TRANSFER OF ARABS IS THE ONLY SOUND SOLUTION FOR PEACE! Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, September 30, 2003.

For many years now, Arafat, through his educational system, has inculcated Arab children with hatred of Jews. He has been extraordinarily successful. Aided and abetted by his daily Arab propaganda network directed both to adults and children, Arafat has effectuated a hatred against Jews that is irremediable. He has innovated suicide bombings of civilians, honoring, even posthumously, the maker of bombs and suicide bombers. Generations of children growing up in the Palestinian Authority school system have had ingrained in them that killing Jews is desirable. This inclination has become an integral part of Arab culture. As a result, 1200 Jews have been killed, and literally many, many thousands maimed for life. Arafat promises those who die in suicide bombings to be instantaneously rewarded. He labels them "heroes." There have been so many children growing up with this orientation, that no "true peace" between Jew and Arab can ever be realistically obtained. That Arabs in the future will live side by side in peace with Jews, does not square with the facts, nor with the daily murder of Jews by Arabs. The Road Map, sponsored by the European Union, the U.N., and Russia, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Powell and President Bush, has not taken reality into consideration. The Road Map is essentially the Saudi Arabian solution to the Mid-East problem, and as such is one sided and basically unfair. Radically new thinking is required in order to have peace in the area. Transfer of Arabs from the Holy Land is, without a doubt, the best solution. Once upon a time, that concept was looked upon with disfavor by "liberals." Whereas, they saw no difficulty in transferring Jews out of their homes in historical Judea and Samaria, as far as Arabs are concerned, that was taboo. Yet the fact remains that the Promised Land was promised by G-d to the Jews only. This fact is recognized even in the Koran. Most Arabs came into the Holy Land from surrounding Arab lands within the last 100 years. Transfer could be made to Jordan where the majority of the population is made up of so-called Palestinian Arabs. Or they can be sent back to many of the Arab lands from which these Arabs originally emigrated to Israel. Fair payment can be made to those Arabs who agree to leave the Holy Land. Arabs who wish to remain, can do so, provided they agree to be a citizen of a Jewish State. The United States and the E.U. would have to play a major role in this enterprise. Both of them have been anyhow pouring substantial monies into the area; their monies could be used more effectively for the purpose of resettling Arabs. Transfer would require the cooperation of many of the surrounding Arab States, something with which Arab governments have heretofore not had a very good track record. However, if the U.S. and the E.U. brought sufficient pressure, that problem could be overcome. What is needed is a determination to bring peace to this important area of the world, and there is nothing more logical and simple than to allow for a vibrant democratic Jewish State living peacefully with its neighbors. Transferring Arabs out of the Holy Land not only complies with G-d's Promise, but will definitely assist in making this desired goal possible. The authors founded Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), a grassroots activist group based in Jerusalem. The group's website address is http://www.womeningreen.org

WILL ISRAEL ATONE? Posted by Beth Goodtree, September 30, 2003.

On Yom Kippur Jews around the world atone for their sins. It is a day for individual prayer, reflection, and forgiveness. But it does not have to be limited to the individual. Israel, meaning both a nation and all Hebrew peoples, is a candidate for atonement too. Over the years I have witnessed a growing phenomenon: that of Jew-bashing by other Jews. For the most part, this form of hatred stems from two sources; curiously, diametrically opposed to each other, yet united by their ignorance and intolerance. Given the climate of the post-9-11 world, both groups feed into a culture that promotes murdering Jews, themselves included. The first group consists of those Jews who hate Israel. Andrew Shapiro, Noam Chomsky, the Sulzbergers, Tom Segev all fall into that category to a greater or lesser degree. And most recently, there is the group of writers who want to prosecute the Israeli military for defending its citizens. While many of these people claim not to hate Israel, their behavior says differently. Adam Shapiro is the Jewish student from Brooklyn who came out in support of genocide bombings and praised Arab terrorism. Noam Chomsky, while saying he has nothing against Israel, writes hateful and frequently inaccurate treatises often quoted by hate groups as examples of why Israel and the Jews must be destroyed. The Sulzbergers are the family that runs the NY Times. When covering Middle East events, they do so with such bias that one might think the victims of terror deserved their fate or that Israel carried out a military offensive without provocation. Meanwhile, Tom Segev is an Israeli historian who travels around the world defending Hamas and other Arab terrorists by comparing these murderers to Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir, thus feeding into global anti-Semitism. And finally, there are the prominent Israeli writers who want Israeli air force commander Dan Halutz to face criminal prosecution for the raid that killed Hamas leader Salah Shehada and 14 others in Gaza City in July. Apparently they are putting the lives of genocidal monsters above that of innocent fellow Jews who would be future victims if not for that raid. Criticizing Israeli policy is one thing, but when that criticism endangers the lives of Jews or fuels anti-Semitic acts, it is nothing less than hatred disguised as free speech or liberal leanings. Aiding and abetting people who would see the destruction of Israel and the annihilation of the Hebrew people, either by word or deed, is akin to assisting in genocide. Such behavior begs for atonement. Then there are the Jews who criticize other Jews for their lack of "appropriate" observance. One's observance or lack thereof is between the individual and HaShem. When one Jew publicly criticizes another Jew about their form of Judaism, they only assist the anti-Semites by giving them fodder for their hatred. By their criticism, they are contributing to the downfall of all Hebrew peoples. The next candidate for atonement is Israel as a nation, or rather as a government. This past year has seen the Israeli government commit not mere blunders, but actual transgressions against the very people it is obliged to protect. Most recently, the Israeli government decided to release hundreds of dangerous criminals despite many warnings about such a move. Since their release, there have been a number of genocidal attacks on Israeli citizens perpetrated by the recently freed prisoners. The latest was a home invasion last week where a 7-month old baby and its father were murdered. All those government officials, especially Ariel Sharon, are complicit in all these deaths, for they were not merely foreseeable, but predictable. No matter what external pressures are put on the Israeli government, the safety and welfare of her citizens must be paramount or the government is working with the enemy by default. Also, the Israeli government recently lessened an assault designed to eliminate a chief terrorist with a history of planning and executing genocidal attacks. The reason? Because some of the terrorist's friends and family were in the vicinity. This terrorist then launched a series of attacks that killed scores of Jewish families. When the Israeli government is more concerned with an enemy's relatives than it is with its own citizens, the Israeli government has become the enemy of its own people. It needs to not merely atone, but to change its behavior. Meanwhile, aside from being a governing body for the citizens living there, the Israeli government is unique in that it is the representative of all Hebrew people and the guardian of all Jewish heritage, past, present and future. This puts an exceptional burden on the Israeli leaders, but one that they must be willing to bear lest they betray all Judaism. The current government seems to be oblivious to this responsibility. By banning Jews from their holy sites, allowing Muslims to destroy any evidence of a Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, and negotiating away land and historical sites that belong to the Hebrew people, the Israeli government has shirked its responsibilities and betrayed the people it is supposed to represent. So will Israel, as a people and a country, atone? I pray that it will and thus be written in the Book of Life for all eternity.

TREASON DU JOUR Posted by Steven Plaut, September 30, 2003.

"Yesh Gvul" (means "There is a Limit/Border") is an Israeli treasonous leftist organization, whose raison d'etre is the organizing of mutiny and insubordination in the military, urging soldiers to refuse to serve and follow orders. It is hailed as a great movement of patriotism and heroism by the very same leftists who foam at the mouth if some settlers try to erect a "settlement" on some empty piece of state-owned land some place in Samaria without the government's permission. THOSE settlers are criminals, violating the law in an anti-democratic manner, and should be tossed in the klink. Anyway, Yesh Gvul, joined by several members of Israel's Literary Left (Sami Michael, Amos Keinan, Natan Zach), have filed a petition with the Attorney General to open an investigation into the assassination of Hamas Mega-Terrorhoid Salah Shahada in July 2002. As you recall, Israel leveled the Gaza building in which the nazi was cowering, and along with him there died in the raid his own children plus some innocent civilians, several of them children. As a result, Isdrael has since been using toy mini-bombs to off the terrorists lest the boom upset the world's media, minibombs that fail to do the job. Naturally, the Israeli Left did not adopt the position that people who do not like Palestinian children getting killed should insist that Islamofascist terrorists not hide amongst them, or that Palestinians stop engaging in mass murder of Jews so that Israel will not have to hunt them down. Instead, the Israeli Leftists have been whining that this assassination represented some sort of human rights atrocity by Israel. Unlike the US whacking the two sons of Saddam. The Leftists would rather that Israel take no military actions at all against the terrorists and simply sit back and allow them to mass murder Israeli children riding buses. Gosh, you think maybe the PLO, which sits back and protects the rights of all terrorists to take cover among civilians, might be the REAL culprit responsible for the deaths of any Palestinian civilians? That is an imponderable, screams the Left. The Left's "logic" is very simple. The only way they wish for Israel to fight terrorism is through complete capitulation to the demands of the terrorists. The Yesh Gvul traitors and their literary fellow travelers are threatening Israel that if the Attorney General does NOT investigate the "crime", they will petition international bodies like the World Court in the Hague and demand that THEY indict Israel. (Alas, Belgium seems to have abandoned its amusement activity of putting the world's politicians on trial in its courts.) The Israeli Attorney General is himself a leftist, and, while he is not quite ready to accede to the demands of the Yesh Gvul traitors, he did volunteer that he himself opposed the assassination of Shahada. Which is just what we all need to know - the personal political biases of the Attorney General himself whose job is to enforce the law and not set Israeli defense policy. Speaking of calls for investigations, how about if we all call on the Attorney General to investigate who exactly is funneling all that cash into the coffers of the Yesh Gvul Treason Organization! The Israeli Minister of Defense declares that the actions of the 27 air force officers who have declared mutiny and insubordination because they oppose Israel's "occupation" are encouraging the terror organizations. Marwan Barghouti, the PLO Uber-terrorist now on trial in Israel for mass murder, demands the court refuse to continue with his trial and instead follow the example being set by the air force officers for peace. But I think he is missing the point. Of course they are encouraging the terror organizations. But that is because the entire Israeli Left is part of an Axis of Evil that unites Jewish leftism with Islamist fascism.

ARAFAT AND 13 PA LEADERS SPONSOR SOCCER TOURNAMENT HONORING TERRORISTS Posted by by Itamar Marcusm, September 30, 2003.

A major soccer tournament glorifying arch terrorists is underway in the Palestinian Authority [PA]. While terrorist glorification is not unusual in the PA, this tournament is striking because it is sponsored very prominently by the heads of the PA, including Yasser Arafat; Saib Arikat; Gibril Rajoub; the Minister of Sport - Abdul Fatach Hamal; the Mufti of the PA Ikrama Sabri; and 10 other senior PA officials. Each of the 24 soccer teams is named for a terrorist or other Shahid [the term of supreme honor designating "Martyrs" - those who died in the combat with Israel] including some of the most infamous murderers. Among those honored are Yechya Ayash, the first Hamas bomb-belt engineer, who initiated the suicide bombings; Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist woman who hijacked a bus killing 36 in 1978; Abu Ali Mustafa, the Head of the Terrorist Popular Front; Az Adin Al Kassam, the name of the suicide bombers' wing of the Hamas; Raid Carmi, Commander of the Suicide Bomber wing of Fatah, the Al Aqsa Brigades, in Tul Karem; Hassan Salame, Black September terror group, involved in the Olympic massacre of Israeli athletes; Abu Jihad, PLO leader; Thabit Thabit, Head of the Tanzim terror group in Tul Karem; Jamal Mansour of Hamas; Salah Khalif, PLO leader; Salah Drowza of Hamas; Kamal Adwan PLO leader. [Al Ayyam, Sept. 21, 2003] Presenting terrorists as heroes and role models is common practice in the PA. In January, the Palestine Media Watch (PMW) reported on the soccer tournament for 12-year-old boys named after Abd Al Baset Odeh, the suicide terrorist who killed 30 at the Passover Seder in April 2002. As stated, this event is significant as Yasser Arafat and 13 PA leaders have prominently put their names behind this. In addition, it is at the very time the PA is actively courting world leaders to continue promoting the Road Map, based on the premise that the PA has reformed and now rejects terrorism. Itamar Marcus is the director of PMW. Its website's address is http://www.pmw.org.il

EVERY P.A. LEADER IS A "MODERATE" UNTIL PROVEN OTHERWISE Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 30, 2003.

The State Dept. is trying to get a P.A. state established. The P.A. has drafted a constitution, however, that submits to Islamic law that renders non-Muslims second-class citizens subject to a special tax, and that calls for stoning adulterers and amputating limbs of thieves (except for Arafat and cronies, of course). The State Dept. neither objects nor comments (Prof. Howard L. Adelson, Jewish Press, 9/19, p.54). The Road Map has failed, but Pres. Bush, running for re-election, won't admit it. Unable to uphold the fiction of Arafat as a moderate, and then of Abu Mazen as a moderate, now the US is pretending that Qurei is a moderate. Having claimed that the "moderate" Mazen couldn't combat terrorism unless Israel made concessions that foster terrorism, the US now claims that the "moderate" Qurei can't combat terrorism unless Israel makes concessions that foster it. After the ceasefire turned out to be phony and a ruse for rearming the P.A. terrorists under Mazen, Qurei now demands that Israel submit to such a ceasefire or he won't take the job of Prime Minister. Pres. Bush goes along with that, to give the appearance of making progress. Bush is a captive of the Road Map. Israeli leaders think that they must go along with what the US wants. They anticipate praise for doing so. PM Netanyahu expected it when he gave away most of Hebron, but found himself facing new US demands, once Hebron was mostly off the table. He was paid the wages of appeasement. The basic problem is that Muslim Arabs consider themselves never to have lost a war. They never surrender. They just make an armistice, letting their enemies call them treaties, until the balance of power shifts from the enemy to them. Thus peace cannot be made with the Arabs (Emanuel Winston, Jewish Press, 9/19, M1). Victory over the Arabs must be decisive and rougher than what modern people deem palatable.

SAVE NO'AM FEDERMAN's LIFE! Posted by Eallan Hirshfeld, September 30, 2003.

[Noam Federman is a right-wing activist and former Kach spokesman, who has been acquited 35 times in the 14 years the police have accused him of various alleged underground 'actions' against Arabs. He was again jailed in May 2002, accused of being the 'mastermind' behind a new 'Jewish terrorist underground, which was accused of planting an explosive near an Arab school in eastern Jerusalem.' However, the indictment against him only accused him of supplying weapons to one of the other suspects. A court ruling remanded Federman to jail without bail. He appealed and in June 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that there was little proof of his participation in the 'terrorist activities' and he could not be considered dangerous to the public. He was then put under house arrest until recently. Now, he has again been arrested and placed under a 3-month administrative detention. Yesterday, Federman called on the state to charge him with a crime if there is evidence against him or to release him. A few days ago, his wife, Elisheva, told Arutz-7's Yosef Zalmanson, "They all know that he is not guilty of anything, and the proof is that they've had plenty of opportunities to convict him and haven't been able to do so. They know that if they brought him to trial, nothing would stick. He just finished 18 months of house arrest; do they really think he was carrying out terror from his home?" ] Action must be taken before a wonderful Jew is murdered before our very eyes. Yes murdered by our own right wing/Shabak Government. They couldn't pin any thing on him so they placed him under house arrest for a year (try it for a week!). When that did not work, erev Rosh Hashana they arrested him and our Defence Minister (nothing else to do) signed a 6 month administrative detention order! Now where have they placed Noam Federman? In the Ashmort lock up (Beit Lid junction). This place is reserved for security prisoners, i.e., the most dangerous Arab murderers. There are no prayer facilities etc etc. Before they get some one to do him any harm please contact any one you know to have him transfered to a prison with a Torani section. This is a matter of Pikuach Nefesh, HELP! What is all the fuss about? He wrote a booklet called "Know your Rights." Worthwhile reading if you live in Israel.

A TALE OF TWO LEADERS Posted by Yashiko Sagamori, September 29, 2003.

Even the very worst of our enemies possess some redeeming qualities. Hitler, for instance, made the trains run on time. In a more recent example, the two sons of Saddam Hussein who should've been captured, given a fair trial and hanged for their crimes or, possibly, spared in exchange for some important information, chose to take their destiny into their own hands and died fighting a battle they knew they could not win. I can offer you at least two reasons why good qualities of our adversaries should be acknowledged. First, we are supposed to be the good guys, and good guys are supposed to be fair. Second, good qualities make our enemy stronger, so we should be aware of them to better defend ourselves. That's why, when I heard President Bush call Chairman Arafat a "failed leader," I began comparing the two leaders and their accomplishments. Yasir Arafat became a leader of a terrorist organization at the time George W. Bush was still a teenager. In 1967, after Egypt, Syria and Jordan suffered their devastating defeat in the Six Day War, they decided to delegate the task of destroying Israel to Arafat. With their support, Arafat expanded his organization by co-opting the entire Arab population of Gaza, Judea and Samaria into the PLO, instantly turning it into the biggest terrorist organization that had ever existed. Since then, he has been carefully and ruthlessly weeding out every hint of opposition, which eventually resulted in practically unanimous support for him among his subjects. He has ruled for murder and by murder, but the political consequences of his murders were calculated with subtlety so meticulous that even the bloody trail the man left wherever he went could not impede his most important achievement. His most important achievement to date is the successful promotion of his terrorist organization as a nation that has been deprived of its ancestral land by brutal Zionist invaders. He patiently and skillfully maneuvered international public opinion into accepting him as a legitimate leader of that mythical nation. He even led Israel, his main enemy and intended victim, into agreeing, in principle, to grant him statehood on parts of Israel's land. The astonishing scale of his success allowed the New York Times to describe the Israeli security fence in an article published on September 17, as a "barrier dividing what [Israel] considers its land from Palestinian territory." That example demonstrates how easy it is for Arafat's followers, including the aforementioned newspaper, to cross the line dividing the truth from what our enemies would like us to believe. What makes this accomplishment an even greater feat is the fact that most people he had to deal with - US Presidents and Secretaries of State, Israeli PM's and Foreign Ministers, European leaders, all kinds of misguided human rights defenders, the assorted UN mob, and so on - were born and educated long before the myth of the "Palestinian people" was invented. They all knew the truth, but it didn't stop them from following Arafat's lead. What is especially remarkable about his leadership style is that he has never lied about his genocidal intentions. The PA Charter spells out its purpose - the destruction of Israel - in most explicit terms. During the Oslo years, Arafat was subjected to tremendous pressure by President Clinton to amend the Charter. He never did. He never caved in. In fact, he has never caved in during his entire career. When Clinton, in pursuit of his ignoble Nobel Prize dream, pushed him into a corner, Arafat issued a written promise to amend the offending clause. But the PA legislature, which is the sole power that can amend the Charter, has never convened to consider the measure. Arafat has been routinely issuing statements in Arabic that contradicted promises he had made earlier in English. Many times he was caught; many times he was pressured to repeat in Arabic what he had said in English. He always managed to convey his true meaning to his mob, as if the victory sign that he so readily flashes to crowds and cameras were an Arabic equivalent of crossed fingers. Never has Arafat or his PA done anything that might have been interpreted as a sign that he was negotiating in good faith, that peaceful coexistence with Israel might be acceptable to him under any conditions whatsoever. What passed for negotiations with him was nothing but explicit blackmail: give us whatever we happen to be demanding at the moment or we will continue killing you. And the killings always continued, whether his demands were met or not. Come to think of it, how could it be otherwise? What could the "Palestinians" possibly offer? What do they have that might be of any value to Israel - or anyone else? Israel has a single demand: stop the war. None of Israel's many conciliatory gestures have ever been reciprocated. None whatsoever. And despite that, the international community has continued providing Arafat and his terrorist organization with political and financial support. In addition to being one of the worst mass murderers in modern history, Arafat proved himself an extremely successful thief as well. It is a well known although little advertised fact that he has embezzled several billion dollars from the moneys sent from all over the world to support his destitute subjects. And here is another sign of his great leadership: not a single European government, not even the government of the United States has ever considered stopping their financial support of Arafat's terrorist organization. They all keep sending him money, knowing that whatever he does not steal, will be used to finance terrorism against Israel. In 2000, he once again proved his outstanding leadership at Camp David where he did not allow himself to be lured into statehood at the price of abandoning his genocidal war against Israel. He literally, physically ran away from Barak's unbelievable offer whose generosity surprised even Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. Madam Secretary used the occasion to demonstrate that her last name had not been awarded to her on merit: she ran after Arafat, yelling to the guards to close the doors before he had a chance to escape. Fortunately, Arafat ran faster and the incident did not deteriorate into a brawl. Arafat went home to Ramallah and started an intifada that is still going on today. Once again, he easily manipulated public opinion around the world into believing that the blame for it lay with Ariel Sharon because of his visit to the Temple Mount. It didn't matter that Sharon was exercising the most basic right of any citizen of any sovereign country to move freely within its borders. It didn't matter that Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, including every little detail of the timing and entourage, had been coordinated with the Waqf. It didn't matter that even if Sharon's visit to Temple Mount had constituted a provocation, Arabs had a choice to react on it or ignore it, and even if they decided to react, they still had an option - purely theoretical of course, since we are talking about Arabs here - of doing it in a nonviolent manner. On November 6, 2000, the New York Post quoted Mahmoud Abbas saying that the intifada was not a spontaneous popular response to Sharon's "provocation," but had been planned by the PA for months in advance. In other words, it was in the works while Arafat was enjoying himself at Camp David with Clinton and Barak. The life of Arabs in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria hasn't been pleasant even during the best of times. The intifada resulted in a virtual collapse of whatever used to pass for society among them. Despite all their suffering, the people calling themselves "Palestinians" have remained fiercely loyal to Arafat. According to every opinion poll ever conducted among them, they wholeheartedly support Arafat and his cause - the destruction of Israel. They gladly sacrifice their own children's lives to that cause. They happily send their children to school and summer camps where they are turned into suicidal maniacs. Isn't it a sure sign of truly great - albeit evil - leadership skills to have not just your own people but the entire world follow you, regardless of the truth, contrary to common sense and against their own interests? Mr. Bush's own Administration has proved that it was out of its league competing with Mr. Arafat's leadership skills. When, frustrated by his blatant refusal to support the American efforts to end the war, the United States forced elections in the PA, Arafat ran practically unopposed and won effortlessly. When later the United States refused to talk to him, he named his puppet Mahmoud Abbas Prime Minister and watched his enemies making fools of themselves talking to the puppet as if it had any real power. Finally, when Arafat replaced the old puppet with a new one, Mr. Bush called him "a failed leader" and immediately suggested that he would be willing to deal with Arafat's new "government" if only it included Muhammad Dahlan and Nabil Amr. In other words, President Bush condemned Chairman Arafat's leadership style precisely because the latter refused to do the former's bidding. Am I missing something here? I don't think so, but I am afraid President Bush is. So, here we have two leaders. One of them heads a terrorist organization. He has been openly and consistently pursuing the same vision - the destruction of Israel - throughout his remarkably long, remarkably difficult and remarkably bloody career. He has been patiently, lovingly preparing a new Holocaust, and the majority of people in supposedly civilized countries, have supported him throughout his struggle. Although he has used doublespeak generously whenever the situation called for it, he never veered away from his goal and never misstated it. Usually, his lies are so artless, so obvious, that they could only succeed with those who badly want to believe him against all evidence. That's because they are designed not to trick his supporters but to give them an excuse, no matter how transparent, to continue their support. The utter contempt implicit in such an approach has never deterred his followers in Europe, America, and even Israel. The other one is the president of the only remaining superpower on the planet. His predecessors were often called leaders of the Free World, but this time that unofficial title somehow has failed to stick. He is the Commander-in-Chief of a military force whose budget exceeds the combined military budgets of all the other nations of the world. During his watch, his country suffered the most devastating attack it has ever seen in its entire history. Instead of using the awesome power at his disposal to protect his country and restore peace in the world, he didn't even dare to honestly identify the enemy. Instead, he clumsily attempted to recruit new allies among his sworn enemies - and failed, predictably. As a result, we are now in the middle of a war that's not going too well - not because the US Armed Forces are not succeeding in achieving the goals set before them, but because their Commander-in-Chief has failed to set meaningful goals. He antagonized most countries that had traditionally supported the United States. Desperate to please his opponents, he betrayed Israel - the only sincere ally the United States has left in the whole world - and did it with crudeness that mercilessly exposed his gaping lack of professionalism and direction. Although American taxpayers provide 25% of the United Nations budget, he has lost the last vestiges of leadership the United States had had in that utterly failed, corrupt organization, united mostly by it's members' opposition to the U.S. and hatred towards Israel. His pursuit of globalization has resulted in the heaviest job losses this country has seen in recent decades. He is presiding over the worst economic decline since the Great Depression. His only real achievement - the tax cut - is far too insignificant in scale to turn the economy around and help the hurting families. Presented with a precious opportunity to work with a Republican majority in both Houses, he has been helplessly pushing ideas lifted from the Democrats' agenda, paving the way for the Democratic party to snatch the power out of his weak hands and lead this country in the direction Hillary Clinton had set for the previous tenant of the White House. And do you know what is the worst aspect of President Bush's failures for the American voters? That come November 2004, there will be no one better to vote for. So, which of the two leaders has really failed?

HOW THE INTIFADA STARTED Posted by Leo Rennert, September 30, 2003.

On the third anniversary of the Palestinian intifada - with no let-up in sight - readers deserve more than the revival of a discredited myth about its inception, i.e., that Ariel Sharon's walk on Jerusalem's Temple Mount triggered the uprising after a "breakdown" of negotiations at Camp David ("Palestinians Demonstrate For Arafat," Sept. 29). Several aides to Arafat, the real instigator of the intifada, confirmed over the last three years that Sharon's presence on the Temple Mount was a pretext, but not the cause, for resumption of Palestinian violence against Israel. Arafat spent millions to import weapons. Former President Clinton and his chief U.S. mediator, Dennis Ross, hold Arafat responsible for rejecting a statehood plan that would have given Palestinians what they often say they want - the Gaza Strip, virtually the entire West Bank and half of Jerusalem. A growing number of Palestinian critics, largely ignored by the Western press, have come to the same conclusion about Arafat's massive miscalculation. There's overwhelming evidence that Arafat nixed the deal and gave terror groups inside and outside his security forces a green light to kill Israelis because he would not abandon his jihadist dream to recover Israel as well.

WHERE ARE THE MEN? Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, September 29, 2003.

A lot of us try to tie-up loose ends on the personal front before Yom Kippur. We attempt to cover old debts, purchase overdue wedding gifts and mend friendships. Usually there's a sense of relief when we finally take care of that unfinished business. However, trying to go into a New Year carrying this overwhelming load of national baggage is impossible. So I have an idea... When the 5764 express to Oslo pulls into the station, I suggest that we all load our collective Jewish luggage onto the train, but refuse to board. You may have to kiss that baggage goodbye, because I'm going to do all I can to bomb the tracks. Israeli pilots, move over! Even though I have vertigo and doubt if I could fit my rather wide girth into a cockpit, I'm ready to fly. How many g's can this mother take? Well, I figure that the blood pressure changes and decrease in the flow of oxygen to my brain that I undergo every time I have to absorb the news of yet another terrorist atrocity is the equivalent to the rapid nose dive of any modern fighter jet. You letter-signers from the IAF are a disgrace to an already embarrassed nation. We have far more respect for the guys on the frontlines - you know those security guards who protect the entrances to our offices, stores, hotels and places of entertainment. They're far more sensitive and benevolent than any of you elite "humanitarian" psuedo-heroes. I was hanging out with one of them the other day in Jerusalem and watched as he lovingly pet and fed a stray cat. Like a little kid, he proceeded to describe to me, in great detail, the various stray animals of the neighborhood and how he takes care of them. I could have sworn that I was holding a conversation with Forest Gump and yet, I felt so safe. I doubt this security guard had the technical brains to maneuver an F-16, but he was doing a good job of protecting the inhabitants of the building, as well of the rest of the living creatures in the area. Move over fighter pilots, Israel has new heroes! You guys get to push the buttons in your hi-tech flying toys, but that unsophisticated guard may get an up-close and personal look at the whites of a terrorst's eyes before he gets a chance to pull a trigger. But I have no doubt that he would fight tooth and nail (literally) to stop an attack. This puts a whole new spin in the concept of "separating the men from the boys." It seems that in another curious twist of fate, our naive children, young men and quite a few women have inherited the chutzpah that you elitists have misplaced (maybe you left it in the hotel room when you took your last European vacation?). Where are the men? Are Jewish men so removed from their basic survival instincts that they refuse to take-up arms when their women and children are being slaughtered like sheep? Where is the rage? At the onset of Oslo, the Israeli Right had a well-organized, highly effective protest movement in place. The people had a voice and the Knesset members heard us-whether they wanted to or not. Yes, three years into the clamorous demonstrations, there was a devastating political assassination -under highly controversial circumstances. But, have we relinquished our G-d given (some would say democratic) right to express ourselves because of the miserable failings, and scheming of Israel's internal security and political apparatus? It's the ultimate in tragic irony that we're afraid to return to the streets in protest because somebody might get hurt? If only our leaders cared for us, like we care for our leaders. Where are our leaders? What really happens to our former heroes once they sit in the Prime Minister's chair? Years ago, when this mess began, my husband used to infuriate me when he would would interrupt my urbane, westernized political rantings with his very crude Israeli explanations. "A small U.S. envoy sits under the Prime Minister's desk with a nutcracker..." You know, I think he's right. Sharon is more concerned with commitments to President Bush than he is about his obligation to protect and lead his own people. He's willing to watch his citizens go up in flames, rather than risk inflaming the region and jeopardizing America's vital interests. According to the Jerusalem Post, in a pre-Rosh Hashana Yediot Ahronot interview, Sharon admits to having once promised George W. Bush that he would not harm Arafat. Sharon also said that it is "very difficult to guarantee that if you grab and take him, he will not be harmed. In any event we will have to take American considerations into account. It is possible that their estimation that this will cause them problems in the Middle East is correct..." That quote may contain the answer to a disturbing question that still stumps the scholars. Nothing angers me more than the ongoing prattle that takes place in academic circles as to why the allied forces didn't bomb the tracks to Auschwitz. When all of this is over (it will eventually end and there will be better days for our people in the Land of Israel) and while we're still calculating the final body count and assessing the damages, a lot of murmuring male voices will make themselves heard via electronic and print media. Everyone from Jewish day school rebbes to Swedish diplomats will ponder the big question. I can just see holocaust survivor turned politician, Tommy Lapid rehashing with talk-show icon and son, Yair Lapid, as to "why we didn't bomb the tracks to Oslo." Meanwhile... every Diaspora Jewish leader of all of the has-been American/Israel advocacy group, that once successfully championed the slogans "we are one" and "never again," will be encouraging "soul searching." What these community leaders fail to understand is that Jewish America buries more Jewish souls in a day then Israelis bury bodies in a year. Some of us won't be tuning-in to the blabber, as we'll be too busy picking up the pieces and recreating and rebuilding a vibrant Jewish State. That's a lot to bite off and chew before the Yom Kippur fast. But when Jewish blood is at stake, some of us loathe the very thought of being stoic and accepting. Ellen Horowitz lives on the Golan Heights with her husband and six children. She is a painter, writer and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com

DEREK PRINCE: LOVER OF GOD, LOVER OF ZION Posted by Dutch W. Griffin, September 29, 2003.

This was written by the Jerusalem News Wire (JNW) editorial staff, and appeared in JNW September 28, 2003. About six weeks before he died Wednesday, globally renowned and beloved Bible teacher and Christian author Derek Prince told a visiting US Senator international developments today indicated that God was busy restoring Israel and judging the nations of the world. This affirmation of Prince's belief in the centrality of Israel to events shaping our lives was shared with hundreds of believers and fellow lovers of Zion who gathered in a Jerusalem church Friday for a glorious funeral service to send the 88-year-old Briton "home." After the service, the worshippers followed the coffin through the busy pre-Rosh Hashana city streets to a quiet Christian cemetery in the heart of western Jerusalem, laying Prince's body to rest just meters from where the most recent 'suicide' bomb attack took the lives of seven Israeli Jews. Prince saw in Islam's virulent hatred of Israel a major force being used to push Jews and Christians closer together after centuries of animosity, suspicion and fear. Revelation in Jerusalem "The pastor, teacher and author, who considered Jerusalem his hometown, was discharged from the British Army and re-entered civilian life in the ancient city at the end of World War Two, four years before Israel's national homeland was reborn. One night in 1946, while standing near the Mount of Olives, he had been awakened to the integrality of the land and people of Israel to the Bible, and consequently to himself as a Bible-believing Christian. As he described it, he realized that "geographically, the Bible is set in the land of Israel; historically, its theme is the people of Israel." Detached from this geographical context, countless historical and prophetic passages of passages of Scripture were "meaningless." The destiny of Israel and the Church   Among the more than 45 books authored by Prince on a wide variety of subjects of interest to Christians were "The Last Word on the Middle East" (Derek Prince Ministries, USA, 1982), and "The Destiny of Israel and the Church" (Word Publishing, Milton Keynes, 1992). In the latter he writes: "Christians from Gentile backgrounds owe their entire spiritual inheritance to Israel. One appropriate way for them to acknowledge their indebtedness is to stand by Israel in the midst of their present pressures, and to uphold them with faithful intercession." Prince saw that the anti-God forces in the world, including Islam, were being used to push Christians and Jews closer together after centuries of animosity and persecution. While many Israelis and Jews in the United States have commented recently on the strength of support for Israel that exists today in the evangelical Christian world, especially since the outbreak of the Oslo War (Al-Aqsa intifada) Prince already noted back in 1982 that: "The State of Israel ... is beginning to realize that its firmest and most influential friends today are found among Bible-believing Christians worldwide." Israel the watershed   Prince believed that the restored nation of Israel was a watershed, a line of separation between nations, and that God would judge nations on whether they stood with His restoration purposes for Israel, or opposed them. "Rulers and nations will determine their own destiny by how they respond to what God does for Israel," he wrote. "God has revealed clearly in His Word that He intends to restore Israel, and that He requires all other nations to cooperate with His purpose. Any nation that rejects the revelation of God's Word has, in effect, rejected God Himself, and must suffer the consequences." God is judging the nations   According to a close friend of Prince's who spoke during the funeral service Friday, US Senator Sam Brownback had visited the then ill-weakened man in his Jerusalem home about six weeks ago, and asked him how he understood what was happening in the world today. Struggling to get the words out, Prince had finally managed to answer: "God is restoring Israel. And God is judging the nations." Jerusalem Newswire is an independent Jerusalem-based, Christian-operated news service providing daily coverage and commentary on events in and relating to Israel. For more news, commentary and analyis, visit Jerusalem Newswire (http://www.jnewswire.com).

ARABS ARE STILL STEALING ISRAELI BEEHIVES Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 29, 2003.

Israel's 450 beekeepers manage 80,000 hives. Since the hives are widely dispersed, the keepers cannot watch all. Arabs are stealing hives in large numbers. So great is this theft, that many keepers either no longer can get insurance or find the premium beyond their means. The most afflicted areas are nearest the Green line. It takes only a few minutes (absent those supposedly evil checkpoints) to drive the swag over the Green Line and into the P.A. (which generally lets in enormous amounts of stolen property, theft being a major Arab industry). The beekeepers have had to move the remaining hives away from the Green Line. In fact, the whole dairy and crop industry that used to exist there have been so ravaged by constant Arab rustling and other thefts, that it has withered. The thieves have trained beekeepers to handle stolen hives. Sometimes, however, their objective solely is economic warfare. Hence the many hives found chopped up, rather than missing. Years of productive effort and investment are destroyed in an instant. (Israel tries to build up the P.A. economically, while the P.A. tries to break Israel down, economically. Israel's policy-making is misguided. It vindicates the Talmudic warning, "If you are merciful to your (irreconcilable) enemies, you'll be cruel to your friends.") Israeli police found 350 stolen hives inside a truck. At $500 apiece, the Arabs had expected to make $175,000, for just a few hours of theft. Another time, a moshav security guard came upon a group of Arabs stealing beehives. They all fled except the driver, caught licking honey in the truck. He was ready to turn states' evidence against his collaborators, but the prosecutors closed the case, alleging "lack of public interest." When beekeepers produced proof about widespread theft in one area, the police told them they had to switch the border guards to where Arabs were killing each other. Beekeepers have been forced to patrol their own property, while the police "are busy protecting the Juarish Arabs..." Judges usually sentence convicts to only three months. The Beekeeper's Council would like that multiplied (MEPF, 9/18 from Miriam Gardner, American Yated Neeman). As the US demands, Israel transfers funds to the P.A., while the P.A. wages economic warfare against Israel. That is an example of inhumane US policy and neurotic stupidity on the part of Israel. Imagine the crime wave if there were two states "side-by-side!" At least P.A. villages do not now extend up to every part of the Green Line, and Israeli police can raid the P.A. to recover some hives. Between what Arafat's Arabs steal from Israelis, and what Arafat steals from his people and foreign donors, thievery is the P.A.'s major industry. The wholesale P.A. theft of livestock, equipment, cars, and computers, that is driving Israeli agriculture out of border areas, makes "P.A." unofficially stand for Pirates Autonomy. One answer is to deduct the costs of Arab crime from excise taxes remitted to the P.A.. Better would be to eliminate their autonomy, remove them from the area, reclaim the Jewish patrimony there, and regain secure borders. The leftist Israeli prosecutors bear indirect guilt. Not only do they impose low fines on Arab criminals engaging in economic warfare against Israel. They often refuse to prosecute the thieves. Their allegation of "lack of public interest" is a poor excuse. It encourages Arab criminals. That same allegation is the phony excuse for not prosecuting the Rabin government's agent provocateur, Avishai Raviv, whose crimes against democracy were among the most subversive.

THE MARTYR OF JOSEPH Posted by Steven Plaut, September 29, 2003.

[This article is reposted exactly three years after the events in question took place.] On Rosh Hashana, 2000, Madhat Yusef became a martyr to the Oslo "peace process" and the policies of the Israeli government of Ehud Barak. Madhat was a nineteen year old Druse soldier serving in Israel's border patrol. He was murdered by PLO bullets, but allowed to bleed to death by the government of Israel. Like many in his Druse town of Beit J'an, Madhat served in the same border patrol in which his father had previously served his country for 25 years. And like American Jews who work on Christmas Day to allow their countrymen to celebrate their holidays, Madhat was doing guard duty at Joseph's Shrine in Nablus/Shechem on the Jewish New Year when he was murdered by PLO stormtroopers sent out by Yassir Arafat. Joseph's Tomb is a shrine in the center of Nablus. The town lies between the Mountain of Blessings from the Bible, Mount Grizim, and the Mountain of Curses, Mount Aival. In the Bible the Israelites are evenly divided between the two mountains by Moses so that future Jew will feel that he is in the center between the two, that the fate of the entire nation is in the balance and depends on his own individual behavior and actions. In the middle, between the two mountains, is the shrine where the bones of Joseph lie, carried to the Promised Land by the Israelites according to Joseph's last will and testament, all as documented in the Bible itself. In this glen, Ehud Barak tipped the balance on Rosh Hashana 2000, toward cowardice and national suicide. According to the Oslo Accords (the formal written ones, not the de facto ones where Israel makes endless appeasements for peace and the PLO wages war) it is agreed that Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, like Rachael's Tomb near Bethlehem, should remain in Israeli control and under Israeli sovereignty. The PLO pledges freedom of access and respect for Jewish religious shrines. In reality, Joseph's Tomb has become a sort of Jewish Alamo. It is the scene of daily violence by the PLO. Jews take their lives in the hands to go there. A handful of courageous yeshiva students stay there, guarded by some soldiers and border patrolmen. The students have refused to listen to Israel's Lobotomized Left, urging that they abandon Joseph's Tomb in order to avoid "provoking" the poor Palestinians with their presence. The students live under permanent siege, and PLO "police" routinely attack people trying to enter or leave the shrine. Things are not much better at Rachael's shrine. It is all an indicator of what Jews can expect to happen at the Western Wall if Israel's Left ever has its way and the Old City of Jerusalem is handed over to the PLO. For years the PLO has sought to ruin Jewish holidays with violence. Two years ago Arafat decided to send the Jews a Succos holiday greeting in the form of a pogrom, launched after Israel had decided to allow Jews to visit an old Maccabee Tunnel near but not under the Temple Mount. Arafat fabricated a story of how the Jews were endangering the Al-Aqsa Mosque and polluting it with their proximity, and ordered his stormtroopers to open fire. Purim has for years been the open season for Arab atrocities, including bombings. And this year (2000) Arafat decided to order pogroms on Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. It was all a part of the "Al-Aqsa intifada" as it was officially named by Arafat. For years we have been saying in this corner that the entire Oslo "peace process" will produce, instead of peace, nothing but the metastasis of violence from the "territories" into pre-1967 Israel, where Israeli Arabs will be radicalized, nazified, and will turn to terrorism. The Rosh Hashana pogrom proved how correct this prognosis is. The official excuse for the pogrom was that Likud leader Arik Sharon had gone for a walk on the Temple Mount, where the two Temples of the Biblical era once stood. Jews are only allowed to visit the Mount as tourists. They are not allowed to pray there and even silent lip-movement by a Jew can get him arrested. There was not a serious danger that Sharon was about to pray there, as it is doubtful he knows how. The control over the Temple Mount had been turned over to the PLO at the start of Oslo. Before that it had been administered by Jordan ever since Moshe Dayan abandoned any attempt to exercise Israeli sovereignty over the most sacred ground in the world for Judaism. The pathetic government of Yitzhak Shamir had ordered that all Israeli flags be removed from the vicinity of the Mount to avoid offending Moslem hypersensitivities. The Mount is de facto under PLO sovereignty and flies the PLO flag. At Camp David, Barak had offered formally to recognize PLO sovereignty over the Temple Mount, along with turning over nearly the entire West Bank to the PLO Reichlet. But Barak had balked at granting an unlimited "right of return" into Israel for Palestinian "refugees," which the PLO was demanding. As a result, Arafat was looking for an excuse to launch pogroms. He has been taught in Pavlovian manner over the past decade that the best way to get concessions from Israel is through violence. On Friday, Erev Rosh Hashana, the PLO-paid and PLO-appointed preachers of the Al-Aqsa Mosque ordered Arabs to attack Jews randomly, to "protect" the Mosque that no one was threatening. Some violence had begun when Arabs attacked Jews on the Thursday before Rosh Hashana weekend and sent 25 Israeli policemen to the hospital. Then on Erev Rosh Hashana, the pogrom was officially launched at Arafat's command and quickly spread into Israeli Arab towns, lasting throughout the holiday weekend. Throughout the Galilee and also south of Haifa, Israeli Arabs blocked roads, attacked Jewish picnickers and motorists, assaulted police. In Nazareth, the town of the Christian Prince of Peace, Arabs screamed "Kill the Jews" and attacked any Jew they could find. Violence broke out in the Negev Bedouin town of Rahat, a hotbed of anti-Semitism. There were violent riots in Jaffa, in effect the downtown of Tel Aviv. Jews in more remote settlements or rural positions were told to stay home and not venture out onto the roads. It was as if 1947 had returned, where the entire Jewish population was under siege. Molotov cocktails were tossed at Rachael's Tomb. The Jews praying at the Western Wall were twice evacuated due to assaults by the pogromchiks. At the Neve Dekelim settlement, those praying in the synagogue had to grab weapons and sit at the windows when the synagogue was attacked. Seventy policemen in Jerusalem were sent to the hospital. Near Kalkiliya an interesting event occurred. There, "joint patrols" between the PLO and Israel are supposed to be carried out under an Oslo agreement. On the eve of Rosh Hashana, a jeep full of PLO "police" was patrolling alongside a jeep of Israeli border patrolmen. Suddenly the PLO Gestapo fired point blank into the Israeli jeep and murdered Yossi Tabje in cold blood. Tabje was a 27 year old Jew from Ethiopia. His mother had died in Ethiopia when he was three years old, after which he came to Israel with his brothers under Operation Moses. He had served in the army as a paratrooper and had been awarded the Presidential medal for heroism. He was due to be married shortly. He was a brother in blood of the Druse border patrolman Madhat Yusef, on duty in Joseph's Tomb. (It will be interesting to see if the assimilationist-liberal organizations in the US, like the Reform RAC or like the ADL, will have anything to say about this hate crime and racist murder of a black man by the PLO.) But perhaps the worst violence was at Netsarim, a small isolated settlement south of Gaza City. Under the Oslo Accords, the PLO agreed to respect Netsarim and protect it from violence. In reality Netsarim has become the Stalingrad of Oslo. It is the subject of yet another "controlled carnage" agreement, of the sort Israeli politicians so love. (Similar agreements long operated in Lebanon.) Under this "agreement" the PLO organizes daily violence and siege of the Jewish men, women and children in Netsarim, and just as long as things do not get "too far out of hand," Israel sits back and allows the violence to occur. The problem is that every so often the PLO-led violence at Netsarim DOES get "out of hand." An Israeli soldier was murdered outside the settlement last week (2000). Over the holiday weekend, the PLO ordered that Netsarim be stormed. PLO "police" were openly leading the pogrom and firing at the Israeli troops with the machine guns they received from Israel. The Jews returned fire for a change. In the crossfire, some of the pogromchiks were pacified to death. Now as it turned out, a French film crew was on the spot and captured footage of a 12 year old Palestinian boy being shot to death outside Netsarim, while his father was wounded. The world media had a new poster child and the PLO had a new martyr myth. What exactly happened there? Muhammed Adira and his father were minding their own business while standing in the midst of a mob of pogromchiks attacking Israelis with machine guns and Molotov cocktails. The father of the 12 year old boy insists they were merely out shopping for a (stolen?) car, and surely everyone knows that Arabs routinely go shopping for cars next to Netsarim in the midst of pogroms. Anyway, the Israeli Commander of the Gaza Battalion insists the boy was hit by bullets fired by the PLO's stormtroopers (later confirmed by a German camera crew and others). No doubt CNN and Haaretz will neglect to mention this irrelevant detail. In any case, the boy may have died because the ambulance trying to evacuate him was fired upon and its driver killed. The PLO has a long track record of firing at ambulances. No one seriously thinks Israeli troops have ever shot at an ambulance. Meanwhile the Lobotomized Left was showing how it could stick to its blinders even in the midst of anti-Jewish pogroms. The police, led by leftist officers and commanded by Professor of McCarthyism Shlomo Ben-Ami (himself later crucified by the Orr Commission - SP), said the pogroms were all the fault of Arik Sharon. As usual the Jewish victims of Arab violence are to blame. Most of the rest of the Left chimed in amen. The US State Department agrees that Sharon is completely to blame. Haaretz ran editorials and Op-Eds blaming the whole pogrom on Arik Sharon's stroll. I have little doubt that if it were printing in the 1940s, Haaretz would run daily banner pieces about the sufferings of SS officers killed by savage partisans and the tribulations of their poor children. Peace Now ran an obscene ad saying that not only was Sharon responsible for the pogroms over Rosh Hashana, but also of course for the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon (in which Arabs killed Arabs). The Haaretz "reporter" Amira Hess, self-styled "expert" on Arabs although she speaks no Arabic, who recently called in the San Francisco area for the eradication of Israel, wrote a "news report" claiming that Arafat had not ordered the pogrom and it was all because "things got out of his control." Barak's government adopted the same line. Such things always remind me of those people who insist Hitler never ordered any atrocities against Jews, wished them no harm and it was all the work of his underlings who were out of his control. But let us return to Madhat Yusef defending Joseph's Tomb from the Philistines. Whose name in Arabic means Joseph. Under siege in the Israeli Alamo in Nablus. The PLO stormtroopers at the direct orders of Arafat firing into the shrine. Yusef is badly wounded by a PLO bullet. The medics do what they can for him. They radio out for help. There is a large Israeli military base atop the Mount of Blessings nearby, on Mount Grizim. But Ehud Barak has issued orders. Israeli troops are to do nothing to "provoke" the Palestinian savages. They are to cower and hide, much like they are ordered to do at the Lebanese border. They are to do everything to avoid situations wherein they might be required to use their weapons. They are to wait for our PLO "peace partners" to restore order. Yusef's comrades desperately dial out for help. The base nearby has tanks and APCs that could be used, if necessary, to disburse the pogromchiks and open the road to the Alamo, allowing Yusef to be evacuated and rescued. But the army has its orders from Barak, the head of the post-Jewish and post-survivalist "peace government." It sits back. It does nothing. The same Israeli military that rescued the 250 hostages being held in Entebbe suddenly cannot rescue a single Druse soldier bleeding to death in Nablus. Mathat Yusef is lying on the floor. He lies there for hours while the Israeli army sits back waiting for the same PLO "police," who are firing into the shrine, to restore order. Like Will Travis, Jim Bowie and Davy Crockett, in his Alamo Yusef simply bled to death. Remember his Alamo!

THE ISRAELI LEFT: LOVE THINE ENEMY, HATE THY BROTHER Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, September 29, 2003.

There they go again. The air has just cleared, people have just calmed down after the last wave of terrorist bombings, and Israel's lemmings are driving toward the precipice again. After recently going to meet Yasser Arafat at his Ramallah compound to show solidarity with him and act as "human shields" to protect him from any Israeli action; the Israeli far-Left has begun what they call the opening of a "street campaign" in the coming months. A group called Peace Now (why not peace last Thursday?) and a few thousand protestors gathered on a Saturday night at "ground-zero - " Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv - to call for Israel to uproot the Jewish settlements in Yesha, Judea and Samaria (the "West Bank") and Gaza and an end to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. The Peace Now demonstrators also denounced the Sharon government's policy of "Targeted Killings," assassinating leaders from Hamas and the other terrorist groups, saying the policy creates an endless cycle of violence. All blood is red, and I guess Israel's lemmings can't tell the difference between the blood of innocent Israelis cut-down in the "act" of living their lives, and the blood of sociopathic murderers, whom Israel targets in self-defense before they can kill innocent Israelis again Returning to the darkest day's of the Left's slander campaign - initiated by Yitzhak Rabin himself - against the pro-Land of Israel forces, former Labor Party Member of Knesset Yael Dayan revived the theme of "settlements vs. the poor." She emphasized the economic cost of the settlements, saying that the government was still pumping huge amounts of money into them, while other Israelis were going hungry. She pointed out that each year 5,000 children in the country slipped below the poverty line. What has she done to help them? Other than to try to impoverish other Israelis and their children of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza by forcing them out of their homes and into the street? Why didn't she suggest cutting government monies spent on the museums, theaters, concert halls, dance companies, sports contests, and other secular-western cultural activities that the elites of the Left, labor's worker committees, and kibbutzes benefit from in disproportionate numbers, receiving tickets at government-subsidized prices? Has she ever suggested that the Kibbutz Movement - about 110,000 people - repay the Israeli government the tens of billions of shekels the government has laid out over the years to cover the Kibbutz Movement's debts? Why did the Israeli taxpayer have to help the economically inefficient darling of the Left? Most of that debt was incurred, to keep up the Kibbutz Movement's standard of living - which is above that of the average Israeli - while failing economically. Where's the Left's outrage about that, while other Israelis were going hungry? The left-wing Haaretz newspaper just released a "special report" about the amount of money, some 45 billion shekels, Israeli governments from the Left & Right have spent on "settlements" since 1967. But whereas most of the money spent on the Kibbutzes was simply for "creature comforts," money spent on Jewish communities in Yesha was for basic infrastucture; much of it would have had to be spent anyway, developing areas for Jews to live in, even within the "Green Line" pre-1967 Israel. But don't worry, you can count on the Israeli Left to obfuscate that also and try to "prove" how expensive "settlements" have been. Has anyone seriously contemplated the costs of moving "settlers" - i.e. the almost 250,000 Jewish citizens in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza - back within the pre-1967 Auschwitz borders? Forget the housing costs, a sizable figure itself. What about the other infrastructure costs, including education, the costs of economic dislocation, and health care? Who says that it will save the government money to move Jews back into the 1967 borders? Has anyone seen a serious study with real analytic data to back up the Left's utopian claims? It's not much different than the Left's original claim that "peace" was just around the corner, if we all accept the Oslo dream. Israel just needed to revive Arafat from political death, bring him and his terror crew into the country, reward him with a base of operations, and the Messiah would be soon be coming. We've all seen how well the Left's claims worked out there. It just never quite worked out the way they imagined, and it won't this time either. The Left in Israel is hell-bent on squashing the settlement enterprise and ending Jewish control over it's historic heartland in Yesha, whether it brings "peace" or not, whether it saves the government money or drives it further into the red. So it doesn't matter if facts aren't on their side, anything to divert the attention of the masses away from their failed "peace" policies and against the Jews of Judea and Samaria passes muster with them. Their demagogic behavior reminds me of October 2002, during the height of the Left's previous hysteria campaign against settlements, when far-left Meretz MK Yossi Sarid said, "All of the settlements were created by law-breaking and violence, and I hope the spread of this cancer will end quickly. The outposts are worse than suicide bomb belts." Similar to MK Sarid's remarks, then Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg (Labor) called the people at the Gilad Farm in Samaria, "Jewish Hamas." Just because they were protesting the expulsion of people from their homes on legally owned Jewish land, that for political (that is to say, leftist) purposes, the Sharon government found convenient to expropriate, they're called "Jewish Hamas"? They are "Worse than suicide bomb belts"? MK Avraham Burg (Labor), no longer Knesset speaker, is up to it again. He recently turned to Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein with the intention of filing criminal charges against the "Forum of Rabbis for the Jewish People & the Land of Israel," numbering some 500 religious leaders. The rabbinic organization has released a statement that the Israeli government does not enjoy popular support for its policies vis-a-vis the Quartet's Road Map plan nor particularly for any steps towards the establishment of an independent Palestinian state. The Road Map negates Torah law explained the rabbis, and as such, anyone contributing to advancing the Road Map agenda is guilty of violating the Torah commandment of "You must not stand idly by your brother's blood," because of all the terrorism that has taken almost 1,200 lives during the "peace process." Rubinstein stated that the written proclamation does not constitute a violation of Israeli law. He then added that following the release of the proclamation by the rabbinic organization; he met with some of the more "influential" rabbis, warning that they must tread carefully since their words may spark civil disobedience or violence. But Burg prefers to continue to try and suffocate any opposition to the Left's "peace dreams." In a similar vein, ultra-leftist Meretz MK Zahava Gal-On just asked the Attorney General to look into a recent Jerusalem Post editorial she says had "words of incitement to murder" in it. The Jerusalem Post editorial said, "The world will not help us; we must help ourselves. We must kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing collateral damage, but not letting that damage stop us. And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative." Where is Freedom of the Speech? Where is Freedom of the Press? When was it ever "incitement to murder" to call for the death of the enemy in wartime? Only in Israel, only on the Bolshevik Left. Labor Party leader MK Shimon Peres has been celebrating his 80th birthday recently. Peres told an international peace symposium held as part of his 80th birthday celebrations, "I believe it was right to give [Yasser Arafat] the Nobel Peace Prize because he did three things that no other Palestinian leader did," Peres told a round-table discussion which featured three other Nobel laureates. "He declared publicly that he recognized the State of Israel; no other Palestinian leader dared do that so publicly. Second, he said he would abandon terrorism, and third he agreed that peace would be based on the borders of 1967 and not 1948." At the peace symposium, Peres said that Arafat made a mistake by failing to dismantle terrorist groups opposed to peace with the Jewish state. "He spoke against [them], but did not act against them," Peres said. There, you have Peres' total whitewash of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority: ignoring Arafat's involvement in illegal arms smuggling, such as the Karine A arms boat affair; Arafat's funding - as head of Fatah - Marwan Barghouti's Fatah-Tanzim and Al-Aksa Brigades terrorist activities; and Arafat's general incitement to violence, regularly calling for "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad," i.e., killing Jews. According to Peres, Yasser "spoke against [them], but did not act against them." Lies, lies, lies... During the Left's slander campaign against "settlers" last October/November, just before the Labor Party created an excuse to walk out of Sharon's National Unity Government and call for new elections - which Sharon and Likud later won - MK Yossi Sarid said the settlers had started a revolt that the government had to destroy. "If the settlers' revolt is not crushed, it will be the end of democracy," he said. Similarly, then Agricultural Minister Shalom Simchon (Labor) said that the actions of the "right wing," in reference to the protests against expelling people from Gilad Farms, "endanger the existence of the State of Israel." Really? Over 850 people killed and thousands injured from terrorist attacks in the last three-years alone, don't endanger the existence of the State of Israel? Arafat's War, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizbollah, Syria, Iran, they don't endanger the existence of the State of Israel? Only a bunch of idealistic kids on a barren hilltop somewhere in the middle of the historic Jewish homeland endangers the existence of the State of Israel? A telltale sign of how sick the Left in Israel has gotten, can be seen in this more recent example, some participants at the Saturday night rally reported that a number of people in the crowd booed when the Israeli national anthem, "Hatikvah," was played at the close of the demonstration. So much for their intellectual consistency, honesty, and concern about the Israeli Right and Jewish settlers "destroying" the State of Israel. The leftists clearly couldn't care less. This article appeared on Front Page Magazine (http://www.frontpagemagazine.com) September 26, 2003.

URGENT! SAVE ARIEL Posted by Mike Evans, September 29, 2003.

I have just returned to Jerusalem from meeting with the mayor of Ariel, Ron Nachman, a dear friend. We talked at length about the safety and security of the more than 17,000 residents of his community. The U.S. and Palestinian Authority are demanding that Israel erase Ariel from the map. The United States will deduct $250 million from U. S. loan guarantees to Israel, if construction on the security fence around Ariel does not meet U. S. criteria. I need your help to end this outrageous policy that once again rewards terrorists. Please add your signature to the Letter of Support for Ariel now! Click Here Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, has flown to the U.S. to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell on this issue. The eleven-member Israeli Security Cabinet that includes former Prime Minister and now Minister of Finance Benjamin Netanyahu, and former mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, now vice prime minister (and my dear friends) will vote shortly on this matter. This is an outrageous situation. Brothers Dbir Anter, 13, and Noy Anter, 12, were killed by al-Qaeda operatives. They lived in Ariel! Their little sister, Adva, was seriously wounded in the same attack. Ariel is in the heart of Israel, twenty-five miles east of Tel Aviv. It has four elementary schools, three middle schools, a high school, and a college with over six thousand in attendance. We must protect these innocent victims of past terror from future attacks. Please show your support of Ariel now. This is the only email you will receive on Ariel. Add your voice to our plea that President Bush stand up to the State Department and "just say no." Show your support to the Israeli Cabinet urging them not to allow the U. S. government to pressure them to abandon the precious residents in Ariel. Safety and security must come before appeasement of terrorists. Bethlehem was abandoned to Arafat and the PA. It is now a war zone. Palestinian Christians, sixty percent of the population, have been so persecuted by the Muslims that they have been driven from the city. Arafat's appetite will not be satisfied with a bite of land here and there, but only by devouring the entire Bible land. A simple fence around Ariel is not politics - it is protection and preservation. It will save hundreds of lives. All the nations fighting against Ariel will vanish like a dream! Those who are attacking her walls will vanish like a vision in the night. (Isaiah 29:7) Please forward this urgent plea to everyone you know. Let's keep it going around the world. You could help save thousands of lives. If America forces Israel to cave in at Ariel, then Jerusalem will be next. For the sake of the children, Mike Evans is the founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, which is based in Euless, Texas. Dr. Tim LaHaye, Mrs. Anne Graham Lotz, Dr. Pat Robertson, Dr. Adrian Rogers, Mr. Pat Boone, Dr. John Hagee, Dr. Jerry Falwell, Mr. Bill McCartney, Ms. Kay Arthur, Rev. Tommy Tenney, Dr. A.R. Bernard, Dr. Stephen Olford, and Dr. Jay Sekulow are just a few of the more then 300 Christian Leaders who are part of the Jerusalem Prayer Team. The website address is http://www.jerusalemprayerteam.org

EGREGIOUS ERROR IN NEW YORK TIMES' EDWARD SAID OBITUARY Posted by Leo Rennert, September 29, 2003.

It is puzzling why, in its obituary of Said, the Times starts by accepting at face value his claim that he spent his childhood in Jerusalem and that he and his family were exiled to Cairo when Israel gained independence. Only 11 paragraphs later is there a mention that his story was exposed as a fabrication. Although born in Jerusalem during a family visit, his birth certificate lists the Saids' residence as Cairo. Except for other occasional visits to Palestine, he grew up in comfortable surroundings in Egypt. Does it matter? You bet. As a scholar, Said shot to prominence with a theory that the West victimized colonial people not only militarily and politically but also culturally. To dramatize this total victimhood, he turned himself into its poster child - torn from his roots, sent into exile, haunted by memories of paradise lost. But once he faked his own biography, what is one to assume about the intellectual honesty of the rest of his work? When challenged about his family's actual roots, Said fibbed once more by falsely claiming that he never tried to make himself the issue. Three years ago, he again skirted the truth when a widely published photograph showed him hurling a stone at Israeli soldiers across the Lebanese border. Calling it a "symbolic gesture," he said he didn't even know he was being photographed. Later, Agence France Press confirmed the photo was supplied by none other than Edward Said. Such twisting of the truth usually has consequences for reputable scholars. But Columbia gave him a free pass - a generosity the university did not show when an earlier faculty member, Charles Van Doren, was exposed for starring in a rigged quiz show. Van Doren got an unforgiving boot, while Said continued to pile up academic honors.

MUTINY AND POLITICS Posted by Steven Plaut, September 29, 2003.

The latest project of Israel's Treasonous Left is organizating mutiny in the Israeli Air Force. 27 pilots have signed a petition declaring they will not follow orders if ordered to strike at Palestinian terrorists. They claim they are unwilling to operate where civilians are. They are unwilling to undertake "targeted assassinations." They prefer that Israeli children by mass murdered on buses than their having to dirty their morally pure hands. The only problem is that the terrorists are where civilians are. Mutiny such as this is subject to 15 years in prison although the government and the leftist Attorney General are unlikely to prosecute. If every Israeli soldier only followed orders when those orders happened to appeal to his political prejudices, the country would be fully disarmed, then destroyed and the Jews placed in cattle cars, evidently what the Left seeks. Lest anyone think the 27 are simply squeamish about Palestinian "civilians," they placed an ad in today's papers, no doubt financed by the New Israel Fund, which has never passed over the opportunity to finance Israeli treason. It declares that the pilots are really engaging in mutiny because they oppose the "Conquest." The "Conquest" is the code word used by the mindless Left for Israeli presence of any sense in the West Bank and Gaza and it represents a "conquest" about as much as does the French presence in Alsace or the American presence in Florida. In general, when an Israeli uses the term "conquest" one should immediately assume that the person is a moron and that absolutely nothing the person has to say about anything at all is worth listening to. But the Force Force Traitors and mutineers are instantly the icons of the Caring Left, including Haaretz, and are being hailed by the Jews-for-a-Second-Holocaust, as well as by the Islamist fundamentalists to whom they are allied, and the Eurotrash. Meantime, Israel is hard at work on yet another of those famous capitulations to the Lebanese terrorists. In this case Israel will release oodles of jailed terrorists in order to get the Hizbollah to release the bodies of three soldiers they kidnapped AFTER the Barak WIthdrawal from Lebanon and have evidently murdered, as well as one civilian. For the past 3 years Israel never retaliated againmst any Hizbollah violations or attacks, including the kidnapping in question, claiming it would put the three POWs in jeopardy. Now it appears they were murdered anyway, yet Hizbollah villages have STILL not had their parking congestion problems solved by the Israeli army. The civilian in question is one whose story is unclear. The Hizbollah claimed he was a spy, but apparently he was not, and one rumor here has it he was in Lebanon on a foreign passport for something criminal. Now the Israeli politicians are marketing the upcoming deal, which by the way is likely to IGNORE the plight of missing POW Ron Arad altogether - putting hundreds of terrorhoids back on the streets who will no doubt then take up quilting. It is marketing it by claiming that Jewish tradition demands working to get captives released by paying ransom. Of course it would be nice if Israel's politicians ever actually checked out Jewish sources and traditions before trying to conscript them for political folly. In fact, Jewish sources are quite explicit that NO ransom may be paid for release of hostages if it is excessive, lest it lead to future extortion, and in any case no ransom could be paid if it involved releasing murderers who will murder again once released.

RESERVE PILOTS REFUSE TO BOMB CIVILIANS Posted by Seymour Ginsburg, September 29, 2003.

Noted in the Sun Sentinel, and the New York Times in blazing headlines, "pilots of the Israeli Air force signed a letter refusing to fly missions which would kill Palestinian civilians or serve in the West Bank or Gaza during the 'occupation'." These 27 pilots and peace reservists should be made to pick up the body pieces of Israeli citizens murdered by such peaceful organizations such as Hamas, Hezballah, and Jihad. They should be permitted to help doctors take out the nails, spikes, razors and other sharp metals in the bodies of civilian women, children and others from bombs placed on buses, in cafes, near schools and on street corners. Thank God these peace-at-any-price people are so few in number the press they get is out of proportion to the main population. I wonder why we hear of no Palestinians refusing to fight. It must be every single one of they agrees with the Palestinian agenda. So much for freedom of the press in the West Bank and Gaza.

INEVITABLE DISOBEDIENCE Posted by Moshe Feiglin, September 29, 2003.

[This week a group of IAF pilots wrote a letter to the IAF commander declaring that they refuse to attack targets in the "territories."] Another seam in the Israeli social fabric came apart this week. The boastful slogan coined by former Air Force Commander Ezer Weizmann: "The best men become pilots - and receive the best girls," reflected the elite of Israeli society - the IAF pilots. And now they have given a slap in the face to this society by declaring: "You are not moral." What do people want from the pilots? If the State of Israel has abandoned the elimination of the leadership of the Hamas terrorist organization in order not to harm "innocent people," why shouldn't the pilots do the same? Morality isn't confined to a specific position. Why is Defense Minister Mofaz's morality better that that of the pilots? The State of Israel arose on the basis of a set of values that inevitably led a thinking person to reach the views expressed in the pilots' letter. The guilt does not lie with them but with that set of values. In fact, those who signed the letter did us a favor, by forcing us to examine for ourselves our basic moral assumptions. What gives a soldier in a checkpoint in Kalandia the right to check the bags of a local Arab? Not to shoot him, just check his bags? The amazingly simple answer is: the ownership of the country. If this is our country, then we have the full right to be there and check anyone suspected of threatening our sovereignty. I have the right to ask a person wishing to stay in my home to identify himself, and I have the right to employ force against him if he refuses to leave. But if this is not our country, we have no right to invade the lives of the residents. The State of Israel has declared that the heart of the country, the land of the Bible, the cradle of the Hebrew nation, is not ours, but that we have conquered it. In this we have destroyed the fundamental moral argument. If so, how can the state justify its violent activities in the "territories" (even before mentioning the colonialism of the neighborhoods of Gilo and Ramot in Jerusalem). Israel says that these are acts of self-defense. We have to check the trunk of the Peugeot or make targeted attacks on terrorist leaders because they are killing us. The moment they stop, we will also do so. In other words, our moral right is derived from the right of self-defense. But this is a very weak argument. First of all, they claim that they are killing us because we are occupying their country. Until we leave, taking the last of our dead with us (as Mahmud Darwish said) we cannot make the claim of self-defense, because we are the attackers. Secondly, the Israeli principle of self defense is based on the Western/ Christian principles of morality, in which self defense is permissible only for the weak against the strong. You cannot eliminate those who do not directly present a threat to you. You cannot defend yourself while at the same time killing women and children weaker than you. These two principles, on the one hand the (lack of) sovereignty, and on the other hand, the Christian war morality, form the current basis for the moral ethic code of the IDF. The State of Israel has itself adopted the principles that leave no alternative to thinking, principled people, who wish to be honest with themselves, other than to disobey orders. Until a revolution takes place in the ideological basis for the existence of the state, until we return to our basic Jewish principles, we cannot say that this is our country, and we cannot free ourselves from the bonds of Christian morality when trying to defend ourselves. The result will be that Jewish children will die instead of Arab children, Israeli society will continue to disintegrate, and the IDF will rely on "robot" soldiers after it has lost the best of its combatants.

WHEN AN IDF PILOT DOES NOT BOMB A CIVILIAN TARGET WHICH PROTECTS TERRORISTS, IDF TROOPS DIE ON THE GROUND Posted by David Bedein, September 29, 2003.

On Thurday morning, September 25th, 2003, the IDF surrounded a home in the UNRWA Al-Bourage refugee camp in Gaza, where an armed Arab terrorist leader was holed up. The IDF did not call in an air raid on the house, since a family was there, acting as human shields for the terrorist. Instead, an IDF infantry unit led a ground assault on the home. As the ground assault commenced, the Arab terrorist opened fire and killed one of the Israeli soldiers, Sergeant Avihu Keinan, age 22, of Shiloh. Six other Israeli soldiers were soldiers were also wounded. Other IDF troops returned the fire and killed the terrorist. When the troops entered the house where the terrorist had been hiding, they discovered an impressive arms cache, which included a complement of Kassam rockets and rocket launchers. All this occurred on the same day that 27 reserve pilots of Israel's Air Force publicized a petition in which they declared that they would not participate in any air raids on Arab civilian targets. The petition was widely circulated among hundreds of Israel's reserve pilots by two groups called "Yesh Gvul" and "Courage to Refuse," which have received more than $250,000 from the Shefa Fund in Phi ladelphia over the past two years. The brochure distributed today by "Yesh Gvul" offers financial support for any Israeli soldier who will refuse Israeli army service anywhere beyond Israel's 1949/67 cease-fire line. Avihu Keinan's father pointed to Israel's policy of hesitating to bomb civilian targets that host terrorists as the reason for the death of his son. Yisrael Medad, Shiloh resident, provided the following moving account of Avihu Keinan's funeral: "The last person to speak at the funeral of Avihu Keinan HY"D was his father, Moshe. Moshe opened by saying that he promised that he would not break down and cry and hoped that he would honor his son by keeping his composure. He recalled that the previous evening, the Air Force Commander, in response to the letter of several pilots who will from now on refuse to participate in bombings of "civilian" targets, noted that the IDF was the most moral and ethical army in all the world. Moshe Keinan rejected that. He said that it was this policy that had killed his son. If the IDF commanders who get their orders from the Minister of Defense and the Government of Israel, prefer the deaths of Jewish soldiers, our own children, over the children of our enemies, then this is not moral. He demanded that 270 Captains, 270 Majors, 270 Colonels, 270 Generals all inform the Minister of Defense Mofaz, that they too are willing to put their insignia and ranks on the table. They must demand to be permitted to put an end to this violence. The Government of Israel must know that the army is unwilling to sacrifice soldiers only to be called the most moral army in the world. He asked rhetorically, is this the way the French, the British or the American army acts? He then finished by singing a Yiddish lullaby which he had sung to Avihu when he was a baby (Moshe Keinan is a Chazan, a member of Tel Aviv's Cantorial Choir scheduled to tour the USA and Canada in a few months): "Mein yingeleh...Mein tayareh  (My young one, my cherished one)" David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem, Israel. Its website address is http://www.israelbehindthenews.com

PERSON OF THE YEAR Posted by David Wilder, September 29, 2003.

The Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShana, is marked quite differently from January first. Whereas the latter is celebrated in Times Square, at gala parties, and the like, most of Rosh HaShana is spend in the synagogue. According to the Jewish calendar, a new 'day' begins at sunset, and so it is that we commenced our year on Friday night with evening prayers. Following the short service, each family returned to its home and began the first festive meal of 5764 (counting from the creation of the world), with the traditional 'signs' or symbols of the New Year, beginning with an apple and honey, while reciting the prayer "May it be G-d's will that we should have a good and sweet year." The next morning, (and the following day too) many Jews spend between five to six hours at the synagogue, reciting numerous prayers, while looking back at the past year in retrospect and looking ahead to the new year with expectation. I participated in early morning prayers at Ma'arat HaMachpela, the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. It's difficult to characterize one's own prayer, but I found my worship to be troubled. Reflecting on the past year was very painful. For many years, while living in Kiryat Arba before moving to Hebron, I prayed at the same synagogue with my friend Rabbi Eli Horowitz, sitting one row behind him. Year after year I would not only see his prayer, but in many cases actually sense it, especially during the High Holy days of Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur. I was only a few months ago that Rabbi Eli Horowitz and his dear wife Dina were cut down in their apartment, murdered while eating their Sabbath meal on a Friday night. This Rosh HaShana his image seemed to be constantly before my eyes. One Saturday morning, during prayers, a friend of mine said something to me about the year starting off with a "bang." When I asked him what he was talking about he looked at me with surprise and asked, "What, you don't know?" When I shrugged he added, "Negahot - a terrorist infiltrated last night, started shooting, and killed two people." Just as we were sitting down to eat on Friday night, so too, Eyal and Sarah Iberbaum, together with neighbors Shai and Shira Abraham, with some other guests, were dipping an apple in honey. The Iberbaums and Abrahams live in Negahot, about ten miles south-west of Hebron. A community of over thirty families, Negahot faced tremendous hurdles in the past few years as a result of the Oslo Accords because the main approach road to the community was transferred to Arafat and the PA. When the Oslo War began three years ago that road was cut off to Negahot's families, who could then enter and leave their community only from the west. Hebron's archivist, Shlomit Gadot, who lives in Negahot, could get to her office here in Hebron only after a two hour drive, as opposed to the twenty minutes it would take before the main road was closed. Yet, despite the difficulties and terrorist activity in the area, the community continued to thrive. Not only didn't people leave, rather, new families moved in. Negahot families began building permanent houses, allowing them to move out of temporary 'caravan' homes. Eyal Iberbaum, 27 years old, had served in Negahot while still in the army, and after marrying a year ago, brought his bride to live in this beautifully scenic community. The Iberbaums, together with his neighbors, the Abrahams and some other guests, welcomed the New Year with hope and expectation for a happy, sweet, and good year. It was just after nine o'clock when their dinner was interrupted by sharp knocking at the door. Eyal asked twice, "who's there" but received only a garbled, unclear answer. When he slowly opened the door, weapon in hand, a twenty-one year old terrorist from a nearby Arab village opened fire with an automatic rifle, killing Iberbaum. A guest in the house quickly shot at the terrorist, preventing him from entering the home. The terrorist, standing outside, started blasting his rifle at the 'caravan' home, whose walls are constructed of plasterboard. As a result of this shooting, seven month old Shaked Abraham, infant daughter of Shai and Shira, was hit in the chest. Her father, an ambulance driver, together with his wife attempted to resuscitate their daughter, to no avail. She died in their arms. Two other guests were slightly wounded. Soldiers serving in Negahot quickly arrived at the site and within two minutes killed the Arab attacker. It was later learned that the murderer, Mahmoud Hamdan, was recently released from an Israeli prison after serving thirteen months because he planned to blow himself up in a suicide attack against Israelis. An Arab gets a year in jail for attempted murder, is released, and then fulfills his wish by killing a baby and a 27 year old man on the eve of the New Year. At the end of every year, it is customary in certain circles to crown a 'person of the year.' I spent some time thinking about who is my 'person of the year.' In the end, I decided that my choice is not one particular person - rather it is a collective - Am Yisrael, living in Eretz Yisrael - the people of Israel, living in the Land of Israel - they are my 'person of the year.' Sure, people like Rabbi Eli and Dina Horowitz, Shaked Abraham and Eyal Iberbaum. Not only them though - but also Eli and Dina's children, Shaked's parents, and so many others, who have been afflicted by Arab terror which has left hundreds and thousands of dead and wounded. These are the people who are continuing to live - who are not giving up, are not leaving their homes, and have not despaired of their dream. These are the people of the year - and they are not just in Yesha (Judea, Samaria and Gaza). They are from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Hadera and Haifa, Eilat and Shlomi - continuing to live - to dip an apple in honey, wishing each other a happy, sweet and good New Year, despite the difficulties, despite the pain. This is the real Am Yisrael which has returned home - to our eternal home, our only home, Eretz Yisrael. With blessings from Hebron, with blessings for a happy and better New Year, from all of Hebron's men, women and children. David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron. Its website address is http://www.hebron.org.il

TERRORIST' BABY VICTIM IS BURIED TODAY Posted by Jules Segal, September 29, 2003.

Shaked (pronounced ShahKED) Avraham, the 7-month-old baby who was murdered in her home in Negohot on Friday night by a Palestinian Arab terrorist, was buried this afternoon in Kfar HaRoeh, near Hadera. Eyal Yeberbaum, 27, who was also murdered in the attack, was buried in his original hometown of Rehovot late last night. "A chilling aspect of this story," related Negohot's security officer Yuval Levinger this morning, "is that the terrorist was just freed two months ago from Israeli prison in the framework of the gestures towards Abu Mazen - even though it was known that he had been planning to carry out a terrorist attack. And so, a few weeks later, he carried it out." The murderer, a member of Islamic Jihad, had little difficulty making his way into the community, as "bureaucratic difficulties" have left it with no perimeter fence. He approached the caravan of Eyal and Sarah Yeberbaum, who were hosting Shai and Shira Avraham and their baby Shaked for the Rosh HaShanah holiday. Upon hearing a knock on the door in the middle of the meal, they repeatedly asked who it was, and suddenly bullet fire sprayed the room through the door. Eyal and the Shaked were mortally wounded, and the terrorist then began to fire on other caravans nearby, wounding two other residents. Finally, an armed resident from another caravan came out and was able to shoot and kill the terrorist, ending the carnage. The baby's father, an ambulance driver, attempted to resuscitate his seven-month old, but was not successful. Shaked is at least the seventh baby under one year old to be murdered in the ongoing Oslo War of terrorism against Israel. The others were Shalhevet Pass, 10 months old, of Hevron, in March 2001; Yehuda Chaim Shoham of Shilo, five months, hit by a large rock in June 2001; nine-month-old Aviyah Malka in March 2002 in Netanya; Tif'eret Sarah Shilon, nine months, who was one of nine people, including her father and maternal grandmother, who were murdered outside Emanuel in July 2002; and two babies - Shmuel Zargari, 11 months, and 3-month-old Shmuel Taubenfeld of the United States - murdered in the #2 bus bombing last month. Negohot, a growing Yesha community of 31 families - 19 families moved in over the past two years - is situated on the east-west highway between Kiryat Gat and Hevron. Though physically closer to Hevron, its only road to the Jewish Southern Hevron Hills communities passes through PA-controlled Area A - leaving it more "connected" with the pre-1967 areas near Kiryat Gat.

SECOND GUESSING G-D Posted by Rebbetzin Esther Yungreis, September 25, 2003.

In my last column I wrote of the anguish and sorrow that fills the hearts of our brethren in Israel nowadays, and I wrote of the all-too real curses that are enumerated in parshat Ki Tavo. There is one curse however, that at first glance, may be difficult to understand, but if you take a moment to think about it, you will realize how poignantly it speaks to us: "And it shall be, if you will not hearken to the voice of the L-rd your G-d to observe and perform all His commandments and all His decrees that I command you today, then all His curses will come upon you and overtake you." (Deuteronomy 28:58). The word "overtake" is puzzling, but upon closer scrutiny, we have to conclude how prophetic these words have proven to be. We have a long history of trying to second guess G-d's word. There are always those who rationalize that the tragedies that befall us are totally unrelated to our abandonment of Torah and mitzvos. They reason that these curses are just so much superstition, and if we would just do "such and such," then all our problems would be resolved. But throughout our long and torturous history, no matter how clever a formula was concocted, no matter how confident we were that this time, we would find a way to neutralize the irrational hatred that surrounds us, the curses always overtook us. Just consider some of the events of the last century and you will see for yourself the sad reality of this prophecy. A Jew by the name of Karl Marx convinced his followers that hatred in the world stemmed from jealousy between the haves and the have-nots, and that it was these economic disparities that rendered the Jews scapegoats. And so, he founded communism, a system that would guarantee the perfect distribution of wealth, a system in which everyone would have an equal share. Many Jews sacrificed and died for this cause. They truly believed that communism would usher in a new era of fraternity and brotherhood. Who would have believed that this very same communism, would not only fail, but would give birth to the most vile and brutal persecution of the Jewish people. - "Alas, the curses shall overtake you..." Theodore Hertzl, a secular Jew from Austro-Hungary, the founder of political Zionism, was convinced that the cause for anti-Semitism was the lack of a Jewish homeland. He was so assimilated that he even expressed willingness to accept Uganda as a substitute, but since Uganda was not to be had, he settled on Palestine. Who would have believed that fifty one years after the founding of the Jewish homeland, that homeland, would become the butt of hatred. "We have nothing against Jews, it is the Israelis and Zionists that we despise," is the politically correct mantra of the new anti-Semites. - "And the curses shall overtake you..." The Reform movement in Germany was founded on the belief that anti-Semitism was provoked by the special Jewish way of life that distinguishes Jews from gentiles. If only Jews would shed their traditions, their mannerisms, their distinct garb, their myriad archaic commandments and enter the enlightened world - if only they would be like all other people, anti-Semitism would cease to exist. Jews gave up their faith, their Torah, and proudly swore their allegiance to "Fattersland uber alles" - "Germany, the Fatherland - above all." Who would have believed that it would be from that very same enlightened, civilized Germany that the most satanic evil ever to be visited upon our people would emerge. - "And the curses shall overtake you.." The events that I described are not from our distant past - rather, they are of today, and we are all familiar with them, but there are still those among us who believe that they can relinquish Torah and mitzvos without consequences - that the curses that we encounter in life are totally unrelated to our lack of observance and our abandonment of the Covenant. They truly believe that all our problems would be resolved if we would just adopt "yet another formula." While the embers of the flames of Auschwitz were still glowing, the advocates of this philosophy found yet another prescription to once and for all eradicate the scourge of anti-Semitism. They scurried to Rome and prostrated themselves before the Pope to inaugurate the dawn of a new era - "Dialogue" The rationale behind this was quite logical. The silence of the Church and its support of the Nazis in Catholic Europe was due to a lack of communication. But now, bridges of understanding would be built. "Dialogue" would be the new antidote for the deadly virus of anti-Semitism. But then came 1967 - the Six Day War, and once again, the balloon burst. As Israel was threatened by annihilation, her leaders appealed to the world community and to the Church, but the nations remained silent as did Rome. The proponents of dialogue tried to call in their cards, but their investment had failed. Rome not only remained indifferent to the plight of the fledgling Jewish state, but lent its sympathy and support to those who were bent upon her destruction. Recently, the age-old blood libels have re-surfaced in contemporary garb. A prince of the Church, Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Meridiaga, who is the Archbishop of Honduras and who, according to Boston Globe reporter James Carrol, is one of a small number of likely candidates to succeed Pope John Paul II, reportedly stated that the accusations of sexual abuse in the Church are a Jewish fabrication! You might wonder how he arrived at such a brilliant conclusion, but then again, how did his predecessors throughout the centuries conclude that Jews slaughtered Christians children and used their blood to make wine and matzoh for Passover' Nothing changes - just the names and the places. Still, you may insist that we are living in the twenty-first century. People cannot just make outlandish irrational accusations built upon a pack of lies. But obviously, they can, and there are myriad people out there willing to embrace them and declare them to be truth. The Archbishop propounds that the Jews were seeking revenge on the Church for its pro-Palestinian/anti Israel stance and most importantly, also wanted to divert attention from the atrocities that they are perpetrating against the Palestinians, so they fabricated this story, and proof of its Jewish origin is that The Boston Globe, owned by the Jewish Sulzberger New York Times family, was the first to break the story. Therefore, it stands to reason that this is a Jewish conspiracy. Now it's one thing for the Cardinal to make such preposterous and virulent accusations, but it is something else again for Rome to remain silent and not call the Cardinal to task. Once again, despite years of dialogue, despite good-will gestures and kow-towing to Rome, the curses have overtaken us. Let us now" consider the tragedies that are befalling us in Eretz Yisroel - the constant barrage of terrorist attacks that result in almost daily carnage. Why do the Arabs hate us so? Why are they bent upon killing us? Why are they obsessed with shedding Jewish blood? Why do they wish to see us dead? Why do they want to eradicate the Jewish State? Once again, our secularists, who deny G-d's Hand in our history have convinced themselves and others that there are valid reasons for all this hatred, reasons that can be overcome: The Arabs suffer from poverty, they live under abysmal conditions, they lack educational and job opportunities, the Palestinians have become refugees, and they need their own state. Who, if not we, should empathize with that? Let's give them what they need, let's give them the land, let's give them financial aid, let's give them the arms to create their own police force. It was this thinking that prompted Israeli leadership to legitimize Arafat and put white gloves on his bloody hands. It was with this thinking that Israel convinced Washington to no longer regard Arafat as persona non-grata, but to accord him all the honor of a diplomat. It was this Israeli thinking that enabled Arafat to win the Nobel Peace prize, and it was this thinking that prompted Israel to sign the Oslo Accords. Oslo would herald a new dawn in Jewish-Arab relations. Israel and her neighbors would enjoy open borders and together build a model state. Israel gave up chunks of her G-d given land, supplied Arafat and his cohorts with funds and weapons, and taught them how to prepare for the establishment of their own state. Who would have believed that that Oslo pact would open the doors to the must brutal and bloody period in the history of the young State, that the arms that Israel gave would be turned against her own sons and daughters? And today, ten years down the road, we are further from peace than ever before. Not only are our borders not open, but now we have to build "fences" to protect ourselves from the killers who live next door. What will it take to awaken those who are still asleep, those who after thousands of years of history still cling to the illusion that we Jews can be like all other nations - that the laws that apply to them can apply to us as well? What will it take to make our assimilated brethren understand that our destiny, our very breath is ordained by HaShem, that we are Mamlechet Kohanim, a priestly kingdom, Goy Kadosh, a holy nation, destined to be a light unto the world, and because of that, there is only one formula, one road map for us and that's the road map that was charted at Sinai. All else is doomed to fail, for otherwise, - "... the curses will overtake us." May HaShem grant that this year of 5764 will usher in a new era of tshuva - return to G-d and His Torah, for that is our only power, our only means of survival, our only antidote to the curses. "If only My people would heed Me, if Israel would walk in My ways, in an instant I would subdue their foes and against their tormentors turn My hand." (Psalm 81). May I take this opportunity to wish all our readers and K'lal Yisroel a gamar chasima tova. Rebbetzin Yungreis heads the Hineni Heritage Center located in New York City. Its website address is http://www.hineni.org

WE ARE HERE! Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, September 25, 2003.

In order to help us Israelis digest our overwhelming holiday shopping bills, most supermarkets offer a bit of sweet compensation in the form of a receipt which entitles the depleted shopper to a "gift." So while my husband went to load the car, I waited for the head clerk to return to the counter with the Rosh Hashanah bonus. Usually it's a bottle of wine or, at the very least, a small gift-jar of honey. This year I was handed a small package of margarine - an obvious and rather ominous sign of the times. Dumbfounded, I returned to the car with a bittersweet complaint. "Honey, look. It's not even butter!" But when my husband flashed his endearing smile, it took me back. When I was a student, attending an overseas summer program at Tel Aviv University, I would often visit my soon-to-be husband and his brother in their modest apartment in Hertzlia. They were always gracious hosts and would share their meals with me, which consistently consisted of bread and margarine - there was rarely anything else. I was too in love to complain (when you're in love, everything tastes good). But, I couldn't help but wonder how it was that these guys looked far more strapping and wholesome than their well fed American counterparts. That same summer we went camping in the Sinai, our supplies consisted of bread, margarine and water. I didn't complain or need anything else, as I was awe-struck with the majesty of the desert (when you're captivated, everything tastes good). That must have been the secret behind the mann in the desert. As long as the Jewish People were in love, awe-struck and captivated, we didn't need anything else. Ahhhhh, to be young again. I think I speak for at least a few of us when I say that the last three chaotic years have sapped a bit of our strength and youthful optimism. We should look forward to this New Year, because it presents us with an opportunity to rediscover inspiration, clarity and hope. But still, I have my concerns with regards to whats in store for us in 5764. After a year of little sleep (I wrote this piece at 4 AM), I'm afraid that I'll fall asleep this Rosh Hashana. It happens every year. Throughout the last several years, I rarely takes naps during the day and am easily awakened at night - as if on high alert. But come Rosh Hashanah, I listen with great concentration to the shofar service - only to be hounded by irresistible drowsiness throughout the rest of the day. So this year I've begun to peruse my bookshelves in search of inspiring works that are sure to keep me going. I've chosen the teachings of scholarly giants like, Rabbis Hersh, Soloveitchik, Dessler, Kook, and Theodor Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. I am not being irreverent. Horton Hears a Who is a must-read Rosh Hashana classic (it's also a short book with lots of pictures). Anybody who doesn't think so is probably either a shirker -like that little twerp in apartment 12-J, or a renegade mayor of our small speck of dust - who prefers to attend gala birthday celebrations rather than tend to their responsibilities in an hour of crisis. (NOTE: If you just lost me, you had better borrow the book. Things will become remarkably clear - I promise.) So, when I start to feel drowsy and the formal prayers and commentaries no longer hold my attention, I'm going to go back to a simpler time - and sit down to a cup of tea, and challah with margarine (and a touch of honey). Then I'm going to recapture my youthful optimism by delving into the prophetic wisdom of Dr. Seuss. I'll join the rest of the Whos in Who-ville in the hope that, this coming year, our cries of "We are here!" "We are here!" "We are here!" "We are here!" will be both heard in the heavens and understood here on earth. Wishing all of Our People a truly peaceful and comforting 5764. Ellen Horowitz lives on the Golan Heights with her husband and six children. She is a painter, writer and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com

NATION BUILDING Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 25, 2003.

The Bush administration announced it would withhold some loan guarantees if Israel builds beyond the 1967 border, redlining the Jewish Quarter, French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, and the Mount Scopus-Hebrew University-Hadassah Hospital areas of Jerusalem. Israeli construction there is not prohibited by international law or by the Oslo accords. Arabs in the Territories are building ten times as fast as Israelis, and mostly illegally. The P.A. encourages this illegal building in an attempt to influence negotiations about final borders. Instead of reducing aid to the P.A, the Administration plans to boost that aid from $100 million to $215 million (IMRA, 9/17 from ZOA). Instead of securing the Jewish nation, the US is engaged in Palestinian nation-building. Problem is, whereas US nation-building in Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq was preceded by defeating the aggressors and terrorists, in the P.A. the terrorists still run everything. Who will defeat them? Israel. Eventually, Pres. Bush will get Israel to defeat the terrorists and then secure the area not for Israel but for Israel's Arab enemies. This cruel irony is anti-Zionist. Israel does the US's dirty work, ultimately redounding against Israel and the US. Before Arab autonomy, Israel spent a fortune building networks of schools, roads, water, electricity, and health. What a mistake! Peres and Rabin gave out ammunition and money with which, to their surprise but not to the Right's, the Arabs attacked Israel. The answer is for Israel to conduct not a war on terrorism that leads to an enemy state, but a war on the Palestinian Muslim Arabs, that leads to a Zionist fulfillment.

AN OPEN LETTER TO AVRAHAM BURG Posted by Arthur Cohn, September 25, 2003.

Dear Avrum, I know you - within our long-time family friendship - for many years. I never commented on any of your political statements when you gave them to Israeli newspapers. However, your article "A failed Israeli society is collapsing" is especially disappointing because it was not only published in Israel, but also abroad in the "International Herald Tribune," "Le Monde" (Paris) and "Suddeutsche Zeitung" (Munich). Under these circumstances I cannot restrain myself from reacting to it. I must protest against your level of argumentation and the style of your essay. Your way of presenting issues is irresponsible, undemocratic and lacks basic honesty. It ignores all the great values which are the basis of the Jewish State up to this day. In very general accusations - which are characteristic of the whole article - you say that the Israeli nation (!) today rests on a "scaffolding of corruption." No word about Israel being a state with a most developed judicial system and courts which are open to all parts of Israeli society (Arabs included) in order to supervise justice in the State of Israel and to fight corruption in all its manifestations - a tiny state surrounded by totalitarian governments which are not bound by the rule of law. No word about the vast majority dedicated to Israel without any personal corruption whatsoever. No word about the tremendous job done in Israel with the huge immigration from Russia and Ethiopia. No word about the thousands of volunteers fulfilling a wonderful task for all underprivileged people - from handicapped children to helpless aged persons. No word about the free press of Israel which detects openly any irregularities within the Government and its branches. No word about the unlimited devotion to Israel's security even by regular citizens who endanger their lives in order to minimize the destruction done by terror acts. You write that settlements are "run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers." The settlements were built since 1967 with the help of the Israeli government (Labor and Likud alike) and even their political opponents know that most of the settlers are great idealists. Far from being corrupt and amoral, they are loyal citizens. It is one thing to advocate removal of settlements, and another to demonize the settlers in such an unjust way. How can you ignore the Jewish historic approach in your analysis of events? One example: Tens of thousands of Arabs worked for many, many years in Israel. Their entry to Israel started to be made difficult only after terrorists were smuggled in with the workers. To speak about the Palestinian difficulties with the roadblocks without mentioning the reasons which brought them about is morally questionable. What is even worse: You invent the lie that Israel has "ceased to care about the children of Palestinians." You describe all of Israel as an inhuman entity and cause with this statement irreparable damage to Israel's moral image. As you surely know, the truth is the opposite: Despite the Palestinian children being educated to become genocide murderers and despite their being abused as shields for terrorists, Israel does whatever possible to avoid unnecessary damage to the lives of Palestinian children. Examples: The deaths of 23 soldiers in Jenin which were sacrificed in order to avoid a massive attack on the civilian population. Another recent example: Israel could have last week killed the main heads of the Hamas movement in Gaza, but refrained from using a stronger bomb in order not to endanger too many civilians. I don't know any other nation in the world which would act with such moral considerations even in their fight against frightfully inhuman terrorists. "We must remove all the settlements - all of them" - what an odd, unreflective statement! If Israel has no rights in the disputed territories gained through the '67 war, how will you react to the request of the Palestinian prime minister that Israel has to go back to the 1948 borders and quit the "occupied territories" of the Independence War? And how will you morally reject the PLO argument, taught in the Palestinian schoolbooks, that all of Israel is "occupied" territories? Can it be historically justified that Israel leaves Hebron, Gush Etzion or even great parts of Jerusalem, so that a future Palestinian state becomes 'judenrein' while now, in Israel, there live more than a million Arabs with political rights? Never in your article do you mention 'peace' (perhaps you don't believe in the possibility of a peace treaty after the Barak experience), but you still expect - in a most irresponsible way that Israel go back to the 'Auschwitz' borders of '67, even without a permanent peace process. Your appeal to  Israel's friends abroad, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, presidents and prime ministers" to influence the road Israel is going on is a clear undermining of Israel's democracy. Now, that you and your party are a minority, you appeal to political forces outside Israel to interfere in Israel's affairs. Who would believe that this undemocratic view is expressed in a call from a man who was speaker of the Israeli parliament? "The Arabs, too have dreams and needs." The majority of Israel would like to assist the Arabs to fulfil these needs. But as long as their dream is "to kill Jews wherever you find them," Israel cannot be expected to assist them in making this dream reality. It is truly unbelievable that a man of your position should have no hesitation, as a Jew and as a Zionist, to weaken the struggle of the Jewish People in Israel with an article full of generalizations, platitudes and baseless accusations, not mentioning with one word the high level of Jewish values and humane behaviour kept alive in the State of Israel, despite the brutality used by its neighbours during all the years of its existence. An old Jewish saying states that one of the greatest sins is to humiliate another human being in public. It is your right (and perhaps even your duty) to publicize your political views, but I am afraid that with your irresponsible article in significant publications worldwide you transgressed this basic rule by humiliating the People of Israel in a most unqualified, ugly manner. Arthur Cohn is a national film producer whose productions include "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis," "Central Station," and "One Day in September."

ELON MOREH Posted by Ken Heller, September 25, 2003.

Dear Friends: Pinchas Fuchs, a long time resident and leader at the eastern Samarian community of Elon Moreh (founded in 1975), will be visiting New Jersey in November during his short stay in the States. I visited Elon Moreh during my trip to Israel last year and was impressed with the progress they have made in terms of housing, education and various emergency projects they have been determined to see through to fruition. I was also struck by the fact the you can actually look down into Shechem (now called Nablus, a major center of terror). It is also important to note that there have been deadly terrorist infiltrations into Elon Moreh in the past several years. They still need a great deal of help in order to complete their various projects in a timely manner. I belong to American Friends of Elon Moreh because I have made several contributions to the community in the past including when I was there. Would you also be able to help? Security conditions can still be improved upon and they are working to complete a large library which will also serve as a conference center and a simcha room. If you would be interested in supplying your financial assistance, please make your check out to: American Friends of Elon Moreh and mail it to: Americans for a Safe Israel, PO BOX 459, Huntingdon Valley, Pa. 19006 Thanking you in advance for your concern and assistance and wishing you again a wonderful New Year, one that brings peace, comfort, sweetness and health to you and all of Am Yisrael.

A HIGH HOLIDAY WISH: DECONDITION PALESTINIAN ARAB SOCIETY FROM INCULCATED HATRED Posted by David Bedein and Daphne Burdman, September 23, 2003.

At a time when the public debate continues as to whether Arafat, Abu Ala or any other PLO leader may lead the nascent Palestinian Arab entity, the time has come to consider a much more serious issue: Whether Palestinian Arab society must first experience a total metamorphosis - something like the De-Nazification that the Allies forced upon Germany after World War II. Any Arab leader who continues to ascribe to the philosophy of the PLO will not be capable of aspiring to peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. Let us say there's another peace declaration between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, either as a result of a negotiated peace, or after a capitulation by the Palestinian Arabs to successful Israeli military action. The rabid hatred of Israel presently manifested by Palestinian Arab society at large will obviate against any possibility of a successful peace process. In view of the absence of an effective, neutral coalition similar to the Allied coalition after WWII, it is essential to start considering the format of reconstruction within any future Palestinian Arab entity which will be brought into existence. The following parameters are posited as cornerstones of the reconstruction process: - Criminalization of incitement to violence and preaching of martyrdom. - Consideration of "Nuremberg-type" trials. - Psychological deconditioning from hatred and violence. - Democratization. - Establishment of a body representing Moderate Islam to perform as Consultants and Administrators in conjunction with secular officials, both Palestinian Arabs and non-Palestinian Arabs. NOTES: Palestinian Arab society has been imbued with profound hatred by deliberate programming through all available means, including societal communication, formal education within the schools, extensive well-coordinated official Palestinian Authority media programs, and messages from the mosques inspired by political (militant) Islam. Establishment of a future peace between the Palestinian Arabs and Israel, will therefore require considerably more than "dismantling the terrorist organizations." Such dismantlement is an essential first step, which of necessity must be followed by a 2-pronged simultaneous program consisting of (1) deconditioning from hatred, (2) massive societal reconstruction. 1.Palestinian Arabs, but most particularly Palestinian Arab youth, have been conditioned to hatred of Israel, Israelis and (to a somewhat lesser extent) of the U.S by programs (described elsewhere) which employ highly sophisticated psychological methods and which thereby tap profound underlying psychological processes. It is therefore essential that psychological deconditioning, which uses similarly designed mechanisms, must be utilized to undo this profound conditioning to hatred, and must form an integral part of any reconstruction program. This will be a long and arduous process. It will be established in the schools, and in the media. Educators as well as psychologists will need to be closely involved in establishing and refining such programs. 2. Essential factors in Palestinian Arab societal reconstruction will include: A. Active education about true democracy, development of a flourishing civil society, development of an active middle class with incorporation of entrepreneurial aspects, equality of women, a legal constitution which reflects contemporary aspects of democratic jurisprudence, the rule of law, due process, and human rights, and which recognizes freedom of religion and separation of "Church" and State. In accord with concerns about "one man, one vote, one time," some authorities indicate that implementation of elections per se must needs be delayed until the democratization process is well advanced and has been seen to be successfully employed by community groups etc. at a local level. B. Constantly ongoing active inputs, both consultative and administrative, from prominent and respected Islamic Moderates, both secular and religious, will be indispensable and essential at all phases of education and democratization. C. Massive repair and development of the Palestinian Arab nation by a contemporary "Marshall Plan" will be essential, running concurrently with the above programs. In order to permit development of the above processes, and drawing on the successful experiences of the post World War II programs, all forms of incitement to, teaching of, and, preaching of, violence for political ends, must be criminalized in Palestinian Arab society. Trial by due process and strict enforcement of legal sentences will need to be implemented. The holding of Nuremberg-type trials will need to be strongly considered for designated war criminals. This will involve intense legal and political discussion. It is to be remembered that: Strict monitoring will be essential at all stages in view of the unfortunate history of (I) Consistent non-compliance by the Palestinian Authority, which is an outgrowth of the PLO. (II) Monitoring agencies who have failed to monitor for various reasons including holding the autonomy of developing nations as a sacrosanct principle, or who have abused their prerogative. Such agencies include the E.U., the UN and UNRWA. Current international attitudes present a considerable problem in terms of the commonly accepted interpretations of "just wars" and deprivation theory as the basis for hatred and terrorism. Recognition of issues raised above will be necessary in terms of gaining international allegiance. It is highly likely that sophisticated psychologists and psychiatrists have been responsible for formulating the existing programs within the P.A. of indoctrination to hatred, violence, martyrdom, and "suicide bombings." Here is the goal: To facilitate a post-PLO Palestinian Arab society, which will be dedicated to its citizens healthy progress and success in the context of a peaceful, productive, fruitful, permanent relationship with Israel. David Bedein is Bureau Chief and Daphne Burdman, M.D., is Psychiatric Research Analyst, Israel Resource News Agency, Jerusalem, Israel.

WALL IN TEMPLE MOUNT COMPOUND COLLAPSES Posted by Bryna Berch, September 25, 2003.

This is in today's Arutz Sheva (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com). It is shameful that a Jewish Government in a Jewish State would ignore what the Arabs have been doing on the site of our Temple. The Arabs in 1967 hoped just to be allowed to pray on the site. Instead, the Israeli Government generously (and stupidly) gave them control and they responded by destroying Jewish artifacts from biblical times. Now they are destroying the site itself. One side of a wall in the Temple Mount compound - completely visible to worshippers at the Western Wall - collapsed on Tuesday, uncovering an area of some 40 square meters of dirt and fill. The wall belongs to the Islamic Museum on the Temple Mount, a building to the right and above the worshipers at the Western Wall, identified by a small gray dome. Archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, a member of the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities, said that the collapse is connected with the illegal construction works being carried out on the Temple Mount by the Moslem Waqf. Speaking with Yisrael Medad on Arutz-7's "Freedom of Broadcast" program, Dr. Mazar said that these works have been ongoing for many years without supervision by either the Planning and Construction authorities or the Antiquities Authority. "No one is concerned about preserving the ancient compound," she said, "nor has anyone mapped, surveyed or buttressed the hollow areas under the Temple Mount and under the mosques... It is frightening to think of this collapse, and of what could happen in the future when many tens of thousands of people visit the Temple Mount, and tractors and trucks - and all of this atop hollow areas that have never been professionally checked. This collapse should be a warning bell. If a catastrophe occurs, the whole world will blame Israel." She said that opening the compound to Jewish visitors is "just the beginning; pressure must be exerted in order that the supervisory authorities do what they are supposed to. The press must get involved in this cause." Photos of the collapsed wall can be seen at .

STRETCHING THE TRUTH IN PEANUT LAND Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, September 25, 2003.

President Jimmy Carter is at it again. He either loves living in a make believe world or is deliberately telling non-truths. He has access to too much information to blame it on ignorance or naivete. Pardon me if I don't sound too respectful, but the man has been shown to be a blatant hypocrite and, despite delusions about his own self-worth (an argument could be made that Camp David occurred despite him, not because of him), an outright menace to the survival of a viable Jewish State. In his most recent blast of hot air in the September 23, 2003 Washington Post (The Choice For Israelis), he again proclaimed that the occupied territories and settlement issue were the main causes of Arab resentment and thus the violence as well. Surely he's aware of poll after poll taken among Arabs that have shown that if Israel withdrew completely from those disputed areas, the Arabs would still reject Israel's right to exist. It's not how big Israel is but that Israel is that's the problem - and he knows this. And he knows about the offers made by Barak and Clinton at Camp David 2000 and Taba. Yet he insists on prodding Jews to take suicidal chances and forsake security measures with a bloodthirsty enemy he wouldn't dream of asking others to do. Surely he knows that the PLO was formed in 1964 - before Israel was in the territories. And surely he knows that nothing has changed in the Arab mindset since then or before. Mr. Carter sees the Palestinian Authority websites, maps, schoolbooks, hears the imams calling for death to the Jews, etc. He knows full well that the proposed 23rd Arab state - the second one to be created within the original borders of Mandatory Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920 - plans to replace Israel, not live side by side with it. It's no accident that at the summits leading up to the "Roadmap," Ahmed Qurei'- newest Arafatian chief marionette - went on record as opposing the use of "Jewish" along with "State of Israel." And these folks still insist that Israel, after being made to return to its 9-mile wide, pre-'67 armistice line existence, then agree to absorb millions of real or alleged descendants of Arab refugees. The half of Israel's Jews who were refugees themselves from so-called "Arab" lands doesn't seem to register with him. At the close of hostilities after the invasion by Arab states of a nascent Israel in 1948, those fragile U.N.-imposed Auschwitz - I mean armistice - lines made Israel a constant temptation to its enemies. Most of Israel's population and industry lies in that narrow waistband. Mr. Carter knows full well that you need a magnifying glass to find Israel in a map of the region - a microscope for a map of the world. He dares to bring up U.N. Resolution #242 to support his position for Israel's departure from the territories. While he's a bit more careful in his wording this time, he still implies that a virtually total withdrawal is required. Nations have acquired territories thousands of miles away from home in the name of their own security, but Mr. Carter can't seem to figure out that Israel's 9-mile wide, artificially-imposed existence (the '49 armistice lines were never meant to be final borders) was a travesty of justice in desperate need of rectification. Whatever the size, shape, etc. the proposed 23rd Arab state might eventually be, it must not come at the expense of security of the sole, miniscule state of the Jews. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War Israel was forced to fight after it was blockaded at the Straits of Tiran and other life-threatening hostile acts, U.N. Resolution #242 most definitely did not demand that Israel return to the status quo ante bellum. The architects of that resolution such as Eugene Rostow, Arthur Goldberg, and others have all stressed quite the contrary. It called, instead, for the creation of secure and recognized borders to replace those fragile post-'48 armistice lines. Most of Israel's settlements have been built on strategic high ground areas for this reason. Even with these left in place, Israel's width goes from 9 miles up to perhaps around twenty in that waist bordering the West Bank/Judea and Samaria. Most people in America drive further just to go to work. Any "Roadmap" discussions must continue to take this into account. Those currently involving the path of the security fence are particularly relevant. While compromises are in order, Carter's demands, advice, or whatever on this issue are not. He speaks of the territories as if Palestinian Arabs (many of whom were newcomers - settlers - themselves in Palestine) had exclusive rights there. Contrary to popular current protestations, these are not occupied Palestinian Arab lands. Leading scholars such as William O'Brien, Rostow, and others have pointed out that these lands were non-apportioned areas of the Mandate, and all residents - Arabs, Jews, etc. - had the right to live there. Indeed, Jews had lived and owned land in Judea and Samaria until their earlier massacres by Arabs. And Mr. Carter knows this too. As he does the writings of the so-called moderates like the late Faisal Husseini whose goal was/is still a purely Arab Palestine from the River to the Sea. Indeed, the "moderates" of the good cop/ bad cop game the Arabs have played to gain concessions from the Jews speak in terms of temporary, meaningless concessions to the Jews as the Trojan Horse that will be used to deliver the final prize, Arafat's modern professed version of the "Peace of the Quraysh." The latter were the pagan tribe the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, made his temporary truce with until he gained the position and strength to deliver the final blow. Talk of a new "truce" with Arafat falls into this same category. It's time to call it what it is. Mr. Carter's constant demand that Israel cave in to such above hogwash is nothing short of hostile intent on his part towards the Jewish State. He expects no others to bare their necks so freely to their sworn murderous enemies as he does Jews. When I see Mr. Carter show the same concern over the plight of some thirty million perpetually victimized stateless Kurds as he does for creating a 23rd state for Arabs (on the ashes of Israel...but fear not, he'll give a proper southern gentleman's eulogy), I might listen to him again. For now, his hypocrisy and double standards vis-?-vis Jews and Israel simply make him a spokesman for the Arab cause.

ISRAEL HAS NO OBLIGATION TO CREATE ANOTHER ARAB STATE Posted by Jules Segal, Septemer 24, 2003.

Mr. President: I am a staunch supporter of many of your policies including your decision to enter Iraq and remove a corrupt and nefarious regime. However, your recent speech at the United Nations made references to the conflict between the Arabs and Israel with which I cannot agree. You stated that the Palestinian people deserve their own state. * Why? and how have they come to "deserve" ... ? * What about the Jews born in what was then Palestine? * Will they belong to this Arab "democracy" without being classed and ostracized because of being Jews? * Jews have been to that "movie" too many times through history! There are already four states in what was known as Palestine: Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. There is no room for another, especially one predicated on the destruction of another country - Israel. The Arabs in Israel and the Greater Biblical Land of Israel, Judea and Samaria, are free to move to any of the Arab countries in the region. if they wish to live in a country void of Jews. They can pick almost any of the Arab countries in the region. Even compensation could be advocated. But, If they want to live in Israel they must learn to live in peace and accept the facts - of a Jewish State's existence! You also stated that Israel must work to create the conditions that will allow a peaceful Palestinian (Arab) state to emerge. what's that all about? When it suits the world we are allowed to be our "brothers" keepers and after we have done our "keeping," it's OK for the "brothers" to return to their terrorism! Israel has no obligation to help nor create a state that by definition will exclude Jews [conceivably also Christians] from within its borders. Nor does it have an obligation to help create a state that will not allow Jews the right to access their places of heritage and practice their religion. Another Arab state in Palestine is superfluous and there is no need for Israel to help create another enemy territory. I urge you to support Israel and the right of Jews to live through-out the Greater Biblical Land of Israel, Judea, Samaria and Ghaza.

ANALYSIS OF SUICIDE-BOMBING Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 24, 2003.

A "NY Times" Op-Ed analysis of suicide bombing led, as always, to the Times' position that Israel should withdraw from Yesha. Political science teacher Robert A. Pape, reached that conclusion from statistics. Since almost half those bombings were by the secularist Tamil Tigers, he deduced that suicide-bombings are not religiously motivated. Experience has shown him that gradual concessions fail to appease nationalist striving, and invasions aggravate them. Therefore he proposes that Israel withdraw behind a wall and the US withdraw the UN, immigration screening, and energy independence (9/22). Some of his ideas are sensible, some are not, and some are vague. Terrorism is broader than suicide-bombing, so Prof. Pape should not be side-tracked by that one method. The UN is malign, incompetent, and corrupt. It can solve little. What does he mean by improving immigration screening? I'd eliminate visiting by certain nationalities and immigration by all. Energy independence is a partial goal, though eminently worthy. The full goal should include so much conservation and renewable energy, that the price of oil declines enough to keep the Arabs from buying much weaponry. It's not invasion that aggravates nationalist hostility. It's occupation. Perhaps we should invade periodically to eliminate military forces and weapons of mass-destruction and the laboratories that produce them, but not stay. That requires more thought. The author must be uninformed about Islamist terrorism. Islam is a religion of war against infidels; radical Islamists also war on their own Muslim governments, to "purify" them. They assemble from many countries to fighting jihad all over the world. When Americans and Englishmen go to Afghanistan and Iraq to fight against Americans and Englishmen, they do so for religious and not nationalist reasons. Iran has no nationalist grievance against Israel, but it subsidizes the Lebanese Islamist terrorists war on Israel. Ultra-religious S. Arabia spreads terrorism by financing radical mosques and madrassas everywhere. Their doctrine is to put loyalty to religion above loyalty to nationality. Nationalism? The Arabs hardly have it now, and certainly lacked it when the Arab-Israel conflict started. The Arabs were persecuting Christians and Jews centuries before there were other nationalities besides the Jewish one. The western Palestinian Arabs are not a nationality. Their leaders admit pretending to be, so as to impress Westerners, who think in terms of nationalism. An Israeli withdrawal from Yesha would not satisfy the Arabs, because they want to expel the Jews from Israel, too. Antisemitism, demagoguery, and greed underlies Arab aspirations about the Territories and Israel, as well as the Islamic injunction to recapture every area that the Muslims ever controlled in the past, regardless of by what means they controlled it. The PLO plan is to use the Territories for warring on Israel. Leaving them Yesha, the key Jewish patrimony that Pape cavalierly suggests Israel abandon, would exacerbate the problem. It would facilitate a Holocaust, by depriving Israel of secure boundaries.

CHILDREN OF JERUSALEM VICTIM'S FUND Posted by Michael D. Evans, September 24, 2003.

Greetings from Jerusalem! The funds that you and the Jerusalem Prayer Team members have donated to help victims of terrorism are being presented to victims and agencies here in Jerusalem. I have been visiting hospitals and ministering to some of the victims of terrorism. The days are not long enough to visit and pray with each of them. We drove to the home of Noga Cohen just days ago! You will remember Mrs. Cohen, because many of you sent email messages to be delivered to her and her family. The three Cohen children (ages 8, 9, and 12) were victims of a bus ambush several months ago. Each of the two younger children lost a leg, and the oldest daughter lost both legs. She is now out of the hospital, and wants to go back to school, but there was no way for her to do that. She had to be carried everywhere. I am so pleased to be able to report to you that the Jerusalem Prayer Team was able to purchase an electronic wheelchair for her. It will take her everywhere...even across sand. I also presented over 1000 love letters from JPT members. Mrs. Cohen cried when she realized that Christians really loved her and her children. Thank you so much for your gifts that have enabled us to help the Cohen family. Give your best gift now to help other terror victims now. I visited two victims of a terrorist attack at Hadassah Hospital. On the same floor with the victims was a wounded terrorist. Members of the hospital staff had saved his life, and he was receiving the same care and attention as his intended victims. At Mount Scopus Hospital, I visited with the deputy director of the hospital. I asked him what the hardest aspect of his job was. He replied, "We treat the Arabs here. We treat hundreds of them that we bring in and treat them at no charge. The most difficult day is the day that a terrorist attack happens. When it comes on television all the Arabs are shouting and clapping and screaming with joy as they see a bus blown up, people dying. They are in our hospitals; we're treating them, and they are rejoicing [because of the murder of Jews.]" We must pray for an end to this murderous spirit of anti-Semitism, and for the peace and safety of the Jewish people in the Bible land. I will return to Jerusalem in early October, and want to be able to take another significant gift to help victims of terrorism. There are many more children like the Cohen children who need our help. Please make your contribution today to the Children of Jerusalem Victims' Fund. Jerusalem Prayer Team PO Box 910 Euless, TX 76039 817-268-1228 Mike Evans is the founder of the Jerusalem Prayer Team, which is based in Euless, Texas. Their website address is http://www.jerusalemprayerteam.org

PA SOCIETY'S UNIVERSAL SUPPORT FOR SUICIDE BOMBERS Posted by Itamar Marcus, September 24, 2003.

Background. Two weeks ago, PMW reported that Palestinian Authority [PA] social organizations and NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] were refusing to sign a US required anti-terror clause, which states that the beneficiary organization will not transfer any money to terrorists or terrorist organizations. During these past two weeks the opposition to the US is growing more organized as 26 organizations gathered in Bethlehem to publicly declare they would not sign the US anti-terror clause, while an even larger gathering is being planned. [See below] It is also interesting to note that condemnation of the US anti-terror conditions is spreading in the Arab world. "Egyptian intellectuals promised to organize a media campaign [against the US demands] ...They rejected the American document that established a condition and link between funding and signing. The Assistant to the Director General of the Arab Organization for [Human Rights] promised to raise the issue with other Arab countries and other Egyptian organizations." [Al Hayat Al Jadida Sept. 22, 2003] It is also ironic that on the very same page in the PA daily, right under the article repeatedly attacking USAID, is an advertisement by USAID offering scholarships to Palestinian students for study in the US. [Page 5, Al Hayat Al Jadida, Sept. 22, 2003] Commentary and Analysis. There is far reaching significance to this collective refusal in the PA to sign the anti-terror clause, as their refusal not only defies US policy, but challenges a most fundamental premise regarding PA society. The common premise is that the general PA population rejects the murder of civilians through suicide terrorism, which would isolate suicide bombers on the fringe of PA society. However, when the entire organizational infrastructure, including social workers, psychologists, medical organizations and all social welfare organizations, refuse to sign an anti-terror declaration, it points to a PA society unified in their support for suicide bombers. This has important ramifications as much international policy, including the Road Map and the attempted isolation of Arafat, is based on the premise that Arafat and those supporting terrorism represent a fringe element, and their isolation would bring about an intrinsic and presumably permanent change in PA policy. However, if the entire society supports terrorism, as the NGOs stand indicates, Arafat's isolation and replacement would not indicate a change of substance, and certainly not an intrinsic and permanent change. The following is the news article that appeared in the PA daily Al Quds. Title: "The representatives of 29 NGOs [Non- Governmental Organizations] in the Bethlehem district reject the USAID document concerning support of the 'terror.' Our people are the victims of the terror." "In the headquarters of the Social Workers and Psychologists Union in Bethlehem, a meeting took place with representatives from 26 NGOs ... [to] discuss the American Development Agency USAID document. [The US document] ... forbids aid to projects belonging to Palestinian agencies and organizations that support terrorism and assist it both directly or indirectly... Without signing this commitment, the funding will be stopped Mohammed Halil Al-Laham, Head of the Popular [Welfare] Service Committee in the Al-Dehisha refugee camp, said that the proposed document by USAID is clear intervention in the affairs of the civil society institutions. The response to this document should not be ambiguous nor hesitant, it should be rejected clearly... Wijdan Al-Aza from the Working Woman's Society... demanded the rejection of any conditional funding or any foreign funding that does not respect not only the beneficiary Palestinian institutions, but also the legitimate goals of the Palestinian people, based on international legitimization. In coordination with the Civil Society Institutions and with the NGOs, Daod Bishara, a member of the legislative parliament, called to coordinate positions regarding this document and its conditions and to hold a general conference in the Palestinian territories in order to take a united position regarding this subject. At the end of the meeting, that was run by Adnan Ita from the Christian Youth Society and by Nabila Al-Dikak from the Social Workers Association, the participants decided to have a follow-up committee that would lead to another expanded meeting, and study the recommendations, with a remark that all those present stated their objection to signing and cooperating with [the terms of] this document. Present at the meeting were also representatives from the District Headquarters and the Palestinian Ministry of Interior and from the Intelligence apparatus. In the same context, the Emergency Committee of the National and Islamic Forces in the district held a meeting, during which all the Civic Society Institutions were called to refuse to sign this document... " [Al Quds, Sept. 23, 2003] This is a "Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin." It's website address is http://www.pmw.org.il.

HIGH HOLYDAYS - HERE AND THERE Posted by Judy Lash Balint, September 24, 2003.

Studies show that certain Jewish rituals are widely observed, even by assimilated or secular Jews. The most popular tradition is attendance at a Passover seder, but a close second is showing up to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services. If it's no longer to observe the religious tradition of personal stock-taking and repentance surrounding the high holydays, then it's to take part in the gathering of the tribe. A time to see and be seen and catch up on family and community gossip. There's often more action in the courtyard or driveway of a synagogue than inside. I grew up in a modern orthodox community in Northwest London in an era when the congregation hired nearby cinemas and church halls to accomodate the "overflow" of three time a year members who wouldn't dream of staying away during Rosh Hashana or Yom Kippur. Even if they only sat in their seats for half an hour, they felt they had earned the right to criticize the chazan, the rabbi's speech and the rebbitzen's Yom Tov attire when they arrived home. Still, few drove to shul because of the proximity of a number of synagogues in the area. As teenagers, we would shul hop. Groups of teens decked out in their holiday best would traipse through the streets of suburban London neighborhoods going from one shul to another to find our friends, flirt and compare our trendy new outfits. Meantime, regular life went on all around us--other kids were in school, the postman delivered mail, shops were open and traffic zoomed past. The atmosphere was distinctly un-Yomtov like. In the U.S where I spent many years, things were pretty much the same, except here, with larger distances between the far-flung suburban Jews and their temples, driving to shul was the norm, except in orthodox communities. Diaspora rabbis know that this is the only time of year they're likely to see many shul members, so they try to pack in as many sermons as humanly possible. The speeches are generally variations on a predictable theme--why don't I see you here more often? High holyday services in the Diaspora tend to be formal affairs with seating charts and an emphasis on how many aliyot to the Torah can be sold to help finance the coming year's budget. In Israel things are very different. Firstly, in the weeks leading up to the holidays there's an atmosphere of anticipation and preparation. Supermarkets extend their hours and run honey cake specials. The outdoor markets are filled with seasonal fruits such as bright scarlet pomegranates almost bursting with seeds, fresh figs and dates. Stalls with Yizkor (memorial) candles and Rosh Hashana cards full of glitter pop up on street corners. Little work gets done as the general answer to all office questions is, "After the holidays.." On the spiritual plane, even Israel TV gets into the act. On the Saturday night before Rosh Hashana it's traditional to recite the Selichot prayers of penitence. Channel One runs a live broadcast of the prayers of a congregation in Jerusalem's Bayit Vegan neighborhhod. Ashkenazic Jews generally start the one hour prayers at midnight, and then every night through Yom Kippur. Sephardim go through the Selichot ritual in the early morning hours every day from the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul until Yom Kippur. In many neighborhoods the cry of the synagogue gabbai (official) yelling out, "Selichot, selichot," at 4:45 a.m every day to waken the faithful marks the beginning of the holyday season. Regular activities grind to a standstill in the early afternoon before Yom Kippur, as buses stop running and stores close to allow families to eat a festive meal before the start of the fast at around 5pm. The clatter of dishes and pots and pans can be heard through every open window. Although my neighborhood is mixed, made up of religious and secular people, (only two of the six families in my building are observant) it seems from my informal survey that the statistics are accurate--more than 85 per cent of Israeli Jews fast on Yom Kippur. In fact, non-religious Jews here do more than just fast on the holiest day of the year. My computer fix-it man, a secular American immigrant, tells me he's going to the mikvah (ritual bath) before Yom Kippur. Mark, who never wears a kippah, has never been to the mikveh before, but was persuaded by a friend that this was part of the Yom Kippur preparation. Last year, a group of secular Tel Avivians took part in a Tashlich ceremony at the beach on Rosh Hashanah, symbolically casting their sins into the Mediterranean. On Kol Nidrei night, the night before Yom Kippur, Israel's streets are traffic free. A tradition among secular Israelis is for kids to use the quiet streets to try out new bikes and roller blades. Families sit on their balconies people-watching with no TV or radio noise to distract them. Among the observant, almost everyone, men and women, dress in white on Yom Kippur. Men in white shirts and the women in simple blouses or dresses--far from the fancy dress code found in most US synagogues. The atmosphere is quiet and serious. Those who do attend services are regulars and are there to pray. Israel's equivalent of the three times a year Jew is most likely to be found relaxing on the beach in Tel Aviv. Judy Lash Balint is a Jerusalem based writer and author of "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" (Gefen), http://www.jerusalemdiaries.com

ISRAEL DIARY - BIRTHDAY WEEK Posted by Barry Chamish, September 24, 2003.

While Israel disintegrates, Shimon Peres threw a birthday bash for himself at much public expense. Little did he know that he provided an opportunity to awaken a nearly defeated people by wrecking his celebration. But would the people exploit their moment? The signs were hopeful on Sept.19/03 when the left-wing newsmagazine Yerushalayim published a huge expose of the proceedings. Not only was the public forced to pay the salaries of 1200 police officers assigned to secure the Peres' party, it was also made to pony up for the civil servants assigned by Likud cabinet ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert who had been working for six months on the orgy; not to mention whatever it costs to feed and entertain the guests at the President's house. All pretty scandalous stuff but the really big scandal was the fraudulent rental of the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv by Peres staff for the 1100 guests. Normally the hall rents for 31,000 shekels, a reasonable sum for the facility. But Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai pressed his city council to defer all costs, based on a request sent on the stationery of the Ministry Of Regional Affairs. That was Peres' last government office, but the problem is he hasn't been Minister Of Regional Affairs for over two years, and in fact, the ministry doesn't even exist anymore. So how did Peres' spokesman Yoram Dori explain away this minor piece of buncoism? "We made a mistake." Well he fessed up, so all is forgiven...Unless someone actually submits a request to the State Comptroller to investigate the con, it looks like it will be. But if someone does demand an investigation, Peres' staff will be there to save him. Asked about the irregularities, Dori explained, "This is a surprise party. Shimon doesn't even know what we're planning for him." The challenge then was to trick Shimon into changing his plans for the evening and shocking him that all his friends would do such a nice thing without him suspecting a thing. But crime has its own price and in Peres' case it was those hard to ignore no-shows. For weeks the birthday boy organizers had promised a glittering array of arriving Hollywood celebrants like Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand and Naomi Campbell. None of them showed up. The only star who did was the long faded Kathlyn Turner, and who noticed? Shimon began his two day festivity by placing a wreath at Rabin Square to the man he murdered, Yitzhak Rabin. The irony was apparently not lost on the Rabin family, none of whom showed up for his celebration. And they were joined by nearly the full roster of the leadership of the far left including Yossi Sarid, Yael Dayan and Avraham Burg. They were furious that the organizers weren't from Peres' own party but were Olmert and Sharon from the enemy camp. To them, this signified that there was no political opposition in the country. Why they asked, would the birthday be not only sanctioned and paid for by Sharon but actually organized by him and his camp? The answer is that the outside power elite ordered Sharon to boost Peres' standing and pay for it. The prestige of Peres and Oslo was at stake and while they would supply Clinton, Anan, Mandela and Gorbechev, Sharon had darn well better be prepared to make sure this con job worked. But it didn't. The biggest embarassment of all was that Mrs. Shimon Peres, Sonia, refused to join the festivities. Here is Dori's amazing explanation for her refusal to return the RSVP; "Sonia is a feminist and does things her way. She hates crowds but will be there in spirit." Needless to say, Dori chose not mention Peres' well known womanizing or long affair with Collette Avital. Nope, 80 year old Sonia wasn't coming in order to take a feminist stand. ... The rally ends and I walk to my car parked near the Mann Auditorium. I see the crowd is leaving so I take out my Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin banner and stood there. I'm amazed that I'm not seeing the creme de la creme of the Left emerging from the event but one after another from the Right and religious sectors. Here is Netanyahu's aide, there is Likud politico Avi Pazner, here comes Rabbi Meshi, the government's agent in the Haredi camp. And then Shas Party spokesman Yitzhak Sudri passes me. I say to him, "Sudri what were you doing in there? You know who murdered Rabin." He answers, "You did." In April 1997, I sat with Sudri in the office of Welfare Minister Eli Suissa. The minister had requested that Sudri inform me that the 1996 general elections were rigged. Peres was blackmailed over his leading role in the Rabin murder to lose the elections. That is what Sudri told me then and now he was spending his evening celebrating Peres. My, my, how the religious political sector has been corrupted! There were a half dozen protesters shaming the party-goers and one was Iris Cohen. I had received reports that she was instigating provocations among various anti-government movements and that she was considered an obvious Shabak agent-provocateur. But there she was, almost alone, doing the work that all of Israel should have been doing. I said to her, "Then you're for real after all?" I recant my previous claim. The Shabak has planted so many instigators among the resistance movements that you don't know who to trust anymore. She is so aggressive that she appeared to be one of them. Now I think she is actually real after all. The last person out of the hall is Greer Faye Cashman, the Jerusalem Post gossip columnist who has been grinding out pro-Peres puffery for years. I say to her, "Greer, I've been getting reports that you are being paid by Peres' PR agency to plant nice things about him in your column. Do you get money from them?" Highly flustered, she denied it. "Then," I queried, "Why are you always going to bat for him?" She ran away from me. The next day her report on the party had a different tone. Half the front-page article concentrated on the protests against the celebrations. One more tiny victory. When I go out and meet the public, I get information. One informant told me, "Get the tv films of the Rabin assassination night. I saw something important. The camera was aimed at Ibn Gvirol street and one of the crowd picked up a bullet clip wrapped in black tape. He gave it to a policeman. Whose clip was that? It wasn't Amir's." Another concerned Israeli took me aside and whispered, "This is inside information and it's accurate. There is a new policy in the Shabak. They think the settlers only suspect religious-looking Ashkenazim as agents, so they've switched to Sephardim mostly." Then attorney Menachem Koren-Weitz had a long conversation with me. "I knew there was a conspiracy before you did and here's why. I've been an attorney in criminal trials at the Tel Aviv Court building often enough to know the procedure. The building is designed to prevent the accused from having any verbal contact with anyone. When Amir was brought in for his hearing two days after the murder, all the regulations were lifted and he was allowed to say whatever he wanted to the media. All his public confessions then were a deliberate part of the coverup." Attorney Koren-Weitz also gave me career advice. He suggested I don't publicize my Hebrew edition of Save Israel! anymore. "Everyone is saying the Shabak gave you something to make you crazy. Stick with Rabin and forget the new book. It's too much for our people." I replied, "When I put out Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin the same people thought I was crazy then. Nine years later, half the country know I was right from the beginning. It'll take nine years, if we have them, but Save Israel! will be vindicated." A few days before, the influential newsmagazine Makor Rishon published a long cover story on my new book. The photographer was highly talented, the reporter not too bright. The result was precisely the sort of disbelief that Who Murdered Yitzhak Rabin engendered. Selling New World Order conspiracy to a tired and unthinking Israeli public has its down sides but the truth will out this time, just as last. The birthday bash ends and I go home. At the protest rally, I'm told to turn on Channel One television at 12:15 for an unexpected surprise. Here, on government-owned tv is a one hour discussion of conspiracy with a well-respected host and three political scientists. They talk about the illuminati, the Jesuits, 9-11 and Rabin. They talk about me and show a clip of me lecturing. And the tone isn't angry or embarassing. The discussion includes admissions that some conspiracies are real. Without Save Israel published in Hebrew, and all the attention it has received, would this program have aired? Would Israelis have been given a new perspective on political reality? Another small victory. In time, they may all add up to actually Saving Israel. I now have a new lecture based on Save Israel! For those who have already invited me to their shuls and homes to present my Rabin lecture, reinvite me to hear: Save Israel - The Dirty Secrets Of Oslo. Write: chamish@netvision.net.il Let's all have a happy and, finally, truthful new year. The truth in Hebrew is at http://chamish.tsedek.com And: http://www.trumpetsounds.com/peres.html This article was shortened from the original.

DREAM MAKER OR DREAM WRECKER? Posted by Michael Freund, September 24, 2003.

Anyone who thought that wisdom necessarily comes with age ought to read the interview with Shimon Peres that appeared in this past Friday's Maariv. Unlike other politicians advanced in years, the octogenarian Peres, who celebrated his 80th birthday this week, showed few if any signs of having become a "statesman," with all the grace and geniality such a title implies. Instead, with characteristic hubris, the father of Oslo repeatedly refused to voice regret for the failed accords, and he was unwilling even to acknowledge the error of his ways. Not a word crossed his lips about the countless victims of his misguided policies, nor was there any expression of sympathy for those who had suffered as a result. Sounding like the tired and resentful politician that he has become, Peres launched into one his standard diatribes, singling out for abuse those who had warned all along that his foolhardy proposals would inevitably lead to disaster and bloodshed. Asserting that Oslo's opponents suffered from a form of "psychosis," Peres bitterly attacked them as "the greatest makers of mistakes in Israel's history." I'm no psychiatrist, but that sure sounds like "projection" to me. After all, Peres is the one who stripped Israel of vital strategic assets, undermined the nation's morale and sought to forcibly uproot tens of thousands of Jews from their homes, all in the name of pursuing his failed vision of "peace." With a record like that, he is hardly in a position to be pointing fingers. But perhaps the most revealing of Peres' remarks came when he addressed the issue of Eretz Yisrael HaShleimah, or "Greater Israel" as the media likes to call it. "The idea of Greater Israel has gone bankrupt," ,said Peres, asserting that there is no choice but to divide the land between Arabs and Jews. While Peres certainly knows a thing or two about intellectual bankruptcy (as his espousal of socialism and rejection of capitalism in the same interview make clear), his attack on "Greater Israel" is truly remarkable, if only because it is so terribly off the mark. Simply put, the idea of "Greater Israel" is the fulfillment of Zionism itself. It is the dream that the Jewish people have faithfully carried over the past 19 centuries, during the darkest hours of the Exile, to return to the cradle of their ancestral home, the Land of Israel. This idea nurtured the Jewish people throughout the millennia, giving them hope in the face of despair. Its validity rested on the promises of the Prophets, who long ago foretold Israel's exile and return. The solvency of "Greater Israel" (or insolvency as Peres would have us believe) has nothing to do with this or that political development, but it has everything to do with the aspirations and yearnings of the Jewish people. "Greater Israel" was alive and well in the 15th century, hundreds of years before the State of Israel was established, and it is alive and well today. Simply because Peres and his comrades succeeded temporarily in withdrawing from parts of the Land in no way undercuts the long-term legitimacy of the idea. Every national struggle, including our own, is fraught with ups and downs, advances and retreats. For Peres to think that his little experiment in withdrawal somehow extinguishes all of Jewish history and Jewish destiny is both the height of arrogance and conceit. Indeed, ironically enough, on the very day that Peres was celebrating his birthday, a news item in the Israeli media noted that a group of Jewish businessmen have succeeded in purchasing territory around Rachel's Tomb, on the outskirts of Bethlehem. And, according to the 2002 Statistical Abstract published by the College of Judea and Samaria, the Jewish population of the territories has more than doubled in the ten years since Oslo, experiencing unparalleled growth of 144 percent. This redemption of Jewish land, which is constantly taking place throughout Judea, Samaria and Gaza, is tangible proof that the idea of "Greater Israel" is far from dead or bankrupt. So long as there are loyal and believing Jews who remain faithful to our heritage, and who cling to our national patrimony with fortitude and determination, the dream of reclaiming the entire Land of Israel will never die. By declaring the idea to be bankrupt, however, Peres is showing himself for what he truly is: not a dream-maker, but a dream-wrecker, someone who has chosen to devote his remaining energies to tearing things down rather than building them up. But you can't just kill someone's dreams, and certainly not those of a nation as formidable as the Jewish people. As Menachem Begin once put it, "Faith is perhaps stronger than reality, for faith itself creates reality." And our faith in restoring Greater Israel remains as resolute as ever. So with all due respect, Mr. Peres, don't forget that the idea of Greater Israel predates you by thousands of years. And it will undoubtedly continue to endure long after you are gone. Happy birthday. The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning in the Prime Minister's Office under former premier Benjamin Netanyahu. This article appeared today on the Jerusalem Post.

FIGHTING IN THE DARK Posted by Yashiko Sagamori, September 23, 2003.

Like a brick sinking in a cesspool, the US-led invasion in Iraq met virtually no resistance. Now the brick is about to hit the bottom, but the contents of the cesspool still haven't turned into anything even remotely benign. Apparently, this is not what the campaign organizers had in mind when they were telling the world about Saddam's forbidden arms and connections to Al Qaeda. Now they are at a loss what to do, and as a result the United States is begging the UN to take Iraq off its hands. What went wrong? Why, after two victorious campaigns against enemies of the United States, is the terror alert level still frozen in the middle of the scale? Why are we still bracing for another attack, knowing exactly who will deal us the next blow, just not knowing where or when? This wouldn't be the very first time the United States has failed to reap the political fruit of a military victory. Let's take a look at the Gulf War of 1991. Don't take me wrong: I was all for it. When it started, I was as enthusiastic about it as the next person. But now, 12 years later, I look back and ask myself: What was the real purpose of that war? You know the official answer: to fulfill the UN mandate to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. That's good. That's noble. Not as noble as the liberation of Israel from Arab occupation would be, but still noble. And yet, what's in it for me? More importantly, what's in it for more than 300 American families whose loved ones didn't come back from that war? Did they give their lives in Iraq defending their country? At this point, inevitably, someone should mention oil. But oil is a totally lousy excuse for the Gulf War. When I buy gasoline, I don't ask (although I probably should) whose oil it's made from. Suppose Saddam had been allowed to keep Kuwait along with all its oil. How would it affect me? The answer is, it wouldn't. Saddam would've been selling Kuwaiti oil just like he was selling his own - what else was there for him to do with it? Of course, it would've made him so much richer, and that would've been unbearably unfair, but still far less unfair than the needless death of an American soldier in some godforsaken desert. If freedom-loving Kuwaitis were so unhappy about being invaded by their Iraqi brothers, I wouldn't mind them fighting Saddam's aggression with all their might. I wouldn't even mind us supporting their valiant, patriotic effort by selling them some hardware and ammo: they could easily afford it, and it would've kept a few people in the US employed throughout Papa Bush's economic recession. If the Kuwaitis couldn't defend themselves, the matter should have been taken care of by the Arab League - it was an entirely internal Arab affair after all. And if the Arab League had once again demonstrated that Arab gallantry does not extend beyond the murder of the defenseless, the UN could've sent the blue helmets in and restored peace in the region. I do not see why American soldiers had to die - or American taxpayers foot the bill - defending the Al Sabah family. Let's ask the most obvious question: Besides the Al Sabahs, whose neck was George Bush Sr. really saving by his invasion of Iraq? Who would be next on Saddam's list? Who has the most oil in the world? Who has been the most reliable US ally in the region? Who is the most devoted supporter of our War on Terror? But of course: the Saudi royal family, the white-robed leaders of the Wahhabi sect, the faithful minders of Mecca and Medina, the ever vigilant keepers of the true-blue Islam, the inexhaustible financiers of jihad all over the world. Is that who our soldiers were sent to defend with their lives half the world away from home - the Saudi royals? Apparently, the Bush family is far less indifferent than I am in regard to the source of the oil we are burning in this country. For whatever reason, they prefer their oil to come from British-made Arab royalty. It has become even more obvious now that, despite all the evidence pointing at Saudi Arabia's leading role in the international Islamic conspiracy against Judeo-Christian civilization, the White House goes out of its way to find an excuse to praise the Saudi rulers for their role in the War on Terror. Why? I don't have an answer. Do you? Let us then take a hard look at our current War on Terror. The most efficient weapon used by our enemy is the suicide bombings. The most efficient weapon Japan used against us in WWII was the kamikazes. Nevertheless FDR did not declare a war on kamikazes: he declared a war on Japan instead. He was right: when you have to fight, you don't fight the enemy's weapon - you fight those who are trying to kill you with it. Terror is not the enemy. Terror is just a weapon. As long as we are fighting the weapon instead of the enemy, we are bound to lose. Declaring his war in the wake of September 11, President Bush miserably failed to identify the real enemy. Against all evidence, he emphatically stated, Islam is not the enemy." That's why our spectacular victories in Afghanistan and Iraq have failed to improve our homeland security even by a notch. That's why we got stuck in both places with no end in sight and no clue what to do with them. And while our military is tied up in Afghanistan and Iraq, the remaining members of the "axis of evil," North Korea and Iran, lead the nuclear arms race unimpeded and unafraid. Meanwhile our enemies don't even bother to camouflage themselves. On September 11, while hundreds of people were standing on windowsills of the Twin Towers deciding whether to jump or burn alive, a spontaneous celebration began in Moslem communities all over the world, from Cairo, Egypt, to Ramallah, Israel, to Dearborn, MI, to Patterson, NJ, to Brooklyn, NY. Elated Moslem crowds were dancing in the streets and passing sweets around. A friend described to me a scene she witnessed at the ObGyn waiting room of a Manhattan hospital where the TV was showing the tragedy live. Two heavily pregnant Arab women were happily laughing and clapping their hands while watching it. When the first tower fell, they hugged and kissed and began jumping up and down. Obviously, they weren't afraid to shake their fetuses lose in the process, proving once again that Golda Meir was right when she said that Arabs hate us more than they love their own children. The rest of those present didn't interfere: after all, America, even under attack, is still a free country. So, since the president has failed to name the enemy, let us do it and state the obvious. Contrary to his assertions, the enemy is Islam. Of course, there are all kinds of Moslems (just like there are all kinds of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Zoroastrians), and I am sure that most of them are perfectly agreeable people. The same, by the way, was equally true for Germans during WWII. But Nazism had to be dealt with, and mostly laudable personal qualities of individual Germans became tragically irrelevant. Regardless of the rich variety of Moslem personalities out there, there is only one kind of Islam, and it is certainly not a "religion of peace and love" as our useful idiots are trying to assure us. "Moderate" Islam exists only in Islamic propaganda. There are observant Moslems and non-observant Moslems. A non-observant Moslem makes his decision for him- or herself, just like God intended us to. An observant Moslem cannot abstain from jihad, just like an observant Jew can never enjoy bacon and eggs for breakfast, no matter how strong the craving. Islam proclaims jihad the most sacred duty of the faithful. That makes sense: the "Holy" Koran played the same role fourteen centuries ago as Mein Kampf did in the 1930's: both outlined the goals and ideology of conquest, mass murder and enslavement in the language most appropriate for their respective intended audiences. Observant Moslems, like loyal Nazis, have no choice but to follow the call. Religious scholars of various persuasions, Moslems and non-Moslems alike, will tell you that jihad is not really a war, that it is a deeply personal, internal struggle of a faithful Moslem striving for spiritual perfection. A documentary on Mohammad shown recently on PBS assured the viewers that the extermination of the Jews of Medina was not an act of anti-Semitism or genocide on Mohammad's part. And Hamas declared that the two "small" suicide bombings at the beginning of hudna did not violate it. It is your choice to believe your ears or your eyes. Moslem hostility towards the civilized world manifests itself in many various forms, but September 11 brought it out into the open, making it available to everyone's scrutiny. Instead of sympathy for the suffering of the victims, the attack prompted an especially vicious wave of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Moslems around the world. Even in countries like Pakistan whose leaders are opportunistic enough to pretend they are supporting us in this war, the population hates us with a passion they aren't even trying to mask. You want to get rich quick? Start exporting easily flammable American and Israeli flags into Moslem countries. One would think it would be in the best interests of the United States and Great Britain to isolate the emerging government of Iraq from the rest of the Moslem and especially Arab world. Instead, after some hard behind-closed-doors diplomacy, the United States achieved the acceptance of the Iraqi governing council into the Arab League. How is that a victory for us? The Arab League is an assembly of our sworn enemies. Arabs hate our guts! They use every opportunity to murder us! Why are we wasting our soldiers' lives and billions upon billions of dollars in Iraq if our government so readily gives away everything we win there? When the war was still in the future, Hosni Mubarak announced that attacking Iraq would be a catastrophe because it would destroy stability in the region. When I heard it, I thought proudly that President Bush was doing the right thing. What the Egyptian president euphemistically calls the "stability in the region" is the stability of feudal dictatorships, ruling dynasties without grace or nobility, and stagnant, corrupt societies that should've been outlawed long before Great Britain got a chance to enthrone tribal chieftains within randomly drawn borders. Stability in the region means the never-ending genocidal war of Arabs against Israel. Stability in the region means that the enemy is free to conduct jihad unmolested. Destroying that "stability" should've been the primary US goal in Iraq. Shutting down all Islamic institutions in the US should've been the highest priority of our new Department of Homeland Security. Instead, our government has done everything it could to avoid fighting the real enemy. Dozens of American soldiers have already paid for the White House's political games with their lives. Eventually, we will all have to pay the price for the cowardice of this Administration, both in the United States and Israel. Other essays by Sagamori can be read on http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko.

TEN YEARS OF OSLO Posted by Ruth Matar, September 23, 2003.

Dear Friends, Naomi Ragen, the well known author, sent out the following email on September 19, two days before Peres' birthday celebration. She listed her subject as: "Let's wish Mr. Peres the birthday he deserves." "Well, I'm back. The terrible events that took place while I was away touched me in far off places, because wherever our bodies are, our hearts are always in Jerusalem. "I understand Shimon Peres is going to have a big, state-sponsored 80th birthday this Sunday, with invited guests including such friends of Israel as Bill Clinton. "I'd like to wish Mr. Peres a happy birthday, and to thank him for his continuing contributions to the people of Israel: "Thank you, Mr. Peres, for bringing back Yasir Arafat from Tunis, and for writing your book The New Middle East, to convince the Israeli public to put their lives into Arafat's hands. "Thank you, Mr. Peres, for again, and again, and again, backing up Yasir Arafat each time a terrorist attack killed our people, helping to convince Israelis, and the world, that Arafat wasn't responsible. "Thank you, for contributing more than any other person, to the ability of terrorist organizations to evade responsibility, to set up shop in Israel, causing the death of over eight hundred men, women and children, and the injury of thousands more. "Thank you, Mr. Peres, for paying Roed Larson, over $100,000, a prize from the Peres Center for Peace, for helping you to get a Nobel Prize. Before, during and after getting his prize, Mr. Larsen was notorious for his wonderful contributions to our area, including non-stop incitement against the Israeli people, government and armed forces. "Thank you, Mr. Peres, for being a true quisling, in a nation that has many; for never visiting a terror victim, for never taking responsibility for Oslo's disasters, for preening and congratulating yourself on your many achievements at the expense of our lives. "Because of you, thousands in Israel will never reach the age of eighty. Because of you many families will never be able to celebrate a loved one's birthday. "Those who would like to express their appreciation and good wishes to Mr. Peres, can join the following demonstration opposite his party in Tel Aviv, on Sunday, September 21 organized by Women in Green (who were right all along...)" Naomi We have been criticized by quite a number of people, especially in the leftist media, for holding a protest Rally where Peres' birthday party was held, and thus "raining on his parade." However, we felt that, as Shakespeare had Mark Anthony say in the famous funeral oration in "Julius Caesar": "The evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." Whatever good Shimon Peres has done, pales in comparison with the tragedy he has brought upon the Jewish People. Over a thousand people took part in a very meaningful Rally outside the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv on Sunday night. Shimon Peres had a dazzling birthday party inside - with all the rich and famous and powerful lauding him for his great "Achievements of Oslo." We, on the other hand, stood outside and mourned the 1,200 murdered and many thousands maimed for life, all because Shimon Peres secretly made agreements with an enemy organization bent on Israel's destruction. There were no cocktails served at our gathering. Nor was there any festive music. Only the Prayer "El Male Rachamim" (G-d full of Mercy) and pre-Rosh HaShana Shofar blowing, which is meant to "wake us from our slumber" and take time to get into the mode of introspection and reviewing our actions of the past year; and to repent both as individuals and as a nation. We had thirty speakers in all. We deliberately did not invite politicians but only leaders of grass roots groups opposed to giving away the Land. We also asked some family members of terror victims to speak. There was not a dry eye amongst us, when the father of 16 year old David Boim, who was murdered on his way home from school, said with tears in his eyes: "Parents should never have to bury their own children." The daughter of Rabbi Ra'anan spoke movingly about her father, who was murdered in Hebron by an Arab terrorist, who broke into their home while they were sleeping. Each speaker, after a very short address, read some of the names of the people murdered. After each name was read, all of us said in unison: "May Hashem avenge his blood." The demonstration was powerful and moving, but in no way depressing or hopeless, because we knew that we, outside the Mann Auditorium, represented the majority of the Jewish People, those who love their Land, their Heritage, and their People. Peres, after loosing the 1996 election to Binyamin Netanyahu, answered questions the day after in an interview with Ha'aretz: Interviewer: What happened in these elections?  Peres: We lost.  Interviewer: Who is we?  Peres: We, that is the Israelis.  Interviewer: And who won?  Peres: All those who do not have an Israeli mentality.  Interviewer: And who are they?  Peres: Call it the Jews. We are the "Jews" Peres spoke about. We're proud not to have the Peres mentality! In the name of all those who were killed and maimed, and all those who are alive and well and want to see Israel as a strong Jewish State - we vowed to make sure that the Jews will always have the upper hand and we vowed to save our country from Shimon Peres and the other Oslo criminals. That is why the singing of Hatikva at the end of our demo was loud, clear and strong. Hatikva, Israel's national anthem, means hope! We know that our message "The Land of Israel, belongs to the People of Israel, based on the Torah of Israel" is the only hope for the survival of Israel as a Jewish state. And we know that in the end, with God's help, this Jewish message is the one that will prevail. Shana Tova! With Blessings and Love for Israel,   Ruth and Nadia Matar The website address for Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green) is http://www.womeningreen.org. To contribute, go to https://host5.apollohosting.com/womeningreen/donation.html

SEEKING PRAISE, GETTING CRITICISM Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 23, 2003.

Israeli officials gear their policy to what they think would bring them praise, but for which they get criticism. If this failure puzzles them, they don't admit it. They keep on making the same mistakes. The explanation for the failure of their appeasement is simple. The people whose praise Israel seeks are no friends of it. They are undeclared enemies. Foremost is the traditionally anti-Zionist US State Dept. Sometimes the State Dept. might express satisfaction with some sacrificial act by Israel, an act that Israelis should condemn. Mostly, the State Dept. is displeased with the existence of Israel, itself. Israel cannot win its good graces. With each concession by Israel, the next requested concession moves up to the top of the State Dept. list. The US pressure that won the first concession, now moves to seeking another.

CONSEQUENCES JINSA Report #362, September 23, 2003.

Over the weekend, President Bush laid blame for the failure of American-led peace efforts directly on Yasser Arafat. Within hours, "Prime Minister" Abu Ala announced that Arafat is his boss and the US should deal with him as a full partner. The obvious American response should be to regard neither as a partner. It is time for the US to stop protecting the Palestinians from the consequences of their lousy choices of leadership and of policy. The best way would be for the US to support Israel's sovereign decisions about "settlements," the security fence and eliminating terrorist leaders. The Palestinians want Jews to forego building on land east of the 1949 armistice line in order that the land remain relatively empty just in case they some day decide to make a deal for the state they rejected in 1948. The State Department calls Israeli housing an "obstacle to peace." But the real obstacle is Arab unwillingness to accept a sovereign Israel and the Palestinian terrorism that accompanies that refusal. The US should tell the Palestinians that Israel cannot be prevented from building houses on land that is, after all, only the unallocated portion of the British Mandate, once occupied by Jordan and acquired by Israel in a defensive war in 1967. The Palestinians should have to decide whether they want to have a country or prefer to continue their rejection of the legitimacy of Israel. Israel should not have to wait for them. Likewise the fence. No one likes the fence - not Israelis, not Americans and not Palestinians. But the fence is a response to more than 850 Israeli deaths by terrorism, and Israel is entitled to determine how best to deal with that. The fastest way to stop the fence would be to tell the Palestinians that unless they stop the suicide bombers not only will the US not withhold money from Israel, but will instead FUND the fence. As the fence goes up, the Palestinians will have to decide whether they will end up behind it or take the steps that will obviate it. Israel should not have to wait for them. Likewise targeted killings. Palestinian terrorists violate the Geneva Convention by living among civilians, believing Israel either will not target them, or will kill enough civilians to evoke the wrath of the US. Their cynical use of their own people is appalling, but their calculation appears justified by the US response, which has been to criticize Israel. Instead, the US should be telling Palestinian civilians that the US cannot protect them, and while Israel will try not to kill them, in fact Israel cannot protect them either. Non-terrorist Palestinians will have to decide whether they want to continue sleeping next to terrorists or give them the boot. Israel shouldn't have to wait for them. [Terrorists don't get to decide anything ? they simply have to know that they will die.] This is not to punish the Palestinians. It is simply to make the consequences of Jew hatred and terrorism fall on those who hate and kill, and those who support them. Rather like the President's policy in Afghanistan and Iraq. It would be a bold stroke for the US and frankly, we doubt the State Department has the nerve. But we challenge the Administration, then, to tell us why Israel is threatened with the loss of American political and financial support for fighting terrorism on its streets while the Palestinians are protected from Israel's righteous wrath.

HIZBULLAH TIME WARP Posted by Honest Reporting, September 23, 2003.

Negotiations are underway between Israel and Hizbullah for a large-scale prisoner exchange. Israel is reportedly willing to release hundreds of Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners in exchange for Israeli businessman Elchanan Tannenbaum and the bodies of three missing IDF soldiers. Two news agencies took this opportunity to provide short - but misleading - synopses of the Israel-Hizbullah conflict. Agence France-Presse (AFP) states only that Hizbullah "was instrumental in the guerrilla war that led to the May 2000 Israeli troop pullout from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation." While this statement is factually accurate, it completely misrepresents the nature of the Israel-Hizbullah conflict by drawing upon an earlier historical period and encouraging an understanding of Hizbullah as freedom fighters. In fact, Hizbullah was formed in 1982 not merely to resist IDF presence in Lebanon, but to destroy Israel and extend radical Islamic control over the entire region, as stated in Hizbullah's official manifesto, and as repeated publicly by every Hizbullah leader for the past twenty years. Moreover, Hizbullah has continued to rain down Ketusha rockets on northern Israel even after the IDF's 2000 withdrawal from southern Lebanon. This, after UN secretary general Kofi Annan determined the IDF withdrawal to be " in full compliance with Security Council resolution 425." Just last month, an Israeli teenager in northern Israel was killed by a Hizbullah rocket. So why does AFP reach back to the earlier timeframe of IDF presence in Lebanon? This maneuver ignores the more germane and telling facts regarding Hizbullah's ongoing terror against Israeli citizens. The more relevant time frame to provide background for today's news report is post-Israeli withdrawal, when the actual Israeli prisoner and soldiers who stand to be released were abducted. Comments to AFP: contact@afp.com Associated Press (AP) summarized the conflict in a similar manner: Hizbullah merely "fought Israeli troops during the 1980s and 1990s in south Lebanon." In an apparent response to critical feedback, AP added an additional line in later editions: "Since Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, Hezbollah has occasionally shelled Israel and attacked Israeli troops because of a remaining border dispute." The "border dispute" justification mentioned by AP is Hizbullah's claim to Shabaa Farms, a region in the northern Golan Heights that even the UN recognizes to stand outside of any legitimate Lebanese claim. Shaaba Farms is clearly used by Hizbullah, therefore, as a mere pretext for ongoing anti-Israeli terror. By granting this pretext legitimacy, AP further obscures the ferocity of Hizbullah's actual campaign " to wipe Israel off the map. Comments to AP: feedback@ap.org Let's not forget that American officials consider Hizbullah one of the most dangerous terrorist groups in the world - one that has killed, over the past 20 years, more than 300 Americans, and served as model for world terror. As writer Jeffrey Goldberg states, "Al Qaeda learned the value of choreographed violence from Hizbullah."

ON THE NEW YEAR: CHOOSING LIFE Posted by Paula R. Stern, September 23, 2003.

On the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israelis are experiencing a sense of depression, as well as a sense of acceptance. We are smarter than we were last year, and more cynical. We have less faith in the world at large, but more faith in our own abilities to persevere. We are angrier than we were last year, but we are also more united and gentler with our own. We are a year older, a year wiser, and a year more isolated than we were before. We have lost our fathers and mothers, our sons and daughters, our grandparents, and doctors. We have lost our teachers and rabbis, our students and artists. We have lost a father the day after his son's wedding, and a father and a young bride the day before she was to be married. We have lost so much, and somewhere in the midst of all this loss, we have found ourselves again. Many have come here to live at a time when  normal" people would be running in the other direction. Israel is ours and we finally understand that it does not matter what the world says or does. We cannot change them, cannot convince them. We can only do what we must. Last year, we still believed there could be a peaceful solution, that a roadmap could be found to lead us out before we hit bottom. For the sake of peace, we thought last year. We would tear our land apart, divide our communities. We would cut our heart, divide our soul. We would sacrifice and achieve peace and, with that peace, retain access, if not ownership, to our history, portions of our land, places in our hearts. This year, we hit bottom. We buried our babies and those about to be born. We ached in places we didn't know we could hurt, cried tears we thought had long since been spent, and watched the blood flow in our land. And finally, across the political spectrum we understood that peace, the greatest of our dreams, our deepest hope, could not be attained through surrender, withdrawal, submission, and acceptance. The price they demanded was simply too high, too much. But more importantly, they were not prepared to pay equally, not prepared to even deliver on what we paid. This year, as in the two that preceded it, they attacked our buses, our cafes, our way of life. They ambushed our soldiers, our young. They kidnapped, stoned, bombed, lynched and tortured us. They desecrated our holy places, burned them, smashed them. They terrorized our roads and our cities. They tried to deny our connection with Jerusalem, attempted to write their history by rewriting ours. Lies, murder, deceit, betrayal. An arsenal of immorality was cloaked in their holy terms of martyrdom. But with the new year, comes rebirth. Fathers are raising their motherless infants. Wives that lost their husbands, are birthing their children in a final promise to hold on to the connection between the future and the past. Our planes flew over Auschwitz and we asked forgiveness to the millions who died there. We came 60 years too late, but it won't happen again. Maybe this time, this time, we will not cave in to the demands and the blackmail of others. Our greatest allies and our cursed enemies, all ask us to show restraint while our children cry that they cannot take it anymore, that they are afraid. We are learning to listen to our children. A new year is upon us. An anniversary of three years passing. Three years in which we have been hunted, while being accused of being the hunter. We have been bombed, while being accused of being the bombers. They tell us that we incite, we target, we kill. And yet each of our operations comes in response to their actions. We target killers who have sent their booby trapped sons into our midst drugged on the lies of future paradise. It is hard, after three years, to believe that there will suddenly be an end to this violence, that the day will come soon when we can put our children on buses and not force them to call, when we can leave them at bus stations and not hold our breathes, fearing that we will hear a boom as we drive away. But under the pessimism and the depression, as in the deepest months of winter, there is a blossom of hope and optimism beginning to grow. We will survive this. We have rededicated ourselves to the State. We will not surrender our rights to live here. So despite Cafe Hillel blowing up, we still had to search for a table when we went out to eat. Despite the number 2 bus being targeted, my daughter and son still have to stand on the ride home during rush hour. Despite the malls and stores that are being attacked, I still had to wait until the tourists had finished purchasing a whole load of presents before buying my husband his birthday gift. Our eyes were watchful as we ate in the cafe. My daughter was nervous on the bus, and the tourist asked if we weren't a little afraid to live here as she made her purchase. But we eat and drink, we ride the buses and we buy our gifts. In short, we live in our country because that is the choice we were commanded to make long ago. "I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both you and your children may live." (Devarim/Deuteronomy 30:19) As we prepare to celebrate the new year, the last year can be summed up simply as a choice made. We chose peace long ago, and that has not changed. But peace is not an option so long as Yasser Arafat, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah will not allow it. And so, in the absence of peace, we have chosen life. May we all be written into the book of life for the coming year, and may only our enemies know the sorrow they would inflict upon us.

WHAT YOU WON'T HEAR AGAINST THE WALL Posted by Eliezar Edwards, September 23, 2003.

This was in Arutz Shevah (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com) today. When you think about it, first only the Leftists wanted the fence, to make a de facto boundary for the PA state they were promoting. Now, it's the Government. If the Government is pushing it, maybe it's because Sharon is afraid that the way the US is pushing a PA state, Israel won't have any piece of Samaria-Judea if it doesn't put in some territorial markers. Anyways, what Colonel Yogev says makes sense. Prof. Amnon Yogev of Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, a Colonel in the IDF reserves, explained to Arutz-7 today what he has against the counter-terrorism partition wall currently under construction in Israel: "If the current situation continues, where the IDF is on both sides [of the planned route of the wall], and the terrorists can produce, let's say, only 1-2 attacks a week - then of course obstacles and other means of warning can help. But if it becomes an ideology of separation - one that says that the Arabs will be on one side and we're on the other, and all attacks will be stopped at the fence - this is total nonsense... "If the wall is totally closed, and the IDF is only on one side of it, then the terrorists can prepare many more than 1-2 attacks and infiltrations a week. After all, the Arabs have 40,000 armed men inside! In such a case, the IDF won't have the manpower to go after all of them... "But I'm not only talking about terrorism. Some people talk about the fence as something that will divide the populations, and will obviate the need for strategic depth and for topographical advantages, and will enable us to live on our side of the wall happily ever after. This is total nonsense. "Unfortunately, the campaign for a wall started as a gimmick during the elections [earlier this year], and it gained momentum, and now you can barely hear a word against it in the media or elsewhere. People think that is the absolute truth, and are even demanding an investigative commission into why there is no fence; they think that if Iraq had built a wall, the Americans wouldn't have been able to win the war." Yogev mentioned in this connection the Bar-Lev Line that Israel built to ward off an Egyptian attack. The Bar-Lev Line was a series of 33 heavily fortified observation posts built after the Six-Day War atop sand ramparts 8-10 meters high along the east bank of the Suez Canal; it should be noted that then-IDF officer Ariel Sharon, already a recognized military hero, opposed it at the time. "The Egyptians penetrated and destroyed this line at 14 different points during the Yom Kippur War," Yogev said. "The only difference between this wall and Bar-Lev is that the current partition is much more flimsy... If the government wants to build it to stop an attack or two, fine - as long as the army continues to fight terrorism. But to throw away billions on it and say that it will end all our problems, that's ridiculous... True, [Gen.] Uzi Dayan is in favor of it - but only as a 'security fence,' not as a 'partition wall,' and he says that the IDF will have to continue to fight terrorism..." Asked about the example of Gaza, where the fence is apparently successful in stopping penetrations, Yogev said, "They send terrorists from Hevron, so why do they have to send them through the fence? And besides that, the topography is totally different, such that it would be much easier to infiltrate a fence/wall in Judea and Samaria than in Gaza..."

THE KISS OF DEATH Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, September 23, 2003.

Most of us recall the Biblical story of Ya'acov (Jacob) fleeing from Esau after he had traded Esau a bowl of pottage for Esau's birthright as first son. Esau swore vengeance and so Ya'acov left the land of his fathers. Years later, Ya'acov returned, expecting the worst violent treatment, even death, from his twin, Esau. But instead, Esau kissed him on the neck. Many scholars believe that Esau still wanted to kill Ya'acov and the 'kiss on the neck' was a barely restrained bite which could have torn open Ya'acov's throat at the jugular vein. Israel has been thus similarly 'kissed' by her enemies, some barely restrained - while others bit deeply - to the point of death. Ya'acov has once again returned to the ancestral home of his forefathers and mothers. The Greeting this time was open warfare and continual Terror attacks wherever and whenever Israel was vulnerable. After 7 wars* initiated by the Arab Muslims - which were miraculously won by the Jewish Israelis - the Muslim Arabs 'pretended' that they wished 'only' to kiss the Jews and thus convinced deluded dreamers like Shimon Peres and others of his ilk that Yassir Arafat, master of Terrorism since the 1960s (1) would, indeed, kiss him and the Jews in Israel. The word: 'naive' or even: 'stupid' would be insufficient to describe the secret, illegal dealings with Arafat for which Peres should, according to law, have been tried, convicted and imprisoned. After much such plotting, Peres and Yossi Beilin negotiated the Oslo Accords, forced them on Yitzhak Rabin (unless he was truly a co-conspirator) and the fatal kiss of death for 1476 innocent Jews, Americans and others was firmly planted on the necks of the Jewish people. Others played a vital role in this devious 'kiss of death'. The Europeans slowly drifted away from their guilt for the deaths of 6 million during the Nazi Holocaust when they helped by turning their Jews over to Hitler's killing machine. The Europeans continued to say the correct words but, underneath they were conspiring with the Arab Muslims and those Israeli Jews called Leftists to make "Judenrein" (Jew-free) the land promised to the Jews by G-d. Their words always came out like kisses but, their lips dripped with poison. America was Israel's only real friend - except for the Arabists in the U.S. State Department and some Presidents closely tied to Arab kings for the oil they sat on. These enemies of the Jews couldn't easily come out publically and say: "We hate you Jews because our friends, the Arab Muslims hate you!" So instead, they planted public political kisses but, out of the sunshine of public scrutiny, they tried to kiss Israel's neck with pointed teeth. President George W. Bush has issued a 'dead or alive' reward of $25 million for Saddam Hussein. When Israel wishes to eject Arafat, Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell, along with the Europeans, United Nations and Russia say "NO!" From Ram'Allah Arafat continues to issue orders for hideous but dramatic Terror assaults. Israel's detractors did plant a kiss of death on all Jewish Israelis who are yet to be murdered due to the cloak of protection provided by Bush, Powell, the U.N.(especially the U.N. Security Council, led by Syria - themselves the mirror image of Saddam's violent regime). When the U.S. vetoed the biased U.N. Security Council vote, Syria went directly to the U.N.'s General Assembly and, not surprisingly, gave the Arab Muslims and the Europeans the vote they wanted, namely, protecting the arch Terrorist, Yassir Arafat. That vote made sense since many of the voting nations themselves are led by dictators who rightfully fear for their own lives due to the cruelty with which they rule. Subsequently, Bush and Powell continued to threaten Israel with a reduction of the $9 Billion of promised loan guarantees for amount spent on the Wall of Separation which Israel is building in an almost futile effort to keep the Terrorists out of Israel's populations centers. But, while the threat is real, Bush makes speeches expressing his understanding for Israel's concern regarding Terror and Israel's right of self-defense. Then comes the practical 'kiss of death', wherein the threat tells Israel NOT to protect herself. Will the next kiss of death be a statement by the E.U., led by France and Germany, with the Quartet, to the effect that they are sending a NATO-led force (with or without America) to forcibly separate and patrol borders which they will establish for another Arab Muslim Palestinian State? Such a bastard State will become an even greater center for Terror indoctrination, brainwashing of children from the age of three, arms smuggling and manufacture, conspiracies to send Terror abroad to the Free West. The 'kiss of death' comes in different forms: *It comes as Peace Agreements like Oslo, Wye, Camp David... *It comes in one-sided 'cease-fires' (Hudnas). *It comes in assurances by 'friends' that they will co-sign such agreements - but, when the enemy breaks that agreement, the co-signer (America) has always abandoned the agreement. Recall when the Egyptians closed the Straits of Tiran, when Egypt moved SAM missiles into those positions given up by Israel under Henry Kissinger's 'kiss' agreement? Recall the U.S. co-signing of Oslo, followed by America virtually ignoring Muslim Arab Terror attacks for ten years? Recall the latest 'Hudna' cease-fire, which demanded that Israel keep to the Plan while Arafat and Abu Mazen blatantly ignored their obligations and Terror proceeded unimpeded with vicious homicide bus bombings and illegal arms smuggling? We Jews have the nasty habit of acclimating to the step-by-step deprivation of rights and loss of freedoms. Recall the Nuremberg Laws where Hitler step-by-step deprived the Jews of their civil rights and the Jews explained away each deprivation - figuring out how to make the best of each successive blow? For a long time Israel has become accustomed to being attacked in each of the named 7 wars, plus ongoing Terrorism. The people, and worse yet, the leadership have acclimated themselves to the frequent Terror attacks. It is 'Terrible' but, we Jews bravely bury our dead, wash away the blood and then (stupidly) proceed with business-as-usual. But, business should NOT be as usual. The Leftist-oriented Supreme Court of Israel, lead by Chief Justice Aharon Barak, acted as if the Muslim Arab Palestinian population was NOT a mortal danger and so they passed laws and tended to treat Jews under suspicion more severely than known Arab Terrorists. The High Court protected the Arab Muslim Palestinians as if they were a normal and non-hostile culture. Political leaders like Rabin, Peres, Ehud Barak, Bibi Netanyahu and now even the Great Warrior, Ariel (Arik) Sharon have always offered kind gestures to habitual Terrorists to please the American, Europeans and especially the Arab leaders whose countries sat on oil. But, each humane 'gesture' was merely viewed as Jewish/Israeli weakness and vulnerability, inviting more vicious attacks. However, Jews are easy when it comes to accommodation and forgiveness. Each little kiss is seen as the 'acceptance' we seek in the world of the 'others'. Observe Jewish leadership when they are invited to the White House or State Department for a little massaging and 'special' briefing. (For sure, it's special - usually not too truthful.) They are so proud; they can't wait to get back to their so-called followers to burble about the munificent treatment they received. But, of course, they never admit to anyone what they gave up in the name of the Jewish people. Observe the spokesmen for Sharon as they try to explain in an apologetic way why Israel attacked the Terrorists in Gaza, Jenin, etc. When we hear from Shimon Peres in his old country Polish accent, trying to make light of the attacks and even trying to justify the ever expanding cemetery of Oslo, we know that we have seen the most aberrant of the Left. Every time Arafat kissed Shimon, Peres grinned and accepted Arafat's poison lips as if he were being knighted by the Queen of England. (He was indeed knighted by a Queen, given Arafat's known predilection for little boys.) Clearly, Israel needs the equivalent of the French Revolution to clean out the old establishment who has betrayed the Jewish people for the kisses they received by our enemies and too often, our friends. There is no respect for the Jewish people at this time. We/They have succumbed to the self-interest of Bush-Powell-Rice, as well as Annan, Chirac, Schroeder, Putin, the House of Saud, the Husseins, Mubarak 'et al'. Granted Sharon sends out troops to placate the Jewish population so they won't kick him out of office. And he's building this ridiculous fence, too expensive and too ineffective. It won't keep out the real Terrorists and it steals money from the weakest social strata, the poor and disabled in Israel's population. But, the Great Warrior, Arik has not unleashed the IDF (Israel Defense Force) to "FIGHT TO WIN!!" as is necessary now. He mobilizes troops outside of Gaza with brief forays into this incubator of Terror but, does NOT finish the job like he did in his early days when he was a true fighter. Sharon seems to be on a tight leash to President George W Bush, who needs the pretense of his "Road Map" (a mighty accident waiting to happen), so Bush can seem as if he is succeeding so he can win the 2004 Presidential elections. Clearly, for NOT standing firm on Terror across the board, Bush will be a one-term President, like his father. For the observant Jews and Bible believing Christians, we know Bush has pitted himself against G-d with the arrogance of dividing the land of Israel and Jerusalem to give them over to a backward, primitive, pagan and murderous people. For Bush, there will be no G-dly forgiveness. I am reminded of Ambassador Joe Kennedy, crossing the ocean on a great ocean liner. A respected Rabbi tried again and again to see him. Finally, on the last day of the voyage he as allowed to meet with Kennedy. The Rabbi asked Joe Kennedy what he could do to help the Jewish children being murdered by Hitler which Joe Kennedy rejected. The Rabbi said to him, "If you are not interested in Jewish children, then your family will carry the burden." Thus, the Kennedy family, through Joe Kennedy (a supporter of Hitler), suffered many tragedies. Let's look at the Bush family, with Grandfather, Ambassador Prescott Bush, known to be a supporter of Hitler (2). Then President George Herbert Walker Bush carried on the tradition of supporting Jewicide (with the aid of his Secretary of State James Baker) - by pressuring Israel to make concessions against her best interests. Today President George W. Bush who, like his father calls the Saudi Prince his best friend, sides with the Saudis (15 of the 19 homicide hijackers of 9/11/01 were Saudis), and now issues orders to protect Yassir Arafat, the Master Terrorist of our day. One cannot help but wonder if this Bush dynasty will also be cursed by G-d, who promised this Land to the Jewish People and who stated: "I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you." NOTES *1948: War of Independence; 1956: Sinai Campaign; 1967: Six Days War; 1969-70: War of Attrition; 1973: Yom Kippur War; 1982: Peace for Galilee; 1991: Gulf War aka Desert Storm - plus ongoing Terror (low intensity warfare) for 120 years. 1. "The KGB'S Man (Yassir Arafat)" by Ion Mihai Pacepa WALL ST. JOURNAL 9/23/03 2. "The Secret War Against the Jews: How Western Espionage Betrayed the Jewish People: 1920-1992" by John Loftus & Mark Aarons St. Martin's Press NY 1994

GREETING AT ROSH HASHANA Posted by Jay Feinberg, September 23, 2003.

Dear Friends, This is a reflective time of year - the seasons change and we celebrate the Jewish New Year. For many of us it will be a relief to say goodbye to the past year. But for those of us affiliated with Gift of Life, it was a year in which we saw countless life-affirming acts of generosity and courage. If you attended Gift of Life's annual gala this past June, you witnessed three bone marrow donors meet their transplant recipients for the very first time. Howard Jonas, the chairman of the IDT Corporation and this year's Gift of Life honoree, told us it was the best dinner he had ever attended! It was a truly spectacular and awe inspiring evening, especially when Ruthie Spector, sister of Bear Stearns president Warren Spector, met her life-saving donor! In reality, such donor-recipient meetings happen frequently in the amazing world of Gift of Life. Most take place quietly and in private, but all are equally joyous and moving. In a few weeks, those who attended the gala will receive a commemorative CDROM with videos and photos. I hope that any time you need a moment of joy and celebration, you will watch it and experience the thrill of knowing that you helped to make it all happen! If you were unable to attend this year's event, but would like to be on the mailing list for next year, please e-mail us at gala@giftoflife.org. We will be happy to send you a complimentary copy of the CDROM as well. The proceeds of this year's gala have already helped us enlarge the pool of potential donors, but we still need the resources to meet the ever-growing demands for our help. A contribution to Gift of Life is a wonderful way to commemorate birthdays, anniversaries and holidays, and it has never been easier and more convenient thanks to our newest online initiative, eGreetings. These unique animated cards were designed exclusively for Gift of Life by a team of Israeli illustrators, and are now available on our website at www.giftoflife.org for immediate use! We will be delighted to send an attractive acknowledgement card by e-mail or regular mail to anyone you would like to honor at Rosh Hashanah or at any other time throughout the year. Your support will advance Gift of Life's major programs, including bone marrow donor recruitment, patient advocacy and public education, giving help and hope to seriously ill children and adults around the world in desperate need of bone marrow transplants. Gift of Life's dedicated volunteer network and professional team are actively searching for donors for several patients in need, including four year old Bracha Naomi Mandelbaum from Jerusalem, and Sharon Steiff, a beloved teacher at the Maimonides School in Boston. Please include them in your prayers for a refuah schlema (speedy recovery). We at Gift of Life wish you and your loved ones a year of peace, prosperity, and good health. Chag Sameach! Jay Feinberg is the Executive Director of the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation, which maintains the Registry. Their website address is http://www.giftoflife.org.

U.S. MUST STOP UNDERMINING ISRAEL'S WAR ON TERRORISM Posted by Andrew Bernstein, September 23, 2003.

President Bush acknowledges that Yasser Arafat has "failed as a leader" and recognizes that his promises to fight terrorism are nothing but empty lies. So why does his administration oppose Arafat's elimination? If Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein were holed up in a compound surrounded by U.S. troops, is there any doubt as to what the outcome would be? Why is Arafat different? The answer is that the Bush administration continues to uphold the absurd contradiction of appeasing Palestinian terrorism while supposedly fighting the broader phenomenon of Islamic terrorism elsewhere in the world. According to Colin Powell, the result of Arafat's removal would be "rage throughout the Arab world, the Muslim world, and in many other parts of the world." But where is the rage - in this case a morally justified rage - of Mr. Powell and the U.S. government toward the terrorists who repeatedly murder Israeli civilians? America has failed to learn the full lesson of September 11, 2001: that appeasement only invites more and worse attacks. The atrocities of that day were merely the most egregious attacks against us by Islamic terrorists. They had kidnapped our diplomats in Teheran, murdered U.S. servicemen in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, attacked the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen - and for more than two decades we did nothing to defend ourselves. For the same reason that we reversed our policy of appeasement after September 11 and began defending ourselves with force, we should allow and encourage Israel to defend itself with force. For years the U.S. government has pressured Israel into suicidal negotiations with Palestinian terrorists. Israel had Arafat and the PLO surrounded south of Beirut in 1982, and was ready to eradicate them, but was restrained by President Reagan, who pressured the Israelis to allow Arafat and his organization safe passage to Tunisia. Despite the price paid in blood by innocent Israelis and Americans since, and despite Arafat's empty promises to fight Palestinian terrorism, the Bush administration continues to urge Israel to keep its troops out of the West Bank and to exercise "restraint." For several compelling reasons the United States must desist from restraining Israel. The death of Arafat and the destruction of murderous groups like Hamas and Hizbollah will eliminate terrorists who hate the United States. It will strengthen Israel, our sole ally in the area, who will no longer have to live with constant suicide attacks. And the demise of Palestinian terrorism will prevent the creation of a Palestinian state, which given the hostility to the West of Palestinian leaders, would only add another independent nation to those already supporting terrorism. There are also deeper moral reasons for setting Israel free to defend itself. The U.S. government needs to understand that more than Israel and America are under attack by terrorist organizations and regimes: Western Civilization is. At its deepest level, this is a struggle between two philosophies and two civilizations. Our murderous and tyrannical enemies are morally committed to their anti-Western ideology. Are we committed to our ideology? The terrorists know of our overwhelming military might - but they sense, too, our vacillating moral weakness. The U.S. government must fight this war in the name of the right and supremacy of Western Civilization, a culture vastly superior to Islamic culture in its ability to promote man's life on earth. Israel is the lone country in the Middle East that stands for freedom, individual rights, secularism, reason, science and prosperity. Every Arab government is a dictatorship - be it a monarchy, theocracy or military state. Only in Israel is there freedom of speech and of the press, freedom of religion and the right to private property. The honest, nonviolent Arab living in Israel enjoys far greater freedom than he would under any Arab regime, including Arafat's. Israel, as the sole Western nation in that region, must be encouraged to apply its military superiority to achieve victory over the terrorists. Urging the Israelis to destroy Arafat and to fight terrorists aggressively is good for the United States, both militarily and morally. We will then have an effective, trustworthy ally fighting by our side. More important, it will show the world that we are committed to the values of Western Civilization, that we will defend them to our last breath, and that we will not yield. Such uncompromising commitment to freedom and to Western values is a weapon far more powerful than any in our military arsenal. Andrew Bernstein, Ph.D. in philosophy, is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes Objectivism, the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

SWEET AND SOUR LIVING Posted by Judy Balint, September 23, 2003.

This poignant piece from Dr Mike Cohen got lost in the shuffle of e mails about last week's twin homicide bomber attacks.Its sentiments are even more valid today as we approach Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Dr Cohen lives in Jerusalem. JERUSALEM, ISRAEL, Wednesday September 10, 2003 - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," wrote Charles Dickens in his classic "Tale of Two Cities." Dickens was referring of course to the French Revolution and his eloquent yet simple description of that time has been used by many a writer to depict their own era as well. Here in Jerusalem, the term "al hadvash veal haoketz" (of honey and stingers) and "al hamar vhamatok" (of the sweet and the bitter) was coined by the closest Israel has to a national poet, Naomi Shemer (Jerusalem of Gold), as part of an amazingly soulful prayer to G-d, asking that He protect all that is dear to us, our children, our soldiers, our travelers, our homes and our souls. Last Friday, instead of being with my family, happily taking pictures as my first nephew celebrated his bar-mitzvah, I was standing at the Har Herzl National Military Cemetery waiting among throngs of special forces commandos in sharp dress whites. Airmen and women, seamen and women of all ranks and ages, and hundreds more in civilian attire had all gathered to mourn the loss of Sergeant First Class Ra'anan Komemi, age 23, from Moshav Amindav in the Judean mountains overlooking southwestern Jerusalem. Sgt. Komemi was no ordinary soldier, he was a beloved career military man and one of Israel's elitist of elite, the naval flotilla, known as Shayetet 13. Despite it being Israel's top naval commando unit, "The Shayetet" as it is known, has participated in hundreds of daring anti-terror operations on land since the Oslo War began almost three years ago. Sgt. Komemi was killed protecting his unit mate while on a search and destroy mission in Shchem. The burst of fire that killed Komemi cae as his team carefully searched a building in which the leader of the local Hamas terrorist organization was hiding. The forces could have just demolished the building with everybody inside and Komemi would still be with us, but Israel's strict military ethics call for the protection of all presumed innocents and their property, including those who may be harboring the terrorists. So the IDF Special Forces teams cleared the building of civilians and then went searching, floor by floor, door by door, room by room. As I, a Special Forces veteran myself, stood there at the funeral in Jerusalem the next morning, I could not help but jump, just like everyone else, as the honor guard cocked its weapons and fired in the air - BOOM!! (click click) BOOM!! (click click) BOOM!! With tears rolling down my cheeks (in Jerusalem, real men DO cry) the special tune of Naomi Shemer's song suddenly started playing in my mind. Was I losing it? Had I been to one funeral too many during this bloody and seemingly endless war? (Of course, even one is too many but still?) Why was a song running through my head at this moment of national grief? And why, for heaven's sake does Mrs. Shemer ask G-d to protect, among other things the honey and the stingers, the sweet and the bitter? As the young man's body was gently laid into the ground and the honor guard shots were heard filling the air from yet another funeral a few sections down, it hit me. I was humming to myself, because it helped make me feel even worse, but better, all at the same time. Allow me to try and explain. Ever eat too much of a good thing to the point where it no longer was the taste you craved? Of course you have, everyone has. So how do you fix it? If it was something sweet you have something salty (and vice versa) and then you get the original taste back with the next bite. Thus, says Shemer, honey can only be made by bees that carry a healthy stinger. Sweet can only be tasted if it comes after bland, and it tastes even better after bitter. Every happy event in Jerusalem, in Israel and in fact in every Jewish home is filled by happiness but tinged with some sadness. A missing grandparent, loved ones lost in the Holocaust, a friend who died of cancer, no family is without some tragic elements of sorrow. What Naomi Shemer is trying to tell us is that that is the way life is and that not only must we accept it, but we must embrace it and beg G-d not to take it away. Shemer is saying simply that if any Jew an become so callous as to not remember his or her history and those who helped shape it, it should be a sad day for all of us. We live a mixed life here in Jerusalem. We are privileged to live in the holiest city on earth, sometimes, in the hustle and bustle of daily life we may take that for granted and allow the sweetness to be dulled by quantity. But then, we are hit with something that makes us realize just how lucky we are to not only be alive, but to be alive to see and be a part of this improbable and implausible 20th Century Jewish and Zionist renaissance and to be doing so from the vantage point of Jerusalem no less! As I stood before the congregation to greet the Sabbath queen and lead services to start my nephew's bar mitzvah Shabbat, I decided to use Naomi Shemer's tune "al hadvash veal haoketz al hamar vhamatok al biteinu hatinoket shmor Eli hatov." Oh good G-d, protect the good and the bad and our little baby girl. I also took the extraordinary move of turning to the community to explain why I had chosen to use such a melancholy tune at the start of such a joyful occasion. The reaction of my sister's friends is one which I have to share with you. Not only did almost the entire community, to a person, come over after services to thank me for the "important thought provoking act," but the rabbi, and others who were praying at the Sephardic synagogue Friday night, came over to me on Shabbat morning to apologize for missing out. To those of us who live in Jerusalem, or anywhere else in this, the holiest of lands, this reaction hardly comes as a surprise. While trying to explain it to my cousin from abroad it became even clearer to me why my choice of tunes had become a communal topic of conversation. We have seen so much death and so much destruction here in the past three years, the past decade, the past century in fact, that we are sometimes afraid that we are numbing to the pain. I have learned that we seek out a face, a story, a familiar aspect, anything, to help us feel more, to feel deeper, to feel the rumbling, deep-rooted searing pain that we expect we should feel every time a Jewish soldier, police officer, fire-person or security guard loses their life trying to protecting ours. We know we want to feel it deep in our gut but how many times can we be stung by the same bullet and still feel it the same way? So, by seeking out someone who was there, someone who is related, someone who can help us shed the necessary and desired tear, we are not only doing that person a favor by mourning along with them, but we are doing a good deed for ourselves as well. We in Jerusalem need to cry. We need to cry out loud. We need to cry out in pain. Tomorrow is September 11. Two years have passed. Two long hard years. Bin Laden is still at large. Saddam is still at large. Arafat is still in charge. Yassin and Rantisi are still alive. I invite the whole western world, the whole sane world in fact to reach deep down, watch the reruns on TV. Find a firefighter or police officer to hug. Do something to make yourself cry. We in Jerusalem need to cry out loud and in pain, but tomorrow, everyone in the free world is in the boat with us. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - yehi Shem HaShem Mevorach. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - may their memory be a blessing to all of us. Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times (Gefen,2002) is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com To subscribe to the Jerusalem Diary group, send an email to:jerusalemdiaries-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

ARAFAT: The KGB's Man Posted by Steven Plaut, September 22, 2003.

This was written by Ion Mihai Pacepa. Mr. Pacepa was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. The author of "Red Horizons" (Regnery, 1987), he is finishing a book on the origins of current anti-Americanism. The URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106419296113226300,00.html The Israeli government has vowed to expel Yasser Arafat, calling him an "obstacle" to peace. But the 72-year-old Palestinian leader is much more than that; he is a career terrorist, trained, armed and bankrolled by the Soviet Union and its satellites for decades. Before I defected to America from Romania, leaving my post as chief of Romanian intelligence, I was responsible for giving Arafat about $200,000 in laundered cash every month throughout the 1970s. I also sent two cargo planes to Beirut a week, stuffed with uniforms and supplies. Other Soviet bloc states did much the same. Terrorism has been extremely profitable for Arafat. According to Forbes magazine, he is today the sixth wealthiest among the world's "kings, queens & despots," with more than $300 million stashed in Swiss bank accounts. "I invented the hijackings [of passenger planes]," Arafat bragged when I first met him at his PLO headquarters in Beirut in the early 1970s. He gestured toward the little red flags pinned on a wall map of the world that labeled Israel as "Palestine." "There they all are!" he told me, proudly. The dubious honor of inventing hijacking actually goes to the KGB, which first hijacked a U.S. passenger plane in 1960 to Communist Cuba. Arafat's innovation was the suicide bomber, a terror concept that would come to full flower on 9/11. In 1972, the Kremlin put Arafat and his terror networks high on all Soviet bloc intelligence services' priority list, including mine. Bucharest's role was to ingratiate him with the White House. We were the bloc experts at this. We'd already had great success in making Washington -- as well as most of the fashionable left-leaning American academics of the day -- believe that Nicolae Ceausescu was, like Josip Broz Tito, an "independent" Communist with a "moderate" streak. KGB chairman Yuri Andropov in February 1972 laughed to me about the Yankee gullibility for celebrities. We'd outgrown Stalinist cults of personality, but those crazy Americans were still na?ve enough to revere national leaders. We would make Arafat into just such a figurehead and gradually move the PLO closer to power and statehood. Andropov thought that Vietnam-weary Americans would snatch at the smallest sign of conciliation to promote Arafat from terrorist to statesman in their hopes for peace. Right after that meeting, I was given the KGB's "personal file" on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. First, the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birth. The KGB's disinformation department then went to work on Arafat's four-page tract called "Falastinuna" (Our Palestine), turning it into a 48-page monthly magazine for the Palestinian terrorist organization al-Fatah. Arafat had headed al-Fatah since 1957. The KGB distributed it throughout the Arab world and in West Germany, which in those days played host to many Palestinian students. The KGB was adept at magazine publication and distribution; it had many similar periodicals in various languages for its front organizations in Western Europe, like the World Peace Council and the World Federation of Trade Unions. Next, the KGB gave Arafat an ideology and an image, just as it did for loyal Communists in our international front organizations. High-minded idealism held no mass-appeal in the Arab world, so the KGB remolded Arafat as a rabid anti-Zionist. They also selected a "personal hero" for him -- the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the man who visited Auschwitz in the late 1930s and reproached the Germans for not having killed even more Jews. In 1985 Arafat paid homage to the mufti, saying he was "proud no end" to be walking in his footsteps. Arafat was an important undercover operative for the KGB. Right after the 1967 Six Day Arab-Israeli war, Moscow got him appointed to chairman of the PLO. Egyptian ruler Gamal Abdel Nasser, a Soviet puppet, proposed the appointment. In 1969 the KGB asked Arafat to declare war on American "imperial-Zionism" during the first summit of the Black Terrorist International, a neo-Fascist pro-Palestine organization financed by the KGB and Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. It appealed to him so much, Arafat later claimed to have invented the imperial-Zionist battle cry. But in fact, "imperial-Zionism" was a Moscow invention, a modern adaptation of the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and long a favorite tool of Russian intelligence to foment ethnic hatred. The KGB always regarded anti-Semitism plus anti-imperialism as a rich source of anti-Americanism. The KGB file on Arafat also said that in the Arab world only people who were truly good at deception could achieve high status. We Romanians were directed to help Arafat improve "his extraordinary talent for deceiving." The KGB chief of foreign intelligence, General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, ordered us to provide cover for Arafat's terror operations, while at the same time building up his international image. "Arafat is a brilliant stage manager," his letter concluded, "and we should put him to good use." In March 1978 I secretly brought Arafat to Bucharest for final instructions on how to behave in Washington. "You simply have to keep on pretending that you'll break with terrorism and that you'll recognize Israel -- over, and over, and over," Ceausescu told him for the umpteenth time. Ceausescu was euphoric over the prospect that both Arafat and he might be able to snag a Nobel Peace Prize with their fake displays of the olive branch. In April 1978 I accompanied Ceausescu to Washington, where he charmed President Carter. Arafat, he urged, would transform his brutal PLO into a law-abiding government-in-exile if only the U.S. would establish official relations. The meeting was a great success for us. Carter hailed Ceausescu, dictator of the most repressive police state in Eastern Europe, as a "great national and international leader" who had "taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community." Triumphant, Ceausescu brought home a joint communiqu? in which the American president stated that his friendly relations with Ceausescu served "the cause of the world." Three months later I was granted political asylum by the U.S. Ceausescu failed to get his Nobel Peace Prize. But in 1994 Arafat got his -- all because he continued to play the role we had given him to perfection. He had transformed his terrorist PLO into a government-in-exile (the Palestinian Authority), always pretending to call a halt to Palestinian terrorism while letting it continue unabated. Two years after signing the Oslo Accords, the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists had risen by 73%. On Oct. 23, 1998, President Clinton concluded his public remarks to Arafat by thanking him for "decades and decades and decades of tireless representation of the longing of the Palestinian people to be free, self-sufficient, and at home." The current administration sees through Arafat's charade but will not publicly support his expulsion. Meanwhile, the aging terrorist has consolidated his control over the Palestinian Authority and marshaled his young followers for more suicide attacks.

ISRAEL, HIT SYRIA, NOT HIZBOLLAH Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, September 22, 2003.

The time has finally come for Israel to take the gloves off and start to hit hard, for real. It's time for Israelis to get over their "Syrian Syndrome," that irrational deep-seated fear of Syria, dating back to the Yom Kippur War of 1973. The Syria of today might not be much different than the Syria of 1973, but Israel sure the heck is. Israel's military in 2003 is quite a bit more advanced, Israel's economy - while still a little slow - is exponentially ahead of Syria's economy. In fact by every measure of national power, Israel is well beyond Syria, the gap has grown not shrunk since 1973. So "get over it," Syria is a paper tiger, or more aptly put a "paper bag," or "basket case." Even after renewed attacks on Israel, why bother with Hizbollah? Why play Syria's and Iran's game? Why pretend that Hizbollah is calling the shots? Why give "immunity" to the real culprits? Put the blame squarely where it belongs, on Syria. One could try to blame the Lebanese government for not doing enough to tone down Hizbollah. The Lebanese military really should take up positions in Southern Lebanon and de-militarize Hizbollah. Israel has left Lebanese soil. Ask the UN; for once they support our position and agree with us. But alas, Lebanon is not an independent state. Lebanon is a puppet regime controlled by Damascus. So Israel needs to put the blame where it belongs; on the only power capable of reining in Hizbollah, of dis-arming them, of cutting off their flow of weapons from Iran, and of discouraging them from attacking Israel, i.e. Syria. About that last line, Syria uses Hizbollah to keep pressure on Israel. Hizbollah is Syria's proxy army against Israel. Notice the Syrian occupation army in Lebanon never attacks Israel. It's always Hizbollah, so that Syria can't be directly blamed for the attack. Well I'm saying, forget the small fry, BLAME SYRIA! First, the Israeli government should make it a cornerstone of it's foreign policy to raise the issue of Syria's continuing violation of UN Security Council Resolution 520, that calls on all foreign forces - including Syria - to leave Lebanon, at every diplomatic opportunity. What a joke that Syria sits on the UN Security Council, while it violates a Security Council resolution. No wonder, many people in the United States, Israel, and elsewhere hold the UN in such low esteem. And, Israel should more vigorously lobby Washington to "sit-on" Syria, till Syria gets out of Lebanon. Washington has been wishy-washy in dealing with Damascus. In the beginning of May, US Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Damascus and Beirut. After leaving Damascus, he said in a Beirut press conference that he and Assad discussed "all of the outstanding issues" that have hindered US-Syrian relations in the past. That included frank talks about Weapons of Mass Destruction; Syria's support for the Lebanese group Hizbollah; and closing the Iraq-Syria border "and keeping it sealed" to technology, fighters and wanted Iraqi authority figures, Powell said. He made it clear to Assad, that the US commitment to Middle East peace "would include Syria and Lebanon, and would include the Golan Heights." But, Powell made no mention of speaking to Assad about getting Syria out of Lebanon. Later, speaking in Beirut - notice not Damascus - Powell assured Prime Minister Rafik Hariri of US support for "an independent and prosperous Lebanon free of all - all - foreign forces." But the main focus of Powell's visit to Syria, it seems, was to prevent them from helping out Saddam's buddies, to 'give up the goods' i.e. WMD, to stop their support for terrorist groups - which they haven't - and to soften up their rejection of US Middle East Peacemaking efforts between Israel and the Palestinians - the road map - promising the Golan Heights, as a reward for good behavior, despite Syria's opposition to the US war in Iraq and despite their facilitation of 'volunteer fighters' to help Saddam. Little focus was put on getting Syria out of Lebanon and nothing has happened on that front since Powell's visit. Yet, on May 2nd - the day before Powell's meeting with Assad - in Washington, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) introduced the Senate version of the Syria Accountability and Lebanese Sovereignty Restoration Act of 2003 S 982. The bill's purposes are to (1) halt Syrian support for terrorism; (2) end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon; (3) stop Syria's production of Weapons of Mass Destruction; and (4) hold Syria accountable for the illegal Syrian-Iraqi trade, which provided Iraq with the weapons that killed American troops. The House version of the Act was introduced on April 10. Both bills now have a solid majority of support in the US Congress. Sponsors and supporters of the bill claim it will weaken Syria's ability to wage wars, to threaten its neighbors, and to destabilize the region. So, there clearly is support for pushing Syria out of Lebanon emanating from the US Congress. Israel should remind Washington of that. Today, after the United State's victory in Iraq, and the inclusion of Iraqi Shi'ites in the Iraqi governing council, it would be hard for Hizbollah or Iran to portray the US as out to get the Shi'ites in Lebanon, just because they oppose Hizbollah. Ending the vicious Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and dis-mantling Hizbollah as a military force there, would also serve US and Israeli interests in putting a firm limit to Iran's influence in the area. This no doubt would have a positive effect in weakening Islamic Jihad - and to a lesser extent Hamas - in Damascus and Gaza. Iran is already on the American and Israeli agenda, due to it's closing in on real nuclear capability. Anything that weakens Iran's ability to "export" the revolution is good for the region and the world. Second, in blaming Syria's dictatorial regime for Hizbollah's attacks on Israel, the Israeli government should announce a new policy, of retaliatory raids against Syrian military positions in Lebanon. As I stated earlier, why should Syria be "immune" from the costs of its policies in support of Hizbollah? After annunciating this change in policy, of holding Syria accountable for Hizbollah attacks, the Israeli government should begin a policy of "graduated escalation" beginning with hitting Syrian positions in Lebanon. Everyone should remember the beginning of the Lebanon War in 1982, when Israel warned Syria to stay out of its way, but Syria didn't listen. When confronted, Israel shot down over 90 Syrian planes with just one loss. Today, Israel has significantly increased its military superiority over Syria from 1982. If Syria doesn't stop the Hizbollah attacks and prepare to end its occupation of Lebanon, the next phase would include selected targets in Syria itself. This "graduated escalation" would put the issue of the vicious Syrian occupation of Lebanon - since 1976 - and their support for Hizbollah terror against Israel on the top of the American, EU, and UN's agenda. Israel and the United States have to support a free and independent Lebanon, free of Syrian occupation, free of Hizbollah terrorism, free to return to its former glory. It's in Israel's interest, it's in Lebanon's interest, it's in the United States' interest, and yes, it's even in the Syrian people's interest. Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst & consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on many news/views, think-tank websites and in newspapers; they can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko. This article appeared as an Opinion piece on Arutz Sheva (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com) August 12, 2003.

THE STORY OF RON ARAD Posted by Jules Segal, September 22, 2003.

Ron has been in captivity 6186 days. On 16 October 1986, Israeli navigator Lieutenant Colonol ron Arad bailed out of his plane on a mission in Lebanon and was captured by members of the Iranian backed Amal terrorist organization. Since then, Ron has been held captive by several such organizations, all of them extremist Shiite groups, all of them backed by Iran. He has been denied basic rights of POW's as set down in the Geneva convention. The international Red Cross has not been permitted to send or receive letters. While he was not in good health when he was captured, nothing is known of his present state of health, or, for that matter anything else about him. Iran claims to know nothing of the matter or of ron's whereabouts or condition. This untenable situation has existed now for well over a decade. The facts speak for themselves. But there is more. Ron is strong and he is a survivor, and this knowledge keeps hope alive. Nevertheless, we must not allow ourselves to lose sight of the suffering of Ron himself and of his family. Ron lives in isolation, loneliness and uncertainty, knowing nothing of what has transpired in these years within his loving, caring family. Let's look at his family. There is Batya, his mother, who experienced every day a mother's worst nightmare: a missing son whose condition is unclear. Is he in good health? Is he warm at night? Does he have enough to eat? Basic worries of any mother, but Batya has no answer. There is Tammy, his loving wife, whose courage personifies the interruption of the lives of a happy, loving couple. There is Yuval, fifteen month old when her father disappeared from her life, who recently celebrated her Bat Mitzva (at age 12) without her father, whom she knows only from pictures. Ron has not seen her grow from adorable to truly lovely. There are Chen, the elder of his two younger brothers, and his wife Lee, who now have two daughters of their own. And there is David, a mere boy. 17 years old when Ron fell into captivity, now married to Merav and the father of a baby girl. Ron knows nothing of this. He also knows nothing of the unflagging efforts to gain his freedom. This unthinkable situation must be stopped. Now! Everyone who is able to do so must join the efforts to obtain basic rights for this brave young man, and ultimately to gain his release. This humanitarian effort must be speeded up. International organizations must do everything possible to call Iran to account and end this tragic situation. No stone should be left unturned, no possibility should be overlooked. We must, everyone of us, join together in achieving this goal. [Editor's Note: This is from the September 24, 2003 Arutz Sheva online news: http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com] ARAD FAMILY SUES TO PREVENT DIRANI'S RELEASE The family of Ron Arad has filed a 100-million shekel suit in the Tel Aviv District Court against Mustafa Dirani - the man most responsible for the disappearance of the Israel Air Force navigator. If the suit is accepted, it will prevent the release of Dirani in the terrorists-for-Tenenbaum deal between that is currently being woven between Israel and Hizbullah. The exchange is said to involve an unspecified number of Arab terrorists and prisoners being held in Israel - some reports say that it will be between 300 and 400 - in return for abducted Israeli businessman Elchanan Tenenbaum and the bodies of three IDF soldiers. The three were killed by Hizbullah terrorists three years ago, shortly before Hizbullah kidnapped Tenenbaum. The Arad family claims that the two main Arabs to be released in the deal - Dirani and Sheikh Obeid - were abducted specifically to render them collateral for Arad. Israeli commandos kidnapped the two of them, in dangerous missions, in order to obtain either information on Arad - or Arad himself. One family member said today, "If Dirani is so important for the deal, then let him produce the information on the whereabouts of Ron Arad." Dirani actually sold the captured navigator to the Iranians, driving around Lebanon and Iran with Arad in his trunk. The family claims that Dirani's actions caused them immeasurable grief and harm, and led to the loss of Arad's tracks somewhere in Iran. "The money is not the point," Ron's brother Chen (pronounced with a guttural "ch") said, "but at this point this is the only weapon we have. We are at war against Dirani's release, and this is just the first step." The family of Elchanan Tenenbaum did not comment publicly on this news. Dirani himself has sued Israel for damages of over six million shekels to which, he claims, his abduction nine years ago entitles him. Chief Hizbullah terrorist Sheikh Nasrallah said publicly this week that he would "make all efforts" to obtain information on Ron Arad. Israel, however, is apparently not banking on this, and is willing to make the deal even before the information is obtained. Tenenbaum, who was abducted by Hizbullah almost three years ago, is not in good health, though his life is not endangered if he receives proper medical treatment. The suit states, "The family was caused damage because of the inhumane and repulsive actions and omissions that Dirani perpetrated on Ron Arad during a long period in which he was under his exclusive and absolute control." These actions included, according to the suit, imprisonment, neglect, deprivation of air and food, and more. Prime Minister Sharon met with the Arad family ten days ago, and explained to them the "ethical dilemma" that he is likely to face very soon if the terrorists-for-Tenenbaum deal goes through. Yonah Baumel, whose son Zechariah and two other soldiers have not been heard from since they were captured in the Peace for Galilee War of 1982, also has something against the deal in-the-works, in light of reports that Israel will release Syrian prisoners in the exchange. "Syria has always been assumed to be in possession of information on our sons," he told Arutz-7's Yosef Zalmanson, "so how is it that that information is not included in the deal?" Supporters of Jonathan Pollard demand that he, too, be released as part of the upcoming deal. "America would not refuse that demand," writes one supporter, "if that one requirement threatened to torpedo the entire prisoner swap. Israel should demand Pollard's release as part of the deal. It would allow America to get rid of Pollard, a political albatross, in a way that seems magnanimous." The Ron Arad website address is http://www.ron-arad.org.il. You can see pictures of Ron's family and sign the petition.

SEND JONATHAN POLLARD A ROSH HASHANAH CARD Posted by Dovid Ben Chaim, September 22, 2003.

Please send Jonathan a New Year's Greeting. His address is: Jonathan Pollard, 09185-016 FCI Butner, POB 1000 Butner, NC 27509-1000, USA

BANANA BOAT REPUBLIC Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, September 22, 2003.

A few of you out there in cyber-land get very annoyed when I refer to Israel as The People Banana Boat Republic of Israel. Read the following two items and judge for yourself. The first is by David Bedein, one of Israel's few genuine journalist and the second by Jan Willem van der Hoeven, the director of the International Christian Zionist Center. Both have proven themselves over the years to be accurate and insightful in their writings as well as truly concerned about the future of Israel. Israel has become a Banana Boat Republic not because the Americans forced it on us but because the Israeli ruling elite wanted it. This goes to the very roots of the Labor Zionist movement and history. Ben Gurion and his gang never wanted a truly independent State. They were maneuvering to be some sort of protectorate under the British Empire. They basically believed that an independent Jewish State was not possible. Even more frightening to them was that a truly independent Jewish State would have to be, well, Jewish. Not a pleasant prospect for a Stalinist like Ben Gurion. It is the same today as well. That is why we are constantly told how much we need America and American aid. Exactly why is never fully explained but the implications are always that without it we will suffer all sorts of terrible consequences. The truth is we do not need American aid. American friendship is a different issue. That is not the same as aid and is welcomed. US PROTECTS ARAFAT'S HEADQUARTERS FROM IDF INCURSION by David Bedein, Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron Int'l Press Center, Jerusalem (www.israelbehindthenews.com). As the debate ensues between the US and Israel as to whether or not Israel will capture, exile or kill Yassir Arafat, the credible Canadian-based Middle East Newsline reported on Monday that the US intervened to prevent the Israel Defence Forces from capturing and neutralizing the Muqata'a headquarters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. Middle East News Line reported that the US State Department issued a directive to Israel to suspend plans to capture Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah over the weekend, even though Israel provided hundreds of captured documents to the US which prove that the Muqata'a is where the terror campaign against Israel is being planned and directed. Despite that, US Secretary of State Colin Powell and US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to suspend military plans against the Mukatta. An Israeli military force had captured a PA ministry about 300 meters from Arafat's headquarters and established a command post for the capture of the Muqata'a. The significance of such a planned tactical move on the part of the IDF is that the Muqata'a,is precisely where Arafat's terror campaign has been coordinated for exactly three years. It is at the Muqata'a. where Arafat has coordinated the Hamas, Islamic Jihad and all the PLO Armed groups under one command since October, 2000. That has resulted in more than 20,000 Arab terror attacks and the cold blooded murder of almost 900 men, women and children throughout Israel A rubric of US foreign policy is that all of the Palestinian Arab security agencies need to work under one command. It would seem that Arafat's coordination of all security services at the Muqata'a fulfilled that US policy directive, regardless of the consequences for Israeli citizens. The US has invested more than $100 million in the PA security agencies this year, under the premise that these funds would be allocated to forces loyal to former PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas and Security Affairs Minister Mohammed Dahlan, neither of whom are any longer in power - so the funds have been diverted to forces loyal to Yassir Arafat. That leaves U.S. security personnel in a position of training and advising PLO armed forces who now coordinate terror attacks throughout Israel. The question remains: Is it too late to avoid an inevitable scenario where an American "advisor?" in the service of the PLO ?"security services" will be killed in a preemptive IDF attack on PLO terrorists? A BANANA REPUBLIC by Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director of International Christian Zionist Center in Jerusalem (www.israelmybeloved.com). Israel's cabinet decides that Arafat will be removed - America tells Israel not to do it, and so, for the moment, Israel complies. Israel's security interests, including those highlighted by the numerous terrorist attacks inside and outside Ariel, dictate that at least that town should be inside the security fence, a fence that, if we are to believe the politicians, is in any case not yet meant to demarcate a political border. Venomously pressurized by the Palestinians, the US tells Israel not to include Ariel, and Israel wavers again. So who is Israel's government? Would any other gentile nation accept and comply with instructions from another country concerning their best security interests? After all the terrible suffering at the hand of the Palestinian terrorists - initiated by them with the evil encouragement of Arafat himself - Israel makes a mockery of that blood and pain to do again what these terrorist-inspired Palestinians tell the Americans to demand from Israel in their name - and may therefore exclude Ariel from the soon to be built security fence. Thus it will go on: no firm dealing with Arafat, no inclusion of Ariel, no united Jerusalem, no to retaining the Golan, no to most of the settlements - because America thinks it is unwise. And Israel will comply until it is too late to stand up for anything anymore - for the Palestinians will have won it all!

ISRAEL, WHERE ARABS BEAT JEWS AND JEWS CAN'T PROTEST IT Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 22, 2003.

Ramla, Israel, has a mixed population of Jews and Arabs. Parents warned their young daughter against going with Arab boys. She didn't listen. You know how it is - young people without experience or knowledge of life don't listen to protectors who have it. She took up with an Arab youth. Then, only 14 years old, she moved in with him. Soon he beat her up, but she thought he "really loved" her. The hospital believed his story that she had fallen. The Jews there would not dare accuse an Arab of physical abuse. When the beatings continued, she got in touch with the wife of a rabbi, who specializes in looking after Jewish girls captured by Arabs. When the girl made ready to leave, the Arab threatened to kill her parents as well as herself. The rabbi's wife came back and rescued her. The woman took the girl into a secret home used for that purpose. This is a religious place where the girls are genuinely loved by caring adults, trained to qualify for jobs, and helped to adjust to society. Adjustment works well enough so that about 60 girls a year find husbands from among the youth returning to religion in the special school run by the rabbi's son. Such youth often are found alienated, wayward, and purposeless. The rabbi's family restores them to normal contributors to society. We've reported about this phenomenon, though not about the home, before. Even if Jewish girls convert in Arab villages, they still are treated like the Jewish enemy. Some of the Arab husbands force the ex-Jewish women into prostitution. (So much for Arab family values! You see the Arabs' racist attitude? In their sadistic minds, they are humiliating the Jews as well as reducing their ranks. This is a form of terrorism.) The Israeli government does nothing about this. Nothing! Israeli police call it a marital problem, when the couple is formally married. If that 14-year-old girl returned home and got a restraining order against the Arab, he would not heed it. Israeli women who escape from brutal Arab villages cannot bring their children out with them, because Israeli judges claim that Islamic law applies. They do not explain how, in a clash between Jewish victims and Arab brutes, the law of the brutes must prevail in the Land of the Jews. The children are raised to hate the Jews. Schools and TV don't educate the Jews about how bestial the Arabs are, and that they are the enemy. That would be "racist," even though true. The worst sin in Israel is thought to be alleged Jewish "racism," while actual Arab racism is condoned. Schools and TV teach, instead, that the Arabs are the same as Jews and have equal rights. Young victims' only recourse is the rabbi's wife and like-minded religious people whose financial resources are not equal to the task. (To find out more information about her work, JTemple@netmedia.net.il) You might be interested in how Israeli Arabs, you know, the ones that the Orr Commision claimed have only a few helpers of terrorism, feel about terrorism. When some terrible bomb went off recently, Arab hospital patients, I was told, openly celebrated. They cheered upon hearing of that dozens of Jews were maimed. The Jewish nurses looked on in disbelief. Nevertheless, they continued treating the Arab patients (probably free, too). What would I do, if I were there? If I were a nurse, I wouldn't treat Arabs who celebrate the piratical murder of my people. Then I'd lose my job. If I saw Arabs trying to capture, by false seduction, Jewish girls, I would fight them. Then I'd lose my freedom. I am ashamed of Israel for letting its people be persecuted by fanatical enemies it foolishly allows to stay within. On the other hand, I am proud of that rabbi's wife who rescues the girls without losing her self-control. She is effective, a heroine, a paragon. What does one make of this? Modern, politically correct notions of tolerance and democracy are sick. Supposition that Israel is a Jewish religious theocracy is mistaken. While the Jews pretend that the Arabs are not their enemies, the Arabs aren't inhibited about denouncing the Jews as their enemies. The main problem is not Jewish mistreatment of Israeli Arabs but Israeli Arab mistreatment of Jews. A people should not have to live in its own country with another nationality that hates it, seeks to destroy it, and commits terrorism against it.

ISRAEL NEEDS A PUSH Posted by David Ben-Ariel, September 22, 2003.

Would God have the Israelis construct the Third Temple? Must we wait until they're perfect before they even lay the Cornerstone? By those stringent standards of self-righteousness, Israel would've never constructed the Tabernacle in the wilderness! Nor would David have dreamt for his son to utilize Israel to build the Temple! God instructed them on how to go about fulfilling His Will in this regard, and they were willing - in spite of their sinfulness. Those Jews and their leaders who returned from Babylon and finally built the Temple - AFTER BEING PRODDED BY HAGGAI AND ZECHARIAH - were also far from perfect (Ezra 9:1). But it didn't stop GOD'S PLAN. God's Purpose goes forward regardless of the failings of men. Thank God! And mind you, such a new Temple would not simply be the "temple of the Jews," as some have slanderously reported. Rather, it would become a "House of Prayer for ALL nations" (Isa. 56:7). If some can understand how Ambassador Auditorium, a concert hall in California, could formerly serve as "God's House," how can they be so proud and stubborn and blind to not RECOGNIZE that God would place His Name where He always has: on the TEMPLE Mount! (Zech. 1:16). Quit making excuses! God says He'll accept the Temple, so shouldn't we? (Hag. 1:8).It ought to be understood that since GOD has restored Israel to the Land, Israel must build the Temple. After all, IT IS A COMMAND. "And let them make me a Sanctuary that I may dwell among them" (Ex. 25:8). The Temple serves as a unifying national symbol, a central focus for the knowledge and worship of the true God (Micah 4:2). It encourages us to remember to keep the festivals of our God, and to send representatives to Jerusalem to celebrate before the LORD (Deut. 16:16; Zech. 14:16).But how can Israel reclaim the Temple Mount without starting a war? Presently that most holy site is under a militant Muslim occupation that forcibly forbids any Jew or Christian from praying or reading the Bible there. This shameful situation continues despite the fact that Israel supposedly guarantees "freedom of access" to the religious sites of all. Israel's "leaders" continue to look the other way as the Muslims practice such blatant religious discrimination daily. Israel must stop taking into "protective custody" those who seek to exercise their religious rights there, and instead REMOVE THE THREAT. I was arrested on the Last Great Day in 1995 to protect me from the mad Muslims! As written in a letter I had published in the Jerusalem Post: "The Temple Mount is not in our hands, because it is not in our hearts and minds. This is to the shame of our political and religious leaders. I doubt that Jews prayed for 2,000 years to return to Zion and pray at a wall." Of course, on an individual level we must welcome God into our personal lives, to find a loving home (Isa. 66:1-2). But on a NATIONAL LEVEL, on a physical plane, we need a physical building to serve as the "Embassy of the Eternal."

SHUK-THINK: Shikaki's "Refugee's Right of Return" Poll Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, September 21, 2003.

The Arab SHUK, market place, has always been a place of exaggerated statements, deceptive claims and out right thievery. When buying goods in the SHUK not only does one have to carefully count his change but his fingers as well after any transaction. Those who do not know how to play the SHUK game should not enter. This includes political and media "experts" as well. All public statements by all Arabs living within the reach of Arafat are made only with his approval and for his benefit. The notion that there could be any sort of independent presentation of facts from within Arafat's kingdom is naive to the absurd. Many in the Israeli media have, unfortunately, jumped on this survey as "proof" that a compromise can be reached. We owe Max Abrahms a YASHAR KOACH for exposing this blatant propaganda trick. [Editor's Note: Max Abrahms "The 'Right of Return' Debate Revisited"can be read among the Featured Articles, this issue of Think-Israel.]

HOW VIOLENT ARE ARABS? A Review of "Terrorist Hunter" Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 21, 2003.

This is my review of "Terrorist Hunter" by Anonymous, 2003, Harper-Collins, New York. Another reviewer thought the book disjointed by intrusions about the author's life. I found the author's story a useful exposition of the preparatory skills and emotions needed for her work. She tells us what it was like for a Jew in Iraq, how difficult it was to settle into Israel, what led her to the US, and how she researched the Islamist conspiracy. She infiltrated terrorist rallies in the US, in order to learn more in person. That, too, is a fascinating tale. She explains about Arab meetings, terrorist use of different names to disguise terrorist groups as charities, and how Al-Qaeda started. The cruelty of the Iraqi Arabs surpasses what most Americans imagine. They accept any lies against supposed enemies, and celebrate executions of them. Let that be a chilling warning! The dishonestly stimulated excitement in Muslim crowds and their waves of hatred right in the US, are not a mere difference of opinion or another way of worship. They are an insurgency in the making and a boost to existing terrorism. This sedition is a mass-movement. The Muslims here know where the money is going when they donate it to terrorist fronts. The speakers sometimes tell them outright. Why do we allow them to come and stay? The book builds up to a proven thesis that US government agencies did not learn their lesson from 9/11. The FBI remained incompetent. It never learned how to combat terrorism. Its approach is not suitable for that type of criminality. For years it refused to believe there was an Islamist conspiracy. More years passed before it started prosecuting it. The CIA covered up for Saudi financiers of international terrorism. The US still deals with states that are its enemies. The author traced the money and conspiracy to their Saudi source. She shows that this terrorism is not, as I used to think, a loose confederation. It is a tightly organized disguise of a Muslim Brotherhood movement, at least among the Islamists. They live and work together on it The White House still invites as its guests extremists whom it calls "moderate." The author witnessed such people, such as the director of CAIR, expressing hatred against the US and the Islamist goal of conquering "all of Palestine," meaning Israel, too. The American Muslim Council rallied a crowd in support of Hizbullah, which murdered many Americans. The crimes that the Islamist speakers falsely attribute to the Jews (not even just to Israelis) are the kind of atrocities actually committed by the Arabs. The Islamists have succeeded in hiding the extent of their conspiracy and their fanaticism from the President, although this book offers a corrective lens. We see how the terrorists exploit American tolerance and democracy to promote murderous anti-Americanism. Arab masses come to meetings already in an emotional lather, believe falsehoods about Muslims being persecuted, submit to the will of the preachers, and part with their cash. The Muslim groups all work together. Seemingly innocuous groups are not harmless. Scholars turn out to be terrorists. When one front is closed, another emerges. Muslim conferences were used to recruit terrorists. The author has been teaching to the US government the information, insights, and methodology that she developed, but some agencies ignore it. She exposed terrorist organizations before 9/11. There is some call to investigate why US security agencies failed to detect and deflect 9/11. Before 9/11, they were afraid of protest by all religious groups, if it investigated Islamists. Politics governed crime fighting. In addition, the US thought that terrorism was a Mideastern problem only, though there were a string of terrorist attacks against US facilities both foreign and domestic. Private investigators, such as the author, warned the government, but the government was not ready to listen. Thus Al-Arian of the U. of S. Florida was bringing convicted terrorists into the US, but he got people to claim he was legitimate. Fellow professors stood up for him, because the government would not disclose the evidence against him that the author shows is overwhelming. The author's insight into terrorism in the US is original and brilliant. Would that her understanding of Israel were not colored by her leftist ideology. She reiterates the leftist canard that the Right had photo-montages of Rabin in Nazi uniform. The infamous instance was arranged by Rabin's agent-provocateur to enable the media to smear the Right. Nor, upon reflection, is such a photo-montage undeserved. True, I would avoid comparisons to the Holocaust, lest it be trivialized and lest the Holocaust victims and survivors and children suffer painful reminders. Objectively, however, Rabin and the Oslo movement led by the Israeli Left and the US State Dept. raised up the Arab followers of the Nazis into a terrorist power that has murdered thousands of Israelis. The so-called peace process that Rabin permitted, and that the author favors, would enable the Arabs to murder another six million. That would be a second Holocaust. So perhaps the Left, which faked the photo-montage, should stop expressing righteous indignation against the Right for the photo-montage produced by the Left. At some time, there gets to be less excuse for otherwise informed leftists to perpetuate that fraud. There comes time for them to purge their own leadership for it and reform their own ideology. Whatever the Right has warned about the Arabs and claimed about the Left has proved true.

WHO IS FOOTING THE BILL? Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, September 21, 2003.

Going through the guest list of those coming to the 80th birthday party of Shimon Peres, one is struck by the fact that some of these names are blatant anti-Semites. Nelson Mendela, for instance, always has an anti-Israel position, but he has also adopted the anti-Semitic attitude of many black Americans. His stand at the South African Durban Conference is well known. Then there is Peres "guest" Kofi Annan, who as head of the U.N.always takes the Arab position on any question against Israel. Bill Clinton is not too far behind in causing harm to Israel, directly and indirectly. You could go on and on mentioning names from the guest list of foreign notables who are not friendly to Israel. They have one thing in common. Their relationship with Peres, does not preclude them from acting to hurt Israel, whenever the opportunity presents itself to do so. In other words, they have found in Peres the ideal Jew! They can continue in their anti-Israel and anti-Semitic behavior and point to their friendship with Peres as proof that they are not in any way anti-Semitic. "Some of my best friends are Jewish" they will proclaim, pointing of course to old man Peres as their prime example. Peres prefers the appellation of being a citizen of the world rather than a citizen of Israel. His international socialist philosophy fits well into his thinking in this regard. The truth is that Peres has never really considered himself a proud Jew. He never was really interested in understanding or learning about Judaism or any of its rich customs and traditions. That makes Peres an ideal person to acquire as a "friend" by these foreign dignitaries. He makes no demand on them for loyalty to Israel. He himself continually and openly downgrades Israel to U.S. Government officials and in the international media. He, moreover, praises his association and friendship with Arafat. Despite Arafat's intifada, and the suicide bombings encouraged by Arafat, Peres still continues to consider Arafat as one of his buddies and a "great leader" of his People; this despite U.S. President Bush's recent statement to the contrary. There are many unanswered questions about this so called "party." Who is paying for the plane fare of the guests, their stay at hotels, etc.? Is the one footing the bill the Government of Israel? And why during these difficult economic times? No one seems to want to respond, but the public in Israel is entitled to direct and unequivocal answers to these important questions.

AMERICAN REPERCUSSION TO PERES' BIRTHDAY PARTY Posted by Arlene Peck, September 21, 2003.

Funny thing happened on the way to meet a neighbor. I brought up the topic of a column that I had just read written by my publisher, Nissan Ratzlav-Katz. He wrote about the truly appalling display of disregard to the citizens of Israel because of the upcoming eightieth birthday party of Shimon Peres. I was delighted to read his message across the pages of Arutz Sheva, that while Israel is struggling to pay its bills and feed its citizens, Shimon Peres, in yet another example of his self-serving attitude, saw fit to give himself, at tax-payer expense, a glittering celebrity birthday party. In this cast of thousands of "A" list invitees ranging from Bill Clinton, former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and my heavens! even Barbara Streisand and Speilberg! I think that somehow Peres even managed to get that strong supporter of the Jewish people, Kofi Annan into its fold. Too bad Arafat wasn't there for another great photo-op hugging as we've seen so often in the past. He was probably too busy sending out more of his suicide bombers. It's not that I have anything against partying. I've partied with the best of them. But, folks, I have to admit, I think that it's more than a little tacky when all these special people are living it up and the people in beleaguered Israel are getting the tab. Now, folks, that's really not fair to BiBi who's the Finance Minister and doing his best to keep spending slashed to a minimum on mundane things like single mothers who are having their social welfare benefits cut. Or, when Hilton and Sheraton Hotels are cutting floors because tourism is down to a trickle. And all those hospitals are filled with victims of Arab terrorism because of Peres' secret and disastrous Oslos. Which reminds me? As a member of the "Hollywood crowd" where have those same Jewish celebrities been when it came to speaking out about the double-standard and violence their Jewish brothers in Israel have been forced to live under? I've seen Hollywood marches of Save the Whales, trees and ferrets. But, Jewish victims of Arab terrorism? Naw. Maybe these bleeding hearts were busy packing for their celebration with Shimon in a glittery and obsessive display of bad taste? Do you think? Which reminds me. About two years ago, I was asked to help produce a fund-raiser for one of Israel's organizations, AKIM, which supports handicapped children. AKIM is in dire need of support, as are most of the charitable and government agencies in Israel. I had the idea of doing a celebrity auction and was well on my way lining up movie stars who had committed to work as MC's, or to be "sold" the night of the event. The venue had been hired, bands auditions, etc. We were on our way. Then, abruptly, things were put on hold as the homicide bombings were in force and Jews in Israel, were dying. Dying because of Shimon Peres and his pal, Yassar Arafat. Everyone just thought it in 'bad taste' to continue and all plans were stopped. Folks, that was two years ago. Now, however, it seems that the situation is cause for celebration and it's "birthday or bust" Or, in this case, Bomb! When is comes to self-service, nothing seems to stop the serial loser, Peres. Tell me? As an ignorant American. Has he ever been elected or, have Mr. Peres' actions been the result of 'appointments?' Anyway, back to my neighbor. When I showed her the spread in the LA Times about Israel's celebration and, the outrage from the citizens of Israel at it being at tax-payer expense, she commented, "Hmmm, why is Israel asking American Jews to give donations or even our government for loans when they have the money for things like this?"

THE POST HAS A BIG PROBLEM LABELING TERRORISM TERRORISM Posted by Leo Rennert, September 21, 2003.

I sent this to Michael Getler, The Washington Post's ombudsman, who wrote a column today defending the Post's avoidance of "terrorism" in describing the killing of hundreds of civilians because to do so would take sides in a war of words between Israel and Hamas. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein: Whichever way you slice it, a terrorist is a terrorist is a terrorist - except perhaps at the Post. Dear Michael: Orwell would be guffawing from his grave if he could read your Sunday column justifying the Post's avoidance of "terrorism" as applicable to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al Aqsa Brigades and other Palestinian terror groups. Let me explain why you're flat-out wrong, assuming words still have meaning. Let's start with a generally accepted definition of terrorism - i.e. deliberate, random attacks on civilians to spread terror in pursuit of political or ideological agendas. If you accept that definition, Pearl Harbor was not an act of terrorism since it was an attack on a military target. The U.S. rightly saw it as an act of war. Japanese kamikaze pilots were not terrorists because they too aimed at military targets. As for 9/11, it was both terrorism and an act of war - the former fits the attack on the World Trade Center; the latter on the Pentagon. But when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Post flinches. On the one hand, the paper's guidance says "terrorism is real and identifiable and we can identify it when that is appropriate." But then it takes a 180-degree turn that, in the Middle East, the term is to be avoided because it's mostly used to describe one side's assessment of the other. In other words, there is such a thing as terrorism but don't use the word in Mideast reports, except when you write about an Israeli accusing Hamas of being a terrorist group, or if you quote Hamas as describing Israel as a terrorist state. Put the "T" word in their mouths, not the Post. But then you realize you have a problem because the Post itself rightly labels Osama Bin Laden as a terrorist (even though he would reject the term) but not Hamas. And that's where your excuse becomes really lame. Because in making a distinction without a difference, you describe al Qaeda as being "only a terrorist network," while Hamas which you admit "conducts terrorism" (your words) is allowed to slip away from the "T" word because it also has territorial ambitions and conducts some social work. Now that's a bit too convenient and disingenuous. Because Osama, you see, also has territorial ambitions that go well beyond anything on Hamas' agenda. Osama wants al Qaeda to be the spearhead of a jihad to liberate the entire Muslim and Arab world from infidels, topple the Saudi and Hashemite monarchies and all secular regimes (to say nothing of little Israel) and install throughout the region (from Indonesia to Morocco) a ruthless theocracy. Moreover, some of his most faithful adherents would go even further and reclaim southern Spain and restore it to its past Moorish glory. And all those grand objectives are fueled by a fanatical belief that eventually Islam (Osama's brand) will rule the entire world. Now if that's not having territorial ambition, what is? But since you're already on a slippery semantic slope, you throw in a few other spurious arguments that also make one's eyes roll. Al Qaeda, you argue, launched a devastating "surprise" attack on the U.S., in contrast to Israel and the Palestinians which have been at war for a long time. Huh? There are many terrorism experts who will tell you that 9/11 did not come as a surprise because the U.S. had been under al Qaeda attacks for a decade (remember the first attack on the World Trade Center, the U.S. embassies in Africa and the USS Cole?) If we're still at war with al Qaeda 40 year from now, will that make them stop being terrorists? So since that argument might not work, you continue to distinguish Hamas from Osama because Palestinian terrorists are resisting Israel's "occupation" since the 1967 war - a "resistance" you maintain "that has now (!) bred suicide bombers." And that's where your entire thesis really goes kaput. Because you started out by saying that, in the Middle East, a term like terrorism should be avoided because Israel and Hamas use it to condemn each other; so the Post should step back and not adopt the vocabulary of belligerents. But that's exactly what you're doing when you blithely accept the Palestinian notion that there has been an Israeli "occupation" since 1967. Have you forgotten that in the late 1990s, under Oslo, almost all Palestinians were governed by the Palestinian Authority and that the Israeli Army had largely vacated the territories? Furthermore, Israel does not accept the term "occupied" territories because it implies that this was once land under Palestinian sovereignty. Israel argues that these have been "disputed" areas since the defeat of the Ottoman Empire. I'm not saying who's right or wrong. But how can the Post say it won't take sides when it comes to using the word "terrorism" because this might put the paper on Israel's side, but the Post then glibly accepts the Palestinian lexicon when it comes to describing Palestinian-populated areas? Also, what's with the timing factor of the breeding of Hamas terrorists? This happened just "now," according to you. Where have you been? Why don't you make a quick check of the Post's archives going back to the Munich massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics - and even before that? Furthermore, you also accept the Palestinian viewpoint when you flatly assert that Palestinian terrorism is the fruit of Israeli occupation. Israel, of course, would deny that and argue that "terrorism" is not a by-product of "occupation" since the Palestinians could have had their own state for the taking in 2000-2001 and the territories no longer were "occupied" anyway, but that Palestinian terrorism is the strategic choice of those who want to obliterate Israel altogether. Again, why if the Post is so intent on not taking sides does it accept the Palestinian version of events hook, line and sinker? Whether you like to admit it or not, the Post, by substituting "militant" for "terrorist" and describing the West Bank and Gaza as "occupied" territories, tilts toward the Palestinian side and against Israel. Words do have meanings - and consequences. What you seem to overlook is that throughout the 20th Century and now into the 21st, fanatical autocrats have twisted language to suit their political ends. Hitler, for example, rejected the notion that he was waging an offensive war when he invaded Poland. Not so, said Hitler. Poland first attacked Germany and Germany simply responded with defensive measures. Now, if you were the Post's ombudsman in 1939, would you or the Post have cautioned reporters not to describe the German-Polish conflict as outright aggression by Germany because, God forbid, this might be seen as taking sides between the conflicting versions of the combatants? Can you see now, for perhaps just a moment, how the Post, in trying to draw fatuously illogical distinctions, is embarrassing itself? If there still is such a thing as terrorism, why not let your reporters call it when they see it instead of straitjacketing them with endlessly contradictory "guidances?" Free use of Webster's might be a good start.

WHY THE DOUBLE STANDARDS? Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, September 19, 2003.

While the world's media still debates whether or not Arabs who deliberately blow up civilian busloads of innocents are militants or terrorists, Mr. Ignatius has no problem using the "T" word for Kurds. And while the same media insists that there be a 23rd Arab state, somehow 30 million stateless Kurds are still considered undeserving of one. David Ignatius of the Washington Post wrote on September 16, 2003 of the danger in playing America's Turkish card in Iraq. In the course of the article, when mentioning the Kurds, he referred to them only as terrorists or rebels. Now think about that for a minute. At a time when most media folks are still debating whether or not Arabs - who deliberately blow up busloads of Jewish innocents in buses, pizza parlors, teen nightclubs, etc. - are "militants" or "terrorists," folks like Mr. Ignatius have no problem using the "T" word for Kurds. Let's say, right from the start, that I support a strong Turco-American alliance, but it's not a good idea to have the Turkish military join us in Iraq. I'll get into this issue a bit later on. For now, consider the following: Just imagine if Israel was to say that under no circumstances would another Palestinian Arab state be permitted to be created (Jordan having been carved out, in 1922, of some 80% of the original borders of Mandatory Palestine as Britain received it on April 25, 1920). Could you envision the outcry around the world? Yet this is precisely what our friends, the Turks, have stated over and over again regarding the Kurds. And besides David Ignatius' comments, this has been echoed elsewhere as well such as in Thomas Friedman's March 26th article in the New York Times. Friedman advised that the Kurds should be told point blank, "what part of 'no' don't you understand? ...You Kurds are not breaking away." Nauseating. These are the same authors who, along with many others, have written volumes espousing the creation of that 23rd Arab state, While the Turks' nervousness over such a thought is understandable, their position (as well as Ignatius', Friedman's, etc.) is morally indefensible - if that means anything these days. We'll return to this issue as well later on. At this time, however, we need to take a good look at the plight of some 30 million perpetually used and abused Kurds. Think about all of the journalistic, political, and other energy which has been devoted to the creation of that 23rd Arab state. Now ask yourselves how much has been devoted to the plight of stateless Kurds? Think of Mr. Ignatius' and Mr. Friedman's comments for starters. For several decades now, in the study of Middle Eastern Affairs, some subjects have appeared to be taboo while others never seem to leave center stage. Perhaps one reason for this state of affairs lies in the perpetual quest for Arab petro-dollars by financially hungry academic institutions. Another possibly related reason has something to do with those who have hijacked an intolerant control of Middle Eastern Studies in academia. Israel, constantly in the spotlight's glare, is thus frequently picked apart (all in the name of "objective scholarship" of course), and every real and/or imaginary sin is repeatedly exposed for all to see and pass judgment upon. Indeed, many academics have taken the lead recently to single Israel out and treat it as a pariah in their attempts to have their institutions cut all ties to it. The mere suggestion that Pan-Arabism or Arab nationalism has problems with Jewish nationalism/Zionism for at least some of the same reasons it has had similar problems elsewhere--Berber North Africa, Lebanon, Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan, the Sudan, etc.--can elicit harsh rebuke. In the classroom, however, such subjects are more often than not simply not dealt with at all. Rare is the classroom, for example, that gets into a discussion of the "other side" of the Middle East refugee problem, the one half of Israel's Jews who fled Arab/Muslim lands as a result of the war Arabs launched against the nascent Jewish State. Even more rare is the class that puts the 1947 partition plan for Palestine into the broader context of another partition going on at the very same time between Hindus and Muslims over the Indian subcontinent. The double standard frequently reigns supreme, and while students are often left with the impression that one national movement holds a monopoly on evil and injustice, the other is in line for imminent canonization. Not surprisingly, therefore, revealing and provocative subjects such as Arab treatment of the Kurds have, until recently, simply been ignored. It took Saddam's gassing of them a little over a decade ago in Desert Storm to finally get some interest aroused...but not much. Yet these same voices, mostly silent on the decades' old subjugation and slaughter of Kurds, loudly protest that Arab nationalism has been eternally wronged because it has manifested itself to date - largely via conquest and forced arabization of other peoples and their lands - on "only" twenty-two states, including one on over 80% of the original Mandate for Palestine issued to Britain on April 25, 1920 and today known as Jordan. Some thirty million proud, much abused, and beleaguered people - still not in possession of one state let alone two dozen others - are thus simply disregarded in a grotesque display of moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy by the very same circles promoting an Arafatian state. What's even worse, outside of academia, an Arabist-dominated State Department perpetuates this problem for its own largely oil-tainted reasons. And most of the media engages in this double standard as well. The story of Kurdish nationalism is a depressing one when compared with that of other nationalisms in the Middle East. Arab and Iranian nationalisms, for example, are replete with events causing anger, frustration, setbacks, and the like, but their futures remain alive with the promise of a better tomorrow. Not so, however, for the Kurds...That is, not until recently. While great forces are still working against this - not the least being those at Foggy Bottom - the war in Iraq has the potential to, at long last, right an historic wrong. It is time... The Kurds are a native, non-Arab people who have lived in the Middle East for thousands of years. Their name derives from the ancient Guti (Guti-Gurti-Kurdi), conquerors of Babylon. They were the non-Semitic Hurrians of Mesopotamia and the Medes of Persian history. Their home covers mountainous regions now part of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and other countries as well. But the heartland of ancient Gutium, the domain of later autonomous Kurdish mirs, had been in what is now - thanks to the British - Arab Iraq. The area around Mosul and Kirkuk, vast in petroleum deposits, was traditional Kurdish land. Add to this an ironic twist. While Syrian Arabs (as well as Saddam) like to sing praises to the medieval warrior Saladin's name, Saladin was, in fact, a Kurd who joined in the fight against Christendom's advances in the Middle East. Had he known what would be in store for his people at the hands of Syrian Arabs centuries later, he might have had second thoughts. A reading of the Kurdish nationalist Ismet Cherif Vanly's book, The Syrian 'Mein Kampf' Against The Kurds (Amsterdam 1968), gives some good insight into how Arabs have dealt with any and all potential rivals in the region. The Ottoman Turks controlled most of the Middle East for over four centuries. With the pending collapse of their empire, numerous peoples had their dreams for independence once again reemerge. President Wilson encouraged this himself in his famous Fourteen Points and his calls for self-determination for all former subject peoples. The Kurds were among those whose aspirations were addressed. The best and most reasonable chance for Kurdish independence was sacrificed, however, in the immediate post-World War I era on the altar of British petroleum politics and Arab nationalism. What was promised as "Kurdistan" became Arab Iraq instead. The odds against a favorable outcome to such aspirations grew immensely from then on. Among other things, Arab nationalists feared that if such a state arose it would become the focus of immigration for millions of Kurds living in Turkey and Iran. Arabs also wrote that they would see the birth of an independent Kurdistan as equivalent to the creation of another Israel, i.e. it would permanently separate lands from what Arabs claimed solely for themselves. In order to maintain any credibility in the strategically important Arab world, the British - who had recently switched from a coal to an oil-powered imperial navy - decided that they had to ignore previous promises made to the Kurds and included the oil-rich Kurdish areas in what was being formed as Arab Iraq instead. Britain decided that its long-term interests required keeping the Arab world as friendly as possible. Besides backing off from promises to the Jews in Palestine (including chopping off all of the land east of the Jordan River and handing it over to the Arabs in 1922 with the creation of the Emirate of Transjordan), this also meant passing another litmus test, the abandonment of the Kurds. A newly invigorated Turkish Republic under Ataturk and Iran's Reza Shah Pahlavi ruled out, respectively, the potential western and eastern options as well - despite numerous and continuing revolts in the former and the brief Mehabad experience in the latter. Rebellion in these areas represented/represent acts of desperation by a repeatedly exploited and abandoned people. In an era in which former victims of imperialism and oppression were struggling for recognition and gaining national rights, the Kurds were alternately tantalized with intimations of independence and crushed by the withdrawal of these promises at the very moment their realization appeared to be within reach. The explosive results were inevitable. "Rebels," indeed, Mr. Ignatius... Even more troubling for those of us who love America and care about what our nation represents to the world, the United States replaced Britain as the primary user (abuser') of the Kurds, using them to hammer away at our own enemies in the region, and repeatedly abandoning them to their own fate when our own immediate goals were reached. So, that brings us up to the present and our current problems with post(')-Saddam Iraq. We hear from the folks at the State Department that Iraq must not be dismembered because it will lead to instability in the region. Talk of a newly-created federal state prevails. Funny, these same foggy Bottom folks don't think twice about what the creation of a second Palestinian Arab state will do to both a miniscule, 9-mile wide Israel and a Jordan whose majority population is Palestinian Arab. Repeated partitions are legitimate for Palestine, but not even one is permissible for Mesopotamia/Iraq. There will be no "Road Map" for Kurdistan...What's wrong with this picture? The real reasons for our State Department not wanting this, of course, are quite different. One of the main issues is the same one that Britain had when it aborted an independent Kurdistan in the first place: fear of angering the Arab world. But think of what could happen if Mosul and Kirkuk's oil became part of a long overdue, friendly Kurdish State with America as its main ally... The other major concern is more noble and has to do with our friends, the Turks. With the collapse of their empire after World War I, when the dust finally settled, Ataturk pulled together a reinvigorated (if much constricted) Turkey. The eastern portion of what was left of the Turkish domain, however, largely consisted of Kurds, but the Turks had drawn their line in the sand and were not about to permit the dismemberment of any more of their territories due to a Kurdish nationalism frustrated with the loss of the one best chance it had at independence in Mesopotamia. So the Turks and Arabs (and others as well) have all harshly suppressed the aspirations of this stateless people. Additionally, Kurdish language, culture, and other aspects of Kurdish identity have been periodically outlawed. So here's our current challenge - if we can overcome the Arabists who too frequently call the shots at the State Department. We now have a chance to right an historical wrong. If Arabs can, after all, have twenty-two states, and very possibly a 23rd in the future, on lands mostly conquered and forcibly arabized from other, non-Arab peoples, how can thirty million Kurds be forced to forever remain stateless and usually at someone else's mercy? What will happen to America's Kurdish allies, who fought and died side by side with our troops to overthrow Saddam, when America leaves the area due to any number of potential reasons? Arabs will not hesitate to take "revenge" on this people whom they have a long history of massacring. Turks fear that an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq will cause and/or support a similar move to independence in the adjacent Turkish lands. This is, in reality, extremely doubtful. More likely - and with proper cultivation most probably - what will occur is that those Kurds (like those Greeks or those Jews or those Armenians, etc.) who wish to live in an independent state of their own will migrate to that state in northern Iraq. Indeed, Turkey stands to lose many of its own potential "problems" this way. The odds of that new state - born as a result of American and possibly Turkish assistance by dismantling Saddam's Iraq - purposely biting the hands that fed it are not very likely. Turkoman tribes in the north and Sunni and Shia Arabs in central and southern Iraq will have a loosely federated state as well, and a formula can be reached whereby the oil wealth can be shared - including with the Turks who feel that they lost the Mosul fields due to Britain's earlier influence with the League of Nations after World War I. It was good that the Turks said "no" to our using their border with Iraq as a springboard for our troops during the overthrow of Saddam. Part of the price tag for such permission would have likely been granting the Turks permission to occupy Iraqi Kurdistan...a moral nightmare...again, if that means anything these days. Talk of inviting Turkish troops to now "help out" in Iraq falls into this same mold. Since we went to war and once again called upon our strangely loyal friends, the Kurds, to assist us in ousting Saddam, we have to be sure that this time we hold the moral high ground. We've not done this before with them. Indeed, after President George Bush (senior) called on them to revolt against Saddam in Desert Storm, he watched and did nothing while these people were gassed to death by the thousands. Secretary of State's September 2003 visit to Halabja was thus a bit ironic. He was one of those who had a say in this earlier policy. Remember that the full force of America's war machine was nearby and could have acted...but didn't. And this was not the first time we abused them this way. It is time to right a long overdue historical wrong. This appeared on http://www.KurdishMedia.com.

DON'T CALL THEM PEACE PLANS Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 19, 2003.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN EXPECTED OF ARAFAT?  Having won the six-day war, Israel should have set the terms and secured its future. Instead, it treated its deadly enemies as equals. It negotiated at Madrid with Jordan over the territories remaining under the Mandate for a Jewish national home, as if Jordan already didn't occupy most of the Land of Israel. The Jordanians showed bad faith by letting representatives of the PLO participate in their delegation. Israel's Shamir regime betrayed its own people by winking at that violation of the official Israeli position not to negotiate with terrorists. It had tried to ignore those representatives, who claimed not to be PLO representatives, because it feared that otherwise the Arabs would not have negotiated. When Arabs refuse to negotiate, the West gives in to them. The PLO representatives, whom everybody pretended were not PLO representatives, made Israel a laughing stock, by running to confer with Arafat, whom Israel pretended was irrelevant, even back then. Later, under Oslo, Israel let Arafat return to the territories. What could it have anticipated from his presence but trouble? It let him entrench himself, mostly because he cleverly put off the election until he was entrenched. Delay is an Arab tactic that works well with impatient Westerners. The Westerners don't see through Arab procrastination. Westerners crave seeing things concluded. They hastily sign agreements that their totalitarian adversaries have no intention of keeping. In this case, Arafat won that election by hook and by crook. How could Israel have expected otherwise? Now Israeli and US leaders act surprised that things turned out poorly. Some still pretend that it was a free election. These are the ones who claim that Arafat has more standing than Abu Mazen, because Arafat was "elected." Do elections of Saddam, Assad, and Mubarik give those dictators standing? DON'T CALL PLANS PEACE PLANS!  Every time the State Dept. comes up with a plan for detaching territory from Israel and giving it to Israel's deadly enemies, people call it a peace plan. The State Dept. should know, as do the Arabs, that depriving Israel of defensible borders and strategic depth brings not peace but war. Not realizing where such plans are heading or what kind of society the Arabs have, other people believe that those plans called "peace plans" by the State Dept. are peace plans. They have no idea that the Arabs don't believe in peace and that these plans are part of their schema for conquering Israel. These dupes suppose that the Arabs must be like themselves, wishful for peace, willing to compromise, and able to bury the hatchet. They should not assume that the Arabs are like themselves or that a plan is a peace plan because it is called a peace plan. It is difficult to blame the ordinary citizen of a democracy for repeatedly falling for these deceptions, because his society does not produce informed citizens. How is he to learn from experience, when he has little base of information, and doesn't know what went wrong. The media blame Israeli intransigence, when the problem is Arab intransigence and bellicosity. DON'T CALL CONCESSIONS GOODWILL GESTURES.  Many concessions are called "goodwill gestures," without indication why. The Arabs accept the concessions but complain about the gestures. That hardly expresses goodwill. Just because the gestures are called goodwill gestures, doesn't mean they bring goodwill. Confirming the Arabs in their certainty of being right or at least on the path to victory, Israeli goodwill gestures only bring demands for more concessions. Let those who propose such gestures explain what the record of such gestures is (they bring ill will), why the current requested gesture would bring goodwill, and why no goodwill gestures are asked of the Arabs, though the Arabs are the aggressors and are the ones who express hatred of the other side. What goodwill do the Arabs show? What Arafat was cajoled to utter, cynics called "magic words," but he was dissembling, and Israel's enemies-who-pretend-friendship, such as the NY Times, seized upon those words as conciliatory.

OF JEWISH "TERRORISTS" AND PALESTINIAN "MILITANTS" Posted by Leo Rennert, September 19, 2003.

Ha'aretz is an English-language Israeli newspaper. To the Editor of Ha'aretz: In scanning you web-site today (Sept. 19), I came across the following headlines, one on top of the other: "4 IDF soldiers hurt in Jenin as troops enter second day of hunt for militants" "Settler charged with series of security crimes, involvement in terror cell" In Haaretz's lexicon, I gather, Palestinian terrorists are merely "militants," while Jewish vigilantes are labeled "terrorists." As a reader of the U.S. press, I'm used to the semantic kid-glove "militant" treatment accorded to Palestinian suicide bombers. But to justify this Orwellian twist, the New York Times, Washington Post and other American media decided to erase the the term "terrorist" altogether from their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But to call a Palestinian terrorist a "militant," while labeling a violence-prone Israeli a "terrorist" is a new linguistic juxtaposition I hadn't come across before. For a second there, I thought I had landed on the web site of an Arafat broadsheet.

DEMYSTIFY IT: How To Defeat Suicide Terrorism Posted by Israela Goldstein, September 19, 2003.

This is an important article; it's written by Adam Wolfson. The religious orientation of the Islamists...breaks down deterrence. How do you deter someone who is willing, indeed eager, to die?...You cannot deter Islamic fundamentalists. Fareed Zakaria In the suicide terrorist we have met our match. Or so we are told. For 40 years, deterrence kept the Soviets at bay, dissuading them from attacking our cities. But deterrence is impossible, it is said, against religious zealots. How astonishing and inexplicable is their behavior! What unfathomable commitment they show! Surely, such fanaticism cannot be deterred. That's the conventional wisdom, but as is so often the case with conventional wisdom, it is mostly wrong. In a rigorously researched article for "The American Political Science Review," Robert Pape has examined every suicide-terrorist attack in the world from 1980 to 2001. There have been 188 such suicide attacks worldwide, ranging from Lebanon to the West Bank, from Sri Lanka to Chechnya, and from India to Turkey. From his survey research, Pape, who teaches political science at the University of Chicago, is able to explain much about this barbaric practice: He shows how suicide terrorism operates, and why it became a growth industry over the last several decades. His superb study should help dispel the widespread notion that suicide terrorism is somehow beyond comprehension, and beyond remedy. One of Pape's most important findings is that suicide terrorism is guided by clearly identifiable strategic goals. It is not a mere act of wanton cruelty, though it is certainly that. Nor is it an act of desperation by the dispossessed. Rather, suicide -attacks are nearly always carefully calibrated to accomplish the political goals of nationalists groups. Of the 188 suicide-terrorist strikes from 1980 to 2001, a whopping 95 percent were undertaken as part of an organized political campaign; that is, only 9 of the 188 attacks were unplanned. These statistics give us a clearer picture of what we're up against. The vast majority of suicide attacks are not the work of psychos; they are not the random and unpredictable acts of fanatics. We're not in the realm of trying to divine the dark psychology of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Rather, suicide terrorism occurs, as Pape describes, in "clusters." And it is nearly always deployed as part of a larger political-military campaign. The psychology of an individual suicide terrorist might indeed be incomprehensible, but this is not the case of those who recruit, train, and outfit him. A suicide terrorist's handlers are not so eager to die, and there is little reason to believe that deterrence - if forcefully and consistently applied - will not prove effective against them. Pape uncovers another startling and vitally important pattern: Every suicide attack in the period under study was launched against a democracy. Hezbollah used this weapon to force the United States and France from Lebanon in 1983; Hezbollah and Hamas have used it repeatedly to force concessions from Israel; Tamil terrorists have used it against the Sri Lankan government; the Kurds against Turkey; the Chechen rebels against Russia; the Kashmir rebels against India; and perhaps most infamously, on September 11, al Qaeda launched its suicide-terrorist attacks against America. This is an extraordinarily important finding. Clearly, the terrorists have reached certain conclusions about our own "regime." They think we are "soft," and they surmise that democracies in particular are vulnerable to nihilistic coercion. And in this regard, the terrorists are, sadly, not entirely wrong. For another pattern Pape unearths is that suicide terrorism against democracies is effective. It is more destructive than regular terrorism - from 1980 to 2001 suicide attacks made up 3 percent of total terrorist attacks but produced 45 percent of all casualties - and that's not even counting the immense carnage of September 11. Moreover, suicide terrorism more often than not achieves its strategic goals. By Pape's accounting, of the eleven separate suicide campaigns from 1980 to 2001, six produced "significant policy changes by the target state toward the terrorists' major political goals." This bodes ill for the future, as Pape indicates: The main reason suicide terrorism is growing is that terrorists have learned that it works. Even more troubling, the encouraging lessons that terrorists have learned from the experience of the 1980s and 1990s are not, for the most part, products of wild-eyed interpretations or wishful thinking. They are, rather, quite reasonable assessments of the outcomes of suicide -terrorist campaigns during this period. So how should democracies respond to this new scourge? Pape argues in favor of beefing up homeland security. Good advice. But much more than that can and should be done. We need to see suicide terrorism for what it is; we need to demystify it. Suicide terrorists are not some other breed of men, unsusceptible to the usual tools of statecraft. As Thomas Hobbes once said of human cruelty: "That any man should take pleasure in other men's great harm, without other end of his own, I do not conceive it possible." The terrorists have their ends. Deny these - make sure that suicide terrorism does not pay - and it will surely lose much of its luster. Adam Wolfson is editor of The Public Interest. This article appeared on National Review Online (http://www.nationalreview.com), September 16, 2003.

SHIMON PERES' 80TH BIRTHDAY PARTY Posted by Ruth Matar, September 19, 2003. great

Ten years ago, on August 20, 1993, Shimon Peres celebrated his 70th birthday in Oslo, Norway. According to his book, "The New Middle East," he initialed "in the wee hours of the night" an Arab-Israeli Accord, which had been arrived at in utter secrecy. According to Peres this Norway setting was ideal. A close-knit group of Norwegian Government people made itself available for passing messages between Israel and the PLO. The group included Foreign Minister Jurgen Holst and his wife, Marianne, and the head of the Political Research Institute, Terje Larson and his wife Mona. When discussions began to intensify, this group spared no logistical or other effort to keep the momentum going and to maintain secrecy. Even Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin was initially kept in the dark about these secret negotiations. However, President Hosni Mubarak, Foreign Minister Ahmru Mussah, and adviser Osmah el-Baaz were privy to the fact that secret talks were underway. Extraordinary! The Egyptians knew that secret talks were being conducted, but Peres' own Government, and the Israeli People, were not so informed! But then, Peres has always had contempt for democratic procedures. Indeed, he boasts: "I may not know what the People want; I do know what is good for the People." (Jerusalem Post International Edition, December 23, 1995) The entire Oslo Process was brought about by stealth and deception on the part of Peres. He gave recognition to the world's then-leading terrorist as the legitimate leader of the Arabs living in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. He entered into peace agreements with the PLO, an organization committed to Israel's destruction. He gave this arch terrorist murderer, Arafat, guns and ammunition for a 'police force,' which he fantasized would prevent further attacks upon Israel's citizens. He surely is the first leader of a country to arm its professed enemy with the expectation of gaining security. The Arabs must have had a good laugh! They made fools out of those who negotiated the Oslo charade; they scored the first real victory against Israel since 1948. But Peres didn't have a clue as to the real intentions of the Arabs. He tells us in his aforementioned book "The New Middle East" how Abu Ala, a Senior PLO representative (presently Arafat's handpicked puppet Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority), smiled warmly at him. 'This agreement," Abu Ala said, "IS YOUR BIRTHDAY PRESENT" This "BIRTHDAY PRESENT" was, of course, the Trojan horse which Peres naively led into Israel's very midst. The ongoing Palestinian war of terror is a direct and inevitable result of these 1993 Oslo Accords - the worst blunder in Israel's political history. The decade of carnage and blood that Oslo ushered in, is still erupting all around us. 1,110 Israelis have been murdered and thousands have ben maimed for life since Shimon Peres accepted his 70th birthday present from the Arabs. But Peres refuses to admit any responsibility. In an article entitled "We Did Not Err" in Ma'ariv, the second largest newspaper in Israel, Peres writes: "THERE WAS NO SMARTER STEP THAN THE OSLO AGREEMENT..." Never mind that he has brought grief and sorrow to so many families who have lost loved ones or suffered serious injuries. Peres is incapable of admitting error and continues to inject his poor judgment on crucial issues of the day. He recently met with U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and sharply criticized Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for not fulfilling his pledges, including the dismantling of settlements. He also stated that Israel has not honored its promise to release enough Arab prisoners and that the Sharon Government is making a major mistake by not negotiating as long as there is terror. He stated that the political situation needs to be handled with "care and wisdom," something which he, of course, never did. Ten years after that handshake on the lawn of the White House Rose Garden, Peres defends Arafat and condemns Israel. Peres' way of handling the political situation has been to close his eyes and to refuse to face the tragic reality of his own making, which exists in Israel today. The Jerusalem Report in the May 1, 1997 issue reports an extraordinary remark of Peres with regard to peacemaking. "In Argentina, the home of the tango, you know that in order to dance well you have to close your eyes and let the romance begin? Peace is a romantic process.' This remark certainly illustrates how Peres lives in a dream world of his own. He has closed his eyes for the last ten years, while his so-called 'peace partner' has killed 1,110 innocent civilians and maimed thousands. Tragically, Peres is dancing the Tango completely by himself on the graves of our loved ones. Now Shimon Peres is celebrating his 80th birthday and is attempting to make this a national affirmation and recognition of his "achievements." Obscenely, Prime Minister Sharon has declared this a State sponsored and State financed event. Sharon who in the past has accused Peres of "Giving Away the Country" and "Dancing with a Murderer" has assigned four of his staffers to promote Peres' birthday celebration. He has also asked his Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom to provide an additional two of his staffers for the same purpose. 1,200 police are assigned to provide security for Peres' birthday bash. The Israeli tax payer, including the families of the victims of Oslo, will be forced to foot the bill for this two day extravaganza. Over 200 people from close to 45 countries have been invited, including Bill Clinton, Kofi Annan, Polish Prime Minister Alexander Kosniski, Michael Gorbachev, Helmut Kohl, Nelson Mandela, Steven Spielberg, Barbara Streisand, Naomi Campbell, etc., etc., etc. Israel is currently in dire straights economically. 20% of Israel's children are malnourished. The Government is reducing welfare payments, and the education budget; it is severely shrinking the basic basket of services covered by the health funds, and making drastic cuts in the defense budget. We are told that we have no money for even vital services. How is it then, that we have money to honor the one person, Shimon Peres, who bears the greatest responsibility for Israel's dire economic situation and the ongoing slaughter of Jews? Our organization, Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), would have liked to ignore Mr. Peres' birthday. We take no pleasure in raining on his parade. But our organization strongly feels, as does the majority of Israelis, that Oslo has been a tremendous failure. We would have liked to take no notice of Mr. Peres' birthday, but we cannot ignore our Government permitting this event to become an international affirmation of Oslo, and an international opportunity to approve the creation of a Palestinian State on our Land. World leaders and, shamefully, our own Government, will enjoy themselves at a dazzling party and pay homage to the main Architect of Oslo, Shimon Peres, who bears the greatest responsibility for the ongoing slaughter of the Jews. The rest of us will hold a Memorial Rally outside the Mann Auditorium in Tel Aviv where the festivities are taking place, to honor the memory of all those poor souls, who will never be able to celebrate another birthday. With Blessings and Love for Israel Ruth and Nadia Matar started Women In Green, an effective activist Israeli group, which lobbies against the Oslo "peace process" in its different manifestations. They are based in Jerusalem and their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org. To contribute, go to: https://host5.apollohosting.com/womeningreen/donation.html

THE ABAYUDAYA,THE JEWS OF UGANDA Posted by Sandy Rosen-Hazen, September 18, 2003.

Sjimon den Hollander wrote the following update/report: "bs'd Dear friends and supporters of the Abayudaya (the Jews of Uganda), After my trip to Uganda, I have not been able to write to you about my experiences yet, due to the many things that claim their time and attention too. In short, what I found was a wonderful community of sincere people, determined to join the Jewish people and to lead full lives in accordance with Torah and Halakha. There are surely a number of things that have to be learned still before an official conversion can take place, but their level of knowledge and observance is truly impressive. One of the things that struck me, was that when people of different families attached the mezuzot that I had brought to them as gifts to the doorposts of their houses, the majority of them actually knew the berakha "likboa mezuza" by heart! Our community in Uganda has adopted the name "She'erit Yisra'el" (Remnant of Israel); a very appropriate name considering the fact that discrimination, persecution and anti-Semitism have decimated the community in the course of many years. Now the climate has changed for the good, thanks to the appealing enthusiasm of these Torah-loving last Abayudaya, a number of families and individuals who before were forced to leave the community, are returning to the Jewish religion of their ancestors! Members of the She'erit Yisra'el community don't eat meat because there is no kosher butcher. However, now and then, they do eat tilapia-fish that is caught in Lake Victoria. Although the Abayudaya are all living in the area around Mbale, they live quite spread out in this large region. I mainly stayed in Putti, an area in the same region with quite a number of Jewish families. Putti has the oldest existing Ugandan synagogue, built in 1919 by the initial legendary founder of the community, Semei Kakungulu. Because the synagogue was built from branches and mud, only a few walls remain standing... On the same land is now a temporary synagogue, made of branches and reed walls, and next to this structure one can already see the first part of the foundation of what will be a beautiful new synagogue. Each brick for this synagogue is made by hand, and this process means a lot of hard work. However right now the progress of this construction is endangered because of lack of money. The first stage was financed by Dr. Wapnick z"l, but since his tragic passing away no donations have been made for the completion of the first stage. We are not talking about enormous amounts here. To complete the first building stage of the synagogue (the entire foundation and the lower parts of the walls) would cost about $1,500. To finish the rest of the structure costs an extra $6,000 to $7,000. After that come the doors, the seats, etc of course, but with a few thousand dollars, a lot could be done! My trip with Ruth de Jong, the Dutch photographer, was very exciting indeed. We found a store in Mbale where solar panels were sold. Because there is no regular electricity in Putti, modern solar energy techniques could provide a great way to supply the synagogue with electricity and light. We bought a small solar panel that provides enough electricity for one lamp. This was installed in the synagogue and it was the first introduction of electricity in the region, a modest first step! We had services during the whole week, but of course, the services on Shabbat in the temporary synagogue were the highlight of the week. Before Shabbat, members of the community travel to the site and spend the entire night and day there together, only to leave after the havdala service. This is to avoid traveling on Shabbat. It was wonderful to here "Lekha Dodi" sung in an African tune, and many other songs in Ugandan-composed melodies. And what an experience to lead the daily prayers, and then during the silent "amida," to hear the sound of distant drums! The Abayudaya-community has big plans: They want to build a whole Jewish yishuv (settlement) on the site: members will build their houses around the synagogue. There will be a Jewish school, a study center (Bet-Midrash) with library, and a house for guests. There is an option to purchase a well that will be used to construct a mikwe. There is also an urgent need for a medical clinic, and of course different industries have to be set up to create sources of income... It is of vital importance that the up growing generation has the opportunity to receive education, so that the community will be strong in the future and able to build itself up and support the weak among them. Therefore we have made it our responsibility to guarantee the payment of their school tuitions. Primary school children pay $6 every three months ($24 a year), (we are supporting 34 primary school children) Secondary school children pay $18 every three months ($72 a year), (we are supporting 13 secondary school children) At the advanced level they pay $26 every three months ($104. a year), (we are supporting 2 children at advanced level) Students at a trade school (construction, catering, tailoring, etc.) pay different fees, all around $75 for three months, (we are supporting 5 trade school students) University students pay about $700 twice a year, (we are supporting 3 university students) The school fees in total that have to be paid immediately, amount to $3,000.00 These fees for this new period are however due this week, and unfortunately we have not received sufficient donations to wire enough money to guarantee every child's and student's education. We hope that you will make donations of any amount to support the Jewish community of Uganda... one amazing thing about your donation to the Abayudaya-Project is the immediate effect every dollar has on the lives of these people. With $240 dollars, ten young children can go to school for an entire year! For $1,500 you can finance the foundation of an entire synagogue! We can do great projects for relatively small amounts of money. Also, every penny of your donation goes to the project. We don't hold back any money for administration. My trip to Uganda for instance, I paid myself. And soon we expect to have a way to even avoid the bank-fees for the wiring of money! Note that your donations are tax-deductible in the United States. Please write your checks to: American Sephardi Federation (ear-marked as: Uganda-Project) Mail to: American Sephardi Federation c/o Mazol Ustaev 15 West 16th Street New York, NY 10011 P.S. We are trying to set up a pen-pal network between Abayudaya Ugandans and American Jews. If you are interested, please e-mail us with your information: Name, age, gender, religious community, etc. and we will try to hook you up with one of the members. Any age is good. Most people in Uganda speak English, and if not there will be someone to translate back and forth. Thank you on behalf of the Abayudaya. This letter was shortened from the original.

A DEAFENING SILENCE Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, September 18, 2003.

While the question asked in the NY Sun piece is rhetorical, it still should be answered. Pollard was sent to jail because he was set up as the fall guy in a massive cover up that has only recently been exposed. He stays in jail because he is an unacceptable embarrassment to Israel's ruling elite who place their "relationship" to the Americans above the people of Israel. Finally, the reason the Liberal, civil rights establishment is silent is very obvious. Pollard is a Jew and worked to save Jewish lives. That is more than reason enough to make him persona non grata to the Liberals. http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=18289 Want to get rich? Collect a nickel from every one of the people who has been crying bloody murder about Attorney General Ashcroft and the Bush administration's use of "secret evidence" against alleged terrorists - but who hasn't uttered a peep abut the administration's refusal to disclose the secret sentencing memo in the case of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard. Mr. Pollard, you may recall, is the American who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage on behalf of Israel. Pollard in 1987 was sentenced to life in prison. That was an unusually harsh punishment, coming as it did after a plea bargain and for acting on behalf of a nation that is, after all, an American ally. Judge Stephen Williams, in a 1992 dissent in an earlier Pollard appeal, referred to the government's breach of its plea agreement as "a fundamental miscarriage of justice" and likened the behavior of government lawyers to that of the witches in "Macbeth." Pollard and his lawyers were back in federal court yesterday (09/02/03) in Washington. Among the issues being argued was the right of Pollard's lawyers, who have the appropriate "Top Secret" security clearances, to get access to the classified documents that the American government filed with the sentencing judge before Pollard was sent down the river. The classified documents include portions of a 46-page declaration filed by the secretary of defense at the time of the sentencing, Caspar Weinberger. Mr. Weinberger publicly referred to Pollard's action as "treason," a charge that the Constitution prohibits the government from defining as anything other than levying war against America or adhering to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort. It was a charge of which Pollard was never accused. The American Civil Liberties Union, to its credit, filed a friend of the court brief siding with Pollard. On another issue before the court, on the statute of limitations and the habeas corpus right, at least one distinguished liberal, Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard Law School, has signed a friend of the court brief backing Pollard, while another distinguished liberal, a former executive director of the NAACP, Benjamin Hooks, tried to sign on to the brief but was rejected by the court. Still, one has to wonder: Where is the New York Times editorial page and its liberal columnists? Where are Nat Hentoff and the Village Voice? Where's Bob Barr? Where are David Bonior and Rep. John Conyers and their allies in the organized American Muslim and Arab communities? The Nation Magazine? The National Public Radio crowd? They've all been writing and buying newspaper advertisement and holding rallies and giving speeches and introducing legislation and otherwise raising a ruckus about the use of secret evidence and tribunals in counter-terrorism cases and immigration proceedings. And doing so in cases that involve the real levying of war against America and adhering to its enemies. Pollard's actions were illegal and misguided, a point even he has admitted. But if the real issue for all these civil liberties advocates were strictly civil liberties, one would think they'd be eager to see Pollard granted the same due process rights that they are so eager to grant those who are accused of aiding the terrorists. In the case of Pollard, however, a perfect example of the abuse of secret evidence is greeted with a deafening silence. It gets to a point where people wonder why. This essay appeared in the New York Sun, September 3, 2003.

Posted by Israela Goldstein, September 18, 2003.

CHANCE FOR PA STATE HAS "EXPIRED" Prime Minister Sharon Now Opposes Creating A Palestinian Arab State, Journalist Close to Sharon Reveals. NEW YORK- A prominent Israeli journalist known to be a close confidante of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reports that in the wake of the latest Palestinian Arab terrorist massacres, Sharon now opposes creation of a Palestinian Arab state. Uri Dan, writing in Ma'ariv on September 11, 2003, stated that the latest attacks have convinced Sharon that the Palestinian Authority must "disappear from the map" and that "The Palestinian leadership will not get to see a Palestinian state - at least not in this generation. The chance that they were given has expired." Dan, accompanying Sharon back to Israel from the prime minister's official visit to India, wrote: "In India, the State of Palestine was buried" - an ironic reference to the famous statement by the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, "In Basel [at the First Zionist Congress], I established the Jewish State." The ZOA notes that fifty prominent Jewish and Christian leaders, as well as former U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Secretary of Education William Bennett, former U.S. Senators Connie Mack and Rudy Boschwitz, and former Republican presidential candidates Gary Bauer and Alan Keyes recently signed a full-page ZOA newspaper advertisement headlined "President Bush, creating a Palestinian Arab state means creating a new terrorist state." The ad appeared recently in the Washington Times, the Weekly Standard, the Israeli newspapers Ha'aretz and the Jerusalem Post, and Jewish newspapers throughout the United States. A national poll by McLaughlin and Associates earlier this month found that by a margin of 71% to 13%, Americans oppose the creation of a Palestinian Arab state.

ILLEGAL ALIENS AND AMNESTY Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 18, 2003.

When no one in particular is seen to have been robbed or assaulted, crimes are called "victimless." However, organized and mass "victimless" criminality actually victimizes many people and society as a whole. One such type of crime is prostitution, which spreads disease and helps engender more criminality, brutality, and demoralization of society. Another such type of crime is that of illegal immigration. Defective societies have a safety valve in the emigration of more enterprising but impoverished or persecuted members. But in sneaking in, the emigrants are exploited by gangsters. They now come in waves, with the same defective ideology and social attitudes of the Muslim countries they fled. They can overwhelm host countries with social problems and attempts to impose their intolerance upon the hosts. Living on the fringe of the host society, they sometimes lead impoverished lives socially as well as economically. Terrorists come in with the mass, and raise money and recruits from them by racketeering. They radicalize mosque members into enemies of their countries. Americans expect immigrants becoming patriotic citizens, but many Muslims become enemies. Some of the Mexicans may be alienated, and, if they become a critical mass, may subvert national unity. The host countries awake slowly to the growing trouble, partly because radical liberals have turned it into an issue of political correctness and perverse humanitarianism. There are individual, pathetic cases. Rather than treat them as exceptions to be humane about, immigration "reformers" exploit sympathy to undo our immigration law altogether. Another reason is that industry prefers having cheap labor. Like Gresham's law about coinage, wherein bad drives out good, cheap wage earners drive out moderate wage earners. Business stays afloat; natives sink. To get such people out of the fringes and avoid some of the social problems, a movement is stirred up periodically to grant the illegals amnesty. There also are drives to allow them various services, despite their not being entitled to them and a duty to deport them. The trouble with such amnesty is that it undermines the defense against illegal immigration. Deterrence is weakened by the expectation of getting in on the next drive for amnesty. One of the arguments for amnesty is that some of those people have been here for several years. Thus for having committed their illegality for several years, rather than just one, they are rewarded more than those who committed such illegality for one year. They are given opportunities to become citizens and vote for more immigration.

CHILD GUINEA PIGS Posted by Honest Reporting, September 18, 2003.

On Monday (Sept. 15), the IDF caught two barefoot Palestinian children - ages 8 and 10 - breaking through the security fence from Gaza. Why were they breaking through the fence? Agence France-Presse reports a cruel case of child abuse: "The boys had been sent to test the security capacity of the fence around the Kissufim area, the Israeli army said Monday." What AFP doesn't report, however, is the boys' statement that an Arab man from Gaza forced them to do it. "An adult told us to cross the fence, and if not, he would hurt us," the boys said. IDF officials said that terrorist elements sent the boys as "guinea pigs" to see how the IDF would react. AFP quotes the IDF that the boys were sent "to test the security capacity of the fence." But since there's no mention whatsoever of Palestinian agents (who would also be interested in testing the fence), the reader has no reason to consider that a malicious Palestinian sent the boys, and is left assuming Israeli guilt. HonestReporting does not wish to imply that AFP intentionally distorted this story. However, given the sensitive and volatile nature of the Mideast conflict, it is irresponsible for journalists to present facts in such a vague manner - in this case, falsely suggesting that Israel used two innocent boys for a cruel test of IDF readiness. Please write to AFP, requesting they clarify the matter in an official correction: contact@afp.com

MISDIRECTED ANGER JINSA Report #361, September 18, 2003.

After proclaiming Arafat untouchable and refusing to meet with him; after putting American interests ahead of toothless multilateralism by withdrawing from the ICC and the ABM Treaty; after beginning the deployment of missile defenses; after abandoning the law-enforcement approach to terrorism; after making specific the link between terrorists and the state apparatuses that support them; after launching a just war against an existential threat; after asserting the right to active self-defense in an era of new threats; after liberating millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq from bestial repression; after proclaiming a democratic revolution for the part of the world most in need of one - the Arab and Muslim world - the President of the United States has let us down by directing his frustration with Palestinian terrorism at ISRAEL. It's bad enough that Israel buries its children on a regular basis, but now Israel will be punished for Palestinian terrorism. The President has made clear through the State Department the American view that: a) Palestinians will continue to receive American support for a state even as they continue to sponsor terrorism and refuse to undertake the democratic reforms once required by the President as quid pro quo for provisional support for independence. The death of American citizens in terrorist incidents will not be considered an impediment to this support; b) Regardless of the number of Israeli dead, Israel must continue to hold out the possibility of negotiations with terrorist groups and their allies; c) Israel cannot eliminate the Palestinian terrorist-in-chief, exile or threaten him. Nor can Israel eliminate terrorists who violate the Geneva Convention by hiding among civilians; d) Israel cannot apply non-lethal pressure on the Palestinians in the form of continuing work on items the Palestinians don't like, i.e., fences and houses. Israel will be penalized financially, but more importantly, Israel will be undermined by the understanding among its enemies that the US will protect them from Israel's righteous anger. Secretary Powell mentioned his fear of the "Arab Street." But the "Street" has been remarkably quiet about Afghanistan and sophisticated about Iraq. It is odd for JINSA to give the Arabs more credit than does the administration, but they seem largely prepared to deal with the consequences of a firm American defense of stated American interests. The President shouldn't let Mr. Powell's fear of Arabs make Jewish lives cheap. We're optimists by nature, otherwise we couldn't stand to be in this business. We have to believe that at the end of the day, the United States stands for the good, the right, the just, and the free. By and large, we aren't disappointed. But today we are. Israel deserves American support for hard decisions about security in the face of ongoing terrorism, not the misdirected anger of those who can't make the Palestinians pay for their depredations, and don't want Israel to.

15 THINGS I DON'T UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE MIDEAST PEACE PROCESS Posted by Rabbi Ephraim Shore, September 18, 2003.

1) If Palestinians want to live side-by-side with Israel, then why do all government logos and websites show Palestine encompassing all of Israel, with Israel nonexistent? 2) If a primary point of the road map is "confronting all those engaged in terror and dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure," then why do the Palestinians demand that Israel release thousands of terrorists from prison, an item not even included in the road map? Instead, shouldn't the Palestinians be arresting terrorists themselves? And shouldn't we be outraged that the two suicide bombers who murdered 15 Israelis on Sept. 9, 2003 (Hillel Cafe and Tzrifin bus stop) were among a group of Palestinian prisoners released by Israel this year? 3) If Israel is supposedly allowed to "take all necessary steps to defend its citizens," then why is Israel condemned for building bypass roads so drivers can avoid ambushes, condemned for building a fence to keep suicide bombers out, condemned for targeted killings of terrorist leaders, condemned for operating road blocks to screen for suicide bombers, condemned for clearing areas used for launching rockets, and condemned for keeping terrorists in jail? How exactly is Israel expected to defend itself? 4) When the PLO first demanded a state in 1964, it wanted every part of Israel except the West Bank and Gaza (which were then in the hands of Jordan and Egypt). Is it reasonable to assume that they now want only the West Bank and Gaza, or is that more likely a Trojan Horse - as Palestinian leader Faisal al-Husseini described it in 2001 as a first step to destroy Israel. 5) Why is the targeted killing of terrorists and their supporters lauded when done by the United States in Iraq, but not when done by Israel whose civilians face a daily threat of terror attacks? 6) Why has the United Nations passed far more condemnations against Israel than any other country - including Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Liberia, North Korea, and China combined - while millions were massacred in these other places? And then how does the UN expect Israel to accept it as an impartial mediator? 7) Why - if the Palestinian Authority has little freedom of speech and freedom of the press, little religious tolerance, is oppressive of Christians and other minorities, is corrupt at all levels of government, and is rife with vigilantism - is the creation of a Palestinian state a favorite "liberal" cause? 8) Why - after Yasser Arafat has proven for 40 years to be one of history's most incorrigible terrorists, while loyally backing dictators like Saddam Hussein - does the European Union still strongly support Arafat's leadership? 9) Why does the media call it "terror" when Al Qaeda strikes at Western targets, but not when Hamas strikes at Israelis (or even American citizens in Israel)? 10) If the Palestinians truly want peace, why do their school textbooks vilify Israel and glorify suicide bombers? Why does the government-controlled TV station broadcast virulent anti-Semitic messages? Why do mosques regularly incite followers to jihad? Why are (UN supported) children's paramilitary training camps - masquerading as summer camps - named in honor of the most "successful" Palestinian terrorists (an indoctrination process that has resulted in 60-80% support for suicide bombings)? 11) Why does the world call the West Bank "occupied" if it never belonged to the Palestinians? [Jordan controlled the West Bank for 19 years after conquering it in a war of aggression. It previously belonged to the Mamelukes, the Crusaders, the Ottoman Turks, and then Britain.] 12) What other country would give control of its holiest spot (the Temple Mount) to another religion (which arrived 1,500 years later), and then permit them to systematically destroy ancient remains (to eliminate evidence of a 3,000-year-old Jewish presence) and allow that religious body to prohibit access to non-Muslims for three years? 13) Why does anyone doubt Israel's sincerity for peace, after offering 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza in the Taba Talks 2001, and having given back the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt - a territory three times the size of Israel constituting 91 percent of the territory Israel took control of in the 1967 war? 14) Why does the world demand the uprooting of Jewish settlements - effectively making those areas "Judenrein" (empty of Jews)? Would anyone tolerate a similar form of ethnic cleansing whereby Israel does not allow Arabs to live in areas under Israeli control? 15) If, during Oslo, Israel gave tens of thousands of machine guns and 40% of the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians (giving them control over 97% of their population), in return for the promise that "all future disputes would be handled without violence," and instead Israel got 18,000 terrorist attacks that killed 845 and wounded 4,898 people, a collapsed economy, intolerable daily life for its citizens, and its holy sites desecrated, why is Israel again being asked to negotiate with that same Palestinian leadership, trust their future promises, and place its security in their hands? This appeared on the web site of PRIMER (Promoting Responsibility in Middle East Reporting) http://www.tampabayprimer.org

OSLO AND THE WORLD TRADE CENTER Posted by Moshe Feiglin, September 18,2003.

The Israeli media remarkably ignored the tenth anniversary of the Oslo Agreement. It would have seemed that the media couldn't have hidden such a fateful date from the public. It would have seemed that the media, that is constantly seeking fresh subjects to publicize, would have addressed the issue of the terrible decade that has elapsed and its significance. However, it appears that the persons pulling the strings in the Israeli media do not intend to set up a dock for the guilty, since clearly they would be allocated a place of honor there. September 13th passed just like any other day. No one in Israel stopped to draw conclusions, and the Oslo Agreements continue to demand their pound of flesh with an increasing appetite. But September 11th, the day when the WTC twin towers collapsed, was treated very seriously. September 11th does not threaten anyone and so Israeli citizens were presented with several programs containing scholarly analyses of the massacre in New York. One thing was hidden from both the Israelis and the Americans. Without September 13th there would have been no September 11th. The Oslo Agreement was also responsible for the collapse of the WTC twin towers. Without the despicable handshake between Rabin, Arafat, and Clinton on the 13th of Sept. 1993, the twin towers would not have collapsed on the 11th of Sept. 2001. It is customary to explain the Oslo Agreement as a peace agreement intended to end a physical conflict centering around the ownership of a piece of territory. This is just a smokescreen, but it seems that there is no alternative for the "cultured" public. Even the attack on the WTC twin towers, in which there is no territorial dispute in the background, and no war between armies and nations, was explained by the blind Western way of thinking by means of old examples of physical conflicts. Such conflicts can be comprehended from a secular viewpoint, and can be solved using our limited range of concepts. The Americans needed a country and an army to fight against, and Saddam Hussein supplied the goods. The Israelis needed a country and an army to make peace with, so they brought Arafat and invented for him a nation, an army, and a country. Both Israel and the US are afraid to confront the truth since they lack the cultural tools to understand it and therefore to face up to it. Even more serious, the cultural basis, the basic ethos on which Israel and the US were founded, is undermined and is liable to collapse if they were to understand the language used for fight against them. Israel and the US cannot permit themselves to wage religious wars, because this totally conflicts with their culture. They therefore flee to apparently rational areas, which are, however, totally irrelevant. US citizens are beginning to understand that the campaign in Iraq has not eliminated the threat of terror hanging over them, and Israeli citizens have already painfully understood that the invention of the Palestinian nation and state will not bring them peace. Our Western rationalism does not like seeking the meta-physical roots of the Oslo process and the Islamic terror. However, even those who are not prepared to consider issues that they cannot physically feel have to answer a single question for themselves. How did it happen that before the Oslo process there were no suicide bombers? The phenomenon of Moslem-Arab suicide is an unusual one in modern history. It is not right to compare this with the Japanese Kamikazes in the Second World War. There have always been soldiers who were prepared to give their lives during a war in order to achieve its aims. Even in Israel there have been quite a few examples of this. However, suicide as an ideology, which takes with it, as additional victims, women and children who do not represent a threat? This monstrous phenomenon only appeared after the Oslo Agreement. Most of the suicide bombing attacks could have been perpetrated even without committing suicide. The terrorist who blew himself up in the shopping mall near my home, in Karnei Shomron, could have placed the bag containing the explosives and left. He didn't do so because his death was an integral part of the act. The Japanese Kamikaze couldn't bring his Zero loaded with bombs onto the deck of the American aircraft carrier without committing suicide. *** Most people in the world believe in the Bible and know that "The Torah will come out from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." The world knows that the good tidings will come from this country. In Oslo the Jews agreed, for the first time in history, that this country does not belong to them but to the Arabs. After all, their tidings were of truth and would come from Jerusalem and conquer the entire world. In Oslo the Jews armed the Moslem Arabs with the most important weapon of all - the feeling that they were right. From a long time a world war has been waged under the surface between the unruly daughters of Judaism - Islam and Christianity - for domination of the world. Now that the Moslems have received from their "mother" the assurance that they are in the right, they have set out on a world Jihad armed with the most powerful, dangerous weapon. Obviously the Arab rabble, bearing the message of Moslem power and evil, is incapable of heralding anything other than death. However, in order to bring this belief to a state of awareness that makes people commit suicide it is apparently necessary to bring a theological, moral proof. Consequently the Oslo Agreement is needed. *** Jews make a practice of connecting dates and events. Both Temples were destroyed on the same date, and five grave events took place on Tamuz 17. These thoughts led me to check whether Oslo and the WTC twin towers attack actually took place on the same date, and not two days apart. I checked the Hebrew date of the two events and was disappointed. The Oslo Agreement was signed on the White House lawn on Elul 27, 5753, while the WTC twin towers collapsed on Elul 23, 5761. But I then came across an article by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe, who reminded me of things I had forgotten. The signing ceremony on the White House lawn was a media presentation only. The agreements themselves were signed four days earlier. Arafat signed then a letter in which he recognized Israel's right to exist in peace and security, and condemned the use of terror and violence. Rabin on the same day signed a letter emphasizing the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian nation and accepted them as a partner in peace negotiations. The date was September 9, 1993. What was the Hebrew date? You've guessed right: just like the attack on the WTC twin towers, the Oslo Agreement was actually signed on Elul 23. Elul 23, 5753. Moshe Feiglin is a member of the Likud and a founder of Manhigut Yehudit, which promotes a strong Jewish identity for the Jewish state.

EXPEL ARAFAT - AND THEN WHAT? Posted by by Elyakim Haetzni, September 17, 2003.

What the Americans Really Want.  An imaginary scenario: The Americans allow Sharon to drop a one-ton bomb on the entire top brass of Hamas, killing them all and leaving Hamas with no leadership. Let's say we've also conquered the Mukata and expelled Arafat and his entire Oslo bunch back to Tunisia. Now what? Does this lead to the vision of Eretz Yisrael HaShleimah [Greater Land of Israel]? Is there even anyone in official Israel, with the Likud at its helm, who sees this as a realistic diplomatic option? Let's try to understand what the Americans were thinking when they allowed us to drop a (small) bomb on Sheikh Yassin, and what they will be thinking when they finally allow us to expel Arafat. The answer was stated by Condoleeza Rice in two words: "Nation-building." She explained: "We struck the Serbs, enabling us to build the Bosnian nation; we beat the Taliban and built the Afghan nation; and we will now build Palestine." In the meantime she has also managed to smite Saddam Hussein, enabling her to busy herself with building the Iraqi nation. But the Palestinian thing is missing something. After all, to build the Bosnian nation, NATO defeated the Serbs. And against the Taliban and Saddam, the U.S. Army stepped in. To build a democratic state here, Hamas terrorism must be smashed - and somebody has to smash it. Bush Needs a Terror-Free Area - for a Palestinian State!  After all, if George Bush would know that the choice here is between a Saddam-like Palestinian terror state and nothing at all, he would certainly give up on his Palestinian vision! So who's supposed to get rid of the Palestinian terrorists so that a "democratic" American-supporting Palestinian state can arise in fulfillment of the American dream? Unlike the Europeans, Bush is serious about terrorism - and in fact sees eye-to-eye on this issue with Sharon. For this reason, he needs a strong army to fight and smash Arab terror - not only in Iraq or Afghanistan, but here too. It's not for naught that "smashing the terror infrastructure" is the first station on Bush's Road Map. But he's certainly not going to send his own boys out to die on the streets of Shechem and Gaza - certainly not when they're already doing so in Iraq - so who's left to do the dirty work? Only the IDF. In other words, it's up to the IDF to clean out the area and pave the way for a Palestinian state. Using the Jews to Build a PA State  It won't be the first time that goyim use Jews as weapons by which to strike the Jews. But our blind Israeli leaders are imagining that they're fighting only on behalf of our security, without seeing that at the same time they're serving another purpose, namely, paving the way for the next stops on the Road Map: general elections in a terror-free PA, followed by an international conference declaring a PA state with temporary borders on Jan. 1, 2004 that will immediately be accepted into the United Nations. This entire vision is a nightmare for every Zionist Jew loyal to his nation and land. But many leftists realize that it's dependent now on the disappearance of Arafat - and that's why they're suddenly demanding his expulsion. They realize that only one last step is required in order to fulfill their historic task of building a "Palestinian" nation and a "Palestinian" state. Zionism: Building Two States?  This process began when Zionism planted within the Arab mixed-masses who lived here with no national identity a feeling that they are a people carrying the name of the land that was destined to be the Jewish national home - "Palestine." Then, in 1967, the Zionist army came and freed them from Jordanian rule - under which they never would have received independence. Israel then spent the next several decades building them up: giving them education and teaching them administration, and building networks of roads, water, electricity, and health. Under Jordanian rule, they left - but under Israeli rule, hundreds of thousands of them came back in order to work for us, and good ol' anti-Semitism granted them the world's admiration. And finally, for good measure, the Zionist movement equipped them with ammunition, military training [from the U.S.], and much money, with the terrorist consequences with which we are all-too familiar. Our saving grace is the fact that the left-wing is not united, and the Arabs, though a smart people, can't control their terrorism urge for even a few months, during which the Road Map could do all the work for them. The Americans, too: if they would think it through, they would allow Sharon to drop a large bomb, expel Arafat, and thus the IDF could fulfill the Bush vision, instead of that of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Amos. Fight - but for the Right Cause!  My intention in these words is not to recommend to the IDF not to fight. I wish rather to warn of the trap that intrinsic in the very words "war on terrorism." This phrase implies that we don't have a war with the Palestinian people, even though they are those who are activating the weapons against us. It implies that the war is merely against the virtual concept of "terror," as if it can be fought with no connection to the 120-year-old blood-filled national struggle between the Jews and the Arabs in this Land. Peres in Oslo and on the White House lawn, and Sharon in his speech in Latrun and in Aqaba, have placed us in a bind. We have no choice but to continue fighting against the Palestinian enemy and to kill its leaders, but we also have no choice but to ensure that our war be on behalf of the Land of Israel, and not for "Palestine." We must therefore define clear national goals for our war. We dare not lead to a situation in which the historians will write that the State of Palestine was established in the Land of Israel with the bodies of our dead. We must therefore break through the tunnel and see the light at its end - the light of Jewish sovereignty over all of western Eretz Yisrael. Attorney Elyakim Ha'etzni is a resident of Kiryat Arba, a columnist in Yediot Acharonot and B'Sheva and a former Knesset Member from the Techiyah party.

POWELL RECOMMENDS APPEASEMENT TOWARD TERRORISM Posted by David Holcberg, September 17, 2003.

Secretary of State Colin Powell declared this weekend that "The United States does not support either the elimination or the exile of Mr. Arafat." His reasoning? "There would be rage throughout the Arab world, the Muslim world, and in many other parts of the world." By that reasoning we should not have attacked Afghanistan, nor Iraq; nor should we try to kill Hussein, bin Laden and the Al Qaeda leadership. In fact, if we accept Powell's reasoning, we should immediately stop our war on terror - we don't want to further enrage those peaceful Islamic terrorists and their supporters, do we?

PEACE ONLY THROUGH ETERNAL TORAH Posted by Choni Davidowitz, September 17, 2003.

Many millions of words have been spoken and written by journalists, politicians, analysts and other opinion makers on how to solve the Middle East problem and bring peace to the Holy Land. Dozens of peace plans, and agreements have been have been submitted and signed but to no avail. In 1948 Jewish sovereignity was returned after 2000 years. Nineteen years later, after the 1967 war G-d returned the Holy City of Jerusalem in its entirety - including the Temple Mount. Yesha (Judea and Samaria) including Hebron with the Cave of the Patriarchs was also returned. Despite this divine miracle and being victorious in four wars against many arab armies thousands of Jewish lives have been lost. Not only soldiers but of late babies, children, mothers and fathers, bobbas and zaidas have been killed or maimed. Fifty five years on we stand to-day and ponder how it is possible that a Country whose people gave the world geniuses of finance and technology and created economic empires for Gentiles, the same people are unable to create economic stability in our own country? How is it that the same army which to-day is much stronger that defeated five Arab armies in six days and in 1973 were at the gates of Cairo and Damascus is incapable of dealing with a bunch of p.l.o hoodlums? The answer is that one who speaks about peace in the Holy Land without mentioning G-d understands NOTHING. One who speaks about solutions to problems and does not mention Torah is incapable of understanding the solution because he does not understand the problem. This is what is happening in Israel to-day. From a magnificent divine miracle we have turned into a state of confusion and despair. We must therefore realise that peace can only be attained with Jewish faith and Jewish Power. A fundamental principle in Judaism is the concept that G-d rewards and punishes "midda keneged midda" - (measure for measure) How do we understand this? "Tucked away in a corner" of the Torah is a verse :(Hazinu chapter 32 V 21) which is seldom commented on, but which speaks volumes regarding the situation as it is to-day. "They (the Jewish Govt) provoked me with a non-G-d (Washington?) angered me in their vanities - so I shall provoke them with a non-people (Beloh-am), with a vile nation shall I anger them." The commentary in the Chumash states that a Govt. which worships deities without Torah values, that country shall be punished by a nation without cultural and moral values, a non people that exists SOLELY to exact retribution against Israel. One does not need to be a genius to deduce that the arabs who are inflicting such vile retribution against the Jews at this time DO NOT WANT to live peacefully side by side with the Jewish People. They DO NOT WANT a state of their own, in fact the only reason they are in our land is to kill and maim Jews. If there is anyone who still believes that a "palestinian nation" ever existed, would they please be kind enough to answer when and where it was founded, what was it's form of Government and where were its borders - name at least one "palestinian" leader before arafat. What country ever recognised its existence and when? In what Library or Museum can we find any of its coins or history or artifacts. Obviously they are a non people as the Torah states. From the above it is obvious that to have peace in our land we have to deal with these non people according to Torah values. There are numerous passages in the Torah which insrtruct us on how to deal with this problem - the most explicit is found in: Parshat Massei (chapter 33 v52/56)which states : "You shall drive out the inhabitants of the land before you and settle in it - for to you have I given this land to possess it, but if you do not drive out the inhabitants before you those of whom you shall leave shall be pins in your eyes and thorns in your sides and they will harass you upon the land which you live and it will be what I meant to do to them I shall do to you." The portion then discusses the true biblical borders of the Holy Land given to the Jewish people. (Rest assured there is no mention of green lines, West Bank or "occupied territories.") Settling the land according to the above Mitzva is the easy part - the difficulty is the second half of the Mitzvah - expelling the arabs. This difficulty will be overcome only with Jewish faith and Jewish power. G-d will make this possible if Governments of Israel learn to govern the country based on Jewish principles and values. Nobody expects every Jew to become overnight repentants. The very fact that millions of Jews in Israel and the Diaspora who do not keep Torah and Mitzvot reflects specifically to desecration of their own personal lives. In Eretz Israel we have a situation in which the every Govt. both left and right have neglected basic Jewish laws. By disobeying these Mitzvot they have publically declared war on G-d and His Torah. By giving away or contemplating to evict thousands of Jews from their homes, shuls, yeshivas, schools and businesses and giving the land to the savages who murder our people is the ultimate desecration of G-d's name and holiness. Every Jew in the diaspora should know that by supporting such an action places him in the catagory of desecrating G-d's name. We should not in any way be influenced by the secular media nor rely on our own understanding for a solution - but put all our faith in the words of Torah. Zionism means that Israel is one entity and if a Jew cannot live everywhere in Israel then he cannot live anywhere. All Israel is holy. The Zohar states that Eretz Israel is G-d's bedroom where he interacts with the Jewish people, His chosen people and where others do not belong. They have no business being involved in the relationship between G-d and the Jewish people. This is especially true now when all that truly remains for the Jews all over the world is the tiny bedroom called Eretz Israel. To sum up the only solution to the Israeli arab conflict must be based on the principle "The Land of Israel is for the Jews, the arab lands for the Arabs."

NEW TERRORIST CONCERN IN U.S. Posted by Israela Goldstein, September 17, 2003.

These cities in America are being watched for terrorist activity. This article was written by Lisa Myers of NBC News. (http://www.msnbc.com/news/967753.asp?0cv=CB10&cp1=1). A dangerous terrorist group that was thought to exist only in Iraq is trying to make inroads in the United States, with a presence in some American cities, top U.S. law enforcement officials have told NBC News. When a massive truck bomb destroyed the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad last month, the U.S. military quickly named a prime suspect: Ansar-al-Islam - a terrorist group whose base in northern Iraq was bombed by the United States this spring. Ansar used to be a small, mostly Kurdish terror group, operating almost exclusively in Iraq. But in the last few months, experts say foreign Islamic fighters have flocked to its side. And now, senior U.S. officials tell NBC News, the group has expanded its reach - to America. "We do have an Ansar-al-Islam presence here in the United States," said Pat D'Amuro, FBI assistant director and one of the agency's top counterterrorism officials. "There's enough intelligence information that we know that gives us great concern." Senior U.S. officials tell NBC News that Ansar followers are under investigation in at least a half-dozen American cities - including New York, San Diego and Los Angeles. So far, law enforcement sources say there's no evidence Ansar is planning an attack in the United States. But they worry that, beyond recruiting and fund raising, some Ansar supporters may be casing potential targets. NBC News has learned that the United States recently pressed Norway to move against one man, Mullah Krekar, for his past role as Ansar's spiritual leader. Krekar said he is no longer involved with the organization. But in a March 2003 video from Insight News, he praised suicide attacks "It is very well," Krekar said in the video. "It is very good. It is very, very useful for enemy." While there is ongoing debate about Ansar's strength and connections, some argue it should not be underestimated. "These members can be activated to perpetrate an atrocity within the USA or Europe," said M.J. Gohel, a terrorism expert. The FBI is focusing on cities with large Kurdish populations. But given recent events in Iraq, officials say Ansar may well include Islamic extremists of any nationality.

TURNING THE TABLES ON THE UN Posted by Beth Goodtree, September 17, 2003.

While the UN has repeatedly shown its anti-Israel bias and Arabist taint, it does have one law in place that Israel can use to her advantage. The United Nations, like any other official institution, is only as credible as the enforcement of its own laws. This gives Israel a weapon to use against Yasser Arafat, as well as the members and supporters of all the other terrorist groups. It is also a means to combat the prevailing Arab stink that permeates every anti-Israel motion. In an ironic twist, the members of the UN Security Council, all being signatories of the Genocide Laws, are obligated to compel Israel to prosecute Yasser Arafat and his followers. International law, signed by most members of the UN, defines the crimes of genocide thusly: Article I: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish. Because Israel is a signatory of the Crimes of Genocide Law, this first article obligates her to prevent and punish the perpetrators who reside within her boundaries. Since Yasser Arafat now resides on Israeli land, (said land, although in dispute, still belongs to, and is de facto administered by, Israel). Israel is obligated by UN convention to prosecute him as well as all members and supporters of other terrorist groups. Whether or not the Arabs now occupying Israeli land in Gaza and the West Bank have formally declared war or not, they can and must still be prosecuted according to law. Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Regarding Article II, the Arabs now occupying Israeli property have committed innumerable documented crimes of sections a through d. And lest anyone question section d, they have deliberately targeted and murdered pregnant women as well as women of childbearing age because they were Jews and because they were Israelis. Continuing on, Article III: The following acts shall be punishable: (a) Genocide; (b) Conspiracy to commit genocide; (c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide; (d) Attempt to commit genocide; (e) Complicity in genocide. Article IV: Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals. Article IV means that Yasser Arafat or anyone he appoints is not immune to prosecution. Regarding Article III, even as I write this, the Palestinian Authority is publicly inciting and facilitating further crimes of genocide. Now the following two articles must be read with care: Article V: The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III. Article VI: Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction. Taking these two articles in reverse order, Article VI along with Article I, demands that Israel bring action against Yasser Arafat along with all members and supporters of the terrorist organizations (Israel being the territory where they reside). Israel would merely be fulfilling her obligations to the UN by filing genocide charges against Yasser Arafat, as well as all members, funders (including official governments), and supporters of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al Aqsa, etc. As to Article V, Israel is in compliance since she has in place the judicial means to try and punish those guilty of genocide, the punishment being the only crime for which Israel can invoke the death penalty. It is time for Israel to comply with the genocide laws that she agreed to uphold. Meanwhile, most of the Arab/Muslim world, as signatories to these same laws, is obligated to enforce Israel's compliance. Incidentally, this would make the UN's most recent pronouncement that Israel was applying 'extrajudicial killings' null and void. All Israel must do is start prosecuting for the crimes of genocide, whether the defendant is present or in absentia. Once found guilty, any action Israel might take would no longer be extrajudicial. And the only thing the UN and Kofi Anan could do would be to praise Israel for her compliance with the genocide laws. Ain't life funny that way.

AN IMPOSED PEACE PLAN Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, September 17, 2003.

I'm posting an article written by Shmuel Neumann, Ph.D. It has some nice ideas. In fact this is a pretty balanced and politically realistic plan. Now, how do we get from the idea stage to the action stage? There are no lack of good ideas, many of them quite brilliant in fact. What I would like to see is as much genius invested into how to get power out of the hands of the Judenrat and into the hands of the Jews. Until we can do that, all the great ideas and plans will not change anything. There is an effort, fortunately, to actually format a strategy. It is called The Jewish National Assembly; "Correcting Israel's Failure of Leadership." Those interested in participating can receive more information from: Shmuel HaLevi, familyp@netvision.net.il. The assembly is being targeted for January 26+ and about 300 serious activists representing numerous organizations have joined in already. I, obviously, am not predicting that this alone will bring about the political changes we desperately need. However, what is important is that the goal is not to be a "talking shop" but to formulate concrete plans for political change. The collective political experience and understanding of the participants will be something quite awesome. I truly expect something to come out of this. Like I said, not the complete solution but the beginning of that solution. I was lost while on a cross-country trip. I stopped a farmer in Kansas and asked him how to get to a certain town. His response was, "You can't get thar' from here." Bush should have consulted that farmer before designing his Roadmap to Peace. You can't get thar' from here. Every algorithm that required reciprocity from the Palestinians failed. Now, the Europeans, ignoring all signposts along the way, are simply imposing a Palestinian state upon Israel. With the last dying embers of the Roadmap, Israel has to accept the bitter reality that negotiations are less than useless. Israel incessantly tried courting peace with the so-called Palestinians, making one painful concession after another, and one one-sided gesture after another, only to be made a fool of again and again. Israel cannot afford the luxury of inaction. Now that a negotiated peace is impossible, we must impose peace. An Imposed Peace Plan.  We can unilaterally give the "world" closure by ending the conflict in a very simple way: 1. The fiction of the Palestinians must be brought to an end. The so-called Palestinians are not Palestinian. They are Egyptian citizens residing in Gaza or Jordanian citizens residing in the West Bank. 2. Permanent resident visas may be granted to the Egyptian citizens living in Gaza and Jordanian citizens residing in the West Bank. Just as a Bulgarian citizen who wishes to remain in Israel can acquire permanent residency status if qualified, Egyptian citizens that want to remain in Gaza and Jordanian citizens that want to remain in Yehuda and Shomron can apply for a permanent residency visa. According to existing Israeli law, permanent residents can vote in local municipal, county and state elections. 3. Equal Application of Law: Israeli law must be equally applied to all residents, citizens and permanent residents alike; Jews and Arabs alike. Permanent residents that join a terror organization must have their visas revoked and be deported. The lawlessness of the Palestinian Authority must be brought to an end. Israeli law must apply to the permanent residents who live in Areas A and B. Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs who seek to emigrate from the West Bank should be permitted to freely emigrate. The Israeli authorities frequently deny these Arabs a pass to leave, citing illusory security precautions. Ironically, we have become like the Soviet Union that for decades withheld exit visas of three million Soviet Jews who sought to exercise their basic human right of emigration. We must insist upon equality under the law. Those Egyptian and Jordanian Arabs who wish to emigrate should be categorically permitted the equivalent of an exit visa. Furthermore, anyone who is either a security risk or participates in the violent overthrow of a government is routinely deported in every democratic country. Just as a Jewish, non-Israeli malcontent who foments racism or is guilty of incitement is deported to their country of origin, Arab malcontents must similarly be deported. The entire terrorist infrastructure from top to bottom must be deported. Finally, it is unconscionable that Jewish Israeli citizens forfeit due process rights if they live in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, where martial law rather than civil law prevails. Israeli citizens are imprisoned without charges, are prevented legal representation and contact with lawyers, etc. They are citizens and the same due process should apply to them on both sides of the Green Line. 4. All of Biblical Israel must be annexed. There is absolutely no justification in perpetuating the delusion that the West Bank is not Israel. Palestine was a name the Romans gave Israel when they conquered it in 77 CE. It was always a colony, first of the Roman Empire, then of the Ottoman Empire, and, after WW I, a colony of the British Empire. The British divided Palestine along the Jordan River: the East Bank, 80% of Palestine, was given to Arabs and renamed Jordan, and the territory of the West Bank of the Jordan River to the Mediterranean was returned to the Jews for a Jewish homeland. This became Israel - a mere fraction of its original size. In 1948, the Egyptians and Syrians attacked the new Jewish state, and, until 1967, Jordan illegally occupied the West Bank. In the Six-Day War, Egypt committed an act of war by blockading the Straits of Tiran and Israel used military force to remove the blockade. After the second day of the Six-Day War, Jordan attacked and the West Bank was restored to Israel. The United States takes the position that as Israel fired the first bullet, it technically attacked Egypt and therefore is unjustified in retaining Gaza. However, even the United States must agree that as Jordan attacked Israel, they have no legal claims to the West Bank. Israeli annexation does not need to be an overt action. Applying Israeli law to this region as it applies everyplace else will have the same effect. 5. Separate states in the West Bank and in Gaza must be established, just as the Sharon, Upper Galilee, Lower Galilee and Negev are separate jurisdictions within Israel, which could be defined as "states." They are free to pass additional state or municipal ordinances, just as any other state or municipality within Israel has that prerogative. 6. Buffer zones must be imposed to prevent the possibility of attack. In order to prevent Jews from being within range of snipers and bombers, clear a two-kilometer buffer zone around every Jewish holy site and tomb, around each Jewish community and along the roads in Judea, Samaria and Gaza. Any Arabs that have houses and farms within these buffer zones who can prove ownership, with papers delineating the chain of title from the Ottoman, British and Jordanian records, should be compensated. Others are squatters who have no rights to this land. We must pool our resources to purchase all property in these buffer zones from the so-called Palestinians. From the standpoint of Israeli security, there will be no need for the security fence, but rather there will be sufficient buffer zones between populations. In the long run, the cost to the government in providing security to its citizens will be markedly reduced. From the standpoint of aliyah, the affluent, accomplished Jews of the world will be attracted to the scenic open space in this newly reclaimed land. 7. We can end the conflict simply by investing. By buying out just 1% of the Arab population in Judea and Samaria, Jews can reclaim 58% of the land, because 99% of the Arabs live in concentrated areas on the other 42%. We must flood the courts with motions to compel Israel to evict any so-called Palestinian who does not possess valid title to their land and homes. With so-called Palestinians confined to cantons, the option remains open for them to sell and find a better life elsewhere. The United Nations Charter gives them this right. Their right to emigrate is an inalienable basic human right. The so-called Palestinians are prevented from exercising their right of free trade by racist fatwas, or religious decrees, of Moslem clerics who issue a death warrant for any Moslem who sells land in Israel to Jews. In a country of law, this must not be tolerated. Ordering the death of the seller is conspiracy to commit murder, plain and simple, whether the terroristic threats are acted upon or not. The cleric must be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Palestinian web sites proudly display execution of land dealers, complete with video and pictures of the execution. 8. Homesteading. Undeveloped land in Judea and Samaria must be cultivated. Just as farmers may apply for agricultural land within Israel, either in joint co-operative projects, as in moshavim or kibbutzim, or in private farming ventures, permits to farm land in Judea, Samaria and Gaza that is owned by the Israeli government must be offered to Israeli citizens. For unowned land, Israel should copy the United States Homestead Act of 1867, permitting citizens to farm abandoned land and record ownership after a number of years. This would simply reinforce the existing Jordanian law that is in full force and effect in the so-called West Bank that permits farming abandoned property. In order for the homesteads to not become a burden upon the Israeli armed forces, homesteaders must be ex-soldiers with valid permits to carry firearms and who have proven ability to protect themselves from infiltrators. This law is certainly not in violation of the Geneva Convention when applied only to the so-called West Bank. One may debate whether Egypt's blockade of the Straits of Tiran in 1967 was an act of war. If it was, then even though Israel fired the first weapons, it was a defensive war. If it was not, then Israel's use of military force against Egypt was an offensive rather than defensive act. However, no one can debate Jordan's role. Jordan attacked Israel after the second day of the Six-Day War despite Israel imploring the Jordanians not to enter into the conflict. Jordan is unquestionably the aggressor in that war and their loss of the West Bank is permanent. The Geneva Accords definitely do not apply to this territory. As such, even the most extremist view that the Geneva Convention prohibits citizens of one country inhabiting the occupied territory of a conquered country, could only apply in Gaza. To be above reproach, the Homestead Act should at first be passed on so-called West Bank areas. Best Interests of the so-called Palestinians.  While implementing this plan will upset a handful of demagogues who corruptly abused their position of power, it is in the best interest of the so-called Palestinian people. Rather than remaining locked into an armed struggle that they can never win and rather than falling victim to fanatical, corrupt self-rule, this is the best accommodation they can hope to achieve. In the early 20th Century, their families moved to what is now Israel in the hopes of a better future for themselves. In the new Jewish state, there were jobs aplenty, education for their children and the promise of a modern democracy. Instead, they were turned into a scapegoat for the entire Arab world, forced into the role of oppressed refugees by their own crooked leadership, contained in poverty and exploited by the Western anti-Semitic media. This is their chance for freedom. Hundreds of thousands of so-called Palestinian Arabs have elected to relocate abroad. They want nothing more than a chance for a normal life. They want to live in an area free of tyranny, injustice and free from those who have exploited them for generations. They understand that were they to stay, they are condemning their children to a lifetime of poverty, abuse by the so-called Palestinian leadership, and anarchy. They do not want to become full-fledged Israelis, which in the future would require three years of army service from their boys and girls just like any other Israeli citizen. They certainly do not want to pay the high taxes that other Israelis pay. They want out. We should help them out.

RESPONDING TO ISRAEL'S ILLEGAL RELEASE OF TERRORISTS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE OR CIVIL RESISTANCE IN ISRAEL? Posted by Louis Rena Beres, September 17, 2003.

Soon, all over Israel, thousands of good citizens will actively protest Prime Minister Sharon's dangerous release of Palestinian terrorists. To the extent that these protests might involve violations of Israeli law, however minor, they would conform to the general meaning of "civil disobedience." But where they would involve no such violations - as, for example, in peacable demonstrations held outside the Prime Minister's residence in Jerusalem - "civil resistance" would offer a more accurate description. This distinction is legally and politically meaningful, and could prove helpful to all those who would now recognize and oppose the Prime Minister's misconceived gesture of "good will" to unreconstructed enemies of Israel. First, however, it is essential to point out that Israel's freeing of several hundred terrorists, including members of Hamas, is a serious violation of international law. Every state has a binding obligation, under this law, to prosecute and punish terrorists. It is codified in many different treaties, and is also an elemental part of the Nuremberg Principles: "Any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefore and liable to punishment." Terrorism is a crime under international law. No government ever has any legal right to free terrorist criminals as an expression of "good will." International law presumes solidarity between states in the fight against all crime. Whenever an individual state violates this solidarity - as is currently the case with Sharon's terrorist releases - it implicates itself in a "denial of justice." This is true even when a particular terrorist release is backed by the United Nations or by a wider "Quartet" of powerful states and organizations. All states, even when they are conscientiously seeking peace, are unexceptionally subject to claims of "peremptory" rules. These rules derive from what is commonly called Higher Law or the Law of Nature. The obligation to seek out and punish terrorists is such a rule. Ironically, the origins of this Higher Law lie, of all places, in Ancient Israel. Now, what about impending protests by Israelis against their government's ongoing release of terrorists, a release in clear violation of international law? In its classic expressions, civil disobedience involves purposeful violations of domestic law for the purpose of changing such law. Those who engage in civil disobedience normally understand that they are "guilty" of particular infractions, even where the opposed rule is egregious (e.g., norms sustaining slavery or racial segregation) and where the intent of the infraction is manifestly noncriminal and clearly humane. Hence, civil disobedience defendants, even where the legitimacy of the courts themselves is denied, are ordinarily prepared to accept court- ordered punishment as the required and possibly reasonable price of their activities. Civil resistance, however, is another matter entirely. In the first place, although it may involve purposeful violations of domestic law, these violations are not conceived with a view to changing that particular law. (Protestors in Israel will not be seeking any particular change in Israeli law per se, but rather a reversal of very particular expressions of the country's current foreign policy). In the second place, civil resistance may not involve any violations of domestic law at all (as in the example of peaceful protests at the Prime Minister's residence), in which case the protestors will have no "guilt" or punishment to accept. Whether the target of the protest will be a change of national law or of national policy, there would be no utilitarian-based infractions and hence no legal price to pay for resistance. In the third place, individual protestors who would engage in nonviolent civil resistance activities to oppose certain expressions of Israeli foreign policy will be attempting to prevent the ongoing violation of certain settled principles of national and international law. Here, where there are no violations of any Israeli law, the protestors will not only be "not guilty" with respect to this law, they will also be fulfilling certain Nuremberg and other Higher Law expectations. Even where these nonviolent civil resistance activities would involve some (normally very minor) violations of Israeli law, such as the prohibitions against trespass, the net calculus of the protestors' actions will be that they are still distinctly law-enforcing. If, after all, the commission of trespass can bring attention to policies that threaten the state's basic security, the net legal benefits of the infraction will greatly exceed the net legal costs. Moreover, international law forms a part of every state's municipal legal system, and protest actions within states to support such overriding law are now not only permissible, but obligatory. In the United States, a traditional common law defense known as "necessity," which has also been incorporated into various state criminal codes, permits conduct that would otherwise constitute an offense if the accused believed such conduct was necessary to avoid a public or private injury greater than the injury which might reasonably result from his/her own conduct. Transposed to the Israeli context, where the greater public and private injury occasioned by the government's terrorist releases could include further terrorism, war crimes, crimes against peace, and even crimes against humanity, a necessity-type defense could be compelling in civil resistance cases. This is the case even if Israeli law recognizes no explicit form of "necessity" because this law must recognize the Higher Law principle from which the necessity defense derives. Significantly, the very idea of a Higher Law has its roots in Jewish Law. From its beginnings, Jewish Law has been viewed as an expression of God's will. Human legislators were responsible not to make law on their own, but rather to render their edicts compatible with discovered law. According to Talmud: "Whatever a competent scholar will yet derive from the Law, that was already given to Moses on Mount Sinai." In international law, the idea of a Higher Law is contained especially in the principle of jus cogens or peremptory norms. According to Article 53 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties: "A peremptory norm of general international law...is a norm accepted and recognized by the international community of States as a whole as a norm from which no derogation is permitted and which can be modified only by a subsequent norm of general international law having the same character." Regarding the lawfulness of civil resistance to the terrorist releases by Israelis, the Road Map does not require such releases. Even if it did, this requirement would be subordinate to peremptory expectations of law. Indeed, even if the Road Map were a formal treaty - which it assuredly is not - there would be no obligation to accept terrorist releases: "A treaty is void," says the Vienna Convention, "if, at the time of its conlusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm of general international law." The right of sovereignty in all states, and therefore also in Israel, rests upon the state's capacity to assure protection. Where the state surrenders such capacity, the very basis of citizen obligation must disappear. "The obligation of subjects to the sovereign," says the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, "is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them." Can the Sharon Government protect the citizens of Israel? By its release of Palestinian terrorists, this government is now enlarging the prospect of further terrorism (including WMD terrorism) against these citizens. In consequence, hundreds or even thousands more Israelis can expect to be maimed or killed in their own land. Israel's ongoing release of terrorists violates the universal and binding obligation to punish acts that are crimes under international law. This means that Israel's citizens who would now support and sustain these releases are actually acting against international law, while those citizens who would oppose this policy within the proper parameters of civil resistance are actually acting in support of this law. These points should be kept in mind by all those who care about both Israel's physical integrity as a state and its essential commitment to democracy.* * NOTE: Since the day this article was published in late August, several suicide bomb attacks upon Israeli citizens have been undertaken by freed Palestinian terrorists. Louis Rene Beres lectures and publishes widely on Israeli security matters, often from an international law perspective. This essay appeared in the Jewish Press, August 22.2003.

THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S DUAL LOYALTY Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 17,2003.

"MIDEAST VIOLENCE THREATENS 'QUARTET' PLAN" was the NY Times headline for Sept. 11; my comments are in italics. The opposite is true: the Quartet plan unleashed Mideast violence. This violence does not threaten some plan; it threatens innocent Jews. In the eyes of Pres. Bush, however, there are no innocent Jews or guilty PLO terrorists, where Israel is concerned. Reporter Steven R. Weisman writes that "Pres. Bush appealed today, once again, for restraint on both sides. Yet with each attack and counter-attack, the Middle East peace plan championed by him is receding further from view." Is he implying that the counter-attacks against terrorists are as bad as the terrorist attacks against innocent Israelis? If Pres. Bush had a sense of morality, that man whose constant references to God seem suspiciously political, why does he urge Israeli restraint instead of full-scale destruction of Arab terrorism? Why is the Map a "peace plan"? Never explained yet! Never will be. At least, not honestly. Speaking up for Arafat, by advocating that negotiation go through Arafat, is "Edward G. Abington, a former State Dept. official who now is a consultant to the Palestinians" (Arabs). Many State Dept. officials become lobbyists for the anti-American PLO or Saudis. Did this disloyalty to their country begin upon their retirement and offer of a job from the Arabs, or did it originate in anticipation of such an offer while they still guided US policy and administration? A Saudi prince boasted that it did. That seems to me like the dual loyalty that Jews worry about getting accused of. But Israel is pro-US, so there is no inconsistency in US Jews' loyalty to Israel! Israeli leaders distrust the non-US members of the Quartet "as having a long history of playing down Israel's security concerns." "They don't just play down Israel's security concerns; they concern themselves with undermining Israeli security. The US is as bad but less obvious about it. Both the US and the EU pay for the terrorist autonomy and for defeatist groups in Israel. The Quartet urges Israel to retreat and not defend itself. It falsely accuses Israel of crimes like the ones that the P.A. commits and attempts. Reporter Steven R. Weisman, included Israeli officials' list of measures of goodwill and compliance with the Map: (1) Released more than 400 prisoners; (2) Let 18,000 more P.A. Arabs work in Israel; (3) Unfroze $450 million; (4) Suspended targeted killing in Gaza (until the Arabs violated its terms); (5) Withdrew from Bethlehem and Gaza; (6) Opened a major road in Gaza; (7) Lifted three major road blocks in Judea-Samaria; (8) Dismantled 12 unauthorized outposts; and (9) Held four meetings with Mr. Abbas. The Europeans called those steps begrudged, minimal, and tardy but the Arabs were attacking! The reporter failed listed no steps of compliance or goodwill by the P.A. (9/11, A8). There were none, but he might have noted that. Israel might have challenged the Quartet's integrity on that, as well as the notion that Israel should make concessions to win the goodwill of hate-filled families. Israel's "goodwill" steps facilitated the murder of more Israelis.

AWFUL Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, September 16,2003.

Jan van der Hoeven asks a good question. We can only assume that Ayalon was not appointed with the interests of Israel in mind. That is one of the disadvantages of being a Banana Boat Republic. The guys that own the boat pick the crew and they pick a crew that is good for them and not for the bananas. van der Hoeven writes: When I read (as reported by Melissa Radler in today's The Jerusalem Post) that Dr Sari Nusseibeh told the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations that PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat is "committed to peace," I am left wondering how in the world it was possible for former Israeli Shin Bet intelligence chief, Ami Ayalon, to make common cause with a dangerous and sophisticated deceiver like Nusseibeh, and to thus spearhead with him the juvenile, foolish peace plan which, if accepted, would spell the end of Israel. If people with such political blindness were among those who were assigned to watch over Israel's most sensitive security needs - also before and during the awful security blunder which accompanied the futile OSLO accords - then what can the ordinary, unsuspecting Israeli population expect when it comes to who really, really cares for their ultimate peace and security requirements? Aryeh Zelasko is an American who made aliyah and lives in Jerusalem. Jan Willem van der Hoeven is Director of the International Christian Zionist Center in Jerusalem. Its web-site address is www.israelmybeloved.com

END OF THE ROAD MAP Posted by Ehud Olmert, September 16, 2003.

It is with tragic irony--the kind that only the Middle East can produce--that Israel's cabinet has decided to expel Yasser Arafat so near the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo "peace" Accords. As the latest American diplomatic initiative, the "road map," is derailed by a resumed wave of suicide bombings, we Israelis are painfully aware that we have achieved little in these 10 years of direct negotiations with the Palestinians. Indeed, in a week in which 15 of our families are mourning their murdered loved ones and scores of others are pacing our hospital wards awaiting news of the wounded, the promises of the ill-conceived Oslo process seem as far off as ever. Thus, the cabinet concluded that Arafat's ongoing encouragement of terror and his obstructive machinations were preventing all progress in diplomatic negotiations. Although he was relegated to the sidelines, his malign shadow still hovered over the road map, leaving it no chance of advancing while the violence escalated. The cabinet understood that it was either Arafat or negotiations, and decided to vote in favor of the peace process. The timing of when exactly to remove the PLO leader is still under discussion and Israel's allies will undoubtedly be consulted in formulating a decision. At the time of the now famous White House signing ceremony, I had just left national politics and was serving as the mayor of Jerusalem. Like most of my former Likud colleagues, then in the opposition, I was fearful of the swift diplomatic path the government of Yitzhak Rabin had embarked upon. Giving recognition to the terrorist PLO, turning over land to armed guerrillas and shaking Arafat's hand seemed at best to be a perilous and naive endeavor. In my own private conversations with the Labor party leaders, I expressed my serious concerns over the dangers the Oslo Accords would bring to Jerusalem and to Israel, the lives and security that were being gambled with. Yet they assured the Israeli public that the entire process was reversible; that if Arafat and the PLO did not live up to their obligations, Israel reserved the right to take the necessary measures against the Palestinian leadership and the Israel Defense Forces would re-enter the conceded territory. Arafat, the Israeli architects of Oslo insisted, would have no choice but to impose law and security in the Palestinian Authority or witness everything he had achieved for the Palestinians being destroyed. I must confess, as ideologically opposed as I was to withdrawing from the disputed territory and negotiating with those with Jewish blood on their hands, I hoped in my heart that, despite the euphoria, the Israeli leadership had truly considered what it was doing and that an authentic regional peace agreement could be secured. The Oslo process wasn't the path I'd have led the country toward, but faced with a fait accompli we Israelis had no choice but to pray that the government showed wisdom in attempting it. Sadly, we now have our answer. The decade of carnage and blood that Oslo ushered in is still erupting all around us. The disastrous assumption that Arafat would fight the terrorist organizations on our behalf was a gamble which has literally exploded in Israel's face. The continuous march of peace initiatives from Cairo to Sharm al-Sheik to Wye to the Red Sea, from Zinni to Mitchell to Tenet, haven't succeeded. At the recent Red Sea Summit, in which I participated as a negotiator, we told our Palestinian counterparts that they had to choose between Hamas or us. They would have to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure or we would be forced to do it ourselves. It is apparent, after this new wave of suicide bombings, that the Palestinian leadership has cast its lot with the Islamic extremists. On a national level, we can no longer allow ourselves to believe in the myth that the moderates on the Palestinian side will be capable of mustering the political power and military support necessary to assert control over the terrorist groups. The roving bands of militias and lack of central leadership has reduced the Palestinian Authority today into something resembling Lebanon at the height of its civil war. Despite American and Israeli efforts to isolate Arafat, his malicious influence and control over the Palestinian leadership has not diminished in the least. His latest intrigues--the forced resignation of Mahmoud Abbas and the appointment as prime minister of his close associate, Ahmed Qureia--have once again struck a devastating blow to another peace effort. There is simply no pragmatic nor responsible Palestinian personality who can fill the leadership vacuum and confront Hamas and other terrorists. The latest round of failed diplomacy has shown that an enduring peace agreement cannot be built on the rotten foundation that is the current regime. Palestinian leaders will neither dismantle the terrorist infrastructure nor allow anyone else to do it. The alleged line that separated the Fatah forces from Hamas and Islamic Jihad can no longer be claimed to exist. Arafat is the CEO of a full-fledged terrorist organization and no less a danger than the Islamic extremist leaders whom Israel has finally targeted. Today all sides of the Israeli political spectrum have drawn the same conclusion: Israel will have to destroy the Islamic terrorist groups along with Arafat's Fatah guerillas. There can be no short cuts when it comes to eradicating the terrorist groups. Goodwill gestures have repeatedly come back to haunt us and we must now be prepared to finish off the task. The U.S. and other responsible democratic nations, engaged in their own wars against terrorist organizations, are slowly understanding that only an unrelenting battle will secure victory against this tenacious enemy. Oslo has taught us that there are no proxies to fight in our stead. If we are not prepared to undertake the task of dismantling the terrorist groups that infest the Palestinian Authority, our civilian population will continue to be targeted for murder. The first and foremost responsibility of our government is to remove the threat of Palestinian violence to our buses, cafes, schools and highways. Moreover, we have learned that to act with any mercy toward the perpetrators is to place our own civilian population in jeopardy. If Palestinian voices of moderation are capable of rising up and making themselves heard over the extremist roar, all Israelis will be very willing to continue the path toward peace. But for the moment we will place our trust in our own ability to confront the terrorists directly. And as the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashana, approaches, tradition dictates that we review past mistakes and try sincerely to repent. The Oslo decade has shown us what is the incorrect and foolhardy way to try to make peace between Arabs and Jews. Armed with this new clarity, we can now attempt to rectify our errors--and set out down a safer, better-calculated road. Ehud Olmert is the vice prime minister of Israel and former mayor of Jerusalem. This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

THE PERFECT ROADMAP Posted by Janet Ann Suzuki, September 16, 2003.

The recent road map which was intended to provide peace and security was doomed to fail because it completely contradicts the Road Map provided by the God of Israel. Through the Prophets, The One True God spoke to the Ancient Israelites before entering The Promised Land. Both Moses and Joshua revealed the Road Map which the people were required to follow if they were to successfully take possession of the land called Canaan. According to The Scriptures, ALL THE INHABITANTS WERE TO BE DRIVEN FROM THE LAND BECAUSE THEY DID NOT WORSHIP THE GOD OF ISRAEL; AND ANY AGREEMENTS OR CONTRACTS WITH THE CANAANITES WERE FORBIDDEN. The Prophets warned the people that their faith, identity and safety in the land were at risk if these commandments were not obeyed. The people made a vow before entering their God-given land; and that vow was later renewed. They pledged to be faithful to the Road Map which had been passed down to the Prophets. However, according to The Scriptures, IN TIME, THE LEADERSHIP OF THE ISRAELITES DISREGARDED THE COMMANDMENTS AND ALLOWED MANY CANAANITES TO REMAIN IN THE LAND AND FORBIDDEN AGREEMENTS WERE ESTABLISHED. As a result, through influence, many Israelites began worshipping the pagan gods of the inhabitants and no longer acknowledged the commandments of The One True God. Do many Jewish people today outright reject the Road Map to peace and security which was conveyed by the Prophets or are they unaware of God s flawless directions because they have not been taught? Either way, the struggles of the Chosen People in relationship to faith, identity and security are ongoing. It is a foregone conclusion that The Nation of Israel will eventually be blessed with the peace and security she desires; BUT this will not happen until her people bow and renew the vow of their ancestors. The leaders of Israel have an awesome responsibility. It is imperative that they choose to focus on the Road Map revealed by the solid foundation of God s Word and not be influenced by the shifting sands of opposing opinions. These leaders must be willing and able to transfer their faith into action. The land was given to the Nation of Israel by The Almighty God Himself and, according to The Scriptures, His people must take possession of it and defend it; not negotiate it away. Without a doubt, the journey toward peace and security will be a difficult road; but the Chosen People must have faith that the Road Map provided by The Scriptures will ultimately prevail. The God of Israel, Who freed His people from Egyptian bondage; protected and provided for them in the wilderness; and miraculously entrusted them with a land of their own, is the same yesterday, today and forever. His commandments were recorded and preserved for all generations. His principles are absolute. RELATED SCRIPTURES (NIV) The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Genesis 12:1-3) "But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land, those you allow to remain will become barbs in your eyes and thorns in your sides. They will give you trouble in the land where you will live." (Numbers 33:55) "Do not be afraid of them; the LORD your God himself will fight for you." (Deuteronomy 3:22) "Be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them." (Deuteronomy 4:9) "If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14) "Your faithfulness continues through all generations; you established the earth, and it endures." (Psalm 119:90) All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal. (Psalm 119:160) The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever. (Isaiah 40:8) Janet Ann Suzuki lives in Langley, B.C., Canada.

MY TRIBUTE TO SHIMON PERES Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, September 16, 2003.

I finally found common ground with Shimon Peres. My youngest son and Mr.Peres are celebrating their birthdays on the same day. We're planning for a modest, but fun affair - complete with balloons and 'pin the tail on the donkey' (funny how the donkey I drew bears an uncanny resemblance to the Labor leader). Due to the overall economic situation, we will probably stick to a bit of ice cream and cake (no pizza this year). And the grave security situation has left me with a zero-tolerance level for excessive revelry - so seven friends of my soon-to-be (G-d-willing) seven-year old will be allowed to whoop-it-up for an hour and a half and conclude the festivities with a resounding rendition of 'Happy Birthday To You' (at which time the shy little guy will probably crawl under the table). Meanwhile, miles away from our home in the Golan, a gala celebration will be taking place. Yes, while unrelenting tears are flowing in a good part of the country, the champagne will be flowing in Tel Aviv and Herzlia Pituach. A star-studded list of celebrities like Barabara Streisand, Steven Spieberg and super-model, Naomi Campbell will join politicians like Bill Clinton and the current and former leaders of Germany, Poland, and Russia (to name but a few), for what promises to be a lavish event. While Bill Clinton sings Shimon's praises -to the accompaniment of Barabara Streisand and Achinoam Nini, most of us in Israel will remain at home and reminisce about 'The Way We Were' and how it used to be that 'On A Clear Day You Can See Forever.' Kudos to Women in Green who will will be protesting with their own rendition of the Streisand favorite, 'What Kind of Fool.' Regardless of ones political persuasion, I think most of us would agree that, in the present situation, it would be truly statesman-like if Peres canceled the happening and marked the occasion at home, over a quiet cup of tea, with Sonya. It's really not fair for me to compare my son's party with that of the grand statesman turned octogenarian. I mean my son, at the ripe old age of seven, has not yet had time to leave a noticeable imprint on the world, whereas a mere handshake orchestrated by Mr. Peres can cause the international community to erupt into applause, blood to flow and heaven and earth to quake. For a prime example, almost two years ago on November 16 2001, in a speech to the United Nations, Mr. Peres announced that in Israel "there is support for a Palestinian independence, support for a Palestinian state." At the time, the international press reported that Israel was angered and deeply troubled by the comments, and there were calls in the Knesset for Peres' resignation. But, Ariel Sharon managed to quell the uprising. I wrote a piece back then and feel that its recirculation would be a fitting birthday tribute to Shimon Peres. Listen up, Shimon. November 16, 2002 My Grandmother used to say a lot of great stuff. I've forgotten most of it, but I have retained a few choice phrases. "Honey, the world is upside down." Yeah, she'd comfort me with that one every time I'd visit her and complain about everything from an unfair teacher to some social injustice. As a young girl, I can't say that I ever shared her anxiety over a topsy turvy world, because I figured that I'd just fix everything when I got older. And you know, I tried really hard to make the world a better place. Some of my modest endeavors got off the ground, some fizzled out and a few boomeranged on me and caused utter destruction. Now that I'm in my forties and I watch as an envelope of powder can instill more anxiety on both an international and individual level than a barrage of cruise missiles, and a few barefoot guys on horseback can give a fleet of cobra helicopters a run for their money, I can stare up at the heavens with resignation and say, "Gosh, Nanny -you were right. The world is upside down." Trying to live right side up in an upside down world is fraught with difficulties. Maintaining one's sense of balance and equilibrium can be especially challenging and downright nauseating. So when I asked my husband to pick up some Tums at the pharmacy, I recalled how I would assist my Grandmother as she would frantically search for antacids in her purse. Shimon Peres, you give me heartburn. You don't represent me or the majority of this country. Living upside down gives me an occasional migraine, but it distorts your "vision." So let me try to clarify things for you. I've brought six children into this world. The labors that I've endured make any of your peace maneuvers and diplomatic gymnastics look like child's play. So listen up, Shimon - This Israeli mother will be washing several sets of army fatigues in the near future and I can assure you that there is nobody in this world who wants peace more than me. Furthermore, I feel fully qualified to inform you that I, along with the majority of this country, wish that you and your "peace partners" would just go away. Frankly, I found your presence at the U.N to be an embarrassment. Israel has seen some pretty grim days in that international arena, but we've also had some glorious moments. Like the time Chaim Herzog demonstratively ripped up the document equating Zionism with racism. What I would have given to storm down the aisle of the General Assembly and trash your speech. But I'll never get to play that role, as I'm too busy in the role of a mother in Israel desperately trying keep some sense of stability and order for her children in a world gone mad, and all because of people like you who will sell their souls and their country for a few rounds of applause. Which reminds me of the time that I didn't get the part that I wanted in the school play. With a wave of her hand, my grandmother would dismiss it and say, "Honey, it's all politics."

WEEPING INSTEAD OF DANCING Posted by Margy Pezdirtz, September 16,2003.

Jerusalem has been quiet today, traffic has been light and people are talking in subdued voices as though they are listening for the sounds of groaning, weeping and screaming as countless Israeli families throughout the land buried and are burring their dead. How many are there? I don't know - there were seven killed yesterday in Tel Aviv at the close of their day - there were six and maybe seven killed in Jerusalem as they sat quietly in the lovely Hillel Cafe on Emek Refaim in the German Colony. I look across the valley at the lights of the hotel on Kibbutz Ramat Rachel where there was to be dancing tonight. There is no dancing, unless of course, if you are an Arab living in Gaza. The lights in the hotel burn brightly, but they cannot pierce the darkness that must be engulfing the lives of the Appelbaum and Sand families. You see, the dancing that was supposed to take place this very evening was to have been in celebration of the marriage of Nava Appelbaum and Chanan Sand. Instead of dancing at a wedding, these innocent, beautiful, righteous families stood at a cemetery today and listened to the mournful sounds of people eulogizing the bride and her father, Dr. David Appelbaum. Instead of placing a wedding ring on her finger, the distraught bridegroom laid it on the shroud covered body of his beautiful bride and watched as his love, his happiness and his future was lowered into the ground and covered with earth. What can you say to this? What can you say to the widow and her remaining five children to ease their pain? Their father was a righteous man, a man of extreme goodness and virtue who took his daughter out for dinner and a father-daughter conversation on the eve of her wedding? This man - this father and husband and Torah scholar - was the director of the emergency room of Shaarei Tzedek Medical Center and had saved many lives, also victims of terror and hate. Now, he was the one being wheeled into the emergency room, his body torn beyond imagination. This man of peace had now entered into his own peace. What can you say to his children? What can you say to his "to be" son-in-law? There are no words of comfort that you can give. They are gone. The loss is unbearable. Tonight, they are weeping instead of dancing. Their hearts are not filled with joy, but torn to pieces by the hideous insanity of a people that want nothing more than to destroy goodness and mercy and righteousness. There were other funerals today. Many of them were soldiers, not killed in battle, but by simply standing at a bus stop waiting on the bus that would take them safely home to their loved ones. What were they thinking about when the murderer strode into that crowded bus stop and ripped apart the lives of their loved ones? Did they feel the bomb go off? Did they feel pain? I don't know; but, I do know their loved ones left behind are weeping tonight instead of dancing. Security throughout the country is the tightest I have ever seen it, but still insanity and hatred got through. So what is next? This is war! There can be no other statement but all out and out war. It is time for Israel to stand tall and tell America and other nations that would pressure her into dying slowly, bomb by bomb by bomb, to go find something else to do. It is time for Israel to say, "War is Declared!" Why not? Hamas did that today, and yesterday and the day before. Tonight, they are threatening to wreck havoc through all of Israel, in the homes and shops and schools and wherever they can. When the world cries STOP! it should be to Hamas and not to Israel. When the world cries "Give them their own state and then there will be peace" the only answer that applies here is, "They have a state - it is called Jordan." Israel needs to set about ridding The Land of the Amalekite, the Hittite and all of the other murderous generations that want Israel to die. As for America, it is time for us to mind our own business! We have our own terrorists to deal with - lets find and eliminate them and allow Israel to do the same. Lets square off with and eliminate Saddam and Osama and the other insane Wahhabist out there that are in such a rush to get to 'heaven' where they have 72 virgins waiting on them. Lets be benevolent and help them out by expediting their journey and in doing so, let us - the United States of America - butt out of Israel's right to defend and protect herself and her citizens. Israel IS a sovereign nation. Israel IS a democracy. Israel IS a God-ordained country. Let's let Israel and God take care of this country as only they know how to do it. It is time for the weeping over the loss of innocent Jewish lives to stop - it is time for the world to allow Israel to rejoice and dance again. The only way that can happen is for the world to BUTT OUT! Margy Pezdirtz is a Christian Zionist, who lives in Oklahoma City. She and her husband have taken a flat in Jerusalem for two years. years. As one of her friends says of her, "Rather than staying out of harms way, they are here, weeping with us, helping to strengthen our spirit."

ISRAELI ARABS AND THE ORR COMMISSION Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 16, 2003.

[The Orr Commission Report inquired into the deaths of 13 Israeli Arab rioters in September 2000, the start of Intifada 2.] By editorial and article, the Jewish Week (9/5) endorsed the Orr Commission report without critical examination and without citing any fact in support of its contentions. The weekly accepted the notion, and had Arab comments extrapolating from the notion, that Israeli discrimination against the Arabs and radical Israeli Arab leaders caused the Arab riots, and that the police then murdered some of the 'demonstrators.' Jewish nationalist comment was not included. The report warns against ignoring Arab grievances. The weekly ignored the permissiveness towards Arab lawlessness that encourages further Arab violence, especially the government's failure to give the police alternative means of coping with Arab mobs. The riots were not 'civil disturbances' but a combination of pogrom, sedition, and ramping up of a mood for insurrection. Indeed, the Israeli Arab rioting was coordinated with a P.A. uprising, so the real cause was jihad. There may be some Arab grievances, but the weekly did not cite any. I wouldn't count a vague claim that Israeli Arabs have fewer educational and job opportunities. Certain jobs cannot be entrusted to what, the newspaper would never admit, is the defeated Arab enemy. Newspaper and commission both lecture the police not to treat the Israeli Arabs as the enemy, but the Arabs are the enemy, have generally considered themselves the enemy, and in the stated riots and in a series of earlier ones, proclaimed themselves the enemy. I think the answer is to treat them more as the enemy and reduce their power to act against Israel. The editorial urges integration of the Arabs by 'affirmative action,' because, despite 'some Arab terrorism,' the Arab sector 'deserves fair treatment.' The panel called for an end to use of live fire in quelling civil disturbances, and it is noted that the police do not use live fire during Jewish demonstrations. I resent the false equating of Arab and Jewish demonstrations. Arab demonstrations are almost always violent; they don't need legitimate grievances to feel aggrieved. Their leaders lie to them about Jewish aggression against their people, and they take to the streets. The commission falsely assumes that the leaders are worse than the followers who elect them. The commission should have questioned why the Arabs were violent, since Jewish demonstrations usually are not violent. In the October riots, the Arabs attacked the police in such numbers and with such violence and vehemence that the police felt their lives in danger. The police use of live fire quelled the riots. For that, the police should have been commended. The Orr commission should have recommended full police staffing, training, and supplies and prompt quelling of Arab rioting in conjunction with P.A. uprisings. Instead, it recommended retraining police to be gentler with Arab mobs advancing on them. Right-wing demonstrations usually are peaceful and are legal. There is no need for the police to be violent with Jews. If that is called discrimination, rather than responding to the demonstrators' behavior, then the commission had the kind of left-wing Jewish guilt feeling that the Jewish Week is full of. Unfortunately, Israeli police often are violent against Jewish demonstrators with clubs. How come the Jewish Week doesn't recommend police training against that? p>Since I've discussed the issue of Israeli treatment of its Arabs before, I won't go deeply into it now. But there is a tendency to assume that because fewer Arabs become educated, and Arabs have incomes like the poorer Jews, they must be discriminated against. Actually, Israeli colleges already do discriminate in favor of Arabs. The Arabs don't pay. They don't meet academic standards. Prof Steven Plaut of Haifa U. has explained that Arabs don't enroll as much, and their larger families reduce per capita income. Of course, certain jobs require security clearance and the Arabs don't get veterans' benefits. Their not serving is a kind of discrimination against the Jews, but the Jewish Week ignores favoritism for the Arabs. Orr and the Jewish Week suppose that the Muslim Arabs are as motivated by economic concerns as are the Jews. That reveals a lack of understanding of the Arabs and failure to study their culture. What could be more patronizing than that? It also fails to see the real problem - Muslim Arabs cannot live in peace in another people's country.

PETITION TO RECALL THE PRIME MINISTER AND THE KNESSET Posted by Ken Heller, September 15, 2003.

Whereas the People of the State of Israel have consente d to create a government whose primary purpose is to provide for the defense of the People and the State,   And, Whereas, it is the inalienable right of the People to withdraw such consent when their existence and the existence of the State are in imminent peril,   And Whereas the present government and its Prime Minister do not represent the will of the People of Israel, in that: A series of plans of the surrender of Israel sovereignty and been proposed and have failed to provide peace and security, and Sovereign Holy Lands have been surrendered to sworn enemies of the state with nothing received in return, and The Holiest place in the history of the Jewish people has been ceded to sworn enemies and the right of freedom of religion abandoned, and The G-d given victories of the Wars of Independence and of survival have reverted to defeat and humiliation by the government?s fear and obeisance to the Nations, and The Holy name of the G-d of Israel has been disgraced by a government which worships the Nations and not its G-d, and. Thousands of weapons have been supplied to murderers in the vain hope that they and not the IDF will protect us from terror, The terrorist leader, Yasser Arafat, was resurrected, empowered and preserved from retribution by a government without plan or policy, and Hundreds of Jews have been murdered, thousands injured because of the weakness and confusion of mind of a government and a Prime Minister which have refused to retaliate effectively, and Because the Prime Minister has declared that there is no military solution to the threat to the existence of the State, and Because the armed forces of the State have been restrained, its members investigated and arrested for acts of retaliation against the enemy and its spirit broken, and Because the Government has arrested and detained those opposed to its policy, without the right of counsel, trial, bail or effective defense, and The government has released from detention, murderers and their accomplices to appease the sworn enemies of the existence of the State, and Because the Prime Minister acts without approval or consent of the Ministers, the Knesset or of the People, in a dictatorial manner, and Because the Economy is in ruin, poverty and crime are rampant, social and Political Justice absent and the spirit of the People defeatist, THEREFORE, The undersigned, citizens and residents of the State of Israel, fearful for their personal safety and for the viability of the State under its present leadership, Do hereby demand the recall of the Prime Minister and the Knesset, and The enactment of legislation implementing this petition and mandating general elections for the full Knesset and a separate ballot for the election of the Prime Minister and, For a Ballot Referendum on the question, "Shall the government of Israel commit itself to the destruction of the Arab terror organizations and all of its participants?" and For a mandatory ballot question, binding upon the Knesset, calling for a Declaration of War against the "Palestine Liberation Organization."

WHAT TO DO ABOUT MR. IRRELEVENT Posted by Eliezar Edwards, September 15, 2003.

Yasir Arafat is once again the military dictator of the so called Palestinian people. I would like to propose a set of procedures that will result in his effective political death, if not necessarily in his physical demise, desirable as that should be to all lovers of Zion. Arafat is effectively constrained to his headquarters in Ramallah. In the past few days, the IDF has occupied buildings in the immediate vicinity with a commanding direct view of the building. Their position makes Arafat's exit a certainty without Israel suffering the onus of his expulsion. What's to be done? All electricity and telephone connections should be severed immediately. Water, sewage, food supply should be continued. Continuous jamming of radio transmissions to and from the headquarters could be maintained on a 24 hour basis. Visitors to the headquarters should be limited to those bearing Israeli passports. Under this tight control, it will not be necessary to expel Arafat. He will be forced to leave, or lose control of the PLO. It would not be necessary to risk IDF soldiers lives to get him out and (if it is really that important) the onus on Israel is far less than if he had to be ejected. What then? As soon as Arafat leaves the compound he should be arrested as an enemy of the Jewish people. He should be held for indictment and trial on the same basis as Adolf Eichmann was tried, and by a set of rules and a court similar to that which resulted in Eichmann's execution. Hanging Arafat after a legal trial would seem to be the preferaable alternative to life imprisonment without parole, but that of course would be up to the court.

IS ISRAELI WITHDRAWAL A MAGIC BULLET? Posted by Leo Rennert, September 15, 2003.

This letter was written To the Editor of the Washington Post: Muhammed Tull, an engineer in the West Bank, writes movingly in Sunday's Outlook section about the plight of Palestinians. But he misses the mark when he pins all the blame on Israel's occupation and argues that Yasser Arafat would fade from the scene and make way for a two-state solution once Israel withdrew to the 1967 borders. Wish it were that simple. Arafat, however, has never flinched from his far more ambitious agenda to return to pre-1948 Palestine. Nor has he given up resort to violence in pursuit of that goal. In late 2000, Israel offered a Palestinian state on 95 percent of the West Bank the entire Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Arafat turned that down flat. In recent days, he renewed his call to mobilize millions of young would-be martyrs to lead a victory march to Jerusalem. Why not twin Mr. Tull's illusions with more realistic assessments by Palestinian writers like Twfig Abu Bakr, who wrote in Al-Ayyam that Arafat's "all-or-nothing" policy created the current "disaster which is evident in every alleyway and every street in our land?" Or Gen. Nasser Yussef, who was to become the new interior minister but was denied control of all security forces by Arafat. In a confrontation with Arafat, Yussef told him that the Palestinian revolution has failed "and that's entirely because of you." For his candor, Yussef was spat upon by Arafat. These Palestinians also deserve some notice in the Post.

TO KILL OR NOT TO KILL? THAT IS THE QUESTION Posted by Barry Shaw, September 15, 2003.

The world's double talk is harshly felt in Israel these days. What is legitimate for others is de-rigueur for Israel. After 9/11the world formed a coalition and went blasting villages and caves in Afghanistan is a desperate attempt to kill Osama Bin Laden. Monstrous bombs using pretty names, like daisy-cutters, were used to decimate huge swathes of the country. In Iraq, a tip-off could activate the coalition forces to drop 2000 pound bombs on a restaurant in the vain hope of killing Saddam Hussein. These actions were rationalized as part of the war of terror, and applauded by a Western world living in fear. The same courtesy is strangely lacking when applied to the ongoing suffering of an innocent Israeli population, and the monster who, for decades, has wreaked mayhem and death in the region. Yasser Arafat is portrayed as a cuddly, cartoon-like, revolutionary desperately trying to keep his irate people from doing the most dastardly, but understandable, deeds against those nasty Israelis. The truth, however, is much different, and far more sinister. Yasser Arafat has been responsible for the horrific deaths of more Jews than Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein together. This alone is enough to have justice brought to this mass murderer. And justice, the death of so many innocent lives, cries out for a sentence far stronger than exile. It is said that Arafat has become 'an obstacle to peace'. It is clear that the Palestinians present and future progress, and Israeli lives, have been ruined by this man's duplicitous actions. If it is true that the majority of Israelis and Palestinians agree on a two-state solution, it is Arafat that is preventing the two sides from achieving that goal. Who could have dreamed, following the Oslo Accords and the lead-up to Camp David, that this Nobel prize recipient would unleash the worst and most prolonged wave of terrorism? This month marks the grim anniversary of the famous White House hand-shake. It was clear from the pained expression on Yizchak Rabin's face that he was dubious then that this man could be trusted to deliver peace and cooperation in the Middle East. Someone once said that "hope is not a strategy." That was the cause of the downfall of Oslo, as well as Camp David and the Road Map. They were all based on the hope and wishful thinking that Arafat would renounce violence, would stop terror, incitement, and the philosophy and practice of 'shaheed' in return for concessions from Israel. The concessions began, but Palestinian terror only increased. Any future peace process cannot be based on hope. Neither can it be based on deception. Oslo, according to Palestinian leaders, was also based on deception. Faisel Al-Husseini, and Arafat himself, called the Oslo agreements a Trojan Horse designed to achieve an immediate objective as a step toward their long term aim of creating an Islamic state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea - read ' in place of Israel'. Until today their call for an end of the occupation is a coded message to their people for an end of Israel. They are not talking about a state of their own 'over there'. They are talking about a Palestinian state 'here', in Israel proper. Even the West's recently failed pin-up boy, Abu mazen, once described Oslo as "the biggest mistake Israel ever made." Israel was forced to recognise the P.L.O., a terrorist organisation, allow them in and give them control over the West Bank and Gaza territories, fund them, arm them, without getting anything back in return - except terror and death. The Palestinian leadership expected Oslo to bring about the fragmentation of Israeli society, pitting left and right in a downward spiral of recrimination. It looked as if they had succeeded with the murder of Yizchak Rabin by a deranged student, but they were wrong. In the main, the left and right in Israel has fused together to resist the violent Palestinian onslaught. There is, today, a more harshly pragmatic Israeli society. It is ready to make painful compromises for peace, but is also prepared to wreak painful justice on those who bring them death and destruction. They are soldily behind Arik Sharon, but that does not make them rabid right-wingers, nor fascists. A growing number, perhaps even a majority, would like to see Arafat dead, but that does not make them radical killers. They simply want justice to come to this dangerous killer, and by doing so allow the process to move forward. September is a significant month in Arafat's history. It was in this month, in 1970, that King Hussein expelled him and his P.L.O. terrorists from Jordan when Arafat made a move to take over the country. Remember Black September? It was also in September, 1982, that Arafat and his terrorists were thrown out of Lebanon, after they had destabilized that country. Yasser Arafat reaps death and destruction where ever he goes. But perhaps one of his greatest crimes has been the planned and deliberate poisoning of the minds and souls of the Palestinian children. As part of his reign of hate, Arafat instigated a program of incitement against Jews and introduced the philosophy of martyrdom in the name of his cause, namely the eradication of Israel. His children became his cannon-fodder, his future suicide bombers, in the greater Palestinian cause. This, surely, must rank as one of the world's greatest crimes against humanity, even out-doing the tragedy that Saddam Hussein inflicted on his own people. For it will take at least a generation to re-educate the next generation to become spiritually and emotionally normal people. The damage is deep, and the implications are that any foreseeable future Palestinian state must be treated with the utmost suspicion with such a deeply disturbed population. It is clear to the world that a Middle East peace process is going nowhere as long as Arafat lives. Isolate him, expel him, as long as he lives - and retains the adoration of his masses - no progress can be made. So what are the solutions? Israel could arrest him and put him on trial. There is a mountain of evidence of his direct involvement in terror and murder, not only against Israelis but also against Americans and others. Why should this criminal escape justice, when other tyrants have justice imposed on them? One implication is that his trial will become an international showcase for a man who knows how to impress a naive audience, an audience who still look on him as an underdog. One important question has not been asked, let alone answered. Assuming Arafat dies a natural death, what then? There will surely be a massive power struggle among the various Palestinian factions. It is reasonable to assume that well-armed and motivated organisations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad would win this battle for power. The result would mean that Palestine would become an Islamic terror state. Is that what the world really needs? Diplomats are attempting to come up with a formula, such as the road map, to prevent this from happening but this, surely, is unavoidable and it is Israel that will be forced to live with this consequence. Palestinian society must be placed in a position where they show the world, but mainly Israel, that they can face up to the terror philosophy and infrastructure within it's midst. To prove it they must, by actions not by words, forge a society that truly deserves statehood. Israel can help them start this process by removing the man who is the architect of death, martyrdom, and terror - Yasser Arafat. Yes, there will be passionate demonstrations, even violence, for a period, but we have violence and terror now, so nothing would have changed. World leaders tell Israel not to kill Arafat as this would inflame the Muslim world. Yet they pursue Bin Laden and Saddam with a determination, without caring that, by killing them, it would raise the ire of Islam. Perhaps the death of Arafat would have the reverse effect. He is not liked nor respected in Arab circles. He has his fair share of critics within his own society. Certainly, there will be an outcry and much beating of chests, but the death of Arafat will force the Palestinians to choose their future direction. It will be a defining moment in their history. The answer then is for a decisive Israeli Government to make the same rational claims as the US Administration did in Afghanistan and Iraq as their search goes on for their tyrants. Is Jewish blood cheaper than Christian blood? Why did they not choose to turn the other cheek when assaulted by Bin Laden, and threatened by Saddam? Why is that philosophy forced on us? Why is Arafat being preserved by the very nations that have declared a worldwide war to eradicate terror. Arafat is the founder of modern terrorism. Why is he emulated as a cute emblem when this man is evil? The answer is justice must be brought to Mr. Arafat, but this justice could be tinged with Jewish humanity. Let us give Arafat, and his killers, one last chance to seek an end to violence - as officially promised by Arafat ten years ago. Let the Israeli Government declare to the world, and to the Palestinians, that the result of the next Palestinian terror attack on innocent Israeli lives will result in a devastating attack on Arafat's headquarters. A couple of 2000 pounders dropped on Mukata should end the Arafat era once and for all. Let this be used, hopefully, as the deterrent that will stop terror, finally, in it's tracks. Maybe, just maybe, the Palestinian terror groups will realize that Israel is serious in it's threat and stop this mad campaign of death to Jews and the eradication of Israel. Maybe, just maybe, if a prolonged period of non-violence is allowed to fall on Israelis and Palestinians, an atmosphere conducive to instigating a peace process will be created.

A DEBATE ON AUTONOMY VERSUS STATEHOOD Posted by Richard H. Shulman, September 15, 2003.

Dr. Aaron Lerner of IMRA and Prof. Gerald Steinberg exchanged views about the Professor's article in the Jerusalem Post urging PM Sharon to make "painful concessions" including PLO statehood. Prof. Steinberg advocated statehood to separate the two peoples, lest the Arabs urge democratic rule and prevail. Dr. Lerner replies that nothing is wrong with autonomy for Arab cities, whereas statehood presents a permanent and undeniable threat. (9/8). I think that each one's criticisms are correct and each one's proposal is incorrect. Statehood unquestionably would boost Arab war making capability and morale. Neither statehood nor autonomy as proposed, would end the demographic threat. Neither proposal rids Israel of its growing Arab population. If the P.A. population is allowed to expand on either side of the Green Line, it inevitably would exert pressure on Israel, as Arafat intends it to. The answer is to revise the autonomy proposal. Israel must not pay the autonomous Arab cities anything or let them earn anything in Israel. Then their number would diminish, as they move away. Israel should annex the major portion of Yesha, in which there is no Arab population. That would prevent PLO statehood and much expansion of the Arab population. Within Israel, the government should move against the illegal Arab aliens, illegal Arab seizure of land, illegal building, tax evasion, and rioting, ban their seditious political parties and mosque preachers, end Arabic as a national language, require national service by the Arabs, stop discriminating in favor of their college admission, and otherwise reduce their numbers and influence.

ALL OUT WAR IS THE ONLY WAY TO ACHIEVE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST Posted by Jules Segal, September 14, 2003.

This was written by Nolan Finley of The Detroit News on August 24, 2003. With the blood of its children running through the streets of Jerusalem, Israel has no choice but to crumple the road map to peace and instead draft a battle plan for combating terrorism. Any hope for a political solution to the violence in the Middle East vanished in the bus bombing Tuesday, which killed 20 and maimed scores of others, many of them children. Television cameras showed the surviving youngsters, screaming and blood-smeared, stumbling away from the horrific carnage. Terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad competed for credit. There's only one way to deal with those who find glory in slaughtering children: Kill them. The bomber's wife said her husband died fulfilling his dream of martyrdom. The man had two kids of his own, and yet his life's dream was to die killing other people's children. You can't negotiate with that level of ignorance, hatred and religious insanity. Yet Israel, at the insistence of the United States, has come to the bargaining table. It has offered extraordinary concessions in the name of peace and taken good faith steps, including dismantling settlements and pulling back troops. But the peace process has failed again, for the same reason it always fails. The Palestinians are wed to terrorism, and real peace can not be bargained with a terrorist state. So Israel has no choice but to seek a military solution, to roll its tanks again across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians blame their violence on Israel's oppression and brutality. But the truth is that Israel has not been brutal enough in the face of terror. Its answer is surgical strikes, targeted assassinations and a catch-and-release prisoner policy. Meanwhile, terrorist chieftain Yasser Arafat sits unmolested in Ramallah, and the leaders of the terrorist networks hold press conferences and rally crowds in village streets. Always, Israel's fist is restrained by the United States. But to end the violence, Israel must strike with terrible force. To be blunt, the Palestinians must be brought to their knees, made to feel the pain of allowing terrorists to act in their name. The path taken in President George W. Bush's road map to peace did just the opposite. It started the Palestinians toward statehood without forcing them to unstrap their bombs. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's puppet, says he risks civil war by disarming the terrorists. He must be warned that war is coming for certain if he doesn't. In past Middle East wars, Israel was reined in before it could achieve its final objectives. The conditions are different today. Egypt is a mess. Iraq is gone. Jordan and Saudi Arabia are in America's pocket. And there's no Soviet Union to pressure the United States to intervene. So Israel has a golden opportunity to launch its own version of a shock and awe campaign. It can drive the terrorists out of the territories, eliminate the threat from the Syrian-hosted Hezbollah along the Lebanon border and, if Iran chooses to join the fight, good - another problem checked off the list. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has played Washington's game. He's reached across the table, spoken words of conciliation, restrained his fury in the face of horrible provocation. It's time to let Sharon be Sharon. He's a warrior. And bringing peace to the Middle East is now a warrior's job. Nolan Finley is editorial page editor of The Detroit News. You can reach him at nfinley@ detnews.com or (313) 222-2064.

ARAFAT'S 1973 KHARTOUM MURDERS Posted by Moshe Brodetzky, September 14, 2003.

[This account is on the http://www.mountnixon.com website, a website devoted to President Richard Nixon and maintained by Russ Braley. This account, which appears on the webpage http://www.mountnixon.com/khartoum.html, was written by Mr. Braley. The page also contains a graphic entitled "Chronology of Khartoum Incident" that shows the original memorandum. - MB] This web site draws some interesting e-mail and comment from knowledgeable people who read it. On February 10, 2002, I received a call from Jim Welsh in Oregon (James J. Welsh), who had noticed that I covered the PLO uprising in Jordan in 1970 (from which came Black September, Yasser Arafat's terrorist arm) and the October War in Egypt in 1973, and I did not believe Arafat's denial that his men had killed Major Robert Perry in Amman in 1970. Did I have any direct information on Arafat's 1973 murders in Khartoum, Sudan, of U.S. Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr., Charge George Curtis Moore, and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid? I had no direct knowledge. All I remembered off-hand was that Israeli intelligence had intercepted a radio-telephone call in which PLO boss Arafat ordered the murders. Not exactly, Welsh said. It was the National Security Agency that intercepted the calls, a series of them, but that had been suppressed. Welsh had recently left a NSA listening post on Cyprus where the calls were recorded and was at NSA headquarters. He was a Navy technician and NSA analyst, an Arabic speaker and expert on the PLO. A colleague on Cyprus called him to tell him of the first call on February 28, 1973, from a transmitter at Shatila refugee camp near Beirut. Shatila was for a time PLO headquarters, and in 1970 West German Communist terrorists had trained there - the East Berlin-backed Baader-Meinhof gang, or Red Army Faction. Their key members committed suicide in a West German prison when repeated hostage-taking vemtures failed to free them. A dozen years later, in September 1982, then-General Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon in response to PLO attacks and drove to Beirut, forcing Arafat to flee to Tunisia, under protection of the Ronald Reagan administration. In three days in 1982, Sept. 16-18, 2,700 Palestinians by Red Cross estimate were killed in two camps, Sabra and Shatila, by Christian Phalange troops who were losing the civil war that the PLO arrival from Jordan had triggered in Lebanon. Sharon was blamed although Israeli troops stayed out of the camps. That intercepted February 28 message was from Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad), assistant to Arafat and head of Black September in Lebanon, to Khalil al-Wazir in Khartoum. Khalaf was No. 2 in Arafat's Fatah, a close friend since the two Egyptians were classmates in Cairo, where Arafat was head of the Palestinian Student League. The name Abu Iyad was notorious in 1973 as the overall leader of Black September when it sent a group to kidnap and murder 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games. Mohammed Oudeh (Abu Daoud) was the off-scene mastermind of the Olympics hostage taking, as he claimed in an autobiography published in France, and he lived on the run between countries for years before settling in Jordan, but Salah Khalaf was his superior. Khalaf was assassinated in Tunis in 1991 by bodyguards of the PLO's Abu al-Hawl, who also was killed that night. The gunman was believed to belong to Abu Nidal's organization, which was challenging Fatah for leadership of the Palestinians. Through the 70s, the PLO was an unruly coalition of competing gangs, and the revolt against King Hussein in 1970 was not so much directed at the king as it was Arafat's effort to shut out of an Irbid-based Palestinian nation the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine of Dr. George Habash and Waddia Haddad, which had upstaged Fatah with its multiple aircraft hijackings and was doing better than Fatah recruiting in the refugee camps. Waddia Haddad, the father of PLO terrorism who assigned the hijack teams, died of cancer in East Berlin's Charite Hospital. In the 1973 phone call, Abu Iyad was instructing Wazir in Khartoum to raid with eight Black September guerrillas the Saudi Embassy party for departing U.S. Charge George Curtis Moore, an Arabist popular with most Arabs, who was being replaced by Ambassador Noel, and to seize the Americans. Welsh belives that Wazir supplied the weapons, brought into Sudan in a Libyan diplomatic pouch - more wheels within wheels - but was not one of the eight murderers. Welsh said the NSA director, the late Air Force General Sam Phillips, was notified by Frank Raven, and a FLASH warning was sent to the State Department for relay to the U.S. Embassy in Khartoum. It may have been delayed at State (or at NSA) when someone in the bureaucracy downgraded its urgency. The next day, March 1, the eight guerrillas armed with pistols and what were described in a State Department cable as submachineguns (probably Kalashnikovs) took more than a half dozen hostages at the Saudi reception. News reports said they demanded the release of Sirhan Sirhan, convicted assassin of Robert Kennedy, and others jailed in Israel and Egypt. President Nixon refused to negotiate with the guerrillas. Sudanese President Jaafar Nimeiri, who had led an Arab League mediation team in Amman in 1970, was absent from Khartoum, held in Juma by bad flying weather. Nimeiri, a military dictator and strong PLO supporter, had been seeking good relations with the United States, and had proposed in 1972 to Secretary Rogers and Special Envoy Joe Sisco getting friendly Arabs, like the Saudis, Kuwsitis, and Libyans (!) to talk Answar Sadat into negotiations with the Israelis. State was responding to his gestures, and Nimeiri doubled the Sudanese interest section in Washington, so he was being treated with kid gloves. Abu Iyad telephoned the order to murder three of the hostages and release the others, saying "Remember Nahr al-Bard (translation: Cold River). The people's blood in Nahr al-Bard cries out for vengeance." The reference was to a terrorist camp raided by Israel 11 days earlier that killed the terrorists of the Munich massacre who had escaped the Munich shootout. Another recorded message on March 2 was from Arafat himself to Salim Rizak (Abu Ghassan), operational commander of the killers, to confirm that he understood that the code "Cold River" meant executing the hostages. Rizak reported that the executions already had been carried out. The murders were sadistic, 40 bullets fired into the three diplomats from near the floor level upward to ensure agonizing deaths, according to Inside the PLO, by Neil Livingstone and David Halevy (Quill/Morrow, New York, 1990). First the victims were told to write wills and farewell messages to their families, according to Holger Jensen, who was in Khartoum for AP. Another message from Arafat said "your mission is over," and instructed Rizak to surrender to Sudanese officials, which was done at six a.m. March 4. Two were immediately released "for lack of evidence" and six others were tried in June, convicted of murder, but later released to PLO custody and flown out of the country. Welsh said that the State Department had sealed or purged records at the National Archives, perhaps for reasons of state, but since he returned home and left NSA in 1974, he has felt increasing urgency to break his oath of secrecy. He felt he could not remain silent about the NSA evidence, especially after President Clinton invited Arafat to the White House, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright held hands with Arafat, and Hillary kissed Arafat's wife. He is certain that the tape recordings of the radio-telephone calls still exist, but no one will officially acknowledge them. In 1989 Senator Jesse Helms learned that the State Department was negotiating with the PLO, and in fact with Salah Khalaf, who had become a diplomat. Helms tried to get the Senate to adopt an amendment to prevent the United States from negotiating with the terrorist PLO. Welsh informed Joseph Farah, who published an extensive report on WorldNetDaily.com on April 17, 2001. Welsh also filled in the New York Post in December 2001 on the story that had been suppressed by the State Department and every President since Nixon. * * * In Spring 1973 the dominant news story in the United States was Watergate, as Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt and the burglars on March 23 were sentenced to long prison terms and the focus of investigation narrowed to Nixon. Biographer Richard Reeves said on TV that by April 1973, Nixon knew he was finished. The Middle East story that year was the October War, launched by Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and the OPEC oil boycott of the United States and The Netherlands (Europe's refinery center) by Saudi Arabia, whose King Faisal secretly had promised Sadat such support if his war went awry, according to Arnaud de Borchgrave, then of Newsweek. Sadat lost his war, then won anyway, when Menachem Begin gave him back the Sinai - "every grain of sand" - as Sadat demanded, but Sadat then was murdered, not by Israelis, but by the Muslim Brotherhood, his own people. Arafat, in Lebanon, played no role in the 1973 war and was a sideshow, all but ignored by a media concentrated on Watergate, while the Soviet Union, wounded by Nixon's opening to China, was a major player, first building Egypt's SAM missile sites that almost won the war, then being ordered out of Egypt by Sadat, then coming back in - if they ever left. The Nixon administration received little support from NATO allies when Nixon went to Israel's aid. Willy Brandt, West Germany's first Socialist chancellor, who had released the three surviving Black September killers of the Israeli Olympics athletes the year before, denied refueling rights for replacement aircraft Nixon was sending to Israel, so Phantom jets were refueled in the air over the Azores on their way to the Sinai. I had covered the 1972 Munich massacre for the New York Daily News in September 1972, when five Bavarian Police sharpshooters took on the eight terrorists with their 11 hostages at Fuerstenfeldbruck airport, and I also covered the release in October of three Black September guerrillas when Black September promptly hijacked a Lifthansa plane over Turkey with 23 aboard. The hijackers ordered the plane to Munich to demand the three killers' release, then on to Zagreb, Yugoslavia, wary of Bavarian police on the ground. Brandt's government flew the three killers to Zagreb by executive jet, where they joined the captive Lufthansa people and were flown to Mohammar Khadafi's Libya. The three freed killers were Ibrahim Masud Dudran, 20, Samer Mohammed Abdullah, 22, and Abdel Kadir Dnawy, 21. In February-March 1973, when the Khartoum atrocity occurred, William Rogers was Secretary of State, his authority somewhat undermined when he was cut out from the Nixon-Kissinger negotiations to open China. In September 1973, Kissinger became Secretary of State just in time to be faced by the October War and the surprise that Sadat and Syria's Hafez Assad had been able to keep secrecy in coordinating their attacks on Israel. Jim Welsh suspects that Kissinger suppressed the tapes, transcripts and documents relating to the Khartoum murders, although the information was withheld for months before he took over the State Department. In February 2002 I spent several days at the National Archives searching State Department and then NSC documents on the murder of Ambassador Noel, and concluded that Welsh was correct in saying the records have been purged. I was directed to four file-boxes in which Noel's material was archived, along with unrelated matters of that time frame. In two boxes there were file folders on Noel, each about one-inch thick, almost entirely messages of condolences and thank-you letters from Secretary of State Rogers acknowledging them. Deputy Undersecretary William Macomber Jr. headed a task force on Khartoum, but I found no task force reports in the Sudan boxes. (But there were Macomber documents in National Security Council box 666, labled Black September Organization, not pointed out by NARA.) I found only about a dozen telegrams on the Khartoum developments themselves, not the stack of paper I expected for an event of this magnitude, which was Page One on newspapers all over the world for a few days. The scanty documents of interest including one FLASH message reporting the hostage taking, and one SECRET State Department chronology of the event written on March 1, before the hostages were murdered, but no follow-up. One telegram outlined State policy as avoiding the use of force in any rescue attempt and stalling to wear down the terrorists. The few sheets of paper on the seizure of Noel, Moore, Eid, plus Saudi, Jordanian and Spanish diplomats, who were released, contained scraps of information, some contradictory. The chronology, for example, reports that the Spanish diplomat said the terrorists demanded that the United States turn over to them King Hussein of Jordan, which I do not remember seeing in news reports. It also said among terrorists demands was the release of German terrorists. (I covered the Baader-Meinhof gang, although my newspaper did not use much of my material, and Andreas Baader, Jan Carl Raspe, and Gudrun Ensslin did in fact kill themselves in prison after another aircraft hijacking in 1977 failed to release them, after Ulrike Meinhof killed herself a year earlier.) The archive also revealed that Noel and Moore were put on the telephone to the State Department, where they repeated the terrorists's demands, Moore giving a long list of Jordanian prisoners to be released, but two notes on these phone messages are one page each, appear incomplete, and did not mention either King Hussein or the Germans. I received good cooperation from Milton Gustafson at the State Department archives, who went out of his way to telephone me at home to say he had found Noel material in boxes classified under the heading PER as well as POL. I received little help from the National Archives' Nixon Project, where Dmitri Reavis, the Project member available, refused any cooperation. The Project director, Karl Weissenbach, whom I reached days later, said that the Nixon tapes I requested, March 1-3, 1973, by court order will not be released until 2004, but he would try to find other documents referring to Arafat's taped telephone orders. The Nixon Project, an archive within the National Archives created when Congress confiscated Nixon's papers, eventually produced three boxes containing Sudan folders, but they had been thoroughly purged. Normally an archivist delivers boxes within 45 minutes, but I waited an hour and a half for two of three requested boxes. The third box took two hours and a second request with the notation for the archivist to call the Nixon Project. The delayed National Security Council box had a Sudan folder with no files in it, only a sheaf of pages, each stating "This file has been removed." Missing were files labled 1-11, 22, 25-28, and higher numbers filed in 1974. Also missing were all the files in between these numbers, without removal slips. It looked like monkey business in the National Archives. On my own, I found NSC box 666. which contained several folders on Black September. Two folders were empty, except for withdrawal slips indicating at least 70 documents had been removed, including 25 CIA situation reports. One CIA report survived the purge, because it was enclosed in a message from Secretary of State Rogers sent March 13, 1973 to selected U.S. embassies, suggesting they circulate its information to foreign governments "orally only," due to its sensitivity. This lone CIA report shows that the CIA, Rogers, Sisco and many at State understood Arafat's connection. "Begin text. The Black September Organization (BSO) is a cover term for Fatah's terrorist operations executed by Fatah's intellgence organization, Jihaz al-Rasd. The collapse of Fatah's guerrilla efforts led Fatah to clandestine terrorism against Israel and countries friendly to it. Fatah's funds, facilities and personnel are used in these operations. There is evidence that the "BSO" operation in Khartoum was carried out with substantial help from Fatah's Khartoum office and applauded by Fatah radio stations in Cairo and Beirut. In addition, Fatah Deputy Chief Salah Khalaf, chief of "BSO," gets an independent subsity from the Libyan government. "For all intents and purposes no significant distinction now can be made between the BSO and Fatah. Four of Fatah's 10-man command, including Khalaf, the planner and director of the Munich and Khartoum operations, are identified as "BSO" leaders. Fatah leader Yasir Arafat has now been described in recent intelligence reports as having given approval to the Khartoum operation prior to its inception. "Arafat continues to disavow publicly any connection between Fatah and terrorist operations. Similarly, Fatah maintains its pretense of moderation vis-a-vis the Arab governments, a pose which most of these governments find convenient for their public position toward the Palestinian cause. It seems certain also that some elements within Fatah are opposed to terrorism, and the chaotic state of the whole fedayeen movement assures factionalism, power struggles, and unclear lines of command. Nontheless, the Fatah leadership including Arafat now seem clearly committed to terrorism. End text." State had the right idea in attempting to notify NATO and Arab nations that Arafat was behind the murders, but the method, word of mouth, banning any documentary proof, is weird. For NARA to continue to withhold so many documents and thereby protect Arafat borders on the criminal. I found no reference in the National Archives to a NSA telephone intercept, never officially acknowledged to exist, and although Isreal has repeatedly confirmed publicly it intercepted Arafat's orders, there is no reference to that information either. Welsh said his Freedom of Information requests have been denied. Welsh suggested that Arafat's ordering the Khartoum killings was suppressed to avoid further exacerbating relations with Saudi Arabia, which is credible because the United States took no action to retaliate against the Saudi oil boycott of the Nixon administration. There is no mention of the Khartoum murders nor of Ambassador Noel in the indexes of Nixon's RN or in Kissinger's White House Years. Saudi oil appeared decisive in the continued coverup of Arafat's murders, as the effects of the oil boycott contributed to the one-sided votes to impeach Nixon in the House Judiciary Committee. It was a warning to subsequent Presidents not to monkey with the Saudis. As a result, Arafat has for 35 years been the PLO's commanding extortionist, kidnaper, and murderer, and the worst calamity ever to befall the Palestinian people. President George W. Bush should break off relations with the Palestinian Authority so long as Arafat remains in charge, and the Justice Department should issue the long-suppressed subpoenas for Arafat on specific murder charges. Arafat's crew should be ordered out of this country, including his spokesman Hassan Abdel Rahman, who appears often on Fox TV mouthing such absurd charges as "Israel created Hamas," the terrorist group. Years ago I disputed with Rahman on a New York local TV show, I don't know what the United States should do about Saudi Arabia, which has financed Arafat for 35 years and other terrorists including Usama bin Laden all these years. Washington has considered the Saudi royal family moderate, and it had shared the Allah-given wealth more or less fairly with its citizens, but that is less clear with each year. It has not been in the interest of the United States to have a revolution in Saudi Arabia, certainly not a Marxist revolution, nor a fundamentalist Islamic revolution, nor a takeover by Iraq. However, the Saudi reaction to President George Bush Senior's rescuing their country when Iraq's Saddam Hussein seized Kuwait and then set its oil fields afire has not been encouraging. Gratitude is unknown to the present guardians of Islam.

U.S. DEMANDED TAYLOR'S EXILE FROM LIBERIA. WHY NOT ARAFAT'S FROM ISRAEL? Posted by Mark Alan, September 14, 2003.

Why does the US government force the tiny country of Israel - with its small, 5,000,000 person population, in a land the size of two Rhode Islands - to tolerate the presence of a blood-thirsty terrorist (Yasser Arafat) when it demanded as a pre-condition for military and political assistance in Liberia the deposition and exile of now ex-president Charles Taylor? The US should demand the permanent elimiation of Arafat's influence just as it is seeking to crush Sadaam Hussein's influence in Iraq. It is the same War and yet the US treats Israeli casualties like so many ants run over by a Humvee. America's complicity role in the murder of Jews in the Holy Land is disgraceful.

ONCE ARAFAT LEAVES, THEN WHAT? Posted by Eliezar Edwards, September 14, 2003.

This was in today's Israel National News online (http://www.IsrealNN.com). Sensible words. The government's dramatic Thursday night decision to "remove Arafat, but not now" continues to draw criticism. Unnamed government ministers from both the Likud and Shinui parties have been quoted as saying that the resolution "weakens Israel and proves that we can't make important decisions without American support." Leading PA figure and Arafat-loyalist Saeb Erekat warned today that Arafat will not agree to be expelled, such that the decision to expel him means to kill him. "If that happens," Erekat said today, "this will cause chaos in the PA areas, with militant groups taking over, and the first thing they'll do will be to come to my office and kill me and all the other Palestinian moderates." Erekat was part of Arafat's PLO group that was allowed to escape Beirut to Tunisia during the 1982 Peace for Galilee War; they were allowed to enter Israel in 1993 when the Oslo Accords were signed. GSS head Avi Dichter has joined the chorus of those who oppose expelling Arafat, saying it would be better to kill him. "Israel would face international pressure," Dichter is reported to have said in closed meetings last week, "possibly forcing it to surrender and allow him to return. Killing him would cause a few weeks of unrest, but afterwards Israel could breathe freely and the entire region would benefit from it." Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz and other senior defense figures agree with Dichter. The UN Security Council will convene tomorrow to discuss the possible expulsion of Arafat, after it called upon Israel yesterday not to expel the PLO leader. Arafat himself, the subject of large demonstrations of support in Ramallah once again yesterday, said that Israel is trying to liquidate the entire Palestinian Authority and thus to avoid fulfilling its obligations. Atty. Elyakim Ha'etzni of Kiryat Arba, a strong opponent of a PLO state, warned in B'Sheva this week that killing Arafat would lead precisely to that - a PLO state. The former Knesset Member explained that Condoleeza Rice said recently that the U.S. is engaged in "nation building," and that its goal in getting rid of the Hamas-Arafat terrorism is to make way for a Palestinian state. Ha'etzni writes, "The words 'war against terrorism are actually a trap, hinting that we don't have war with the Palestinian people - who are the ones who are actually using the weapon of terrorism against us - but against the virtual concept 'terrorism,' as if it could be taken care of independently of the 120-year-old national struggle between us and the Arabs here." Dr. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer in the Arabic Department in Bar Ilan University and a researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told Arutz-7 today, "Arafat may not have been relevant for us, but he always was for the PA. Even locked up in the Mukata, he gave the orders, whether by phone, emissaries or whatever. The public demonstrations supporting him show that he is their leader, while we fell victim to some wishful thinking." Arutz-7's Yosef Zalmanson notes that Kedar himself, along with other analysts, observed that Arafat was not always a beloved leader. In March 2001, six months after Arafat initiated the Oslo War, Kedar told Arutz-7, "Arafat's popularity in the Palestinian Authority is declining significantly... [He] now has the support of only 28%. In addition, 38% of the Palestinian youth are interested in immigrating abroad. They see that the fruits of the intifada are not exactly what they e! xpecte d... In many areas this intifada has brought them nothing but trouble, and so they want to send their leaders back to square one." Kedar says that expelling Arafat will not bode well for Israel: "We will be blamed, and the bad situation will not improve. He will give the orders from abroad, but they will be even more violent... He has to be held totally cut-off from phones, visitors, etc." The police began an investigation today against Uri Avnery and 30 extreme left-wing Gush Shalom members. They arrived in Ramallah to show support for Yasser Arafat, and said they would bodily protect Arafat against Israeli soldiers. The group may be charged with violating a military order not to enter areas under PA-control.

STATING THE OBVIOUS: On Blindness and Stupidity Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, September 14, 2003.

For three years now I have been stressing repeatedly that the failure of the infamous Oslo Accords was due to one simple fact: The Israeli negotiators, including Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, had it in reverse: They agreed to land for peace instead of peace for land. Three years ago I was not yet the expert on the subject I am today, but I recognized the simple basic principal: One does not hand over tangibles before ensuring the receipt of proper consideration. Now comes this important article by Joshua Porath, professor emeritus of Middle East history at the Hebrew University. It was published as "Why Oslo Failed" in the Jerusalem Post, September 13, 2003. It sheds some new light on facts which preceded the Oslo signature, and clearly blames the failure of Oslo on the above mentioned simple fact. The recent so-called Road Map went even further than Oslo in its stupidity: It promised a Palestinian State in advance, and would you believe it: The Israeli government