The Chicago Tribune, even when it tries to tell the truth without deceptive spin, it simply cannot help itself - given its consistent hostility to the Jewish nation of Israel. In a lengthy article, penned by a Storer Rowley - assisted by a Jew, Joel Greenberg and an Arab Muslim Muhammad al Waheidi, they spin a story replete with much disinformation. The story of one suicide boy is told so you see this killer as a sympathetic hero - not as a killer taught to hate by his Islamic education. (1) He was not poor and he was educated.

Because the story starts on the front page and continues on a two full page spread inside, I can only highlight the tricky, misleading spin which seems always the character of the Chicago Tribune when they elevate a Muslim Arab killer and denigrate the Jewish Israelis.

The title "Killing in the name of God" is itself misleading. Allah, whom the Muslims claim as their god, the former pagan moon god, Zin, is not the G-d of the Jews, nor of the Christians - despite the Muslim effort to co-mingle the various religions. Borrowing the equity of other religions presumably is an attempt to minimize the Koranic instructions that Islam is both superior and instructs its followers to be in an unending war with non-believers (Dar al Harb).

The Trib story is about Ismail Maasawabi as a boy who is given a pre-sympathetic background so that when he becomes a Shahid (martyr for Islam) and blows up himself and two Israeli soldiers, the readers will understand his motivation. He is described as having "honey-colored" eyes which is all very heart-warming but, he is a killer nonetheless. (I wonder which writer ever saw his eyes?)

Of course, the two 19 year old Israeli soldiers do NOT receive the gift of the Trib's sympathetic 'spin', telling about how they too were once children with loving parents, all of whom were subjected to incessant Terror by the Palestinians and those who taught Ismail to murder Jews for the glory of Allah.

This gaggle of writers begin to slip in what psychologists call "reduced cues" or "subliminal information" in order to ignore the fact that this 'kid' was a religious pathological killer submerged in a religion that produces Islamic killers.

For example, the Trib tells us this is a "rare glimpse into the psychology of a suicide bomber", a twisted blend of religious piety and victimization that has become the new face of radical Muslim extremism, a force behind attacks on America and her allies around the world.

First, there is a plea for the readers to understand a religious boy, deeply pious and a victim. Are you beginning to feel sorry for Ismail, a suicide killer? This story defeated the usual "poor Palestinians" mantra. Ismail was NOT poor and he was educated.

But, the spin gets better (or worse) as the story concludes in this paragraph that, because the Arab Muslim Palestinians and the Arab Muslim nations have been unsuccessfully trying to destroy the Jewish State since before it was born in 1948, and that Americans are being attacked and killed daily in Iraq, Afghanistan and, of course, 9/11 by the same radical Muslims Terorists. Interesting that the Trib echoes the Islamo-Fascists propaganda that the Saudis, Iranians, Syrians wouldn't have attacked Americans in New York, Iran, Afghanistan and its Embassies IF ONLY Israel had died quietly.

The Trib also ignores the simple fact that long before the State of Israel was partitioned, Arab Muslims hated the West and were loyal followers of Hitler throughout WW2 and after. Even the word Assassin comes from a Syrian who established a cult of religious killers high on hashish.

Did you know that the U.S. Colt 45 caliber was invented when the U.S. was fighting Muslims (in the southern Philippines after the Spanish-American War) who were high on hashish and the 38 caliber revolvers could not stop them in one of those hysterical charges with the Muslims screaming: Allah Akhbar (Allah is great!)? Terrorism has been around a long time and whether loaded on Hashish or high on religious fervor, it is all has the same death for the victims.

We are told in the Trib's story, that Ismail went from being a devout Muslim to becoming a radical Islamic homicide bomber because he became entwined with the Palestinian Resistance and Hamas, the militant Islamic organization. A lie and a truth squeezed into one thought. As a devout Muslim and following Koranic law, he was already obligated to fight Jews, Christians and all infidels (non-believers in Islam).

Being influenced by Arafat's Palestinians and Hamas, the core lessons taught to children at the earliest ages of 2 and 3 and upward, were to hate, kill and believe you will go to warrior's heaven to taste the delights of the forbidden fruit on earth. When you are a bit older you get 72 eager virgins. I don't know what kids get. I suppose candy and all the Coca Cola they can drink.

We are told what was once a nationalistic movement for statehood has become for "many" Palestinians a religious call to arms. (It wouldn't be difficult to change the word "many" to "most".)

We are shortly told, by way of an explanation or apology for becoming a suicide killer, that he experienced alienation and humiliation imposed by parties the Trib sees as the villains: Israel and her ally, the United States of America.

First the Trib writers exclude the fact that the Arab Muslim nations launched the first of six wars and instructed the "falaheen" (peasant farmers) to leave the Land of Israel so the Arab armies would have a clear field of fire. After the battle, they could come back and claim the homes and cultivated lands of the Jews. The humiliation was that they were deprived of the slaughter they were promised or, as regularly stated by the Arabs before each war to "Dance in the Blood of the Jews".

The children from the age of 2 and up were and are taught to hate and kill but, NOT taught the history of their elders who swore to massacre the Jews. As years and more Terror became common, so did defensive Israeli road patrols, checkpoints and incursions to break up terrorist gangs, weapons' workshops, weapons' smuggling tunnels and terrorist organization leaders. For Ismail, he was taught this was undeserved humiliation but, it was well-deserved and barely sufficient to contain the terrorists' attacks, if the Trib wanted to present all the facts.

Clearly, whether Ismail knew all of this is ignored but there again the Tribune's three intrepid writers also didn't know or conveniently ignored the basis of why the alienation and humiliations took place. Granted Ismail and the Arab Muslim world would no longer be humiliated IF they could have succeeded in occupying all of Israel and push the Jews into the sea. Then the twin pillars of Islamic "Pride and Shame" would not have been toppled in six lost wars. Then these backward Islamists could have sat in their coffee-shops discussing the great victory pumping up their self-esteem as great warriors.

The writers go on "Yada, Yada, Yada" speaking about the wishes of Ismail's father for the boy to finish his studies and all things that families want for their children . Having hooked us on the transference of sympathy to the father, I wonder how the writers felt about the fathers and mothers of the two murdered 19 year old Israelis who will now never get married, never have a family, never have children that, in addition to unending spreading ripples of grief in their Israeli families from our dedicated Terrorist for Allah.

We learn 1.3 million Arab Muslim Palestinians live in Gaza City and 8,500 Jewish citizens live in the 21 farming communities of Gush Katif. The Jews have a long and old history in Gaza. Only the Arab Terrorism and wars evicted the Jews from Gaza. In 1967 when they liberated the land of Gaza, they took it from the Egyptians who for 19 years had occupied Gaza (they never owned it) when they attacked Israel. The Jews had taken over the infertile sand dunes which no Arabs wanted. The hardy Pioneering Jews cultivated them, built them up, invented a sophisticated method of growing in sand within greenhouses, made them successful and - then, of course, the Arabs wanted it.

Since before and after 1948 wherever the industrious Jews built businesses, cultivated the land and made it GREEN, the backward and envious Arabs wanted it. There, of course, was a time in the so-called advanced civilization of Europe when the Germans, French, et al delighted in confiscating what the Jews built. Greed, envy and religious hatred are powerful motivators. When the pioneering settlers of Gush Katif in Gaza shared their technology with nearby Arab villagers but, the terrorists insured that the Israeli assistance to advance the Arab's primitive land cultivation was ended by the Arabs' own Terrorism..

The Trib writers go on to describe Gaza City where the Arabs live as in a slum - in effect, blaming the Jews. Why is it that the energetic Jews labor to make the land bloom from the same nothing? But, the Arab Muslim Palestinians made it into a slum? Why did Arafat and the Mullahs of Islam with dogged determination, keep their own people in refugee camps, refusing to build them their own proper housing but relying upon UNRWA and other donor nations to insure a permanent class of refugees?

We, in America, call this kind of charity the "Appalachian Syndrome". But, that is what Arafat and his cohorts wanted, a permanent showcase of misery so he could bleed the world for money which, of course, never reached the poor Palestinians he was bleating about.

Israel provided the Arab Palestinians a place to work, to use their skills, good health care, education and voting rights in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament). The workers brought home a good paycheck. When Arafat was resurrected by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres? Oslo Accords and put in control, all that ground to a halt as Arafat ramped up the Terror attacks and Palestinian workers would stab or shoot their boss of many years. Now, they claim to the U.N., the U.S., the E.U. that Israel is keeping them from working. Pressure has been put on Israel to allow Arab Muslim Palestinian workers into Israel, despite the fact that the terrorists enter with them.

The Trib writers tell us that decades of war and tension between Israel and the Arab Muslim Palestinians - plus factional fighting made the current siege in Gaza grim. This is where the familiar moral equivalent comes into play. Somehow the reader is told that the suicide attacks and other Terror used by the Palestinians is equal to Israel's response to those provocative attacks. The Trib 'spins' the idea that Israel deserved the Terror and its counter-attacks just made things even.

The Trib writers speak of the first intifada in December 1987 when an Israeli truck crashed into two cars carry Gaza workers from the Jabalya refugee camps. The Trib tries to 'spin' the story that this all began as an unplanned uprising which started 'spontaneously' and Arafat had nothing to do with turning out the mobs. Regrettably, it would have been stopped but, Yitzhak Rabin just happened to be in Washington and refused to return for several weeks. Shimon Peres was in France and England drumming up support for their pressure to force Israel into what later became Oslo. He also refused to return as the crisis grew.

Meanwhile, on the Egyptian side of the border which splits the town of Rafa/Rafiah, the Palestinian Arab Muslims decided that rioting was a 'good idea'. In short order several Egyptian trucks pulled up, dropped their tailgates with 50 caliber machine guns mounted to the truck beds. They raked the rioters with machine gun fire, leaving the bodies on the street. That was the end of the intifada on the Egyptian side - while on Israeli side, the fighting continued, grew worse and more were killed. No one even investigated the 'spontaneous' uprising and how it happened that both Rabin and Peres were out of the country at that precise time and refused to return for several weeks.

The Trib story goes on to the next intifada which began on September 28, 2000 on the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It should have been called the Rosh Hashanah War of 2000, not the Al Aksa Intifada. Arafat claimed that it started because Ariel Sharon walked up on the Temple Mount where the First and Second Temples of King Solomon were built but where the Al Aksa Mosque is now - and that this visit (okayed by the Imam in charge) was a great insult. However, this War was planned for months prior, even to the point of Palestinians gathering food in the event of martial law was declared AFTER Arafat's intifada was launched. A little honest research could have told this trio of 'spin' that the intifada was pre-planned as was the one in 1987. The Trib has all this information in its data base.

In July, Arafat had been offered 97% of Judea, Samaria and Gaza plus more and parts of Jerusalem by a foolish Prime Minister Ehud Barak but, even this anti-Zionist gesture by Barak was rejected by Arafat who began planning his now four year War.

All of this 'spin' ends with an attempt at equalization lest it be said the Trib and its spin meisters were not sympathetic to the two dead Jews. So they tell us they are Sgt. Aviv Iszak of Kfar Saba and Sgt. Ofir Kil of Jerusalem both of whom had families that loved them and both felt committed to the security of Israel.

How generous of the Trib to show "what"? Sympathy for two dead Jews who were murdered by a pathological killer dedicated to a hideous religion that demands human sacrifices by children and youths to its pagan god? Even this disingenuous, pathetic attempt at balance is positioned at the very end of a huge article where thousands of words have persuaded the readers that one young suicide killer has 'reasons' to kill.

The final few words tell us how his father and mother view his end as a sacrifice or act of jihad (holy war for Islam). I wonder if the Chicago Tribune, as a matter of balance would allow me to have a double spread to speak about the many Jewish families who have been victims of Arab Muslim Terror. Since Olso was signed September 13, 1993, more than 1500 Israelis (including 52 Americans) have been murdered by radical Islamic terrorists, with tens of thousands more wounded, many maimed for life. Since Arafat's Rosh Hashanah War 2000 more than 1000 Israelis have been murdered by Arafat's Muslims.

Perhaps the Tribune would print a fair story on "Whose Jerusalem" in the interest of fair and balanced journalism.

But, I doubt it.

###

1. "Killing in the Name of God: Struggle for the Soul of Islam: Subtitle: "Poverty, Hate Turn a Palestinian Youth into Ready Recruit as Suicide Bomber" - Special Report" by Storer H. Rowley, Joel Greenberg and Muhammad al Waheidi Chicago Tribune October 3, 2004.

Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla. He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm).

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