel's capital, and bringing it under full Jewish sovereignty for the first time in almost precisely 1,900 years. On May 6, the UN voted to give East Jerusalem to Arafat. Dear Friends, As soon as talk began about Israel giving up land, immediately the godfather of all terrorists Yasser Arafat awakened from his stupor and proclaimed that Jerusalem would be the capital of a Palestinian State (he, of course, added a few chosen words about driving the Jews into the sea.) If this sentiment simply reflected the demented rantings of Arafat it would be one thing, but last week the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to bestow East Jerusalem into Arafat's hands. Can you imagine, Arafat and his bloodthirsty terrorists operating out of a base in Jerusalem? A majority of the United Nations, including many European nations, support this idea. And you can be sure they will campaign to make this a reality. Only one thing stands in the way of turning Jerusalem over the likes of Arafat and his Fatah thugs - we stand in the way: One Jerusalem. The world must be told time and again that tens of millions of people are dedicated to the proposition that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of the State of Israel. Once again we must remind the world that no part of the Holy City should be given to Arafat or the United Nations. One Jerusalem is dedicated to the single proposition of educating people around the world that history, tradition, and the Bible attest to the fact that all of Jerusalem is rightfully the capital of the Jewish people. Along with educating students, adults, members of the press, and elected officials One Jerusalem has also shown the world that this idea has the support of millions and millions of Christians and Jews world-wide. We are the ones who organized the largest celebration in Jerusalem's history that had hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating their support of the concept that Jerusalem is and must remain undivided under the rule of the democratic State of Israel. "Jerusalem," those who participated in the historic rally outside of the walls of the Old City were saying, "is not on the negotiating table. Nor should it ever be." Some try to spin the view that those who support keeping the status quo when it comes to Jerusalem are radicals. Well to those critics I cite the words of a most un-radical politician, Golda Meir: She said, "Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided - not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing." As the battle heats up, we need your support and support of others who think like us to increase our effectiveness. I urge you to seriously consider donating to One Jerusalem and signing our petition. Click here to sign Furthermore, we urge you to send this appeal to friends and family who are not part of our family today. I hope you will take the time to demonstrate your support during this very critical period. (Even the Committee responsible for the upcoming Athens Olympics does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. My letter to the Committee. is at http://www.onejerusalem.org/OlympicLetter.asp) One Jerusalem is proud to have as our Chairman Natan Sharansky, a man who took on the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union and won. Along with Natan, we are supported by Benyamin Natanyahu, Limor Livnat, Dore Gold, and many other ardent supporters of One Jerusalem and its cause. Take the time to make a donation today. No contribution is too big or too small. Now is the time we must act, before it is too late. Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com To Go To Top

ISRAEL SHOULD RESOLVE THE CONFLICT THROUGH NEGOTIATIONS? Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 19, 2004.

Pres. Bush has now assured the Arabs that the letter he sent PM Sharon about his Gaza abandonment plan merely offered advice, and that US policy remains focused on mutual negotiations as the means of resolving the conflict between the P.A. and Israel. That had been my interpretation. It was obvious from the wording as well as from experience with US methods. Nevertheless, proponents of the abandonment plan touted Bush's letter as supporting Sharon's demands, and the Arabs pretended to agree with that false interpretation of the letter. It now is clear that Bush and Sharon had attempted to deceive the Likud referendum voters. Since what Sharon said was erroneous, either he does not know how to read or how to consult with the US, or he was dissembling. Bush and Sharon should lose credibility over this. They probably will not. The media is not exposing their attempted deception. Nor is there is an indication that the public detected the contradiction between what Bush was claimed to have said and what he assured the Arabs he meant. A useful poll would have elicited from Likud voters whether they believed what: (1) The letter stated; or (2) Sharon's supporters claimed about it. Should the two sides negotiate? Can negotiations resolve the conflict? No. Use the US as the model. The US did not try to resolve WWII by negotiations. The US demanded unconditional surrender, so as not to leave intact regimes that were totalitarian and imperialist, as is the P.A.. The US found it impossible to resolve anything with Saddam, for he violated all his commitments, just as the P.A does. Who can resolve anything with the fanatical P.A. jihadists? It is suspicious of Pres. Bush to demand that Israel negotiate under similar conditions to what the US refused to negotiate over. Will Israel protest this double standard? The more the US demonstrates the double standard, the more hostile towards Israel it reveals itself. 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

FAITH VERSUS FEAR Posted by Anita Tucker, May 19, 2004.

You may recall that about 20 years ago the youth of Gush Katif (not too many then) put up a tent on the bald beautiful hill of Tel Sultan and demonstrated to try to convince our Nation's leaders to halt their crazy plan to build houses on Tel Sultan and allow "settlers" from Egypt (whom Egypt wanted to be rid of)-like the blood-thirsty murderer whose house was turned into rubble last night by Tzahal, sent by our Nations' leaders. This morning 'of course our nations leaders are discussing how to enable the terrorists to "settle" closer (e.g.in Kfar Darom,Netzarim and Netzer Hazani) so it will easier for them to murder more Israeli citizens. In the same breath our Nations' leaders are discussing how to turn the homes of Israeli citizens into rubble. Those youth about twenty years ago who looked at Jewish history and understood how we must handle our future - trying to prevent the obvious disaster that came to be, were hauled to the local police station for investigation. I guess there must be some logic in all this. It seems that our Nations' leaders are filled with a fear that causes them to act illogically. Obviously, only Faith can overcome fear! Anita Tucker lives in Netzer Hazani, Gush Katif, Israel. To Go To Top

OUR BODIES ARE LYING HERE Posted by Moshe Feiglin, May 19, 2004.

As a result of a terrible explosion, that split our body into six million parts that were dispersed throughout the continent of Europe, the State of Israel was born. Only such a terrible explosion could have overcome the critical mass of anti-Semitism and led it to that moment of grace on November 29, 1947. Afterwards the Americans and the Soviets changed their minds, but it was too late - the State of Israel has been born. Israel exists by virtue of a rare historic moment in which Western/ Christian morality precisely matched reality at the right second. Every clock indicates the right time at least twice a day, but this clock has a million hands and they all fit into place in that historical moment, and the UN Partition Plan Resolution was passed. Immediately afterwards all the hands started moving again and the world was stuck with us. For 56 years the nations of the world have been attempting to get rid of us, each in his own way. Those who think that only the Arabs and the Poles act like this are invited to join the long lines of people waiting to buy tickets for Mel Gibson's new film in New York, or to join the workers removing the swastikas from the walls of the prestigious homes of Jews in Toronto, or the policeman permanently guarding the entrance to the synagogue in Melbourne, Australia. We need hardly mention what is happening in France and Belgium. According to the morality of the Gentiles, only when our bodies are dispersed in every direction, revealed to the light of day in the most horrible way possible, are we in the right. This is our basic ethos, our starting event. Here we built the Israeli Temple. We called it "Yad Vashem", and every time an important personage arrives we take him there for a visit. For the last 56 years we have tried to freeze the unique second in which the hands of the clock were matching. We have no morality other than yours, but come and see our dispersed bodies, see how right we are, see how justified is the existence of our country. And so for 56 years IDF soldiers have paid the price of our flight from ourselves, the price of the Christian morality we have adopted. The weak party is in the right, the martyr may retaliate, but only with his last gasp, or preferably later. Our bodies are lying here, in a million parts. Because it's immoral to cut off electricity to a neighborhood in which they're manufacturing Kasam missiles. Because it's immoral to demolish houses of Arabs in Rafiah. Because how can we endanger the Egyptian "peace" with a demand to guard the entrances to their tunnels. Because it's immoral to bomb a lathe above which an innocent old woman is living. Because we have to send a soldier to give her bread to eat. We, who have become enchained by that "morality", will act cruelly towards our own people and send them into this Hell, and then thank the Egyptians for helping to locate the parts of their bodies. Once again it seems that for a moment the hands are again matching. The Christian world is "shocked" at the sight of these savages playing with parts of bodies. We are again in the right in the way they like. Suddenly Netanyahu suggests cutting off their electrical supply. No, not in order to defeat the savages, nor to force them to stop producing Kasam missiles, nor to make them hand over their weapons. Certainly not. Just in order to force them to return the parts of the bodies. The Jews are in the right when their bodies are smashed into pieces. Meanwhile the hands of the clock are advancing, and CNN is showing other pictures. Netanyahu has already changed his mind. Until the next explosion. Moshe Feiglin was a cofounder of Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership), a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Feiglin has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To Go To Top

A WITHDRAWAL FROM GAZA - THE AFTERMATH Posted by Barry Rubin, May 19, 2004.

Let's put aside partisanship and ideology to ask: What would the situation actually be after an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip? The following is a good-faith effort to do so whose conclusions, I think, are hard to reject. Israel: The national trauma about dismantling settlements will be real but shall pass. A majority view will coalesce including many Likud members and voters as well as most everyone to its left that the withdrawal was a good thing to do. People would feel they had accomplished something, improved Israel's security and reduced the stigma of occupation. This euphoria would last at least a few months until it became apparent that the gains made were limited and many problems still existed. There would then be renewed pressure to "do something," most likely demands in some quarters for an additional unilateral withdrawal from all the West Bank outside the security fence or areas Israel did not intend to claim in future negotiations. Critics will blame the lack of benefits from the Gaza withdrawal on its insufficient extent. On other hand, negative results from withdrawing and the chaos in Gaza will reinforce those opposing additional withdrawals. International reaction: The United States and Britain enthusiastically endorse withdrawal; the rest of Europe would say it was a step in the right direction but not enough. U.S.-Israel relations would remain strong but much of the Western media, academia, and intellectual circles along with many European politicians will explain that the withdrawal was a trick and should not be accrued to Israel's credit. All the more effort would be needed, they will explain, to get Israel out of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. While a withdrawal would forestall international pressures and perhaps ease slightly hostility in general it would not bring tangible rewards. The Arab world: It would universally agree that this was a trick by the evil warmonger Sharon. And demand Israel give up even more without getting anything in return. A few Arab liberals would write newspaper articles disagreeing. Palestinians: Fatah and Hamas would proclaim an Israeli withdrawal as a defeat brought about by their armed struggle, only proving that more fighting and terrorism is needed to force Israel into additional unilateral concessions. Hamas will say this is another step toward destroying Israel altogether while Fatah officials will explain it is another step toward forcing Israel's withdrawal from all the We