Palestinian security heads protest dismissal of chief

Oy vey! The boys are having differences

Commanders of the Palestinian Preventive
Security force met with President Yasser Arafat Saturday night to
discuss the dismissal of their chief Jibril Rajoub, Palestinian
sources said.
The six commanders represent a larger group of 600 West Bank
security force members who are unhappy with Arafat's decision to
replace Rajoub with the former governor of Jenin, Zuhair Manasra,
according to a DPA report.
The officers went to Arafat's Ramallah headquarters, intending to
tell him that they were opposed to Rajoub's dismissal but that if he
had to go he should be replaced by somebody from within the force.
Dozens of Preventive Security members met Saturday in the town of
Beitunia, southwest of Ramallah, during a brief lifting in the round-
the-clock curfew imposed on Ramallah for the past two weeks.
They discussed the changes in the leadership of their 4,000-strong
force, expressing dismay in Arafat's move and vowing to end
cooperation with the Palestinian leader unless he relents.
Rajoub accepted his dismissal after meeting with Arafat Thursday,
but said he would not take up another post. He also called on his men
not to challenge Arafat's decision.

Fabricated Indymedia quote blames Israel for Bali bombing?

Notorious anti-Israel site caught by blogger in Big Lie and Fakery!

An Indymedia post from Wednesday purportedly quotes an AFP article suggesting the C4 used in last week's Bali bombing originated in Israel:


(OCTOBER 16,2002) Police investigating the deadly bombing of a nightclub in the Indonesian island of Bali in which nearly 200 people died have found traces of plastic explosive manufactured in Israel at the site of the attack.
The discovery of the explosives suggests a sophisticated bombing operation. Reports from the French news agency AFP say that the head of Indonesian intelligence, Hendropriyono, has disclosed that the explosive was a type known as C4, tacked to manufacture in Israel.

- Indymedia, Israeli made C4 explosive used in Bali bombing.

However, the Indymedia post doesn't link to a copy of the full AFP article. A google search for various combinations of key words - Bali, C4, Hendropriyono, Israel - turns up nothing relevant other than the Indymedia article (which is syndicated on a number of regional Indymedia sites). e.g. Hendropriyono c4 israel. A search on the new Google News service, which indexes AFP articles via any number of affiliate news sites, finds zero hits.

The nearest AFP story I can find is this one, also from Wednesday. It quotes Hendropriyono, but the only C4 manufacturer mentioned is the US:


THE C4 plastic explosive used in the Bali bombing is a very powerful substance mainly manufactured in the United States but widely supplied to military forces around the world.
- AFP, C4 explosive a 'military issue'.

Tellingly, Indymedia's alleged AFP quote - indented to appear as a direct paste from a wire article - doesn't match the usual AFP style. AFP doesn't put the date in ledes, it puts the location, like this:


JAKARTA (AFP) Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri has signed two emergency decrees to combat terrorism following the devastating Bali bombing, Justice Minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said.
- AFP, Indonesia president signs anti-terror decrees after Bali blast.

Nor does the upper-case date match AFP style.

Now, that's not proof that the quote was fabricated. Some news services have a policy of altering wire stories to match their own style - for example the News Corp copy quoted above, which includes neither the date nor location in the lede. But it seems more than a little suspicious - particularly given that it followed just a few days after this Indymedia story, reported here on Monday, that alleges Mossad involvement in the bombing:


BALI, Indonesia (Sun Oct 13, 2002) - Mossad Bombs ripped through a packed nightspot on Indonesia's traditionally tranquil tourist island of Bali overnight in a Israeli staged terror attack, killing at least 182 people, many of them Australians.
- Indymedia, Mossad Bombs Kill Almost 200 in Bali Tourist Nightspot.

As with the Wednesday C4 article, it includes an indented quote with the appearance of a wire story - but no link or reference. Indeed, the article includes no information at all other than unsubstantiated allegations. Even by Indymedia's low standards both articles are far from credible, as the comments following the posts show.

Israel, U.S. consider joining for operation



A joint effort proposed that would greatly lesson Israel's fears of a missle attack.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is considering an Israeli proposal to send U.S. Special Forces into Iraq's western desert to knock out Iraqi missile sites in the event of war, a U.S. official said Friday.

In a joint operation, Israel would furnish the United States with intelligence about the sites and how to disarm them early in the conflict, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Israel's aim is to sharply reduce the risk of an Iraqi missile attack.

Israel presented the proposal during Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's talks this week in Washington with President Bush and senior White House, Pentagon and State Department officials.

He was given assurances the administration would make a maximum effort to neutralize any Iraqi missile threat.

Sharon vowed before his trip to Washington that Israel "will take the proper steps to defend its citizens" if Iraq should injure Israeli civilians.

In the 1991 Persian Gulf war Iraq hit Israel with 39 Scud missiles, but at the behest of the United States, Israel did not retaliate.

On Wednesday, Bush endorsed Israel's right to self-defense. Still, the prospect of Israel attacking Iraq could hamper U.S. efforts to attract Arab nations to support a U.S.-led war with Iraq.

Sharon did not get a response to the Special Forces proposal during his three-day visit, and it is under consideration, the official said.

Ex-aide condemns Arafat's handling of intifada


Arafat's mistakes detailed. Or is the former aide positioning himself politically should there be an election?

Yasser Arafat has been criticised by his former security chief for failing to grasp the chance to establish an independent state, even on unfavourable terms, and for the attacks on Israeli civilians.
Muhammad Dahlan, who resigned last week as Mr Arafat's national security adviser and returned to his base in Gaza, was quoted by the London-published Arabic daily Al-Hayat condemning the leadership for causing Palestinians to suffer for no perceivable gain.

It reported that Mr Dahlan spoke to a group of journalists on Sunday who were told not to take notes. Nevertheless, it said it had a written record of the conversation.

"The Palestinian leadership missed no opportunity to make mistakes," it quotes Mr Dahlan saying.

"There were two streams in the [Palestinian Authority]: those who say the people can suffer and [are] steadfast, and those who say the people has collapsed. Both are wrong. The people can suffer if its sacrifice will be politically rewarded."

Mr Dahlan describes the suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians as a political disaster for the Palestinian cause, particularly after September 11. He is quoted as telling journalists that he opposed the "military strategy" and favoured popular resistance modelled on the first intifada, but Mr Arafat failed to act on the advice.

Palestinian poll: A husband may beat his wife if she hurts his manhood


Three cheers for democracy and equality!

Introduction:
A poll conducted in the Palestinian Authority by a Palestinian public opinion company shows that a majority of Palestinians are of the opinion that a husband may prevent his wife from working, that a woman should strive to devote herself to her husband and that a husband is entitled to beat his wife if he thinks that she "hurt his manhood". Nearly half the Palestinians believe that neither law enforcement nor social welfare agencies' intervention in husbands' violence towards the wife is warranted, while at the same time a the majority calls for tough punitive legislation for violence towards women. These two attitudes are, it seems, not viewed as contradictory. One possible explanation is that the support for punitive measures expressed by a majority of Palestinians does not apply to a husband's violence towards his wife.

The text:
“The Society for the Advancement of the Palestinian Working Woman, in conjunction with The Palestinian Center for Public Opinion Polls, conducted a poll under the supervision of Dr. Nabil Kokali, on the topic of violence against women..."
“56.9% of Palestinians feel that it is a husband’s right to hit his wife if he thinks she hurt his manhood...”
“59.1% of Palestinians feel that it is a husband’s right to prevent his wife from working outside the home..."
“66.4% of Palestinians declare that the crown of success of the Palestinian Woman is devoting herself to the care of her children and her husband above devotion to herself…"
“47.1% feel that there is no need for intervention of social or law enforcement agencies in instances of husbands attacking wives, because that is a family problem..."
“73.9% feel that a woman must think of how to become a mother and wife rather than engage in her economic and social freedom..."
"86% of Palestinians feel that the [Islamic] traditions and customs retard advancement of women..."
“68.5% of Palestinians feel that the [Palestinian] Authority should legislate firm punitive legislation for violence against women...."
[Al-Ayyam women’s supplement ‘The Woman’s Voice’, October 3, 2002]

Ambassador gets earful


At least in this instance the Israeli speaker was allowed to have his say. And the Palestinian student who wonders about the Palestinian people? Well guess who is encouraging the bombers and sending very young children out to throw stones.

There were some tense exchanges between Haim Divon, Israeli Ambassador to Canada, and about 50 Dalhousie University students who attended an hour-long lecture yesterday in an auditorium at the Sir Charles Tupper Building, under the watchful eyes of several plain-clothes security people.

Some students questioned Divon’s assertions there would be peace between Israel and Palestine if only the Palestinians would accept the Camp David accord worked out by former U.S. president Bill Clinton, and if they would recognize Israel as a bona fide country.

Divon, who described Israel as having 7,000 missiles pointed at it, said security is, and must be, its top priority.

“Every day, an Israeli meets and confronts a very hostile environment,” he said.

Israel has tried “everything” to live peacefully with Palestinians, Divon said, but nothing has worked, and that is why they have turned to reprisal attacks on refugee camps to counter suicide bombers.

“If there’s another way, tell us about it,” he said.

“No one is holding (Palestinian chairman Yasser) Arafat accountable. I think Israel is the only country in the world where there are mortar and missile attacks daily. Where else in the world would you tolerate such attacks from neighbours?”

Divon said that until the “Iraq issue” is solved, there won’t be a major breakthrough between Israel and Palestine, and charged Iraq has been funding Arafat.

“No one wants to live in such a crazy situation. The international community shouldn’t be so soft on Arafat,” he said.

Divon said there are so many Palestinians living in refugee camps because the Palestinian government wants to use them “to better bash Israel.”

He said that since the Second World War, there have been 50 million refugees and most have been resettled, “except the Palestinians.”

“We didn’t keep Holocaust survivors in a refugee camp to say: ‘Look at what they did to us,’” he said.

An Egyptian student in the audience asked Divon why he kept on “pointing the finger” at Palestine for the problems.

“I’ve been living here seven years and every time I put on the TV, all I hear is suicide bombers ... What about the Palestinian people who are dying every day from bullets?”

Divon said Israel is pointing the finger at one person, Arafat, “but the Palestinian people have to point the finger, too.”

“So, you’re pointing the finger again,” replied the student

Lebanon accuses Israel of 'state terrorism'



At this gathering of hypocrites, you get to pick who is worse, the French that arte "denounced" or the Lebanese who talk about Israeli and neglect to mention they are a client state, occupied by Syrian troops, and allowing Hezbollah to use their territory to continue nearly daily attacks against Israel.

BEIRUT -- Israel has long been accustomed to being attacked at meetings of international organizations, but the summit of francophone nations was not prominent among them. That changed yesterday.

Israel was a favourite target as more than 50 leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, began their summit in Beirut. The host of the conference, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, began the day with a scorching attack on Israel, accusing it of "odious massacres" of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, a tense scene was developing in the media centre between Lebanese journalists and a French reporter, whom they accused of broadcasting to Israel, in violation of Lebanese law

Israelis swoop as U.S. calls for calm


Ah, Reuters. US calls for calm and those nasty Israelis go after "militants"--ie, terrorists. And, oh, yes, buried at the bottom of the article, the paper notes that soldiers attacked and killed a Palestinian who had attacked them with bombs. Wish those soldier could show some restraint!

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli troops have raided houses in the West Bank and arrested at least eight suspected militants, continuing their crackdown on a Palestinian uprising despite calls for calm from Washington.

The pre-dawn swoops centred on the city of Nablus and the men who were detained belonged to President Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction and the militant Islamic group Hamas, the army and Palestinian witnesses said on Saturday

Witnesses said troops searched six houses whose occupants had already fled. Four soldiers were injured as they blew up the door of a wanted man's house in the city's Balata refugee camp.

The sweep came a day after Israel announced it would ease its hold on two restive West Bank cities, as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned from Washington talks and a U.S. envoy set off to the Middle East with a peace plan in pocket.

Washington, Israel's closest ally, is keen to see Israel ease its curfews and closures as it tries to rally Arab support for a possible war against Iraq.

Israeli military and security sources said the army suspended its curfew indefinitely in Jenin, a militant bastion like Nablus. It would also minimise troop presence in Hebron ahead of talks on a potential withdrawal.

Israel Under Siege, Part I

Sharon’s talks with Bush may have ended with hugs and kisses, but the substance of the news stands as a stark contrast. At the moment, US-Israel relations display at the very least four areas for concern; the problematic Israel-EU relationship is a separate chapter, and the topic for tomorrow’s article (Israel Under Siege, Part II).

The First problem area concerns the impending calamity known as “two states living side-by-side”. In his statement dated October 16, 2002, about his talks with Sharon, Bush said at a press conference:

We talked about the framework for peace, the idea of working toward peace, the idea of two states living side-by-side in peace as a part of our vision. And to this end, Bill Burns, Ambassador from the State Department, is going back to the Middle East to continue to work on the process; continue to work toward achieving concrete, real, objective and measurable reforms, so that there's a peaceful future for the region.

It would appear that Israel was compelled to swallow this “vision”; a strong emetic is recommended.

Second, the ambiguous situation with regard to retaliation, should Iraq once again attack Israel.

In the foregoing press conference,

PRESIDENT BUSH: If Iraq were to attack Israel tomorrow, I'm sure
there would be appropriate response.

Q: How should Israel respond? How should you respond --

PRESIDENT BUSH: If Iraq attacks Israel tomorrow, I would assume the Prime Minister would respond. He's got a desire to defend himself.

As pundits pointed out: and supposing Iraq did not “attack Israel tomorrow ” but attacked in the context of a US war against Iraq - what then?

The AP story answers:

Bush and American diplomats are trying to line up Arab and other nations to support the United States in the event of war against Iraq.

Only a few Arab nations are prepared to make that commitment, and their support might melt away if Israel retaliated against an Iraqi attack.

Aware of that risk, administration officials quickly followed Bush's remarks by trying to draw a line between an unprovoked Iraqi attack on Israel and an attack in the event of war.

Well, there you have it: yes; and no; and maybe. And Israel is squeezed among the three.

Third, the fund transfer to the PA. The joint US-Israel statement announced:

As part of the effort to further Palestinian reform, the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Israel agreed that the Government of Israel would consider favorably the gradual return and scheduled transfer of all PA tax funds collected by Israel on the unequivocal condition that there would be full U.S.-led monitoring to ensure that these funds will only be used for the economic and civil activities of the Palestinian community and to prevent the use of these funds for terrorist activity of any kind.

Of course, the “unequivocal condition” is a farce, since any of the transferred funds used by the PA for salaries, will free up other PA funds for terrorist activities. Furthermore, the transferred funds would certainly be used to finance the bloated bureaucracy that Arafat has developed in order to ensure that a large proportion of the Palestinians depend on the PA for their livelihood.

Here again, Israel was compelled by the US to cave in.

Fourth, the weakening of Israel’s resolve and response. The Wazzani dispute, the dismantling of settlements and the impending withdrawal from Hebron with no guarantees for the security of Israeli citizens, are all examples of the weakening that is apparent to any observer. The weakness is surely apparent to Hizbullah and other terrorists, and it is surely a consequence of US pressure.

There is a bitter, ironic epilogue to this tale of pressure-and-cave. The “World” section of the Ottawa Citizen today [October 18] is headlined, “US caves in to pressure on Iraq war”. On the Web, the Sydney Morning Herald reports: “US forced to back down on Iraq strike threat”; and the AP heaedline reads, “U.S. Backs Off on U.N.-Iraq Threat”. The irony is, tht when Israel had to back down in the face of US pressure, Israel yielded to a lion; when the US backed down in the face of Franco-Russian pressure, it yielded to mosquitoes.

Contributed by Joseph Alexander Norland

Rabin's stock takes deserved dive


Rabin: then and now:

KIRIYAT ARBA, WEST BANK, ISRAEL - At Elitzur's cafe, just off Rabbi Kahane Park, some very hard men ushered in Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Day by discussing their feelings. The topic was the assassination of Rabin nearly seven years ago.
"I've felt guilty for the past six years," said Elitzur. "But not after what Oslo has done to us."

Elitzur, who wears a large skull cap and sports an untamed beard, is the father of 11. In 1995, he told a reporter that the way to stop the accords - a Palestinian state in return for peace - was to put a bullet into the prime minister. A few days later, Yigal Amir did just that. Overnight, Elitzur became a symbol of extremist violence.

"I had mixed feelings after the murder," he told me. "I felt my words contributed to bloodshed." He shook his head. "But since the intifadeh, I'm mad at Rabin all over again."

"You are not planning to commemorate memorial day," I guessed.

"I'll recite psalms," Elitzur said. Then he added, "The truth is, I recite psalms every day."

A loud boom shook the cafe. Dubak, a local activist, cocked an ear. "Nothing," he pronounced. Two years of the post-Oslo intifadeh have given him perfect pitch for lethal explosions. Dubak wears a smaller skull cap and a shorter beard than Elitzur - signs, in settler's circles, of relative moderation. But he, too, intended to skip Rabin Memorial Day.

"In Oslo, he gave Arafat 70,000 Kalishnikovs," Dubak said.

"If Rabin had lived, he'd never have let this happen," said a visitor from Jerusalem. "He was an honest man. He would have admitted his mistake." The hard men nodded. Later that day, Knesset member Zvi Hendel echoed this thought when he introduced an (unsuccessful) bill to annul the accords. If Rabin were still alive, Hendel argued, he'd be the first to vote for it.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres - Rabin's partner in Oslo - took heated exception. "I'm proud of [the Oslo Accords]," he told the Knesset. "And Rabin would have stood here the same way I do."

Maybe. But Rabin had a premonition that Oslo might turn into a fiasco. "I'm afraid I made a terrible mistake," he confided to an American acquaintance shortly before his assassination.

Death spared Rabin confirmation of his hunch. The deal is on a political respirator and slipping fast. If and when it goes, most Israelis won't mourn it, any more than the hard men at Elitzur's cafe mourn the death of Yitzhak Rabin.

The anti-Adam Shapiro


We post the news, and the news generalizes all too often about conflicts between groups of people. Here is a story about a man and his family and Faith, Religion, Roots, Discovery, Love, Family, Marriage that will gladden your heart.

This spring, Adam Shapiro, the former Jewish Brooklynite who spent the night at Yasser Arafat's compound when the P.A. leader was under "house arrest," made headlines around the world for many reasons. Among them, obviously, were the "man-bites-dog" element of a Jew embracing the "Palestinian" cause, including, reportedly, calls for violence against his co-religionists.

Then, there was his engagement -- and, later marriage -- to an Arab woman.

"How odd," commentators opined. Well, actually, not. Though certainly not at the rate Jews and Christians intermarry in America, Arab-Jewish unions are far from rare in the Jewish State.

Below, we present the amazing but true story of the product of one such union. And a even more surprising ending.


To say that Salah Abdel Manam has yichus, or distinguished lineage, would be an understatement.

On his maternal side, his great-grandfather was a famous Safed mystic (mekubal). And his first cousin died heading a distinguished combat division in Lebanon while heroically defending Israel.

On his paternal side, his great-grandfather was a famous Moslem cleric. And a first cousin is one of Arafat's close advisors, who this spring was holed-up with him at the Mukta compound.

Although Jewish activist organizations helped Salah's mother escape twice from her Arab village and her husband, she ultimately decided to cast her lot with them. While Salah's father was willing to marry a Jewish woman, he nevertheless continued to affiliate with the strictest strain of Islam. In time, 9 children were born to the couple. Each was raised a devout Muslim.

Salah became proficient in the Koran at a young age, and knew large parts of it by heart. Adopting religious dress, he even wore a jalabiya.

Hatred of Jews was a recurring topic in his home and at school. Though married to a Jew, Salah's father wasn't reluctant to proclaim openly his hated of all things Jewish.

His parents intermarriage impacted Salah's day to day interaction with the world around him. "Because my mother was a Jew, I had to show that I was more extreme than everyone else. I knew I was always being watched," Salah explains, matter-of-factly.

But while going through the motions of being an "extremeist," Salah would at once be troubled by contradictions he found in the Koran.

And then politics began to intrude into his life. He lived, after all, in the Middle East.

When the first wave of suicide bombings began, friends tried to draft Salah into the Al Aksa Brigades. The Koran, he was told, "requires me to become a shahid." But being proficient in the Muslim holy book, Salah challenged the recruiters to find the source of this "teaching."

They couldn't.
"It was easy for them to convince the young and the ignorant, but they couldn't seduce me since I knew the Koran inside out. … I also knew that the Koran calls on believers to honor the Jewish people and not to scheme against them. They couldn't fool me," Salah recounts, proudly.

As Salah was finishing high school, he was becoming more and more troubled by the way of life he had known since birth. Eventually, he joined his friends in search of work in Israel proper.

HE'S A JEW
At the time, Salah recalls, "I didn't know I was a Jew, according to Halacha," or Jewish law. "But whenever I would pass a synagogue, I felt a certain warmth emanating from inside. It was as if G-d was calling to me: 'Return my son.' I identified with my Jewish side. I'm not sure why."

Salah's parents soon began to notice the gradual change taking place in their son. They tried to convince him to join his 3 brothers -- including his twin -- who were studying Islam at a Mecca seminary, which propounds extreme Islamic views. They hoped that sending Salah there would put a speedy end to his interest in Judaism.

But Salah refused. He continued working in Israel.

Salah's first encounter with religious Jews was at a Tel Aviv construction company where he found employment. But whenever he would attempt to ask questions about Judaism, his co-workers were evasive. When he eventually confided in them that his mother was a Jew -- which renders him 100% Jewish -- Salah was advised to enroll in classes at a school ("yeshiva") for those seeking to become observant.

He did, but did not reveal his secret.

One day -- almost two years ago -- Salah returned home to his Arab village near Carmiel and packed his few belongings. He has not returned since and intends never to step foot in the region again.

All's well, that ends well? Not exactly.

(UN)HAPPY BEGININGS

Salah discovered that despite his sacrifice, his problems were only beginning.

Initially, he decided to move to an Israeli city with a large religious population. But with suicide bombings and terror attacks escalating, Salah, who began to wear a yarmulke and other distinct Jewish garb, was regularly viewed by residents with deep suspicion due to his Arabic name and his orange Palestinian identity card.

(In recent months, suicide bombers have donned Jewish garb in attempts infiltrate secure areas.)

Worse, his return to Judaism was literally threatening his life. During a police sweep, Salah would be picked up and expelled to the West Bank. Israeli authorities would not believe that he wanted to become a Jew, thinking it was a ruse. Yet were he was returned to the Palestinian Authority, he knew he would be hanged and murdered for being a "collaborator" with Israel.

"I was going out of mind," Salah confides. "I was afraid to walk in the streets. I was afraid to go to offices. I was afraid to go to the Ministry of the Interior to change my status because my parents might find out where I was living and someone with a knife or a weapon might come after me."

In the end, he finally decided to open-up to the dean ("rosh yeshiva") of his Judaic studies school. Once the sage verified Salah's astounding story, he took the truth seeker under his wing. The easiest way to solve Salah's problems, it was decided, was to have him officially be converted by the Rabbinate, who ruled that he had to undergo a Halachic circumcision.

FATE?
To his amazement, Salah found out that he had been circumcised according to Jewish law.

"When I was born, there were no local Arab mohelim," Salah explains. "There was no Intifada, and Jews freely entered Arab towns without fear. There was a mohel in one of the settlements near the village where my parents lived, and he did the circumcisions for our family. Afterwards, I understood why. My Jewish mother wanted her children's circumcisions to be authentically Jewish. She specifically asked the mohel to perform these rites quietly and make sure that no one heard or saw. He knew that my mother was Jewish and he gladly fulfilled her will. Who knows if I returned to Judaism in the merit of this."

In the past year and a half, Salah has been vigorously pursuing his studies in a yeshiva. His Arab accent has completely disappeared, and sidelocks and a beard now frame his face. He has also worked unceasingly on his pronunciation of Hebrew, and today it is flawless.

FULL-CIRCLE

Salah has reconnected with his mother's Jewish relatives, who received him warmly like a lost son. He has taken the same last name as his illustrious great-grandfather, and says he is doing everything possible to forget his Moslem past.


Now 24, Salah, who uses the name "Yehudah," is recently married to an Italian-born Jewish woman who recently returned to her Jewish roots, although in a much more conventional manner. A chessed (benevolence) organization undertook to help pay for his wedding.

SOCIETAL PROBLEM

Yehudah says that there are hundreds of Jewish women like his mother who remain in Arab villages -- not because they have such a good life; many, in fact, are abused -- they stay because they feel they have nowhere to return to. Their families have already sat "shiva" (mourned) for them.

He believes that if the Jewish people would open their hearts to these unfortunate women, they could save many of them.

Israeli Pre-emptive Action


I'm pleased about this notation of Israeli activity in Iraq in preparation for the war:

The administration's pledge [to send SOF to western Iraq to destory SCUDS threatening Israel], which was conveyed during this week's visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, follows an undisclosed reconnaissance mission in western Iraq this summer by Israeli special forces, according to a former U.S. defense official. The covert Israeli operation was aimed at determining whether Iraq had the capability to launch drone aircraft, in addition to Scud missiles, from its desert air bases.

This is good news not only b/c it confirms that Israel is getting ready for the war, but also b/c it confirms that the intifada, in which policing activities can be a drain on standard military operations, has not eroded the IDF's long-range special operations capabilities. The Karine-A naval commando operation was also good evidence of the IDF's continuing SOF capability.

This operation was not "previously undisclosed," however. Jane's Foreign Report, a weekly publication, wrote about it a while ago and was picked up in some mainstream publications. I was dubious at the time, however, b/c Foreign Report not entirely reliable. But this is one where they apparently got it right.

The Universities Will Not be Turned Into Centers for Anti-Semitism


While the self-righteous Left at American universities proclaim solidarity with the Palestinians and their hatred Israelis, the Left in Iran, ironically, protests in the direct opposite manner, demanding that Israel be left alone to live in peace alongside a Palestinian state.

Students and Great Nation of Iran:

Although the enraged Iranian Nation, pursuant to its many demonstrations, has cried the unmistakable slogan of “Leave Palestine Alone, Give Thought to our Plight,” once again in our country the founders of the order of atrocity and lunacy, totally disregarding regional and world-wide realities and necessities, pursuing their own sickly fascist doctrine of expansionism, are toying with the national integrity and interests of Iran.

Thanks to its unwise, inexperienced, and manna-less politicians, the regime of the Islamic Republic blows the trumpet of support for the Palestinian people anytime it encounters disgrace and disregard internationally, or encounters formidable difficulties domestically. With the daily escalation of public discontent and the intensification of the people’s struggle, the regime is drumming the noise of the decennial of the Intifada and the martyrs of the anti-Zionist battles which it has pulled out of the proverbial sleeve of a committee by the name of “Palestine and the University” located at the Ministry of Science, Research, and Technology. Along this line, on the tenth of the month of Mehr [October 2] they intend to convert the hallowed premise of the University to a place for spreading violence in the name of supporting the Intifada. As to what the existing purpose of this committee is within the Ministry of Science, and what scientific, technological, or research service it provides to our universities, there is much to be said. The Ministry of Science should have displayed this committee’s report card to the public so that everyone would realize the racketeering that goes on for stealing from the honorable nation- in appearance to support the Palestinians and in practice for filling their own coffers.

These usurpers of political power-- who from the very beginning, pursuant to spreading the “Islamic Revolution,” turned our country to a haven for religious terrorists and the supporters of religious violence in the region-- by announcing the so-called “Decennial of Defending the Intifada,” and by observing the memorial of one of the Lebanese Hezbollah leaders, have taken another step toward dragging Iran into a strategic and political abyss. With this anti-national act of theirs, they have once again shown the world that the religious tyranny ruling Iran is not only disregarding the country’s national interests, but that also with their ludicrous acts of openly defending terrorism, religious fundamentalism, and warmongering movements in the region, they are moving along the path of destroying Iran and the Iranians.

Cola wars as Islam shuns the real thing


Our Saudi friends punish us by depriving Arabs on their pilgrimage to Mecca of....Coke and Pepsi. Perhaps our Lefty college students can get on this camel bandwagon.

AMERICA may be girding for war with Iraq but it is already fighting “cola wars” throughout the Middle East.
As a boycott against US products spreads across the Islamic world, Muslim manufacturers are taking on America’s biggest brand names by producing their own fizzy drinks.

Factories in Iran making Zam Zam Cola are struggling to keep up with demand for their slightly sickly version of Pepsi and Coca-Cola.

Ten million bottles of Zam Zam have been exported to Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries in the past four months and the Iranians are working overtime to churn out enough of their cola to slake the thirsts of the two million Muslims expected in Saudi Arabia for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.

This cola has been so successful that others are racing to get in on the act. Tawfiq Mathlouthi, a French Muslim entrepreneur, will launch Mecca Cola in Paris next month. No superstar is being paid millions to sing its jingle but there will be an advertising campaign promising that 10 per cent of the profits will go to a Palestinian children’s charity

On the anti-Israel bias in the media

Anti-Israel bias in the media is omnipresent to the point that one hardly needs to quote examples to substantiate this statement. Those who do need proof can check out any of the zillion examples quoted in CAMERA, or Honest Reporting, two of the numerous sites that provide ample proof. Even the Economist, the mag that recently published “a balanced” article on Israel ( IsraPundit ) is not immune from egregious anti-Israeli bias (Jerusalem Post).

With all this in mind, it is instructive to read about an interview with Danny Seaman, a PR professional working for the Israeli Government Press Office (GPO); the interview was posted recently on the website of Israel News Agency (INA) .

To explain the negative way in which Israel is portrayed in reports coming from Israel, Danny Seaman states:

At the direct instruction of the Palestinian Authority... the offices of the foreign networks in Jerusalem are compelled to hire Palestinian directors and producers. Those people determine what is broadcast. The journalists will certainly deny that, but that is reality.

Seaman then continues to describe the PA’s strategy to control the foreign press:

Four years ago began the threats on the Israeli staffers, including Arabs from East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians let the foreign journalists understand: if you don't work with our people we'll sever contact with you, you won't have access to sources of information and you won't get interviews.

Seaman gives an example of press manipulation:

The IDF announces that it is going in to demolish an empty house, but somehow afterwards you see a picture of a crying child sitting on the rubble. There is an economic level to that. The Palestinian photographers receive from the foreign agencies 300 dollars for good pictures; that is why they deliberately create provocation with the soldiers. They've degraded photography to prostitution.

One could dismiss Seaman as a biassed Israeli official, but his statements echo what another journalist, Thomas Friedman of the NYT, wrote about the way the press was manipulated in Lebanon by the Arabs - PLO, Syrians, Lebanese militias. Here are Thomas Friedman’s words (see reference below):

There wasn't a single reporter in West Beirut who did not feel intimidated, constrained, or worried at one time or another about something he had learned, considered writing, or had written involving the Syrians, the PLO, the Phalangists, or any of the other forty-odd militias in Lebanon...

How many serious stories were written from Beirut about the well-known corruption in the PLO leadership, the misuse of funds, and the way in which the organization had become as much a corporation full of bureaucratic hacks as a guerrilla outfit? These traits were precisely the causes of the rebellion against Arafat after the summer of '82, but it would be hard to find any hint of them in Beirut reporting before the Israeli invasion. The truth is, the Western press coddled the PLO and never judged it with anywhere near the scrutiny that it judged Israeli, Phalangist, or American behavior. For any Beirut-based correspondent, the name of the game was keeping on good terms with the PLO, because without it you would not get the interview with Arafat you wanted when your foreign editor came to town. The overfocusing by reporters on the PLO and its perception of events also led them to ignore the Lebanese Shiites and their simmering wrath at the Palestinians for turning their villages in south Lebanon into battlefields.

One may learn more about “press freedom” in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA) by reading the report issued by the International Press Institute (IPI), which is no friend of Israel. A typical excerpt from the IPI report:

Palestinian Authority Security officials arrested Palestinian television cameraman Majdi Arbid for filming the execution of Majdi Makawi in Gaza on 20 January. Arbid sold the film to Channel 2 of Israel, which broadcasted the execution, according to a Reuters report.

Palestinian security forces ordered the closure of Al-Jazeera TV’s office in Ramallah on 20 March. The Palestinian security service had allegedly been offended by an image of Lebanese guerrilla soldiers holding up a picture of Palestinian President Yasser Arafat with a shoe hanging from it in a preview for a documentary on the 1975-90 Lebanese civil war. Al-Jazeera’s correspondent in Ramallah, Walid Al-Omari, said in a broadcast that members of a Palestinian security service entered the office and demanded that part of the preview for the documentary be removed.

In a letter to the PA, the IPI wrote, inter alia:

According to IPI’s sources, five journalists working for the news organisations Reuters, Associated Press Television, the Abu Dhabi Satellite Television Station and Agence-France Presse, were briefly arrested on 14 September. Four days later, on 18 September, new restrictive regulations for Palestinian broadcasters were introduced. As a result, the media were instructed by the Palestinian police not to broadcast news items concerning calls for a general strike, nationalist activities, demonstrations or security news without the permission of the police or national security services.

Furthermore, in a series of incidents on 8 October, at least four journalists were beaten during demonstrations in Gaza, a cameraman with French television station TF 1 was briefly arrested and a BBC reporter’s cassette was confiscated in the West Bank. On the same day, other journalists in Gaza were prevented from covering the demonstrations against US bombings of Afghanistan. Access to Gaza has been forbidden to foreigners, including foreign journalists, since 9 October; allegedly because the Palestinian Authority is unable to guarantee their safety.

The brief excerpts quoted in this article outline three of the elements of the PA’s strategy to control the media: infiltration, intimidation, bribes (“access to information”). In combatting the PA on this front, Israel is indeed faced with an uphill battle.

Referece:

Friedman, Thomas L. From Beirut to Jerusalem. New York: Doubleday, 1995. Quotation is from pp. 70-74.

Contributed by Joseph Alexander Norland

One media org blames Israel for everything from the DC sniper to the Bali bombings.


Honest Reporting has a number of items worth reviewing, including this remarkable piece by idiots who want to blame Israel for the Bali bombing. Don't they realize that even those sympathetic to their cause might well be embarrassed by such total nonsense?

At the risk of giving publicity to a web-rag, here's something so wacko that we can't let it pass. Indymedia.org reports that the Israeli Mossad is a prime suspect behind the string of sniper killings in the Washington, D.C. area.
http://indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=208531

Another "report" on Indymedia.org claims that the bombing of the Bali nightclub was "a Mossad terror operation."

Indymedia describes itself as "a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, objective, and passionate tellings of the truth."

Perhaps the consumer public could be a better judge of that.

Comments to:
imc-editorial@lists.indymedia.org
IndyMedia400@hotmail.com

PALESTINIANS ATTACK JOURNALISTS

This week, Muhammed Abayet of the Palestinian terrorist group al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, was killed when the public telephone he was using exploded. During Abayet's funeral the next day, Palestinians attacked Reuters photographer Mahfouz Abu Turk, who had to be treated for head and back injuries. Another photographer had his camera smashed. See the Jerusalem Post report at:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1034014777470

Many major news agencies noted the funeral but omitted mention of the attack. Associated Press presents the funeral as peaceful: "Unlike many funerals for Palestinian militants, there were no cries for revenge or gunmen shooting in the air at Abayat's funeral."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021014/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians_7480

Even the victimized news agency, Reuters, itself makes scant mention of the Palestinian attack:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=564&ncid=564&e=3&u=/nm/20021014/ts_nm/mideast_dc_4015

Comments to:
editor@reuters.com

In the past, journalists have been threatened with violence for covering stories that are unflattering of Palestinian groups. Recall the Sept. 11 street celebrations, which prompted the (Israeli) Foreign Press Association to declare:

"We call on the PA to ensure freedom of the press and the free flow of information, and to prevent elements operating within PA jurisdiction from making or carrying out threats that aim to impede this and effectively impose censorship. We hold the PA fully responsible for the safety of each and every journalist operating within their areas..."

HonestReporting wonders: Where is the outcry this week from the Foreign Press Association and other media rights groups like Reporters Without Borders
(http://www.rsf.fr/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=20)?

OUT OF CONTEXT

Here's a piece of diligent media monitoring from HonestReporting member Mike S. of Cincinnati:

BBC published a piece on the decreased Palestinian olive harvest, placing the blame squarely on Israel. The article's main photo caption read: "Olive groves have been bulldozed to build settlements." This accusation does not appear in the article itself; it is only in the caption without any source cited.

Mike wrote to complain, and received the following reply from Bob Trevelyan, duty editor of BBC News Online:

"Thanks for your email concerning our story on the Palestinian olive harvest. I regret that you found the picture caption unsatisfactory. I accept that it is ambiguous and have changed it."

The caption now reads "Olive groves have been bulldozed by the Israeli army." Though factually accurate, this BBC caption gives no context for the idea that Palestinian snipers have frequently used olive groves to conduct ambushes of Israeli citizens.

See the article and caption at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2317839.stm

Comments to:
newsonline.complaints@bbc.co.uk

Exclusive to IsraPundit: Jonathan Lichterman responds to
Terje Roed-Larsen’s article, Before it's too late

A fundamental concept has defined all peacemaking attempts between Israelis and Palestinians. It is called the two-state solution.

Yes, two states, Palestine and Jordan.

Would-be Middle East peacemakers have long determined that justice, security and peace between the two peoples is best achieved by creating two sovereign states west of the Jordan River: Israel and Palestine. That includes me, as one of the facilitators of the 1993 Oslo Accords and now the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

Are you actually arguing that Oslo was successful, Terje? So long as you keep enabling and appeasing the Palestinians, you will never be anything but a would-be peacemaker.

A viable, independent Palestine alongside Israel is still possible. But perhaps not for much longer, given four undeniable trends at work today.

Boy, is it still possible?, we’d better hurry up and declare that state, lest we miss the chance to have another autocratic repressive Arab regime hell-bent on killing Jews right next door. How much do you want to bet that Israel gets blamed for these four “undeniable trends?”

The first two are readily apparent - a deteriorating security situation fueled by vicious terror attacks and widespread violence against civilians, and an unprecedented Palestinian humanitarian crisis.

Yep, old terj-boy doesn’t fail. When describing the deteriorating security situation he doesn’t mention who is perpetrating the terrorist attacks and widespread violence against civilians. Who wants to bet that some moral equivalence is on the way?

And of course the “unprecedented” Palestinian humanitarian crisis is the culprit. I am sure the explanation of this will include the loss of humanity in Palestinian education, and the billions embezzled by the Palestinians’ leaders, and of course the necessity of Israel’s actions in response to the unprecedented level of terror attacks. I am sure that is what he means.

The other two, while less visceral, have serious long-term implications: The gradual destruction of the Palestinian Authority and Israel's expansion of its West Bank settlements.

The gradual destruction by Israel of the PA and of course the settlements. Yep so far all four blamed on Israel.

These trends force me, and I am far from alone, to ask two very troubling questions. Are we nearing the death of the two-state solution, the bedrock for all our peacemaking efforts?

You missed the funeral long ago on that one.

And if so, are we prepared for the consequences?

I.e., are we prepared to let Israel defend itself?

If indeed we are at a critical juncture, it is most vividly seen in the growing chasm between the diplomatic efforts to forge a peace agreement and the catastrophic situation on the ground. Diplomatically, an unprecedented international consensus has been formed around a three-year, three-phase road map by the Quartet (the United States, European Union, Russia and UN) that would lead to a comprehensive peace.

Yes, a universal consensus, including the UN, we all know that this will be an offer Israel cannot refuse. Get this Israel, the quartet has decided that you have three years until you are forced into a suicide pact.

The roadmap builds on major diplomatic initiatives from last spring's Arab League announcement to fully recognize Israel based on the two-state solution to U.S.

Yes, the Arabs will recognize the right of its co-member in the UN’s right to exist. Wow, what a concession. Maybe they will recognize Michael Jackson as the King of Pop as well, to really sweeten the deal.

The recognition of Israel’s right to exist is not a negotiating chip, it is a non-starter.

President George Bush's Rose Garden speech last June (reinforced recently in statements by British Prime Minister Tony Blair) which clearly outlined the vision of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

I happened to be standing next to Roed-Larsen as he listened to Bush’s speech. Here is how he heard it: “na-na-na-na-na-na-na we’re not listening na-na-na-na-na-na, . . . Palestinian State in three years . . . na-na-na-na-na we’re not listening.”

Moreover, the UN Security Council unanimously endorsed the Quartet Plan, which was unveiled in detail on September 17. The bottom line - we have a way forward.

I can't even comment on the hilarity of citing the UN as the source of approval when it comes to Israel.

But these promising diplomatic moves clash foursquare with the disastrous situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip today.

Of course, not about the disastrous situation in Jewish Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, or Netanya.

To understand this better, consider two competing views found on both sides of the conflict - the constructionist and the destructionist. In simple terms, the constructionists believe in a two-state solution and the destructionists do not.

It’s all ball bearings these days. C’mon guys its so simple maybe you need a refresher course.

Israeli and Palestinian constructionists have similar outlooks.

Yes, they both think that it is all Israel’s fault.

They say the best way to foster peace, security and prosperity for both sides is through the creation of a democratic Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This state would work for the benefit of its people, and in the process control and stop violence against Israel. In this scenario, both sides win.

And they will all live in gumdrop houses on al-Lollipop lane.

Israeli and Palestinian destructionists both seek total control of the land at the expense of their adversaries, and are in a kind of unholy embrace that is fueling today's downward spiral. For them, only one state can emerge west of the Jordan River: Israel or Palestine. It is a zero-sum game.

Translation: "imperialist Sharon war-criminal humiliating and oppressing Israelis" are locked with the small minority of marginalized Palestinians who want to destroy Israel.

Today's trends show that the destructionists control the day.
First, major bloodletting over the past two years has killed more than 600 Israelis and 2,000 Palestinians. This death toll has sown deep grief and massive distrust on both sides, making negotiations difficult to begin, much less conclude.

Whew, finally. I never thought he would get to the numbers game of moral equivalence, where score is kept by the number dead.

Second, the Palestinian humanitarian situation is almost unfathomable. Hundreds of thousands remain under 24-hour curfew and the economy is in ruins.

Almost unfathomable, we will be able to fathom it with this wise sage's guidance. Context???? IF THEY WOULD STOP KILLING THEY WOULD NOT BE UNDER CURFEW!!! Who started the war, and why is the economy in ruins? Could the corruption rampant from those receiving the funds be responsible? These are the tough questions to which Roed-Larsen does not have the answers.

International aid is the primary factor in preventing total societal and economic collapse, and the anarchy, hunger and disease that would follow.

Is he talking about the international aid in the form of the bounty for the heads of Jews, or Europe's blood money which has been nothing more than mad-money for Arafat. Yep, that money is really going to good use.

It is a good thing they are preventing the anarchy with international money. Boy we wouldn’t want anarchy, whew, disaster avoided. What their was a murder of some collaborators? What, there was a murder of a PA police chief? Whew, thank Allah there was no anarchy.

Third, Israel has, through military action, come very close to destroying the institutions of the Palestinian Authority, and with them any semblance of a central government. These institutions took nearly a decade to build, and are essential for building a peaceful and prosperous Palestine.

Yes they took nearly a decade to build up their arsenal to kill Jews. Of course Israel has destroyed them with military action. Of course, no context for that military action, just soldiers on a lark. Of course Arafat’s corrupt and terror steeped regime had no role in destroying PA institutions.

The fourth trend is perhaps the most significant of all: Israel's continued expansion of West Bank settlements, and the land confiscation that goes with it. Even as the world repeatedly calls for a freeze to all such activity, it continues apace. The settlements, and the highways that serve them, could soon envelop East Jerusalem, cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank, which would then also be split in half. Other settlement projects will bisect the northern West Bank and encircle Bethlehem and Hebron to the south.

Terj-boy finally got around to the settlements. Arafat was so concerned with the settlements that they were made the corner-piece of the Oslo accord, you designed. Oh, they weren't the cornerstone of that agreement, you mean they just became important because it plays well in currying rage against Israel? “Land confiscation?” Whose land is being confiscated? What about the land that was sold to the Jews by the Arabs?

Of course Roed-Larsen being so intimately familiar with the Palestinians is well aware of the PLO's charter position regarding the settlements: The settlements in Tel Aviv and Netanya and Haifa are all obstacles to peace.

Israelis and Palestinians are warning that these trends will soon make it impossible to create a viable Palestinian state in control of its own land, borders and resources. The result: the death of the two-state solution.

Translation. Israel has made it impossible to create another Arab thugocracy hell bent on its destruction.

What does that mean? Let's be frank.

Have you not been frank with us before this. Thank you for finally being frank.

If Israel retains overall control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, it will be faced with a difficult choice, given the sheer presence of the Palestinian population. Palestinians could soon be left living in a string of unconnected homelands run by local warlords, which will not give them the freedom they covet and would almost certainly guarantee continued insecurity for Israel.

Oh, more on the settlements.

“Freedom they covet?” A bunch of Thomas Paine’s they are. Israel will have "continued insecurity?" You mean, unlike the security of a hostile neighbor with the freedom to import heavy weapons?

The other option is Israel controlling the land, but without the people. That is known as "transfer."

Ack, the T word. Of course there is no mention of something in the middle, an autonomous but non-sovereign Yesha. That would not fit the paradigm, because it is too logical.

We have not yet reached the death of the two-state solution.

Faster please!

But it will take immediate and steadfast efforts from Israelis and Palestinians, backed by the international community, to take us off the destructionists' path.

Translation: The international community can hasten the demise of Israel if they really hurry.

In this I have confidence, recently bolstered by two polls conducted last August, which show that a majority of Israelis support the creation of a Palestinian state, provided Palestinians follow a policy of non-violence.

I was lucky, because I happened to be next to Roed-Larsen when he read the poll. Terje: "Look, a majority of Israelis want a Palestinian State, . . . and something about violence"

Moreover, one of the polls says that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians approve of using non-violent means to establish their state.

Was that the same poll that found 80% support for continued suicide bombing? Oh, that says violins, not violence.

We all know what must be done.

A segue to Reed-Larsen’s Final Solution to the Jewish Question.

To the Israeli people, I ask - are you prepared to ask your government to go back immediately to the negotiating table, to stop all settlement activity and work together with Palestinians and the international community to build a peaceful and viable Palestine?

Are you prepared to call in Dr. Kevorkian to help you?

If not, are you prepared to deal with the outcome?

What the hell is that supposed to mean?

To the Palestinian people, I ask - are you prepared to stop not just terror, but all forms of violence, whether you consider them legitimate or not? Do you recognize, as many of your leaders now do, that violence and terror have only served to undermine your national ambitions and create a crisis for your people unmatched for more than two generations?

I actually have to give him some credit on this one. He did not ask Israel if they are willing to stop their endless genocide of the Arabs like I thought he would. He directs the violence question squarely on the Palestinians in this Final Solution section. Of course straight from the Asrawi hand-book he is not saying that it is wrong, it just hurts the cause.

To the international community, I say - it is time to move decisively to put this peace process back on track and reach a two-state solution. Otherwise we must be prepared to address the consequences of its death.

Yes we must avoid the situation where Israel is allowed to fight its battles. Open those wallets and start sending more money and putting more pressure on Israel. A boycott or two may be nice. What are these consequences of the death of the two state solution he keeps talking about?

The writer was one of the facilitators of the 1993 Oslo Accords and now serves as the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

This is a little like taking credit for being one of the architects of the Edsel or the Titanic.

Contributed by Jonathan Lichterman

Freedom Fighters

Israeli leaders such as David Ben-Gurion, Menahem Begin, and Ariel Sharon were not and are not terrorists. Rather, these individuals were, and have always been, freedom fighters.

Iran Denies Policy Shift on Mideast



Just in case you believe that giving up the territories would resolve issues and end up in a two-state solution, here is the Iranian position.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran denied Wednesday that it had shifted its policy toward acceptance of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi told the official news agency IRNA that Iran still believed in a "one-state solution in the Palestinian land and does not recognize the Zionist regime."

"The only solution to the Palestine crisis is the formation of a Palestinian state in that land," state radio quoted him as saying.

Asefi told Reuters Tuesday that Iran advocated a single Palestinian state, but would "not hamper" a two-state solution if that was what Israelis and Palestinians wanted.

That apparent softening of Iran's stance drew fire from the militant Palestinian Islamist group Hamas Wednesday.

"This position contradicts the Islamic program which does not recognize any rights for the Jews to own an inch of Palestinian soil," senior Hamas political official Mahmoud al-Zahar told Reuters in the Gaza Strip.

Iran has never recognized Israel's right to exist. Since the 1979 Islamic revolution it has called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Iran bitterly criticized the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1988 when it declared a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that would co-exist with Israel within its 1948 borders.

OPPOSING VISIONS

Israel still occupies much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where Palestinians have been waging a two-year-old uprising.

The Palestinian Authority, led by President Yasser Arafat, remains committed to a peace based on two states living side by side, a vision rejected by Hamas and other Islamist organizations.

"I'm afraid Iran is taking some steps which are not acceptable in Islamic terms," said Zahar, speaking before Iran's denial that its policy had changed.

"They (the Iranians) have no ability to hinder anything. But we as Palestinians, as Islamists, we do not accept the two-state solution. Even if two states were established, our goal and our dream will remain alive in one great Islamic state in Palestine.

Britain gave a cautious and qualified welcome to Asefi's remarks.

Maybe an Imposter?


The below picture is captioned:

A Palestinian woman carries a AK-47 during demonstration in Gaza City, Monday, Oct. 14, 2002. Thousands of supporters of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s Fatah (news - web sites) movement gathered for the rally. Demonstrators carrying Arafat's picture and Palestinian flags are in background. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

Funny but she does not look very 'palestinian' to me. What do you all think? This just goes to prove Joan Peter's thesis in From Time Immemorial - that claims that so-called 'palestinians' lived in the Land for a thousand years are not true. Many are people who were imported by the British as laborers, especially from Sudan and Iraq. I think this lovely lady is probably descended from imported Sudanese laborers. Arafat, who was born in Cairo (as in Egypt) had a least one Sudanese grandparent.

Here is another supposed 'palestinian' on the left:

Bush promises Israel one-week notice before Iraq attack


How much notice will the US give to UN Security Council?

WASHINGTON — Israeli sources said the Bush administration has pledged to provide a general warning of one week of any U.S. military offensive. The warning would be specific three days before the war.

Washington has also pledged that the United States would make the tracking and destruction of Iraqi Scud-class missiles in western Iraq a priority. Iraq is believed to have up to 80 Al Hussein medium-range missiles.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met President George Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to discuss prospective scenarios regarding a U.S.-led war against Iraq and received pledges of advance warning of any U.S.-led war against Iraq.

Bush and Sharon also discussed the Middle East after the fall of the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Middle East Newsline reported.
Israel hopes the United States will offer to deploy the PAC-3 missile defense system in the Jewish state.

Israel Killed and Wounded a Decent Number of Arabs Today.


In response to attacks with guns and anti-tank rockets on its forces by the Arabs, Israel responded and killed and wounded a high number of Arabs including civilians. Israel stated that the attackers were hiding among civilians. According to Israel hiding among civilians is a common occurrence.

So, why doesn't Israel film such incidents of using civilians as shields and release the films to the press? More Israeli stupidity.

Counterpunch's Anti-Semitism


The Left Wing rag, Counterpunch, has posted Amira Baraka's anti-Semitic poem "Somebody Blew Up America" as a featured piece. No comments are made concerning lines such as:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?"

Yaacov 'Zeev' Farkas, doyen of Israeli editorial cartoonists, dies



JERUSALEM (AP) -- Yaacov "Zeev" Farkas, called the founder of the political cartoonist's art in Israel, died Tuesday, hospital officials said Wednesday. He was 79.

In the years before television came to Israel, politicians and other public figures vied with each other to appear on his full-page spread in the weekly supplement of the newspaper Haaretz. "Anyone who appeared in the middle of that page, not on the margins, knew that he had arrived, that he was really somebody," his colleague Benny Zipper wrote in Haaretz.

The weekly cartoon, an intricate mixture of dozens of characters, objects and symbols around a central theme, appeared for decades, always including an oval-faced, jug-eared self portrait. After the weekly page was discontinued in the 1980s, Farkas continued drawing daily editorial cartoons.

Many public figures, past and present, have caricatures of themselves, drawn by Farkas, framed and hanging on their walls, Zipper wrote.

Born in Hungary in 1923, Farkas survived a Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, where thousands of Jews were killed during World War II. In 1947 he came to what was then British Mandatory Palestine and in 1952 became the editorial cartoonist for the newspaper Omer. He began drawing political cartoons for Haaretz in 1962.

He always signed his cartoons "Zeev," with a tiny oval-faced, jug-eared portrait of himself holding a huge artist's brush dripping with black paint.

His kindness was legendary. "He was never mean to anyone," Zipper wrote. In 1972 Richard Nixon wrote him a letter of thanks for a cartoon in Haaretz showing the beleaguered U.S. president carrying a cross and surrounded by enemies.

One of Farkas' most famous cartoons, published in 1979 at the time of the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt, showed the dove of peace posing as a magician and producing three tiny figures out of a hat -- Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin and President Carter.

In 1993 Farkas was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize for Journalism. His last cartoon appeared a year ago.

Farkas is survived at a daughter.

Kofi Annan: Why are you criticizing only Israel?


Enough, already, with the hypocrisy of the United Nations!

By Harry Reicher October 17, 2002

His Excellency
The Honorable Kofi Annan
Secretary General
United Nations Organization
New York, NY 10017

BY FAX: 212 963 4879

Dear Secretary General:

Very regrettably, I feel constrained to record my deep disappointment at your statement in criticism of Israel's action in the Gaza town of Khan Yunis.

I looked in vain to find in your statement some reference to a central - indeed critical - fact, namely the continuing strategy, pursued by the leadership of the Palestinians, of locating terrorists, as well as caches of their arms, in heavily populated civilian areas. That this is quite deliberate is long past the point of denial, as is the reprehensible object accomplished thereby, namely the use of civilian men, women and children as human shields.

What is also obvious is that, as long as the international community especially per medium of the United Nations allows, and even encourages, this practice to continue, it is utterly inevitable that Palestinian civilians will continue to be exposed to risk, as a direct consequence of the policies of their own cynical and uncaring leaders. What, one may wonder, could be more guaranteed to encourage those policies than the certain knowledge that, if Palestinian civilians are tragically killed, it is Israel that will be blamed by the United Nations?

The point gathers even more force, when it is recalled that you yourself have gone on record as expressing abhorrence at the very same practice, albeit when occurring in other parts of the world. Your own report, S/2001/33 1, of March 30 of last year, contained particularly strong language in condemnation of the failure to "separate armed elements from civilians," which has "led to devastating situations." Speaking of West Timor (Indonesia), you point out that:

"[N]ot separating combatants from civilians allows armed groups to take control of a camp and its population, politicizing their situations and, gradually establishing a military culture within the camp. The impact on the safety and security of both the refugees and the neighboring local population is severe. Entire camp populations can be held hostage by militias that operate freely in the camps, spread terror, press gang civilians, including children, into serving [in] their forces, sexually assault and exploit women, and deliberately prevent displaced people from returning home. In addition, humanitarian aid and supplies are often diverted to these armed elements, depriving the intended civilian beneficiaries. Finally, blurred lines between the civilian and militia character of camps expose civilians inside to the risk of attack by opposing forces where camps are perceived to serve as launching pads for renewed fighting." (p7, para 30, emphasis supplied).

The recent history of the West Bank and Gaza bears out, all too tragically, the force of your own assessment. I trust you will therefore appreciate my concern at the silence of your Khan Yunis statement on this very matter.

At the same time, it is a source of continuing bewilderment to witness the ongoing double standard that is applied, so far as Israel is concerned, and which is so clearly evident in this case.

I trust that future statements will be directed at the heart of the problem, so that the dangers thereby posed to the civilian population in Palestinian areas are removed once and for all.

Saudis seen funding AL Qaeda


If fundamentalists are helping the terrorists, you can well believe they are helping to support terror groups within the Arab community who seek the destruction of Israel. Time for the U.S. to send a message loud and clear to what little there is of the Saudi government.

WASHINGTON - For years, Saudi Arabian officials have ignored Saudi-based individuals and charities that have been the main sources of financing for Al Qaeda, an independent task force reported yesterday.

The report, written by a task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, also said that the Bush administration's current efforts to curtail financing for international terrorism are ''strategically inadequate'' to ensure sustained results.

The report, released last night, urged the administration to designate a special assistant to the president with a mandate to compel government agencies to coordinate their activities.

It added that the administration must pressure other countries to replace their ''woefully inadequate'' antiterrorism programs with more vigorous efforts.

The report said US government spokesmen have systematically refused to acknowledge the ties of Saudi charities and individuals with Al Qaeda.

Time Warp


If you saw a headline on the front page of the Washington Post that said something in the vein of "White House Supports French Retaliation in the Face of German Invasion", your reaction would probably be, "Why does the white house need to affirm France's right not to be invaded, and why is this a headline, let alone even news."

And yet, on the front page of today's New York Times we read that, "Bush Backs Retaliation by Israelis if Iraq Attacks". I'm appalled by the fact that this even needs to be said. I'm just waiting for the day that the headline says, "Bush tells Israel not to respond in the face of Iraq attack". Oh, wait, ...

On whose side are they, anyway?

Over the last months, I posted several articles about Israel’s advocacy campaign, becuase I am deeply concerned about the state of Israeli PR and about the consequences - loss of public support in the West, and ultimately, loss of the support from foreign governments (see, for example, article 1, article 2, article 3, article 4, and article 5.)

Because of these concers, I consider the following story from the Jerusalem post, October 15, 2002, to be such a serious matter:

A private donor provided unlimited funding for 48 Israeli students to visit college campuses, churches, synagogues, and high schools across the US to defend Israel.

Israeli consulates were asked to set up the speaking engagements, and judging from glowing articles in dozens of student newspapers and local media, feedback on Web sites, and interviews with the participants, the visit was a success.

So why is a group of students accusing the consulate in Los Angeles of turning their visit into a nightmare?

"They treated us with such disrespect," said Joey Low, the businessman who funded the 12-day tour through a non-partisan, non-profit group called Israel at Heart. "As far as the consulate was concerned, it seemed like the whole idea was for me to spend money flying the students somewhere so they could have a sightseeing trip."

...
But according to students who were sent to cities and towns in the LA consulate's jurisdiction, officials set up few meetings for them, forgot to make sleeping arrangements in some cases, and an official who accompanied one group repeatedly tried to upstage them on the podium.

Low noted that officials at various consulates accused him of being stingy when he asked that the visitors be housed in dorms or students' apartments instead of hotels. The students described their dealings with the consulate as "disappointing" and "horrifying," and accuse it of sabotaging their effort.

From this point on, the article provides specific details about the conduct of the Israeli officials, each detail more disturbing than the previous one. It makes you wonder on whose side these officials really are.

Read and weep; there is probably much rejoicing among Israel’s numerous foes.

Contributed by Joseph Alexander Norland

Coalition Crisis Flares Over Oslo Vote

The Oslo criminals continue to defend their duplicity with the terrorists even as the full magnitude of the disaster they have created becomes clear to us all. G-d willing the day will come when they will be prosecuted for their crimes against the Jewish people. Meanwhile the few politicians with the courage to stand up to the appeasement cabal are shouted down with insults in the Knesset. We can only hope that the Labor traitors will carry through on their incessant threats to leave the coalition. Only then will we be able to start to reverse the irreparable damage done by these vermin. Almost as if he realizes his time is short, Ben Eliezer is speeding up his efforts to return Yesha to the PLO.

(Ha'aretz) A coalition crisis erupted between Labor and Likud on Wednesday after two Likud MKs voted for a proposal to annul the Oslo Accords.

Labor charged that the two, Abraham Hirchson and Eli Cohen, had thereby violated the Labor-Likud coalition agreement, which included a pledge to abide by the accords. Labor whip Effi Oshaya even informed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that his party was ending all cooperation with Likud in the Knesset as of that moment.

Oshaya said that Labor was also outraged by the fact that two senior Likud MKs, Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin and coalition chairman Ze'ev Boim, had failed to vote even though they were present in the plenum.

The Likud defections, however, did not affect the outcome of the vote: The motion, submitted by MK Zvi Hendel (National Union), was defeated 29-13.

The debate that preceded the vote was stormy, featuring vociferous exchanges of insults between Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and right-wing MKs. Peres told the plenum that "the Oslo Accords are alive and well according to the coalition agreement, and therefore there is no place for discussing their annulment - unless you also want to annul the government and the coalition." He added that he was sure that if the late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin were still alive, he would have no regrets about having signed the accords.

"He couldn't stand you!" interjected Hendel. "You're destroying the country!" "You brought us to this disaster!" added Michael Kleiner (Herut)."Get rid of your blinkers!" put in Haim Druckman (National Religious Party) Peres responded by attacking settler rabbis, calling them "those terrible politicians from Yesha [the Hebrew acronym for Judea, Samaria and Gaza]."

Minister Landau Against Selective Law Enforcement

(Arutz Sheva) Public Security Minister Uzi Landau, who oversees the police department and law enforcement, had very strong words against his colleague Ben-Eliezer for his "selective" attitude towards illegal construction. "The law must be enforced, of course, but only if it is done equally. Can you imagine a policeman walking up and down the street and giving tickets only to Labor Party parking violators? It is unacceptable that the government does not enforce building regulations against the massive illegal Arab construction... [Former Prime Minister] Barak also wanted to take the Jewish outposts down, but he gave in because he saw their importance - and also because he didn’t have primaries coming up… Ben-Eliezer's decision is influenced by his political motivations..."

Minister Landau said that the "illegality" of the outposts is merely in that "some of them have not completed their approval process - but this is how many things have been done in Yesha for many years; if they want to start changing things, then it must be done across the board." [Read More]

Can There Be Democracy in the Arab Middle East?


In a well-thought out speech, the writer argues that it is a matter of attitudes rather than mere voting that makes for a democracy. And those attitudes can not be imposed by outsiders.

Martin Kramer
Address to the 2002 Weinberg Founders Conference
Landsdowne Conference Center, Leesburg, Virginia, October 5, 2002

Can there be a liberal, democratic Middle East? This is very much a loaded question. It reminds me a bit of the famous exchange between a journalist and Mahatma Gandhi. The journalist asked Gandhi: what do you think of Western civilization? To which he replied: I think it would be a good idea. Gandhi's point was that the modern West had failed to live up to the promise of the rich legacy of its civilization.

If I were asked today what I think of modern Arab civilization, I would probably answer the same: it would be a good idea. Here, too, there is a great legacy that the contemporary Arab world has been unable to renew. And nowhere has that been more apparent than in the failure of the Arab world to create the climate of free inquiry without which modern civilization is impossible. In our times, it is difficult to create such a climate without democracy.

If the 20th century has left us with a lesson, it is that the civilizations that will flourish in the 21st will rest on democracy. Every form of dictatorship, from communism to fascism, was discredited in the 20th century. We are approaching the point in human history where democracy will be deemed a prerequisite of modern civilization itself, and its absence, the most obvious symptom of modern barbarism. If that becomes so, then there is little doubt which side of the divide the Arab world will occupy. Freedom House ranks it as the least free part of the globe. And certainly there is a high correlation between the prevalence of despotism and a whole range of barbaric outrages, from the gassing of Kurds to 9/11. We know from experience that despotism generates terror. And has there ever been a form of despotism in modern times that did not encourage and even nurture anti-Semitism?

Since 9/11, many commentators have looked at the Arab world, made similar observations, and then drawn a conclusion. The conclusion is this: the United States should use its vast power to promote democracy in the Middle East. Not only should it plan to replace hostile despotisms, like Iraq's, with democratic regimes. It should compel our allies, such as the Egyptians and the Saudis, to open up their politics. The theory is that if these were more open systems, this would drain away the intolerance and hatred that pervade these societies, including the hatred of America and the desire to eradicate Israel

Peres meets with Erakat for talks: Palestinian official

JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres met with a senior Palestinian delegation headed by chief negotiator Saeb Erakat in Jerusalem.

At the meeting, which took place at an unnamed location in west Jerusalem, Peres and Erekat discussed the humanitarian disaster facing the Palestinian people and the transfer of Palestinian funds frozen by Israel, a senior Palestinian official said on condition of anonymity.

Another Israeli official who was not named was at the meeting, along with the Palestinian economy minister Maher al-Masri.

"The two delegations agreed to hold a big meeting early next week, the official said.

Among the subjects discussed were "an Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian cities which have been reoccupied since September 28 2000, the removal of the closure and the siege and the transfer of money owed to the Palestinian Authority," he said.

The two delegations also spoke about the "humanitarian disaster" facing the Palestinian people and the ongoing settlement activity in the Palestinian territories, he added.

Israeli radio reported that Peres and the right-wing Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin were set to meet with a senior Palestinian delegation led by chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat at some point during the week but the date of the meeting was not specified.

Bush: Israel to respond if attacked


This response should it be called for will strengthen the ties between the US and Israel.

WASHINGTON –– President Bush, calling Saddam Hussein a dangerous man, said Wednesday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he was certain Sharon would retaliate if Iraq attacked Israel.

Bush gave no indication in an Oval Office news conference that he had tried to restrain Sharon, who already has said his country could not stand by if attacked.

"If Iraq were to attack, I am sure the prime minister will respond," Bush said.

Bush, Sharon to consult on protecting Israel


Israel is of course likely to get hit by missiles from Iraq should the U.S. attack Saddam. And Israelis worry about what support they may get from the United States. And that in turn is what Sharon seems to be discussing with President Bush this week.

Washington --- President Bush meets today at the White House with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for talks on options for protecting Israel from attack in the event of U.S.-led military strikes against Iraq.

Possible strategies range from rapid U.S. strikes targeting Iraq's offensive missiles to improved early-warning data should Iraq launch missiles toward Israel, less than 250 miles from the Iraqi border.

The Iraq issue has taken precedence, though Bush is expected to remind Sharon about U.S. concerns over Israeli military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Raanan Gissin, a Sharon aide, said the aim of today's talks was to coordinate plans for a possible war in Iraq.

"The United States is about to make a major strategic move in the region that's going to affect security in Israel, the Middle East and the rest of the world," Gissin said. "It's important for allies and friends to consult each other."

Sharon is seeking a commitment from Bush that, should he decide to attack Iraq, Israel would be notified two or three days in advance.

Top pollsters called in to gauge ‘anti-Israel’ mood


Given what appears to be a serious rise in anti-Israeli sentiment world-wide, many Jews are concerned and are trying to take action to defuse it. Here is an example how Israel's supporters are responding.

JEWISH community leaders are considering launching a major PR campaign — with the help of America’s top political strategists — amid concerns that media hostility to Israel is growing.

Bicom, the body set up last year to help put Israel’s message across, has called on Stanley Greenberg — the Democratic Party pollster who has advised former US President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Israeli Premier Ehud Barak; and Republican strategist Frank Lunz, whose CV includes work with George W. Bush, Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi and former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Bicom’s acting director, Lee Petar, told the JC the pair was conducting “quantitative and qualitative” research to see how Israel’s message was getting across. While their work was “in the early stages and there is no point going off half-cocked,” he said it was already evident there was hostility towards Israel.

Though he declined to give further details, another Bicom source said that one early “focus group” meeting had found “particular hostility” towards Israel’s message among “professionals, like academics.”

“We are looking at ways to sharpen the message and to choose the right people to do it,” Mr Petar said.

He acknowledged that the research initiative represented a major investment. “To get the world’s best professionals — and these are the world’s best professionals — you have to pay the top price,” he said.

Thomas Friedman Sucks as Usual


I began reading Thomas Friedman's most recent piece (also see Fred's post below) optimistically as a result of the title "Campus Hypocrisy" but deep down I knew that the ghosts would be there. Friedman can not write a piece about the Middle East, and practically on any subject, without smacking around Sharon and the settlements. He could be talking about the human rights situation in China and he will somehow analogize it to the settlements.

He began the article well basically blasting the divestiture from Israel campaigns in the first six paragraphs

You are also hypocrites. How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I'm not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction — out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East — is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.

But, of course, in the third paragraph he throws in a gratuitous crack at Sharon. After he finished with the students who seem to have been reading Friedman's columns too literally over the last ten years as he demonized Israel, Friedman has some extra column space so he lobs four paragraphs at the settlements, beginning with some total bull:

The settlement policy Israel has been pursuing is going to lead to the demise of the Jewish state. No, settlements are not the reason for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to think they do not exacerbate it, and are not locking Israel into a permanent occupation, is also dishonest.

Why Friedman can not talk about any subject without always turning to the settlements and Sharon needs to be analyzed. The simplest explanation would be that Sharon or someone looking like him sodomized Friedman (against his will, in this case) in a settlement and Friedman is getting back at his villains. Perhaps more work needs to be done on this theory.

Justice Ministry considering death penalty for terrorists


Although many countries of the world make the death penalty illegal, has the time perhaps come to re-think this position for Israel? I doubt that it would serve as a deterrent, but it might well serve as a statement to the world about those who kill innocents in the name of some questionable cause.

Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein and State Attorney Edna Arbel are reportedly considering asking for the death penalty for members of an east Jerusalem-based Hamas terror cell accused of carrying out a series of deadly terror attacks which claimed the lives of 35 people. Even so, sources in the Justice Ministry said that chances are slim that such a punishment would be handed down.

Bereaved relatives of the victims cursed and tried to physically beat the four east Jerusalem residents at the start of their trial Sunday in Jerusalem District Court. Some of the relatives cried out, "They gave you blue [identity] cards, you receive income supplements from the state, and then you murder us. You drink our blood!" The families also threatened to "hang [the defendants] from a crane like they do in Iran."

PA Gen. Masri: We can stop Hamas, but won't



In a rather unexpected public statement, the PA reveals that it can but will not stop Hamas. This puts to rest the notion that the Israelis have so dismantled the PA police that the PA is helpless in combatting terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority has the strength but not the will to smash terrorist groups and their support networks in the Gaza Strip, a top PA security official said yesterday.

In an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post, Brig.-Gen. Muhammad Masri, head of the Political Security Department at the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, said the long-awaited crackdown on Hamas promised by former PA interior minister Abdel Razek Yahya will likely never happen.

As part of a sweeping set of reforms that began in late June, the PA has sought both to centralize its myriad security services and to rein in Hamas, a group responsible for more than half of all Israeli deaths due to terrorist attacks in the past two years of conflict.

"We have enough men and arms, but not political horizon and no incentive, to enter into bloody conflict with other Palestinians," said Masri from his office at the PA's GIS building just north of Gaza City.

The PA security establishment sees no compelling reason to confront either Hamas, whose popularity is soaring, or the other Palestinian rejectionist groups. For this reason, Masri does not anticipate the ending of terrorist attacks in Israel in the near future.

West Bank rabbis urge soldiers to refuse orders to dismantle illegal outposts


When West Bank rabbis urge Israeli soldiers to disobey orders from the government, we have something akin to soldiers refusing to serve in the West Bank, and this divisiveness is tantamount, if it were to take place in large numbers, to civil war. Without taking a stand on the issue of the West Bank and Gaza, I believe that these rabbis are putting an additional stress upon religious military people by presenting them with moral conflicts. We are all too familiar with the notion of refusing to Taking Orders From Above (ie, Nurenberg trials), but the channel in this instance is the religious voice claiming to speak for The Above.

The Council of Yesha Rabbis yesterday called on Israeli soldiers to refuse to participate in the evacuation of inhabited illegal outposts on moral grounds and for reason of conscience. The rabbis said the outposts were established as part of the Biblical command to settle Eretz Yisrael, and therefore it is forbidden to dismantle them. Settlers clashed with soldiers at one outpost scheduled to be dismantled, but said they would protest the action within the framework of the law.

An emergency meeting was held on Monday by rabbis representing the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlement in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The session took place at Havat Gilad, one of the outposts earmarked for evacuation. In a joint statement, signed by Rabbi Zalman Melamed, Rabbi Elyakim Lebanon, Rabbi Dov Lior, and Rabbi Daniel Shilo, the rabbis noted that Defense Ministry orders calling on soldiers to dismantle outposts take them away from security duties.

The rabbis' statement said:

1. Every outpost in Eretz Yisrael (the Biblical boundaries of the Jewish State) was established as part of the commandment to settle the Land, and therefore it is strictly forbidden to evacuate its residents.

2. The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is the People's army, and its mission is to prevent terror and to defeat Israel's enemies.

3. It is forbidden for any party, including an Israeli government minister, to misuse his standing and order the IDF to dismantle outposts, thereby bringing about a public debate on the issue.

The rabbis called on the government to cancel the evacuation orders. They said that at a time of war, it was forbidden to take actions that would lead to an internal war as well.

Head of Israel Government Press Office Alleges that Foreign Press in Israel Largely Controlled by Palestinian Authority


IMRA provides an interview with Danny Seaman, Director, Israel Government Press Office:

"At the direct instruction of the Palestinian Authority," explains the
director of the Government Press Office (GPO), "the offices of the foreign
networks in Jerusalem are compelled to hire Palestinian directors and
producers. Those people determine what is broadcast. The journalists will
certainly deny that, but that is reality."

. . .

Q: Which offices are we talking about?

"The most senior are the Associated Press and Reuters, which provide
information to hundreds of millions of people around the world. On the
second level are the major television networks, CNN and the BBC, and the
American stations, ABC and CBS."

Seaman claims that the Palestinian workers at the various networks work with
complete coordination. But that is nothing. "Three senior producers,"
alleges the GPO director with deep internal conviction, "were coordinated
with Marwan Barghouti. He used to call them and inform them about what was
about to happen. They always received early warning about gunfire on Gilo.
Then they shot for TV only the Israeli response fire on Beit Jala. Those
producers advised Barghouti how to get the Palestinian message across
better."

Alliance Between Conservative US Christians and Israel Worries Muslim Leaders


Some Jews worry about an alliance between the Christian Right and their high esteem for Israel, but at this time Israel needs all the support it can get. Besides, the Christian Right is a potent force within the GOP.

A growing alliance between conservative Christians in the United States and Israel is sparking concern among Muslim leaders, who fear what they see as a campaign against Islam. American Christian Zionists say they are strengthening their support for the Jewish state because of the fight against terrorism.

Thousands of enthusiastic evangelical Christians, waving Israeli and American flags and carrying large banners proclaiming Christ as the King of Kings and the Lion of Judah, poured into the Washington Convention Center last week for a rally to support the state of Israel.

Pat Robertson
The demonstration was organized by the Christian Coalition, a group which says it has two million supporters and calls itself "the largest and most active conservative grassroots political organization in America."

The founder of the Christian Coalition, Pat Robertson, says his group is Israel's strongest supporter. "The evangelical Christians make up, other than the Jewish community, the strongest support for the Jewish causes in the world and for the nation of Israel of all the people in the world," he said.

Campus Hypocrisy


Tom Friedman points out that campus anti-Israel gatherings may not be anti-semitic, but singling out Israel is hypocritical and dishonest because there are two parties required for negotiations for a peace accord. Friedman then raises the demographic issue--one man, one vote--noting that if Israel holds on to the territories and Arabs in a few years outnumber Jews, college students in America will have a real issue.

FRIEDMAN

The Washington Post recently reported that students and faculty at a growing number of universities are pressuring their schools "into selling their holdings in companies that do business with Israel, prompting a counter-campaign among Jewish groups that consider the effort part of a creeping tide of anti-Semitism on campus." Here's what I would say to both sides on this issue:

Memo to professors and students leading the divestiture campaign: Your campaign for divestiture from Israel is deeply dishonest and hypocritical, and any university that goes along with it does not deserve the title of institution of higher learning.

You are dishonest because to single out Israel as the only party to blame for the current impasse is to perpetrate a lie. Historians can debate whether the Camp David and Clinton peace proposals for a Palestinian state were for 85, 90, or 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. But what is not debatable is what the proper Palestinian response should have been. It should have been to tell Israel and America that their peace proposals were the first fair offer they had ever put forth, and although they still fell short of what Palestinians feel is a just two-state solution, Palestinians were now prepared to work with Israel and America to achieve that end. The proper response was not a Palestinian intifada and 100 suicide bombers, which are what brought Ariel Sharon to power.

It is shameful that at a time when some Palestinians are writing that they made a historic mistake in not nurturing the Clinton peace offer, pro-Palestinian professors and students in America and Europe pretend that the only reason the occupation persists is because of Israeli obstinacy. This approach will never gain the Palestinians a state, and those who dabble in it are simply prolonging Palestinian misery.

[reg req'd]

The Jews are to blame, of course

Were it not so sad, the following AP headline, 13 October 2002, would be hilarious (the story’s author is given as Ibrahim Hazboun):

6 Palestinians Killed, Israel Blamed

The story proceeds to “explain” why Israel is "blamed":

Israeli soldiers on Sunday killed two armed men who crossed into southern Israel from Egypt, said the commander of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv. Three soldiers were wounded in a gunfight that broke out, he added. The Ahmed Abu al-Rish Brigades, an offshoot of the Fatah movement, claimed responsibility for the infiltration.

Here are a few more headlines for AP, in the same genre: “typhoon hits - Israel blamed”, “stock market declines - Israel blamed”, “Man falls off ladder - Israel blamed”, “traffic jam on Highway 31 - Israel blamed”, “Islamists Kill 183 in Bali - Israel balmed”.

And why not? Don’t we already have a collection of fantasies that includes: Israeli culpability in the WTO, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the standard blood libels, “Jenin massacre”, etc?

It is important to understand where these fantastic accusations come from and why they are perpetrated. The simple answers are, of course, that they are disseminated to malign the Jewish people and Israel in the hopes that someone will buy the lies. Loss of credibility with educated people is of little concern to the Arab apologists, for they have learnt that they are made of Teflon and that nothing will stick to them. It is also the opinion of some who know the Arabs, like Prof. Fuad Ajami, that the Arab culture is “a culture susceptible to legend”, (Ajami, Fouad. The Dream Palace of the Arabs. NY: Phantom Books, 1998, p. 178).

But, having read the works of the foremost expert on Middle East affairs, Prof. Bernard Lewis, I have to conclude that the “root cause” is deeper. In the “Conclusions” chapter of his recent work,

Bernard Lewis. What went wrong. New York: Oxford U Press, 2002,

the author opines as follows:

In the course of the twentieth century it became abundantly clear in the Middle East and indeed all over the lands of Islam that things had indeed gone badly wrong. Compared with its millennial rival, Christendom, the world of Islam had become poor, weak, and ignorant...

Modernizers--by reform or revolution--concentrated their efforts in three main areas: military, economic, and political. The results achieved were, to say the least, disappointing...

There was worse to come. It was bad enough for Muslims to feel weak and poor after centuries of being rich and strong, to lose the leadership that they had come to regard as their right, and to be reduced to the role of followers of the West. The twentieth century, particularly the second half, brought further humiliations--the awareness that they were no longer even the first among the followers, but were falling ever further back in the lengthening line of eager and more successful Westernizers, notably in East Asia...

"Who did this to us?" is of course a common human response when things are going badly, and there have been indeed many in the Middle East, past and present, who have asked this question. They found several different answers. It is usually easier and always more satisfying to blame others for one's misfortunes. For a long time, the Mongols were the favorite villains...

The rise of nationalism--itself an import from Europe--produced new perceptions. Arabs could lay the blame for their troubles on the Turks who had ruled them for many centuries...

The period of French and British paramountcy in much of the Arab world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced a new and more plausible scapegoat--Western imperialism...
The attempt to transfer the guilt to America has won considerable support, but for similar reasons remains unconvincing...
where hostile stereotypes of the Jew existed in the Islamic tradition, they tended to be contemptuous and dismissive rather than suspicious and obsessive. This made the events of 1948--the failure of five Arab states and armies to prevent half a million Jews from establishing a state in the debris of the British Mandate for Palestine, all the more of a shock. As some writers at the time observed, it was bad enough to be defeated by the great imperial powers of the West; to suffer the same fate at the hands of a contemptible gang of Jews was an intolerable humiliation. Anti-Semitism and its demonized picture of the Jew as a scheming, evil monster provided a soothing answer...

Meanwhile the blame game--the Turks, the Mongols, the imperialists, the Jews, the Americans--continues, and shows little sign of abating. For the governments, at once oppressive and ineffectual, that rule much of the Middle East, this game serves a useful, indeed an essential purpose--to explain the poverty that they have failed to alleviate and to justify the tyranny that they have intensified. In this way they seek to deflect the mounting anger of their unhappy subjects against other, outer targets...

This analysis not only explains why the Arabs disseminate their fantastic lies, but it also constitutes a warning to those who believe that a second Palestinian-Arab state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza will solve any problem whatever: the “root cause”, as Prof. Lewis explains, is very, very, different.

While I can understand why the Arabs spread their fantasies, I have yet to find a satisfactory explanation as to why so many in the West - including well-meaning, intelligent people, as well as the current US president - have swallowed the fantasies about the right of the Palestinian-Arabs to a second sovereign state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, a.k.a. the “Palestinian’s right to self-determination”. Could it be that a concoction of oil and dollars can induce hallucinations even in the best of us?

Contributed by Joseph Alexander Norland

Hevron - Now And Forever

The surreal absurdity of Ben-Eliezer’s plan to transfer Hebron to the murderers is aptly demonstrated by these two stories. While the transfer will certainly put Jewish lives in severe jeopardy, it will also provide another stronghold for the terrorists in Judea along with Bethlehem.

(Arutz Sheva) Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Army Radio today that, "security permitting," he plans to withdraw IDF forces from Hevron by the end of the week. The move would come as part of the new "Judea First" plan introduced by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. An extension of the failed "Gaza and Bethlehem First" plan, "Judea First" calls for the transfer of security control throughout Judea to the Palestinian Authority's security establishment.

Ben-Eliezer, speaking from France, said that Israeli officials had already notified PA representatives about the intended Hevron withdrawal. Arutz-7 correspondent Haggai Seri notes that while Prime Minister Sharon expressed his opposition to the "Judea First" plan during the Cabinet meeting on Sunday, he did not overrule its implementation.

A spokesman for the Hevron Jewish Community had harsh words for Defense Minister Ben-Eliezer, saying he "is willing to literally sacrifice Israeli lives for his own political gain. Transfer of Hevron back to Arafat-terrorists is tantamount to cold-blooded murder... Less than three weeks ago, a Jewish man was shot and killed in cold blood, while three of his children were injured, here in Hevron... Only a few days ago, terrorists massively attacked the Tel Romeida neighborhood, shooting from the Harat a-Sheikh hills... The IDF [then] was prepared to fight back, on the spot. What will happen when those hills are solely occupied by terrorists, without an IDF presence? The answer is crystal clear. Hevron residents will again be sitting ducks in a pond, target practice for the terrorists..."

IDF: Bethlehem haven for terrorists

Bethlehem has become a sought-after haven for Palestinian fugitives since the IDF pulled out in accordance with understandings reached in the "Bethlehem-Gaza First" understandings almost three months ago, Col. Shimshon Arbel, head of the office of the coordinator of government activities in the territories, said Monday.

Arbel warned that one should not be deceived by the "relative calm" in the Bethlehem area, which has become a hotbed of terrorists from all over the West Bank, especially those from the Hebron area.

"From the city, where they receive shelter, they convey instructions to terrorists elsewhere in the West Bank to perpetrate attacks," he said.

"Instead of cracking down on them and bringing them to justice, the Palestinian Authority fails to act to combat the terror and stop the bloodbath."

Arbel said it would be wrong to believe that the PA is incapable of acting if it chooses to do so.
"A good example is what happened recently in the Gaza Strip, when Hamas killed the Palestinian police commander. Immediately, the PA condemned the act and demanded that those responsible for the attack be turned over. Yet I never heard such sharp and immediate responses of condemnation in cases where terrorists who lived in areas under PA control entered Israel and perpetrated suicide attacks." [Read More]

Sha’ath Says Hamas Has Contacts with EU, American Officials

RAMALLAH (IRNA) - Palestinian Authority official Nabil Sha'ath has revealed that a meeting between EU officials and Hamas representatives took place in Beirut recently amid rumors of secret European efforts to convince Hamas to give peace efforts a chance.

The Palestinian daily newspaper al Ayyam on Monday quoted Sha'ath as saying that the outcome of the meeting was positive.

"The Europeans have informed us about the meeting with Hamas in Beirut and asked us not to talk about it in public, they apparently were pleased with the positive trends within Hamas."

Sha'ath also said that there were contacts between Hamas and American officials.

The Palestinian official said an unnamed Persian Gulf state would host a dialogue between Hamas and Fatah in an effort to overcome tension between the PA and the Islamic movement following the death of a PA security official by suspected Islamic activists.

Hamas has neither confirmed nor denied contacts with EU officials. However, Islamic leaders in the Gaza Strip have reaffirmed the movement's unflinching commitment to ending the Israeli occupation.

A Zionist Goes to the University of Michigan Divestment Conference

An on-site reporting of the nefarious gathering of imbeciles who met at the University of Michigan for a divestment conference which seems more from the discussion like a war room to topple Israel. This report from elitzur and was found at Not A Fish

The propaganda in the lobby:
As expected, lots of loony stuff was on display. Publicity for the World Socialist Web Site, Larouche for President ("The UN Should Declare Bush Insane"), and various other conspiracy theories about the assassination of Malcolm X and some incoherent things about Zapatistas.

The first two speakers: "Tactical lessons from the struggle against apartheid"

(A) Colin Powell is not sufficiently in touch with his blackness
The first speaker was Mahdi Bray, an African-American activist who worked in the anti-apartheid movement during the '80s. He said that the American media equates all criticism of Israeli policy with anti-Semitism, and that Israel is an "oppressive, racist, apartheid state." Then he said that Israel is a democracy, but that doesn't mean anything because America was too when it had slavery and Jim Crow. The occupation is all about economics and Israeli exploitation of cheap Palestinian labor, and thus the Palestinians are "the new nigg@#s" of the Middle East. Bray spoke to Colin Powell just before Powell made his last trip to the Middle East in April, and he told Powell that "we know the face of apartheid and racism in the American South, and I know you know that." He claims that Powell smiled and replied "it's complicated," which Bray said he accepts, but then he disregarded that by asking, "what's so complicated about freedom? Shouldn't everyone have that?" Then he told some stories about the suffering of African-Americans in the South during the '50s and '60s and said that eventually, rage builds up and people fight back. He did not mention suicide bombings, either the Palestinians' use of them or the African-Americans' non-use of them.

(B) Divestment will defeat the all-powerful state of Israel
Next was Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian activist and professor of Islamic law and history at UC-Berkeley. He started off by thanking the pro-Israel protestors of the conference for all the free publicity, such as the President of the U. of Michigan who publicly stated that the university will not divest from Israel. He called her "an obedient servant" without specifying whom she serves. Then he claimed that Israel "stands alone" in "legitimizing torture, assassination, ethnic cleansing" and many other nefarious things without mentioning that they are practiced widely around the world, particularly in the Arab and Muslim part. He said that Israel's supporters emphasize its similarities with America (democracy, free speech, etc.) in order to fool people into not scrutinizing its policies. Then he claimed, like the speaker before him, that Israel's being a democracy means nothing because America was a democracy when it oppressed its women, and also that Hitler was elected. He said nothing about whether Hitler's election led to a lack of scrutiny of Nazi policies or not. Bazian then claimed that Israel's supporters charge Palestinian supporters with anti-Semitism in order to close off access to civil institutions, but failed to mention exactly which institutions he had in mind (I can't think of any). He claimed that Al Gore used to be one of the leaders of Israel Bonds, which I don't believe. He praised the boycotts of Israeli academics going on in Europe and confidently predicted that the anti-Israel divestment campaign will succeed. He also said it was unjust that people who make donations to Israel can claim a tax write-off, but said nothing about tax write-offs for non-Israel-related donations.

Attempted Genocide From the Start

To fully understand current conflicts in the Middle East, history must be recalled. Acknowledged by the United Nations and the civilized community of nations, Israel became a recognized and sovereign state on May 14, 1948. Immediately, the five armies of Egypt, Syria, Transjordan (which was renamed Jordan one year later, in 1949), Lebanon and Iraq invaded the fledgling country. Their combined intention, celebrated enthusiastically all over the Arab world, was expressed plainly and publicly by Azzam Pasha, Secretary-General of the Arab League: "This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre, which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades." Hence, scarcely a few years after the Holocaust and resultant codification of Crimes Against Humanity, the intent of these Arab states toward the tiny new State of Israel was openly genocidal.

On May 15, 1967, Israel's nineteenth Independence Day, Egyptian troops began moving aggressively into the Sinai, massing purposefully near the Israeli border. By May 18, Syrian troops, too, were preparing for battle along the Golan Heights, almost 3000 feet above the Galilee, from which they had been shelling Israel's farms and villages for several years. Egypt's Nasser ordered the U.N. Emergency Force (UNEF), stationed in the Sinai since 1956, to withdraw. After the withdrawal of UNEF, the Voice of the Arabs radio proclaimed, on May 18, 1967: "As of today there no longer exists an international emergency force to protect Israel. We shall exercise patience no more. We shall not complain any more to the U.N. about Israel. The sole method we shall apply against Israel is Total War, which will result in the extermination of Zionist existence." Two days later, a jubilant echo came from Hafez Assad, then the Syrian Defense Minister: "Our forces are now entirely ready... to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland.... The time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation." President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq joined the chorus of genocidal threats: "The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear - to wipe Israel off the map."

Today, in late summer 2002, this goal remains fixed and unchanged. Significantly, the goal remains nothing less than another Jewish genocide. Arab terrorism, as a complementary strategy of attrition, is consciously directed at the very same goal. With particular reference to the Palestinians, the Charter of Hamas - the Islamic Resistance Movement - exclaims proudly: "There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by Jihad... In order to face the usurpation of Palestine by the Jews, we have no escape from raising the banner of Jihad.... We must imprint on the minds of generations of Muslims that the Palestinian problem is a religious one to be dealt with on this premise.... 'I swear by that (sic.) who holds in His Hands the Soul of Muhammad: I indeed wish to go to war for the sake of Allah! I promise to assault and kill, assault and kill, assault and kill.'"

Arab/Islamic plans for genocidal extermination of Israel have never been kept secret, perhaps because these plans don't really disturb the rest of the world. With rampant anti-Semitism again in fashion, especially (and ironically) in Europe, few seem to recall that, prior to 1967 - when all Arabs were already screaming for Israel's "annihilation" and "liquidation" - there were no "Palestinian territories" under Israeli control. Exactly what was the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Arab world in general seeking to "liberate" between 1948 and 1967, when Gaza was held illegally by Egypt and Judea/Samaria (West Bank) by Jordan?

There is no "peace process" with Arab states or authorities today, nor has there ever been such a process. The formal treaties extant between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan are little more than a temporary expedient by the Arab parties to buy time for critical rearmament and doctrinal refinement. Even before Israel's declaration of statehood in 1948, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, on November 28, 1941, met in Berlin with Adolph Hitler (still a great hero in the Arab world). The subject of Haj Amin's meeting with Hitler was "...the final solution of the Jewish Question." Further, this meeting, which followed Haj Amin's active organization of Muslim SS troops in Bosnia, included the Mufti's promise to aid Nazi Germany in the War. Haj Amin did everything possible to ensure Hitler's success with the Final Solution. He even urged the foreign ministers of the Lesser Axis Powers (Italy; Rumania; Bulgaria) not to permit Jews to leave for Palestine. It was essential, Haj Amin asserted, that Jews be sent to countries "...where they would find themselves under active control, for example, in Poland, in order to protect oneself from their menace and avoid consequent damage." The Haj, who was in regular contact with both Himmler and Eichmann, knew exactly what "active control" in Poland meant during the summer of 1943.

Now the Arab world seeks "active control" in Israel itself. Preparing for genocidal war against Israel with weapons of mass destruction, the Arab states - together with the Palestinians - argue repeatedly that the post-Holocaust concentration of Jews in "the Zionist entity" is proof of Allah's plan to make Jewish annihilation more practicable. Hence, the state created by the Jews to prevent another Holocaust is described by Israel's genocidal enemies as the literal means to create another Holocaust. Moreover, unless all people of good will begin to recognize and understand this inversion of Israel's purpose, Israel could indeed become the Arab/Islamic world's Final Solution to the Jewish Question. This bitter irony is so overwhelming and terrible that it is almost unutterable, but it cannot be disregarded.

Let us all listen to the following: For all believing Muslims, according to both Hamas and the Palestinian National Authority, "...peace with Israel was and still remains nothing less than a poison threatening the life-blood of Islam.... The Prophet is said to have predicted a final war to annihilate the Jews. Muhammad had stated: 'The hour (i.e., salvation) will not come until you fight against the Jews; and the stone would say, "O Muslim! There is a Jew behind me; come and kill him."'"

History must be recalled.

Sharon ready to hear U.S.-Iraq plan

This meeting is something of a dance, foreplay, making up, dating. Israel needs to know what the US will do to protect Israel should the US attack Iraq. The US needs to get assurances that Sharon can "keep the peace" so that America will not be be annoy potential Arab support for an attack upon Iraq. And everybody seems to know the gameplan.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is ready to hear about U.S. plans to block a possible Iraqi missile attack on Israel in the event of a military confrontation with Saddam Hussein.

In a meeting with President Bush at the White House Wednesday, Sharon also is expected to answer U.S. charges that his government is not doing enough to ease restrictions on the Palestinians.

Sharon, who arrived from Jerusalem at dawn Tuesday, was making his seventh visit since taking office in March of last year. A few hours before leaving Israel, Sharon called on the Palestinians to replace their current leadership, a reference to Yasser Arafat.

"Your terrible suffering is needless," Sharon told the Palestinians during a speech to Israel's parliament. "Blood is being spilled for nothing. Change the despotic regime that is leading you from failure to failure, from tragedy to tragedy."

Fatah, foes in Gaza `showing our teeth'

When we think of the various conflicting perspectives within the State of Israel on just about all matters, but especially on how to deal with the Intifada II, we often forget that among the Arabs there is also a growing contentious argument going on, based on who will control what, and more often than not being fought out with guns and bloodshed rather than with ballots and elections.

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- A lone truck circled up and down the hot, grimy streets on Sunday, blasting out a call for people to join a march Monday to help restore peace, not with Israel, but among warring Palestinian factions.

Still, Palestinian officials are not just counting on such rallies to end the bloodshed that erupted last week between the Palestinian Authority and the militant Islamic group, Hamas.

Armed security forces were staked out at most street corners in Gaza City, while others roamed the area, stopping cars in a rare effort to confiscate weapons from anyone not within the Palestinian Authority.

While talks continued between officials from Hamas and Fatah, the largest of all of the Palestinian factions and the one led by Yasser Arafat, tension hung in the air.

Fatah officials claimed that Hamas was using one bloody incident to show its growing strength, to test the grit of the Palestinian Authority's security forces and to stake out a much larger role for itself in Palestinian politics.

"They [Hamas] are testing the waters to see if they can take over," said Jihad al Wazir, a high-ranking official in the Palestinian Authority and son of Abu Jihad, one of Fatah's founders.

"So we are showing our teeth and they are showing their teeth, and hopefully we'll sit down and resolve this," he said.

When friends collide: Bush and Sharon

Bush clearly wants Israel to show great restraint in hitting back at terrorist in order to curry support amongst the Arabs in the Middle East, support needed for military bases and installations, and to keep any war with Iraq confined to that one country. Israel, on the other hand, has its vital interests at stake and needs to show they will not buckle under threats of terrorism, lest this encourage the killers to continue their assault upon Israel. This article indicates the problem that both nations, good friends, face.

Oct. 15, 2002 | JERUSALEM -- Last Wednesday, members of the Israeli cabinet were flown to the Negev desert in southern Israel to attend an army training drill. Under the blazing sun of late summer, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his ministers and the country's top brass watched the ground forces "occupy" a mock Palestinian village and saw a bulldozer razing one of the "homes." Sharon used the stage to talk about the coming American attack on Iraq. "The clouds of war are darkening in our region, and I hope they will not reach us," he told the TV cameras, "but this should be known: If Israel is attacked, it will defend its citizens."

With this carefully worded statement, Sharon broke a self-imposed silence on the Iraq issue. Only days before, he had acquiesced to an American demand and ordered his fellow cabinet members to avoid discussing it. The timing of his warning was significant. On Wednesday, the Israeli leader will meet with President George W. Bush for the seventh time. One of Sharon's aides described it as a "critical" meeting: Sharon's leadership will be put to the test as the Middle East prepares for an earthquake that is likely to change its strategic landscape, perhaps for decades to come. Both Sharon and Bush want to use the meeting to clarify the rules of behavior, at least until the war is over, and to start discussing the realities of "the day after."

Two issues, Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, will dominate the White House encounter.

In Mideast, a water war can turn deadly serious


E.O. Wilson, the highly regarded biologist at Harvard, in the conclusion of his book Consilience, predicted that the two biggest problems the world would soon confront would be massive movements of peoples from lands that could no longer sustain them and wars, within and between states and countries, as the drinkable water shortage grew increasingly worse. We see the water problem happening within the U.S. in the far West, and we note that it is happening among countries in the Middle East, a situation made worse because of the already exiting animosity.

Jerusalem --- What's liquid, flows from the ground and could trigger fighting in the Middle East?

It's not oil --- at least not this week. It's water.

Lebanon is set Wednesday to open a pumping station near its border with Israel to supply thirsty Lebanese villages with water. The move has led to threats of Israeli military retaliation from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The waterway in dispute is the Wazzani River, which flows south into the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, Israel's main source of water.

Israel says its neighbor's siphoning of water from the Wazzani should be limited to meeting the drinking needs of local residents. Lebanon's prime minister, Rafik Hariri, says that his mostly agricultural country "is free to use its share of the water the way it pleases," including for irrigation.

Lebanon's plans have caused saber-rattling around a region that already has plenty.

Yellow Stars In France And Bali "Militants"

Two Essays By Steven Plaut

Yellow Stars

France is now leading an initiative in the EU to require that any Israeli products sold in Europe but manufactured in the Jordan Valley, East Jerusalem or elsewhere in the "West Bank" or Gaza Strip be labeled "made in Palestine" or "made in occupied Palestine". The idea is that not only can peace-loving Frenchies boycott the product but that these would be subject to import duties because they would not be counted under the tariff-agreements between the EU and Israel.

But it gets better. The EU does also have a tariff agreement with the Palestinian Authority that allows its exports to enter Europe with little or no duties. So what France is really proposing is that only things produced by JEWS living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip be subject to duties, tariffs and import quotas, but not things produced in the same areas by Arabs.

Which raises an interesting question. When products enter Europe from the West Bank and Gaza, how will the peace-loving progressive Europeans be able to tell if they were made by Arabs or Jews?

I would like to help. Why not just make all boxes entering Europe with things produced by Jews carry a large yellow star? And since all of Israel is occupied Palestine, why not have ALL things made by Jews in Israel also carry a yellow star? And then to make sure the sneaks do not try to slip things in through companies in other countries owned by Jews, why not make all things made by all Jews everywhere carry a yellow star when they enter Europe? And then it goes without saying that any Jews walking about in Europe should also wear yellow stars, just to be sure....


The Bali Difference

I certainly do not mean to detract for an instant from the horror and outrage over the Bali bombing, but at the same time I cannot leave without comment the dramatic differences in the reactions of the world to the Bali bombing and the countless Arab atrocities against Jews.

Not a single media outfit has referred to the perpetrators of the Bali bombings as "activists" or "militants". Not even the BBC and CNN. Indeed, both uncharacteristically used the "T" word to refer to the bombers.

If it turns out that the car bomb was triggered by suicide terrorists, no one in the world will include those dead terrorists in the total body count of the "tragic affair".

Not a single commentator has been insisting that if the terrorists resorted to such violence, then surely they must have legitimate grievances.

Not a single commentator has been insisting that if the terrorists resorted to such violence, then surely they must be fighting for a just cause.

Not a single commentator has been insisting that if the terrorists resorted to such violence, then surely it must be because they are so desperate and mistreated. And no one demanded that Australia ask itself what it has done wrong to earn such hatred.

Not a single commentator has been insisting that Indonesia and Australia need to open dialogue and negotiations with the terrorists because - after all - there is no military solution to the problems of
terrorism.

The Nobel Prize Committee has not suggested that the perpetrators of the bombing be awarded a Peace Prize.

Meretz party chief Yossi Sarid has not suggested that the poems composed by the perpetrators be taught in Israeli schools.

Israeli professors from the Left have not yet organized petitions to demand that the demands of the bombers be met.

Jimmy Carter has not rushed to Bali to endorse the demands of the bombers.

Israeli leftist lawyers have not yet offered to defend any of the bombers caught and indicted.

Student demonstrators in Berkeley did not stage mock street theater representations of the bombings, showing the Australians as villains.

Britain's Chief Rabbi did not declare that only withdrawal from occupied Australia is the solution.

Tikkun's Mikey Lerner did not refer to the bombings as "unrest" and demand that we all feel the pain of the bombers.

The University of Michigan and Colorado College have failed so far to organize Solidarity with the Bali Bombers Conferences.

Canada has not confiscated any leaflets that declare that Australia has the right to exercise self-defense against the terrorists.

The newspapers have not been telling Australians that they brought it all on themselves for being racist and insensitive and obstinate.

No one has yet proposed allowing the terrorists to set up their own state in New South Wales.

No one has described the Bali bombing as "resisting occupation".

No progressive churches or synagogues have offered to host the spokeswoman for the Bali bombers.

No one has described the Bali bombers as moderates who need to be cultivated lest really radical Islamist terrorists gain power.

Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin have not yet offered the bombers parts of Jerusalem.

NU-YB Calling to Dissolve Knesset

With Ben-Eliezer destroying Jewish homes and planning to create a terrorist refuge in the holy city of Hebron, and Arik Sharon negotiating with the PLO terrorists, National Union is rightfully calling for new elections. It is time for this madness to stop. When we elected Sharon, we did not realize that decisions would be made according to the hysterical whims of the deranged lunatic left. I have called in the past to show patience with Sharon, but with settlements being uprooted and Ben-Eliezer planning to sacrifice the children of Hebron to his re-election schemes, I feel that we can not be patient in the face of such an onslaught against Eretz Israel and the Jewish people. It is time to elect a right-bloc government without the participation of the Oslo traitors. I still believe Ariel Sharon’s long term goals are sound, but I can not support a coalition which threatens to undermine all of the progress we have made against the terrorist menace in Yesha.

(IsraelNN.com) The National Union-Yisrael Beitenu faction of the Knesset is calling to dissolve the Knesset within 90 days and move to elections. The opposition faction cites the government's failures in the security, economic, and employment spheres for its decision.

Back to the Future: NPR Rewrites Israel’s War of Independence


National Public Radio, presumably a non-partisan show, has acquired the reputation of consistenly misleading the public, intentionally or through incompetence, on just about all matters relating to Israel and the conflict with its Arab neighbors. Here, again, NPR is taken to task with illustrations of their distortions and bias.

National Public Radio’s look back to the beginnings of the Arab-Israeli conflict moved in its third installment to the 1948 period, centering on Israel’s War of Independence, and like the first two segments, this one was marred by grave errors and omissions. For example, in discussing British restrictions on Jewish immigration, NPR mentions only the postwar period, when displaced persons and Holocaust survivors were confined in European camps. But NPR ignores the hundreds of thousands of Holocaust victims who died during World War II solely because Britain barred Jewish immigration to pre-state Israel, the only place willing to accept Jews in those desperate days. NPR listeners might have better understood the history supposedly being covered had this segment mentioned, for example, the British government’s opposition in 1943 to a plan to evacuate Jews from Rumania and France for fear they might end up in Mandate Palestine. As an official British memo put it:

... the Foreign Office are concerned with the difficulties of disposing of any considerable number of Jews should they be rescued from enemy occupied territory. ... They foresee that it is likely to prove almost if not quite impossible to deal with anything like the number of 70,000 refugees whose rescue is envisaged. (David S. Wyman, The Abandonment of the Jews)

With no country willing to accept these people, many, like the refugees on the steamer St. Louis, died in Nazi death camps after they were forced back to Europe. Others, such as 768 passengers on the Struma, died when their unseaworthy vessels foundered.

Unfortunately, NPR’s version of history obscured from view the callousness and cynicism of the pro-Arab British Foreign Office during the war, and left mysterious the quite natural reaction of the leaders of pre-state Israel. Instead of explaining any of this, NPR’s Mike Shuster informed listeners that, “Once it was certain that Hitler’s Germany was defeated, the Zionists turned on their erstwhile allies ...” But the British had not been allies, erstwhile or otherwise.

Reoccupation: Israeli military
government or functional division?


BitterLemons.org presents its customary faceoff between two Israeli writers and two Arab writers discussing a single topic.

Palestinian Authority renews efforts to have Palestinian children die in confrontations


More documentation that the Palestinian Authority uses its young to further their ends.

PMW [Palestinian Media Watch]has documented in the past the Palestinian Authority’s [PA’s] tactic of encouraging children to seek heroic Shahada - death for Allah, and then using the numbers of dead children in their PR war against Israel.

A PMW bulletin last week noted the PA’s recent attempts to brings crowds of violent demonstrators into the streets, in an attempt to change the image of the terrorist war to that of a popular uprising.

Now the PA has combined the two tactics, once again encouraging children to die as part of the “popular uprising”, as they have renewed the broadcasting of one of the most odious PA video clips, the “Farewell letter” clip. In the clip a child writes a farewell letter to his parents, glorifying his desire to die, and then places himself in front of Israeli soldiers during a violent riot where he is shot and dies, achieving his goal. As he falls his words are sung: “How sweet is Shahada [death for Allah] when I embrace you my land.”

Millions Diverted From School Guards


As though Israel does not have enough problems with its terrorist "neighbors" they also have what seems corruption to contend with.

Only $8 million of the $20 million raised from American Jews to provide security guards for Israel’s schoolchildren will be used for that purpose, The Jewish Week has learned.

“Something doesn’t smell good,” said Hilik Goldstein, a spokesman for the Union of Local Authorities, which is hiring the guards for Israel’s 124 municipalities and who revealed the funding cutback.

“We thought that all the $20 million would go directly to hiring security guards,” Goldstein said. “But that’s not to be. I’m not saying the $12 million has vanished, but I don’t know what will be with it.”

That disclosure comes on the heels of a report in The Jewish Week last week that schools in Israel opened Sept. 1 without any of the $20 million being used to hire security guards.

The United Jewish Communities, which raised the money beginning in April as part of its Israel Emergency Campaign, had highlighted the fears of Israeli parents in its appeal for funds.

HIZBALLAH:
TERRORISM, NATIONAL LIBERATION, OR MENACE?


A very long piece (57 pages) that examines the role of Hizballah in the Middle East and how Hizballah might impact both Israeli, Syrian and American policy making. Though recognizing the central fact that Hizballah, like Iran, seeks the destruction of Israel rather than a peace accord, the writer seems to believe that a number of concessions by Israel might lead to peace and establishment of a Palestinian state. This, claims the author, will ultimately diminish the importance of Hizaballah.

In my view, any and all accomodations will be viewed as a sign of weakness and thus perpetuate the aggressive role of Hizballah. The writer also makes interesting comments on an American role in the region.

SUMMARY

The author reviews the history of Hizballah since its inception in 1982, and examines its role in the recent political turmoil of Lebanon and the region. Not only is Hizballah's role central in the dispute over the Sheb'a Farms enclave between Lebanon and Israel, it is part of an entangled set linkages involving Syria, Iran, the United States, the European Union, and the Palestinians. The challenge that Hizballah poses to U.S. policy in the Middle East involves complicated strategic issues, not merely problems of terrorism that could be dealt with by countermeasures.
[see link for Adobe Acrobat format file]

Just Say No

California passes legislation that opposes any anti-Israeli divestment. And that's a lot of money.

ACR 235, Richman. Public pension funds: University of
California: divestiture of funds.
This measure would urge the University of California to reject
calls to divest its pension funds from companies with ties to Israel.
The measure would also urge leaders of the Palestinian Authority to
clearly renounce terrorism as a form of political expression and to
embrace peaceful negotiations.

WHEREAS, The University of California is an independent academic
institution with a strong reputation for academic freedom, free
speech, and intellectual honesty; and

WHEREAS, The University of California has collected and invested
more than $50 billion of pension funds on behalf of its employees;
and

WHEREAS, Historically, political groups have tried to use the
financial power of public pension funds to advance their political
goals; and

Fatah vows revenge following activist killing; Israel detains 13 Palestinians in West Bank

Can you think of a time when these murdering terrorists have not "vowed revenge" ?

Muhammad Abayat was killed Sunday evening when a public telephone exploded in his hand. The Israeli army did not confirm or deny that it killed Abayat, but Israeli officials voiced "satisfaction" over his killing, claiming he had been implicated in many anti-Israeli attacks.

Palestinian sources said Sunday night that the victim was not the real target, and that Israel wanted to get his older brother, Nasser, the current comander of the Fatah military wing in Bethlehem area.

In other developments, Palestinian sources reported that Israeli tanks entered the Dir el Balah refugee camp early Monday morning. According to the sources, no injuries have been reported in this southern Gaza Strip area.

Elsewhere, Palestinians opened fire on Israeli soldiers operating near the Balata refugee camp in the Nablus region. No injuries were reported by the Israeli media.

Also during Sunday night, Palestinians threw grenades, launched mortar shells and opened fire on army outposts and Jewish settlements throughout Gush Katif bloc, in the Gaza Strip, according to Israeli reports. No one was injured in any of these attacks.

Israeli soldiers apprehended early Monday 13 Palestinians throughout the West Bank. According to Israel Radio, the men were members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad movements. (Albawaba.com)

Thanksgiving

This weekend, Canadians are celebrating Thanksgiving. Had the Canadian Thanksgiving fallen in November, as the US Thanksgiving does, we probably would have been cursing the frigid temperatures rather than giving thanks.

On a more serious note, Canadians have much to give thanks for, such as our democratic system and our freedoms (not to mention the fall colours in Eastern Canada). Unfortunately, Canadian foreign policy is not one of the “for thanks” items. Not to sour the mood too much, I’ll list but three points.

First, the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Not only did Canada sign on, but the government refuses to sign a mutual agreement with the US to prevent extradition. Israel and Romania alone have signed such agreements with the US (for which Israel received from the US a mammoth kick in the stomach - see my posting dated October 13, 2002).

Second, the issue of Iraq. Canada, unfortunately, joined the chorus of “only with UN approval”, to Saddam Hussein’s great delight.

These issues of ICC and Iraq were addressed in an article posted on August 10, 2002, on DawsonSpeakes, with links to document the statements made above.

Third, the overtly anti-Israeli policies . Like so many other countries, Canada seems to forget that Israel is our sister-democracy, as Canada joins the perpetual chorus condemning Israel for every imaginary transgression (such as the “Jenin massacre”). And like so many other countries, Canada does not shy away from pettiness in pursuing the ultimate objective of attempting to curry favour with the Arabs. The most recent example in this context is the Magen David Adom issue.

In an article posted in Canada’s National Post on October 10, 2002, attorneys Greenspan and Nathanson of Toronto stated:

The Magen David Adom (MDA), the Red Star of David, was born 52 years ago. It is the Red Cross, except with a Jewish symbol. Its purpose is to protect life and health and to alleviate human suffering. It serves, without discrimination, the entire Israeli population, including 1.1-million Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian Arabs in need.

MDA is not a government agency. It sought membership in the International Federation of Red Cross (IFRC) with the Red Star of David as its emblem. ...[I]ts application for membership of the IFRC was rejected at the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which required all new national aid societies to adopt the Red Cross symbol. And yet since that time some 25 Red Crescent Societies representing the Muslim world have been admitted to the IFRC which is now called the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Services.
...
The American Red Cross characterizes MDA's exclusion as "an injustice of the highest order." MDA is the only national emergency relief society to be excluded from the world's largest humanitarian network.

Recently, the [Canadian] Federal Court of Appeal also struck a blow against MDA. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) had issued a notice of revocation of the registration as a charitable organization of MDA's Canadian branch. By a majority, the court upheld the proposed revocation...

To qualify as "charitable," an organization must devote its resources to charitable activities carried on by itself. The CCRA decided the purchase of bullet proof vests was not charitable. MDA said its ambulances service very dangerous areas, often assisting people subjected to terrorist attacks, and equipment to protect the injured, as well as the drivers, is needed. The CCRA demanded at least 10 instances of the locations where the ambulances had to encounter terrorist bullets. The Court noted this demand was "unduly sarcastic."

While the CCRA ultimately did not base its revocation notice on the purchase of bullet proof vests, it showed itself in this case to be permeated with an anti-Israel attitude. The basis for revocation offered by CCRA was that MDA carried on activities contrary to a supposed Canadian public policy against operating across the "greenline," i.e. the Occupied or Disputed Territories (the eastern part of Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank).

The Court held there was no legal foundation for the CCRA's position that, because of Canadian public policy, MDA was not carrying out its charitable objectives to the extent that it operated in the Occupied Territories. The Court held there was no definite public policy that a charitable organization could not operate in the Occupied Territories. But the majority did uphold the "Minister's fundamental concern" that the Canadian MDA (CMDA) "did not take appropriate steps to ensure that the ambulances and equipment it provided to MDA would be used for charitable purposes." The court held the MDA's resemblance to the Red Cross "questionable" since the MDA "is not recognized by the family of International Red Cross Societies." Further, since there was some "evidence" that the MDA had given one ambulance to the Israeli Defence Forces, the Court questioned CMDA's charitable purpose. The Court speculated that MDA might have been involved in military operations. The "evidence" was an internal memorandum referring to "evidence gleaned from CBC news reports and other unnamed sources" relating to "the use of ambulances in the Occupied Territories and the use of ambulances in the transportation of armed personnel, ammunition and other Armed Forces activities." The dissenting judge said these were not facts, CMDA should have been granted an opportunity to address them, and the CCRA should not act on unsubstantiated news reports.
...
The majority wondered whether or not MDA is truly a charitable organization and why the IFRC has not accepted Israel as a member. Does the majority not read the newspapers? Does it not understand there is an attempt to isolate Israel, to delegitimize virtually all its organizations, an attempt stemming from hatred for Israel and its people? The effect of this judgment is to lend support to Israel's enemies. This judgment is wrong and should not stand.

The judgment can be nullified in one of two ways:

1. by an appeal, with leave, to the Supreme Court of Canada; or

2. by the Minister of National Revenue's refusing to publish the revocation notice in the Canada Gazette because if it is not published, it does not take effect and the charity can survive an unsuccessful appeal.

The Minister could easily take the second way after negotiating with the CMDA to ensure it is in "technical" compliance.

What bothers me in particular about this case is the pettiness and mean-spirit with which the Canadian government pursued the issue.

I sure hope that next year I’ll have a Thanksgiving with less misgivings. In the meantime, join me in writing to the Canadian Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, requesting that the Minister of Revenue prevent the revocation, as the article suggests. Jean Chretien’s e-mail address is pm@pm.gc.ca .

Another step you can take is to sign the Magen David Adom petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/savemda/.

Happy thanksgiving, Canada.

Contributed by Joseph Alexander Norland

Ben-Eliezer Planning Hebron Pull-Back To Create More Cities Of Refuge For Terrorists

Ben-Eliezer’s crass immorality and hypocrisy continues unabated as he is now planning to create a terrorist refuge in the holy city of Hebron. When he is not busy destroying Jewish homes, he is finding time to build safe havens for mass murderers. What price in blood must we continue to pay to fuel his re-election campaign? What sort of person sacrifices Jewish children for his own blind ambition? The blood of the children of Hebron will be on his hands.

(IMRA) At best, the situation in Bethlehem can be termed a "cocked-gun-arrangement". As Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon pointed out, the PA has not cleared out the terror infrastructure in Bethlehem - they have turned it into a terrorist haven. In point of fact, the "cocked-gun-arragement" has already been tried in Hebron. The result was that Hebron was used as a center for organizing terrorist operations - this with the Jewish community paying a dear price for the PR stunt.

There can be no greater irony that at a time of tough talk against terrorism around the world that anyone should push for giving the terrorist more breathing space in Hebron and other cities in the West Bank.

(Ha'aretz) With his "Gaza-First" security plan having failed to get off the ground, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Sunday he was considering expanding the Bethlehem dimension of his plan, which is aimed at effecting a gradual truce in the territories, to include the West Bank city of Hebron.

Several months ago, Israeli and Palestinian officials reached agreement whereby the army would withdraw from a defined area in the territories and the Palestinian Authority security forces would move in and maintain calm. Soon after the deal was struck, troops left Bethlehem and the area has
remained quiet since. That is not the case in Gaza where daily attacks on settlements and IDF forces continue.

Ben-Eliezer, who made his comments just before his departure for France, said the reworked plan, which he called "Judea-First," referring to the southern section of the West Bank, was currently under discussion.

(IMRA) Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon said several weeks ago after the IDF pulled out of Bethlehem that the city was becoming a refuge for wanted men. Military sources say that at least eight wanted men have moved from Hebron to Bethlehem in recent weeks.

Syria begins to feel the heat

DAMASCUS - Senior Syrian officials have expressed fears that the United States could target Syria next if it attacks Iraq. "There is serious cause for concern," says an official. "A strong lobby within the US has been campaigning for action against Syria."

Syria is on the US list of state sponsors of terrorism for its support for the Lebanese resistance group Hizbollah and radical Palestinian factions. Those groups are listed prominently in the Syria Accountability Act before the US Congress. The act proposes punishing Syria for backing Hamas, the Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah. The US believes that Hizbollah was behind the bombing of the barracks in Beirut in 1983 that killed 241 US marines.

Syria is now looking for international moves to check an attack on Iraq. "The whole international community, especially Europe, must play an active role on the international arena to restore balance into international relations," Syria's Foreign Minister Farouk Al-Sharaa told visiting Swiss deputy Foreign Minister France Van Dienkin earlier this week.

Concern for itself is backed by anger over Iraq. There are few signs of any love for Saddam Hussein in Syria. But there is anger that an Arab nation is in the firing line of US President George W Bush.

"We are not afraid of the aggression," Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz said on Wednesday at the end of a two-day conference in Damascus, urging the lifting of United Nations sanctions on Iraq. "No Arab country is free of the threat, even if it takes part alongside America in the aggression against Iraq," he said. The meeting drew hundreds of participants from Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and North Africa. British Labour MP George Galloway also attended.

Syrian officials say that Bush's strategy is a "glaring example" of US double standards. The burning issue for most Arabs is the shedding of Palestinian blood. "It was distressing that in his speech Bush failed to mention Israel's latest deadly raid into the Palestinian territories that killed at least 15 people and wounded about 100 others," an official said.

Syria believes that the crisis over Saddam Hussein's suspected weapons of mass destruction should be resolved through the UN. Syria also says that it wants Iraq preserved as a nation, with no further suffering for the Iraqi people.

Syrian officials say that the US is motivated by Iraqi oil, not by fear of Saddam's weapons. Even under the sanctions, Iraq provides the US with 9 percent of its oil supply. Until spring this year Americans were buying half of all Iraq's oil exports.

"America's obstruction of the international arms inspectors' return to Iraq and its attempt to issue a new Security Council resolution that includes a threat of military force against Iraq are intended for the appropriation of its oil and wealth under one pretext or another," the state-owned al-Thawra newspaper said in a recent editorial. Views in the paper usually reflect the thinking of the Syrian government.

Syria is also threatened by loss of trade if Iraq is attacked. Iraq is its biggest trading partner. Trade between the two countries exceeded US$2 billion last year. Britain has alleged that these ties extend to illicit trade in below-market prices in Iraqi crude in violation of the UN oil-for-food program.

Britain alleges that this allows Syria to meet domestic petroleum needs while exporting its own oil at higher prices. Syria says that all oil dealings comply with the sanctions regime,

Iraq Govt Gave $15 Mln to Palestinian Families

The Iraqi government has given about $15 million to families of Palestinians killed or injured in clashes with Israelis in the past two years, Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper cited a captured Palestinian as telling the Shin Bet security service.

Families of people killed received checks of $10,000 and wounded people received amounts of $500 or $1,000 depending on the severity of the injury, Ha'aretz cited Rakad Salim, the secretary general of the pro-Iraq Arab Liberation Front in the West Bank, as telling Shin Bet. Salim was arrested last week.

Relatives of suicide bombers have been among those who received checks transferred from Iraq via a Jordanian bank, Ha'aretz cited the Shin Bet report as saying.

Salim, who told Shin Bet he had connections to Iraq President Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party, said the Palestinian Authority was involved in the transfer of the funds, Ha'aretz reported. Iraq intends to increase its involvement in attacks on Israelis, Ha'aretz cited unidentified officials in Israel's security service as saying.

IDF kills 2 infiltrators from Egypt; 2 more Palestinians killed, 28 hurt in Gaza

Two Palestinians were killed and 28 wounded early Sunday when Israeli soldiers, backed by tanks and a helicopter, entered the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, witnesses and a hospital official said.

Along the nearby border with Egypt, Israeli soldiers killed two armed men who crossed from Egypt, the army said.

Three soldiers were wounded in the clash.

The army said the troops entered the Rafah refugee camp to search for tunnels used by the Palestinians to smuggle arms and drugs into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. A number of tunnels were uncovered, the army commander in the Gaza Strip said.

The Palestinians said the soldiers blew up five houses.

The army said one house was blown up but other houses were damaged when the army blew up tunnels. The army said the Palestinians suffered casualties after they opened fire on the troops and threw grenades at them.

One of the dead Palestinians was a four-year-old boy, family members and a hospital official said. Four of the wounded Palestinians were in critical conditions, Dr. Ali Mussa at the Rafah hospital said.

Moussa Bereka, a relative of the dead boy, said the 60 people in his extended family, ran from the house in their pajamas and the boy, Tawfik Hussan Bereka, was wounded as they ran, and died later at the hospital.

"They did not even give us one minute to evacuate our belongings or to leave safely," he said.

However the commander of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv, said the troops entered the camp shortly after midnight and no houses were blown up until almost 5 a.m.

"The occupants were given at least 35 minutes to get out of the house," he told The Associated Press.

Protests continue at U-M disinvestment conference


The 400 pro-Palestinian activists who gathered for a national conference at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Saturday tried to silence some of their loudest critics by condemning attacks by suicide bombers in Israel.

In recent days, lobbying by pro-Israeli groups who oppose the conference tried to link the gathering with terrorist groups and attacks on Israeli citizens.

On Saturday morning, two rows of Jewish protesters from New York greeted conference participants outside the Michigan League with shouts of: "We want peace! This conference supports suicide bombing!"

However, inside the League, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Hussein Ibish, called suicide bombings "horrible."

"It's been a catastrophe for the Palestinian national movement that people have been engaging in that foul practice," Ibish told participants.

Eric Reichenberger, an organizer of the conference, also declared, "We absolutely condemn suicide bombings. As far as attacks on civilian populations, we condemn all forms of attacks on civilian populations either by Palestinians or by Israelis - whoever might be involved."

The focus of the Second National Student Conference on the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, said Reichenberger and Ibish, was on building political pressure against Israeli policies toward Palestinians. The conference's stated goal was to call on the university to disinvest its stock in companies that do business in Israel, but many speakers admitted that such action is years away.

"I actually doubt that any major schools will be convinced to disinvest - but that doesn't matter," Ibish said. "This is still a beautiful opportunity to discuss the issues."

TROUBLE IN THE HOLY LAND


In this interview Arafat doubletalks and rambles on as though he is a prophetic voice who has sucked up the vapors of Delphi. But he makes it very clear that he will not negotiate the Right of Return.

Hamad: It is known that the Israeli army planned to expel you from the Palestinian territories, to a remote area.

Arafat: To a remote area! That is, to the desert! They are most welcome. "O Mountain! The wind cannot shake you." Have you forgotten my motto? They will not take me captive or prisoner, or expel [me], but as a martyr, martyr, martyr. "O Allah, give me martyrdom." [The Prophet Muhammad said:] "There still exists a group in my nation that preserves its religion, vanquishes its enemy, and is not harmed by anyone who attacks it, and its people are the victors due to Allah's strength." It was said [to the Prophet Muhammad], "O Messenger of Allah, where are they and who are [these people]?" The Prophet answered: "They are in Jerusalem and its surroundings, and they are at the forefront until Judgment Day."

Hamad: During the time you had been under siege, the people came to your aid and swore a new oath of allegiance [to you]. Also, polls showed that 60 percent of Palestinians would vote for you.

Arafat: Sixty percent is a lot. I'd settle for 55 percent.

Hamad: But 80 percent support the continuation of the intifada and armed operations.

Arafat: Does anyone think that our people will surrender to this occupation, this destruction and this siege? We as leadership and as a people still cling to the peace of the brave, which we signed with my late partner Rabin, who paid for the peace of the brave [with his life] to the extremist elements who today [are at] the highest positions of the [present] regime in Israel. Peace on the land of peace and on the holy lands is not just for the Palestinians, but for the entire world, for our children and their children.

Hamad: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is now offering a phased solution. Do you agree to a repeat of the Oslo experiment?

Arafat: There are resolutions that must be carried out. And there are agreements that must be implemented.

Hamad: Would you again accept a phased agreement?

Arafat: These things will be presented to the Palestinian National Council, and it will decide.

Hamad: A policy of establishing facts on the ground is being imposed by the Sharon government to change the demographic reality. [This is being carried out by] annexing one plot of land and another plot of land, with the Palestinians still seeking to implement the international resolutions.

Arafat: Is this the first time? Didn't they, in the U.N., cancel Resolution 181? When Golda Meir came to the Suez Canal and was asked about the Palestinian people, didn't she reply, "There is no Palestinian people"? This Palestinian people has been dealing with this since Sykes-Picot, and even before, since the Zionist Congress in Basle, with this [Zionist] program, defending this holy land and the holy sites in it."

Hamad: Sari Nusseibah, in charge of the Jerusalem portfolio, signed a document with Israeli elements from the left which includes abolishing the Palestinian refugees' right of return to their homes from which they were expelled.

Arafat: No one can abolish the right of return. There is Resolution 194. I told them this officially in the [framework of] the agreements signed between them and us, and also to Sharon and Netanyahu at Wye

Would-Be Homicide Bomber Detained Near U.S. Embassy in Israel


Summary:
Seeking to build support ahead of an election, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was to name a new Cabinet soon to replace one that resigned in a showdown with the Palestinian legislature. (1) Its replacement was delayed by an Israeli siege of Arafat's headquarters compound, but aides said Saturday the new Cabinet would be named within 10 days. (1) Elsewhere, in the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis on Saturday, Israeli forces shot and killed a 21 -year-old Palestinian, hospital officials said. (1) ' S MY PEN PAL By URI DAN October 12, 2002 -- JERUSALEM - Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat have exchanged secret messages of good will - the last coming as recently as Thursday, Palestinian officials said yesterday. (2) Palestinian media played up the exchanges yesterday but there was no word of whether Saddam mentioned his impending showdown with the Bush administration. (2) The suspect, from the West Bank, ran away but was chased down and overpowered by guards, a police spokesman said. (4) Israel U.S. Embassy security guards overpowered a would-be homicide bomber who had tried to enter a crowded cafe nearby on the Tel Aviv beachfront on Friday, police said. (3) [4 articles]

Ben Eliezer wants to implement "Judea First" plan


JERUSALEM (AFP) - Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer said Israel was intending to implement a "Judea First" security plan which would see Israeli troops pulling out of Hebron.

"We've tried the Gaza and Bethlehem First (plan) but in Gaza it didn't work, so we want to implement the Bethlehem model in Hebron", the minister told reporters Sunday while en route to a 48-hour visit to Paris.

Judea is the Biblical term used by Israel for the southern West Bank, while the northern area is known as Samaria.

Ben Eliezer did not elaborate further on the proposal, nor was there any indication of when it might take place.

The "Gaza and Bethlehem First" security plan, which was agreed in August, involved a phased Israeli withdrawal from reoccupied Palestinian areas in return for the Palestinians taking over security control.

The new security arrangement was kicked off in Bethlehem and Gaza on August 19, but the withdrawal was not fully implemented in Gaza after cooperation between the two sides broke down following an outbreak of violence in the area.

By contrast, the plan has appeared to work in the southern West Bank area of Bethlehem, which Israeli troops left in mid August.

The plan was proposed during the summer by Ben Eliezer as part of a wider deal for a gradual army pullout from areas reoccupied since the beginning of the intifada, which kicked off in September 2000.

On August 25 the Israeli government bowed to pressure from the military and ruled out any imminent pullback from Hebron, as Ben Eliezer said "guarantees that calm will be maintained" by the Palestinian Authority had not been received.

Hebron is a scene of frequent clashes between the majority Palestinian population and extremist Jewish settlers who inhabit an enclave in the town centre heavily guarded by Israeli troops and police.

Three mini-essays on friends

1. With friends like this...

From Ha’Aretz, October 12, 2002, comes this peace of sobering news, under the heading, U.S. slams Israel for humanitarian situation in territories:

The United States harshly criticized Israel's handling of the humanitarian situation in the territories in a message delivered to the Prime Minister's office Friday by U.S. Ambassador Dan Kurtzer.

The Americans accuse Israel of not fulfilling its promises to ease the suffering of the Palestinian population and claim that discrepancies exist between government statements on steps to improve conditions and their implementation on the ground. The message also included criticism of recent IDF operations in the territories in which Palestinian civilians were killed.

It makes one want to ask, Et tu Brute? Until, that is, one remembers the civilian casualties inflicted by the US in Afghanistan - remember the bombing of the Afghani wedding? This is not meant as a criticism of US operations, it is just meant to remind the US about the kettle and the pot; or about people in glass houses.

Shortly before the US “message” was delivered, the US government released its views about religious freedom in the Middle East. Contrary to everything one knows as a fact (a topic for a separate, upcoming article), the US government seems to believe that Israel should be criticised with regard to religious freedom too. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Israel and the PA, lumped together in a section titled "Israel and the occupied territories", were both lauded for generally respecting freedom of worship. But criticism of Israel took up most of the 15-page section.
...
Anti-Jewish sentiment in the PA was limited to one paragraph that criticized "the rhetoric of some Jewish and Muslim religious leaders," which it described as "harsh and at times constituted an incitement to violence."
...
The report also notes that while the PA doesn't provide financial support to Jewish holy sites in the areas under its control, it "paid for the refurbishment of Joseph's Tomb" after the tomb was ransacked by Palestinian rioters in October 2000. According to media reports, the funds were used to turn the tomb into a mosque, after which it was declared a Muslim holy site.

The omission from the report of Palestinian suicide bombings, which have been promoted by some Muslim leaders in the PA as a religious duty, is glaring in light of its detailed critique on Israel's military response to these actions, said a number of experts.

"Gross caricatures of Jews, reminiscent of the Hitler era, are published throughout the Palestinian Authority, and it's a shameful disgrace that the State Department appears to ignore this," said Michael Horowitz, director of the Project for International Religious Liberty at the Hudson Institute.

"In a report like this, America comes across as being the ally of oppressors," said Meyrav Wurmser, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute, who criticized the report for omitting the PA's mistreatment of Christians and the controversy surrounding the building of a mosque on church property in Nazareth.

Paul Marshall, a senior fellow at the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, noted that there is no Israeli equivalent to the PA's broadcasting of Friday mosque sermons that sometimes call for the annihilation of Jews. "To say that the rhetoric of some Jewish and Arab leaders has been harsher, that does not get at the reality. There's a difference in the scale and intensity of what's been said," he said.

2. A friend in need

IMRA, 11 October 2002, summarized the results of a study conducted recently in the US. Selected findings:

A majority (54%) of Americans indicates that it supports Israel and its policies and actions towards Palestinian terrorism; just 29% are opposed. The most commonly cited reasons as to why Americans support Israel is because the two countries share common values and enjoy friendly relations.

I guess that those who sent the foregoing “message delivered to the Prime Minister's office” belong to the 29%, not to the 54%. Additionally,

Support for Israel stands at 46% among Democrats and 45% among self-identified liberals, while among Republicans and self-identified conservatives this figure reaches 67% and 61%, respectively.

Evangelicals are most likely to indicate they support Israel because of the strong relationship that Israel has developed with the United States – 24% point to the fact that Israel is a democracy that values self-government and freedom and another 19% support Israel because it is an important and longstanding ally to our country in the war against terrorism.

Four-out-of-five adults (80%) agree that enemies of the United States, like Saddam Hussein and Al Queda, are also enemies of Israel. Agreement with this statement exceeds 75% among nearly every major demographic group.

But in view of the foregoing Part 1 of this article, the following finding is quite amazing:

A clear majority of Jews (81%) see Bush as a strong supporter of Israel, and 46% say they would be more likely to vote for him based on the way he has seen handling the war on terrorism.

What will it take to call a spade a spade, a friend a friend, and a phoney a phoney?


3. Tell me who your friends are and I’ll tell you who you are

The Saddam-Arafat friendship is a long-standing one, highlighted by Arafat’s support for Saddam on the eve of the Gulf War. The Jerusalem Post has this to report about the latest round of mutual-support:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat received a message from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein Thursday, Palestinian officials told The Jerusalem Post.

They said the message came in response to a letter of greetings sent by Arafat to Saddam last week on the occasion of the Muslim holiday marking Prophet Muhammad's midnight journey to the seven heavens.
...
Thirty families from the Jenin refugee camp published a large advertisement in the daily Al-Quds newspaper Thursday expressing their gratitude to Saddam for providing them with financial assistance. The families, whose houses were destroyed by the IDF during Operation Defensive Shield, praised the Iraqi president for supporting them and "healing our wounds."

The advertisement, which lauded Salim for his role in transferring the funds, also included a large picture of Saddam in military fatigues.

I suppose that with this news in mind, Colin will intensify his support for Arafat and the EU-niks will increase their funding.

Contributed by Joseph Alexander Norland