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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's put aside partisanship and ideology to ask: What would the situation actually be after an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip? The following is a good-faith effort to do so whose conclusions, I think, are hard to reject. Israel: The national trauma about dismantling settlements will be real but shall pass. A majority view will coalesce including many Likud members and voters as well as most everyone to its left that the withdrawal was a good thing to do. People would feel they had accomplished something, improved Israel's security and reduced the stigma of occupation. This euphoria would last at least a few months until it became apparent that the gains made were limited and many problems still existed. There would then be renewed pressure to "do something," most likely demands in some quarters for an additional unilateral withdrawal from all the West Bank outside the security fence or areas Israel did not intend to claim in future negotiations. Critics will blame the lack of benefits from the Gaza withdrawal on its insufficient extent. On other hand, negative results from withdrawing and the chaos in Gaza will reinforce those opposing additional withdrawals. International reaction: The United States and Britain enthusiastically endorse withdrawal; the rest of Europe would say it was a step in the right direction but not enough. U.S.-Israel relations would remain strong but much of the Western media, academia, and intellectual circles along with many European politicians will explain that the withdrawal was a trick and should not be accrued to Israel's credit. All the more effort would be needed, they will explain, to get Israel out of the West Bank and east Jerusalem. While a withdrawal would forestall international pressures and perhaps ease slightly hostility in general it would not bring tangible rewards. The Arab world: It would universally agree that this was a trick by the evil warmonger Sharon. And demand Israel give up even more without getting anything in return. A few Arab liberals would write newspaper articles disagreeing. Palestinians: Fatah and Hamas would proclaim an Israeli withdrawal as a defeat brought about by their armed struggle, only proving that more fighting and terrorism is needed to force Israel into additional unilateral concessions. Hamas will say this is another step toward destroying Israel altogether while Fatah officials will explain it is another step toward forcing Israel's withdrawal from all the West Bank and east Jerusalem. Recruitment of activists, gunmen, and suicide terrorists will increase. No Palestinian will say anything publicly to the effect that this deed shows Israel's readiness for peace and compromise. On the contrary, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and colleagues will say it is a trick that does no good and violates all previous negotiated agreements. They will make it seem that Israel's departure from the Gaza Strip (even accompanied by dismantling several West Bank settlements) is an injury to Palestinians for which they deserve political and financial compensation. The situation within Gaza: Arafat and the Palestinian Authority (PA) will do little or nothing to set up any real governing authority since he wants anarchy and continued fighting while having no interest in the material welfare of Gaza's people. There will be limited inter-Palestinian fighting but no civil war. Perhaps Gaza will be divided into different zones under the control of Hamas, hard-line Fatah militia, or Muhammad Dahlan's Fatah dissident forces which want a negotiated solution with Israel. Of greatest concern is that Arafat's passivity will only further encourage most activists to back a Fatah-Hamas alliance devoted to continued war against Israel and seizing Palestinian leadership after Arafat's demise. The Security Situation would look like this: --Sporadic fighting on the Gaza-Israel border with relatively low damage and casualties for Israel. Terrorists from Gaza will hardly ever penetrate into Israel though this is already true. --A somewhat improved use of Israeli strategic resources, moving from Gaza settlement and road protection to a mobile defense of Israel's border. --The use of Gaza as a base for attacking Israel with new kinds of weapons, especially missiles, which can cross border barriers. --Periodic Israeli raids into Gaza to destroy weapons and arms factories as well as to kill or arrest terrorists will face better-organized opposition, meaning higher casualty levels could offset the number of casualties reduced by not having to guard settlements. --Increased attacks against the Philadelphia corridor causing more casualties there and making it harder to block arms' smuggling from Egypt. --An upsurge in West Bank terrorist efforts inspired by a Gaza "victory" and the credible argument that a few more months of violence will force a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from that area. The security fence will largely block attacks into Israel--though this would happen without a Gaza withdrawal--but West Bank settlements, roads, and those guarding them will face increased danger. Summary: The key issue regarding a complete pull-out from Gaza is not about dismantling settlements but whether this initiative would improve Israel's situation. The main gain would be a psychological lift for Israelis to say they were no longer there. But as for political and strategic benefits they may well be limited and not necessarily lasting ones. Some added remarks: 1. The purpose of this article is to try to figure out a likely post-withdrawal scenario. I have deliberately not taken a stand for or against the withdrawal in order not to compormise the analysis. 2. My starting point is that it does not matter what I think in terms of political decision. It will either happen or not, though the way that it happens is important in shaping the outcome. 3. Readers can draw their own conclusions. 4. If people ask what is my "solution" the implication is that there is some really good solution if only we can think of it. That is a mistake often made in dealing with the Middle East that has been very costly in the past. Each option has large pluses and minuses. This should be recognized. 5. As a philosophical point, let me add that a problem is that people say "I am for this" or "against that" and then end up tailoring the case to prove their assertion. Sometimes it is best to keep an open mind so as to avoid this problem. Professor Barry Rubin is Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). To Go To Top

DISENGAGEMENT OR ZIONISM? Posted by Eliezar Edwards, May 19, 2004.

Eli Pollak, a former chairman of Professors for a Strong Israel, in his article "Disengagement or Zionism?" in the Jerusalem Post, May 18, 2004, notes that Jews have long lived in Gaza and that it will gain us nothing to give up this land. (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid= 1084857510960&p=1006953079865) He writes a rebuttal to Brett Stephen's desire for a withdrawal from Gaza. This is his article. 'Disengagement operates on the principle that Israel must suit its own convenience first, withdrawing from territory that has become a strategic liability, while consolidating control over territory that remains an asset" is Bret Stephens's reasoned, if at times tortuous, description of why he changed his mind and today supports withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. The Jerusalem Post's editor explains, in two long articles, that he did not reach this conclusion easily. "I'd rather Israel seize its chances, on its own terms, than wait for winds to blow fair in Ramallah or Iraq or Brussels or Turtle Bay." Stephens has lost hope in the Palestinians and the world at large but trusts the Israeli Left "to hold some nationally agreed line in the sand." He concludes, "Land may be a form of security, but a Zionist consensus that won't crack under moral stress is a better one." Stephens demands a Zionist consensus but does not define its meaning. A consensus definition was coined by Chaim Weizmann, who spoke about "synthetic Zionism," a synthesis of political and settlement activity. For Stephens, Zionism is only political; settlement per se is not of value. He chides the Jewish residents in Gaza: "The settlers must also take into account the sacrifices the rest of Israel have made on their behalf - the soldiers who defend them, the tax money that subsidizes them." It doesn't occur to him that many people in "the rest of Israel" laid their lives on the line knowingly for securing the settlements. Destroying settlements would be sacrilege to their memory. He does not consider that many of us would be extremely upset if our tax money were wasted on dismantling settlements instead of affirming the right of Jews to live in Eretz Yisrael. Stephens, as many others, including President George W. Bush, believe "that Palestinians are entitled to live under a government of their own choosing - provided they respect the rights of their Israeli neighbors to the same." How will we know that the Palestinians "respect the rights of their Israeli neighbors"? Jews lived in Gaza for centuries until expelled in the 1929 riots and in 1948; Kfar Darom was overrun by the Egyptian army. We have a moral and legal right to live there. Abandoning Kfar Darom is a major step toward allowing the Palestinians the luxury of having their own state without respecting our rights. The right of Jews to live wherever they please (legally, without usurping that which belongs to others) is the litmus test of Palestinian and Arab intentions. Israeli initiatives implying that parts of this world are Judenrein are a sure sign of the hostility of the Palestinian state-to-be. BUT LAND is not mere security, it is the affirmation that the Jewish people have the same rights as any other people in this world. Taking the land away from the Jews is the antithesis of Zionism, for it implies that we will never be a normal people. Even when territory becomes a strategic liability (which the Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip is not), the utmost effort should be made to keep it. Stephens is for disengagement because "I want to have as little to do with the Palestinians as possible." He wants Israel to retain control over borders but concedes that Israel "might be pressured into relinquishing control over the (Gaza) Strip's ports of entry." But then logic is replaced by wishful thinking. He claims that "withdrawal would mean Palestinians could no longer wage war against Israeli civilians at which they're so expert. If they chose to fight, it would be on terms that overwhelmingly favor Israel." How will Israel defend itself against an onslaught of missiles from Gaza to Ashkelon and Sderot? Only by reentering Gaza as it did tragically last week. But by then, this Gaza would be armed with sophisticated weapons and more deadly land mines. The cost we paid last week for defending Green Line Israel would be a relative pittance. A short review of the danger of a Palestinian state is also in order. Stephens writes, "I have zero confidence there's a light at the end of the international tunnel." I concur. Today's deep enmity implies that a Palestinian state would be hostile to Israel, ruled by an oppressive dictatorial regime that will allow the "right of return" to "Palestine" (as conceded by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in his talks in Washington). The difficult demographic problems of today will worsen. The Palestinian state will be densely populated, impoverished, and angry. Its leadership will blame Israel for all the misery it inflicts on its own population. The Arab world will mount an international campaign, fueled by oil, against the rich Israeli state that has usurped Arab homes in Jaffa, Ramle, and Jerusalem. Israel will remain a pariah state in the world, having lost not only the esteem of righteous gentiles for its folly but worse, it will have lost its self-esteem. This will not be the "Zionist consensus that won't crack under moral stress." The only way we can "disengage" is by dismantling Israel. Nay, with present anti-Semitic levels in the world, the only possible real disengagement is to abandon our Jewishness. As long as the world is dependent on Arab oil, and as long as immoral, corrupt Arab regimes are tolerated, Israel will be engaged by a hostile Muslim Arab world. As explained by Hebrew University's Islamist expert Prof. Moshe Sharon, Israel's very existence is an intolerable affront to Islam. These are the facts of life, and disengagement won't change them. What distinguishes the believer from the atheist is not the messianic belief in a Greater Israel cited by Stephens, but humility. The believer acknowledges that only God is master of the universe; we are not masters of our destiny, personal or national. I remain an optimist. It is up to us to stay true to our Zionist and Jewish ideals, to be steadfast in the face of cruel adversaries, and continue to do what is right and moral. With the help of the Almighty, this path will lead to a normal Jewish State of Israel. To Go To Top

NO JEWISH HOMELAND IN GAZA? SPEAK FOR YOURSELVES, ARIK AND MOFAZ! Posted by Steven Plaut, May 19, 2004.

As part of the propaganda juggernaut designed to panic Israelis into withdrawing from the Gaza Strip with their tails between their legs as a reward for Palestinian barbarism, and as part of the campaign to make Gaza judenrein and expel its settlers, the Left - and by that, these days I also mean the Likud - has been blustering about how Gaza was "never Jewish land", never had Jews living in it, is not at all part of the Jews' national heritage, and so on. For example, the Israeli Minister of Defense Shaul Mofaz recently declared that "Gaza is not at all Jewish heritage." Oh really? Well, let's put aside for the moment all those stories about Jews spending time in Gaza in the Bible, from King David to Samson. Let's talk about historically unassailable evidence of Gaza being actual documentable Jewish homeland, long before the Gush Katif settlements were set up. It turns out that Gaza had a thriving Jewish community until the Jews were ethnically cleansed from Gaza in the 1948-9 war. From now on, when you hear the mindless Left blabbing about how "ethnic cleansing" took place in the Israeli War of Independence, you will understand that the only ethnic cleansing that took place was of Jews expelled from Gaza (and the West Bank), and later of Jews from all the Arab countries. For strange reasons, the Left has never heard about any of those ethnic cleansings. The Gaza Jewish community had as its Rabbi staring in 1906 one Rabbi Nissim Ohana, born in Algeria and trained as a Rabbi in Jerusalem, who also served later as an important Rabbi in Alexandria, Egypt, in Malta, in New York, in Cairo (where he was Chief Rabbi of Egypt), and in Haifa (where he was Sephardic Chief Rabbi in the 50s). This past weekend the Israeli religious newspaper Hazofe devoted an article to Rabbi Ohana and to the Jews living in Gaza in the first half of the 20th century. Rabbi Ohana was on warm cordial terms with the Moslem Mufti of Gaza, the article reports, and the two wrote a book together. There is one other curious detail worth knowing about this famous Rabbi of Gaza. I am married to his granddaughter. The Rabbi is one of the figures discussed in my book, The Scout (http://161.58.167.199/shop/indi_scout.htm ) . So when Mofaz states that Jews have no heritage to preserve in Gaza, let him speak for himself. Unlike so many of the fascist terrorists currently filling the Gaza Strip, my family can legitimately claim Gaza as our homeland. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

WHO DOES POWELL THINK HE'S KIDDING? Posted by Elias Yrachmiel, May 18, 2004.

This article was written by Michael Freund and it appeared today in the Jerusalem Post and is archived at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1084857510957 &p=1006953079865 To Israelis and Americans: Please fax or email this letter to President Bush and let him know your feelings about how he is allowing his employee Colin Powell to act in front of the world and allowing the world to believe that Powell speaks for Bush. We need to flood his fax machine with our replies. Also please forward this to as many people as possible and ask them to act on hehalf of Eretz Yisrael Email President Bush: president@whitehouse.gov Fax President Bush: 1-202-456-2461 Send us a copy at action@netzahyisrael.org Dear President Bush: Please take a moment to read this article from Michael Freund and understand something about the Jewish People that Colin Powell can never understand - the article speaks for itself, and by the way how much is Colin Powell adding to your chances of re-election with his blatant anti-semetic pro-arab portrayal of the Secretary of State - the direct employee of the President of the United States, or perhaps that is the way you want the Jewish and Non-Jewish world to view your dictated US Policy? After a week in which 13 young Israeli soldiers had been killed by Palestinian terrorists, who then paraded the body parts of their victims through the streets of Gaza, the US Secretary of State could find nothing better to do than to cozy up to the Palestinians and criticize Israel. Shortly after arriving in Jordan this past Saturday, Powell met with the Palestinian leadership. Afterwards, he told reporters that he was pleased to have had a "constructive talk" with Palestinian premier Ahmed Qurei, along with "my colleague Nabil Shaath and so many other of my good friends from the Palestinian Authority." His "good friends?" This is the same Palestinian Authority that has been waging a terrorist war against Israel since September 2000 and which is directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds of innocent men, women and children. It is the same entity that Powell's own State Department, in its recently released report on Patterns of Global Terrorism, has linked to acts of terror against the Jewish state. And this is whom Powell considers to be his "good friends?" Not only that, but in his remarks to the press, with a smiling Qurei standing at his side, Powell did not even bother to mention the horrific events of the preceding week. He did not see fit to condemn the Palestinians' vile desecration of Israel's dead, nor did he denounce their ongoing efforts to carry out attacks against the Jewish state. Indeed, not once did Powell even mention the word "terrorism". As if that weren't bad enough, Powell followed up this appalling performance with an even more shameful one the next day. Speaking Sunday at a news conference at the World Economic Forum on Jordan's Dead Sea coast, Powell slammed Israel for demolishing Palestinian structures in Gaza that have been used to stage attacks on Israel's soldiers. "We know that Israel has a right for self-defense," Powell said, "but the kind of action they are taking in Rafah with the destruction of Palestinian homes, we oppose. We don't think that that is productive," he added. That Palestinian terrorists use these very same houses to attack and kill Jews doesn't seem to move Mr. Powell one whit, nor does he seem troubled by the fact that his "good friends" in the Palestinian Authority utilize the area to smuggle in weapons from Egypt. On those issues, he is strangely silent. And yet when Israel seeks to thwart such efforts by expanding the "Philadelphia Route", as the area between Rafah and the Egyptian border is known, Powell suddenly finds his voice and lambasts the Jewish state for daring to defend itself. Needless to say, this is hardly the first time that Powell has chosen to denigrate Israel. Two years ago, while testifying before Congress, he outrageously accused Israel of trying to solve the Mideast conflict by killing as many Palestinians as possible. "Prime Minister Sharon has to take a hard look at his policies to see whether they will work," Powell said. "If you declare war against the Palestinians thinking that you can solve the problem by seeing how many Palestinians can be killed, I don't think that leads us anywhere." (New York Times, March 7, 2002). In April 2001, after IDF troops entered Gaza to stop Palestinian mortar attacks against the southern Israeli city of Sderot, Powell responded by rebuking Israel, saying that its actions were "excessive and disproportionate", as if there was something wrong in Israel attempting to protect itself. But what is truly remarkable about Powell's latest broadside over Israel's destruction of Palestinian homes in Gaza is its sheer, unvarnished hypocrisy. After all, it was just 15 short years ago that a certain American general named Colin Powell oversaw the US invasion of Panama in late December 1989. In the initial days of the war, US forces bombarded the El Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama City, where the headquarters of the Panamanian Defense Forces were located alongside the homes of thousands of innocent civilians. According to a report prepared by the UN Economic and Social Council, the result of the US attack on El Chorrillo was that "several blocks of apartments were totally destroyed, as a result of which their inhabitants were forced to seek alternative accommodation, often at a great distance from their former dwelling. Other buildings suffered severe damage". By the UN's estimate, the homes of at least 2,723 Panamanian families, totaling approximately 13,500 people, were affected. An April 7, 1991 Human Rights Watch report was even more blunt, referring to "the devastation" of El Chorrillo, and asserting that Powell's forces had "violated the rule of proportionality, which mandates that the risk of harm to impermissible targets be weighed against the military necessity of the objective pursued." Now, isn't that ironic. The very same Colin Powell who blasted Panamanians out of their homes fifteen years ago to protect American troops now chooses to criticize Israel for doing the very same thing. Who does he think he's kidding? But let Powell complain all he wants. Israel has no choice but to safeguard its citizens, regardless of what the Secretary of State and his "good friends" the Palestinians might think. Yrachmiel ben Menachem Mendel Elias and Professor Ya'akov Golbert are Directors of "Netzah Yisrael Lo Yeshaqer. Michael Freund served as Deputy Director of Communications and Policy Planning under former premier Binyamin Netanyahu. To Go To Top

THE ARABS IN ERETZ ISRAEL Posted by David Ben-Ariel, May 18, 2004.

This was written by Rabbi Meir Kahane, Zt"l and is archived at Rabbi Meir Kahane, Zt"l. It is a central tenet of Judaism that G-d wished the Jew to create a unique, total, pure and complete Jewish life, society and state in Eretz Israel. This being so, who can honestly believe that He then sanctioned the democratic right of a non-Jew, who is totally alien and outside the Jewish society and who is free of its religious obligation, to have the slightest say in its workings? Eretz Israel means "the Land of Israel." Meaning the land of the people called Israel. Precisely as Moab was the land of the people of Moab and Edom that of the Edomites. The concept, the logical concept of a land, is that it serves as the home and the receptacle for a people to lead their own unique and distinctive life style. It is not the geographical area that defines the person, it is the person who controls the land. No non-Edomite was ever a citizen on Edom just as no non-Philistine was a citizen of Philistia or had any say in its national concerns or character. So, too, with Israel - the Jewish people. The Land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel. It is they who control it, define it. It is their vessel, their territory in which to create the society of Israel, the Torah society of G-d. Only Israel, only the Jew, has a proprietary interest in it. And thus, Judaism lays down legal, halachic, conditions for the privilege of a non-Jew being allowed to live in the Land of Israel, the the Chosen Land of G-d, given to His Chosen People, Israel, to create a Chosen Torah society. And this is, of course, the heart of the matter. It is not merely that the land belongs to the Jewish people. It is that the land belongs to G-D and which He gave to the Jewish people for a specific reason and under a specific condition. It is the land that was indeed taken from other people - the Canaanite nations - because it is G-d who made the world for a specific purpose - goodness and holiness - who holds title to the entire universe, to all the land within it, and it is His to do with as He sees fit. And the rabbis, in asking why the Torah - a book of laws - begins with a story, the story of Creation, reply that should the nations point to the Jews entering the land and taking it from the seven Canaanite nations, Israel rejoins: "The world and all that is in it belongs to the Holy One Blessed Be He. When He so chose He gave it unto you and when He so chose He took it from you and gave it to us, and this is the meaning of the verse (Psalms 111): 'The strength of His deeds did He recount unto His people in order to give unto them the inheritance of the nations.'" (Bereshit Rabah 1:2) It is the Almighty who created all - the world, the lands, the peoples in them - for a purpose. And it is He who took The Holy Land from others for the same purpose and gave it to The Chosen People, for that purpose: "And He gave them the lands of nations and they inherited the labor of peoples that they might observe His statutes and keep His laws" (Psalms 105). TO OBSERVE HIS STATUTES AND TO KEEP HIS LAWS. And that is why the non-Jew who wishes to live there can do so only under certain conditions, the most important being that he has nothing to say concerning the state, its character, its workings. This is so for all non-Jews. Any grant to them of citizenship that implies ownership and a right to shape the destiny and character of the state destroys the uniqueness and entire purpose of giving the land to Israel. It invites spiritual assimilation and eventually demands for political autonomy. How much more so for the non-Jewish residents of the Land who lived there BEFORE the L-rd gave it to the Jews. Those residents refuse to recognize such a fact. They believe the land to be theirs and dream of the day when they will regain it. To allow them to remain as proprietors, or even freely living with restrictions, is to ensure not only the general spiritual assimilation that is threatened by any large number of non-Jews, but also the threat of revanchist political and military attack. And that is the clear concept given by the great Biblical commentator, Abarbanel, in explaining why the Children of Israel were forbidden to agree to a covenant of peace with the Canaanite nations which would give both equality and rights in the Land. Abarbanel brings down the verses in Exodus (34:11-12): "Observe thou that which I command this day; behold, I drive out before thee the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Peruzite and the Hivite and the Jesubite. Take heed to thyself lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land that you come upon, lest it be a snare in your midst." And here is what the great Biblical commentator says: "For having taken their land from them there is no doubt that they would always seek the harm of Israel. And that is why the verse says 'the land that you come upon,' i.e., since you, Israel, came upon the land to take it from its inhabitants and they are 'robbed' of it, how will they observe a covenant of love? It will rather be just the opposite, for they will be a 'snare in your midst' and when there will be a war, they will join your enemies and fight you." What sheer clarity and logic and NORMALCY! What understanding of the normal workings of people's minds and national feelings! And what a difference between the great Torah scholar and the tiny Hellenists whose cowardice and fear of facing the truth lead them down such pathways of contempt for the Arabs. Of course the admonition prohibiting a treaty of friendship and equality with the Canaanite nations is EXACTLY the same for the Arabs of Israel, and for precisely the same reason. In both cases we deal with people who lived in the Land before Israel returned. Of course, they do not accept the truth of Divine ownership of the Land by the G-d of Israel, hence Israel's right to take the Land with sovereignty and ownership. Do we expect them to? Of course the ultimate, only reason that they surrender and live quietly is fear and their understanding that they are too weak AT PRESENT to change the situation. But of course they never accept that situation as permanent and of course they dream of the day when they will return their "stolen land" unto themselves. And so, apart from the reason that ANY non-Jews, even those from a people who never lived in the Land, cannot be granted national and citizenship rights in a Jewish state, there is far greater reason in the case of the Canaanites and the Arabs and any non-Jewish people who once lived in Israel and who see it as their land, stolen by the Jews. And, indeed, that is why so many of the Torah commentators deny the right of the Canaanites to live in the Land at all, under any circumstances, because it is impossible that they would not plot revanchist plots. There is no essential difference between the feelings of the Arabs and the Canaanite nations concerning the land they believe to be theirs. And while we may accept the view of those commentators who would grant the Arabs the limited rights of all other gentiles in the Land, it behooves us to watch them far more carefully than we would people who never lived there. David Ben-Ariel is author of "Beyond Babylon: Europe's Rise and Fall." His website address is http://www.benariel.com To Go To Top

A LETTER TO AIPAC MEMBERS Posted by Unity Coalition for Israel, May 18, 2004.

This letter was written by Member of the Knesset Yuri Shtern. You will find supporting information in the AFSI letter below. The rank and file of the Likud party has rejected the "disengagement plan" in a landslide referendum. The Israeli Cabinet refuses to approve it. Yet at the conference you are attending today, the AIPAC leadership has refused written requests by Members of Knesset who are part of the governing coalition to have a representative appear before you and explain why the majority of the Cabinet Ministers opposes the "disengagement plan". You will, however, be required to hear from one of Israel's left-wing MKs, Matan Vilnai. Your annual Conference is an important event for all American citizens who support the State of Israel. It is important that you are afforded the right to hear all the relevant points of view on the issues. Unfortunately, as your conference takes up the most important debate in Israeli politics today, you will only hear one side of the story. The Conservative point of view on this important subject will not be presented, and you will only hear the Left-wing position on this issue. I am bringing this to your attention because I respect your commitment to Israel and believe that you have the right to know the truth. Sincerely, MK Dr. Yuri Shtern The National Unity Coalition is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" To Go To Top

LEFTIST SUPPRESSION OF FREE SPEECH USING SLAPP SUITS Posted by Steven Plaut, May 18, 2004.

SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation. SLAPP suits are anti-democratic harassment "libel" suits filed by people to suppress the free speech of their critics. In Israel, leftist extremists have filed a rash of these harassment suits in recent years as a tactic to silence those who criticize them. This is as good a proof as any about how fundamentally anti-democratic leftists really are. For background information on SLAPP tactics, see http://www.gjs.net/web-slap.htm . In many parts of the United States there are severe penalties against those who use SLAPP suits as a harassment tool. Today one of the most important SLAPP suits by a leftist extremist was defeated. Several others have been defeated in recent months in Israeli courts. The case decided today is a fascinating one, and it illustrates an important victory of democratic free speech over leftist extremists and their totalitarian campaign to silence criticism of the Left through misuse of the courts. Michael Barizon is better known as "B. Michael", which is how he signs his columns in "Yediot Ahronot", Israel's largest daily newspaper. Like so many of his fellow columnists, B. Michael is a leftist extremist. There is a tossup over whether he or Sylvia Keshet is the most fanatic leftist sat Yediot, and a few others there can give them a run for their money. B. Michael has a very long history of publishing craven, libelous material about Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, and about others of whom the Far Left disapproves. In a typical rant, B. Michael described settlers as "evil people, corrupt and pampered over decades with feelings of mastery, madness, and welfare support." You get the idea. It goes from bad to worse after that. Anyway, a columnist at the small religious Israeli daily newspaper "Hatzofe", Chana Eisenman, took a dislike to some of B. Michael's more outrageous rantings. In July 2003 she wrote her own column strongly criticizing B. Michael. She accused him of using Goebbels-like propaganda tactics (her terminology). She accused B. Michael of being one of the world's great anti-Semites. She accused B. Michael of granting his blessings to the rivers of blood being produced by the Palestinian Authority, "blood for which Satan has invented no adequate vengeance". Now as you know, the Left always believes in free speech for itself (alone), no matter how foul and libelous its own ravings, but no one must be allowed to criticize the Left. Sauce for the goose is definitely not sauce for the lemming. Anyone who dares to do so should be sued for libel or worse. Just ask Neve Gordon, the leftist extremist at Ben Gurion University trying to sue me in an extraordinarily similar SLAPP suit to that of B. Michael (see www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ ReadArticle.asp?ID=11497). That is right, B. Michael filed a libel suit against Chana Eisenman. In his suit, B. Michael claimed his "good name" had been damaged by the remarks about him published by Chana Eisenman. He protested his outrage that she had said he was using nazi-like propaganda tactics and that he is an anti-Semite. Chana Eisenman and her lawyers insisted that B. Michael was simply trying to recruit the courts as an instrument to suppress her free speech and her right to criticize his outrageous articles. They insisted she had simply spoken the truth about him. They pointed out that in his columns, B. Michael openly endorses law breaking by the Left for political purposes and libels the settlers. Even though she herself lives on the wrong side of the Green Line (that is, like me, she lives inside pre-1967 Israel and not in the "occupied territories"), she took personal offense at B. Michael's libelous attacks on all Jews living on the other side of the Green Line. And that is why she decided to attack B. Michael's views and behavior in her column. The suit was heard before Jerusalem Magistrate's Court. Earlier today, the judge decided against B. Michael. Even if the statements by Chana Eisenman could be considered libelous, said the judge - who evidently believed some were, they were entirely protected speech because they were denunciations and attacks on the articles by B. Michael that were themselves libelous. The judge emphasized that B. Michael's own articles are clearly libelous and so he is estopped from suing for libel someone else who attacks those articles, especially when the articles criticizing him were direct reactions to what he himself had written. In addition, B. Michael is a columnist and so is a public figure and is clearly not protected against journalistic attacks on his ideas and writings, even if the denunciations of him are in harsh language. The judge stated that the mere identification of a writer with those who have been libeled by a plaintiff, even if the defendant was not explicitly a victim of the plaintiff's libel, is enough to establish "lack of malice" and so free expression remains a legitimate basis for the defendant's own defense. The judge pointed out that the harsher and more outrageous are the comments of a plaintiff that are attacked by a defendant, the easier it is for the defendant to claim a free speech defense, even for harsh language of his/her own. Finally, the Jerusalem magistrate cited rulings by the Chief Justice in Israel in which the latter established that public figures, especially those with direct access themselves to the media, are by and large barred from suing on grounds that their "good name" has been tarnished. Now for those who have been following my own adventures in the realm of leftist utilization of the courts as an anti-democratic harassment tactic, you will see oodles of parallels between this suit and the malicious SLAPP suit I am currently fighting. In that, leftist extremist Neve Gordon, a lecturer in political science at Ben Gurion University, filed a SLAPP suit in Nazareth court (hoping the suit would be assigned an Arab judge - for background, see http://jewishvoiceandopinion.com/ ?x=0401P1A&t=Zionist%20Professor%20Sued %20for%20Views%20in%20Israel Like B. Michael's suit against Eisenman, Gordon claimed I called him an anti-Semite, which I did and which he is. Gordon also claimed I called him a Holocaust Denier; in fact I called him an admirer of Holocaust-Denier Norman Finkelstein, not quite the same thing. (Gordon had written an article comparing Norman Finkelstein, widely regarded as a Holocaust Denier, anti-Semite, and fraud, to the Prophets in the Bible from a moral point of view.) Gordon also was unhappy that I referred to the "human shields" who protected Arafat and the murderers in his headquarters in Ramallah, people whom Gordon joined in an illegal "protest" designed to interfere with Israeli military operations, as "Judenrat wanna-bes." Like B. Michael, Gordon endorses law breaking by leftists, and unlike B. Michael, Gordon has engaged in some of it himself. Like Eisenman's criticisms of Michael, everything I ever wrote about Gordon concerned his own political views expressed in his own articles. Like Michael, Gordon is a public figure and writes columns for dozens of anti-Semitic magazines and web sites all over the world (some of his articles are published in neo-nazi and Holocaust Denial web sites). Like B. Michael, Gordon's own articles are fever swamps of libel. He libels just about everyone he writes about, from his own army commander (a private citizen and not a public figure) to Ehud Barak and Bibi Netanyahu. He also libels Israel, declaring it a fascist, terrorist, apartheid state. By today's court ruling, even if there were anything libelous in anything I had ever wrote about Gordon, and there decidedly is not, it would all be protected speech in light of his own vile writings, which are far worse even than those of B. Michael. Stay tuned, courtroom lovers. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL'S CONDEMNATION Posted by J.Ouanounou, May 18, 2004.

Amnesia International condemns Israel for the destruction of palestinian buildings, and says that it is a "crime against Mankind". And the killing in cold blood of a pregnant women and her four young children, killed with bearing end in their car, is this a crime against the real estate? This is distributed by the Jewish Community of France. Contact them at Communaute-Juive-France@yahoogroupes.fr To Go To Top

MY SON'S EAR Posted by Linda Olmert, May 18, 2004.

When we think that we have witnessed the depths to which these ???? that we are surrounded by will sink to, we discover that worse is yet in store. What should we call them. "People" is out of the question. "Animals" is also unacceptable: I have never heard of animals who behave this way. On most of yesterday here in Israel, we were involved in a public discourse that was the most tragically bizarre that I have ever been a witness or party to: what price should we pay for the pieces of our soldiers, the children of our neighbors and friends? The former Chief Rabbi Lau expressed the opinion that if we do not do everything to get the pieces back, we will be undermining the motivation of every soldier from now on. Others quoted Ron Arad's mother's will which stipulated that should her son be determined dead, no price was to be paid to ransom his body. In a letter, Naomi Ragen writes: "What shall we do? Often, the phrase from Conrad's Heart of Darkness goes through my head: "Exterminate the brutes." But there are so many of them. So many. And even though the Jewish people now possess an army which is able to make sure every Jewish life taken will be paid for by the lives of the murderers, our love of life doesn't see this as a victory, or a solution. What is their dead to us? We do not glory in it. If they live or die, the fact that they have taken one of our husbands, mothers, children is a loss and a defeat. And an unbearable tragedy." May the souls of our soldiers rest in peace. And may their families and People be comforted in the building of Zion. This article is called, "Family To Bury Son After Anguished Wait" and is by Tovah Lazaroff, It appeared in the Jerusalem Post, May. 13, 2004. "Please God, no soldier should injure a fingernail to get back my son's ear," said Sara Newman, her voice shaking with emotion, as she sat in the front hallway of her Ramot home in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Her son, Eitan, 21, was one of six soldiers killed in Gaza Tuesday. While soldiers searched for body parts and rumors circulated about a possible deal for pieces of the six young men already in possession of the Islamic Jihad, Sara, her husband Michael, and their two remaining sons, sat waiting to hear how much of Eitan will be coming home for burial. They received news only late Wednesday night that it was possible to bury Eitan on Thursday. "It's an unusual situation, normally we would have held the funeral straight away," said Michael. Wednesday would have found their home filled with shiva visitors. Instead, Sara and Michael noted that everything is backwards. They and their sons sat in circles of friends, who hug them and cry. The tables were laid out with photos of Eitan, bottles of soda and plates of cake and fruit. It looks like the home of a shiva, but it wasn't. They had undergone none of the mourning rituals. It was a scene that was repeated in the homes of the other soldiers as well. "The whole thing is very long, it makes it more difficult in the long run," said Michael. Two soldiers have been posted in their home to keep them updated on the details of what was happening, but Michael said they promised not to speak about the details. "We would not put any pressure on the army to bring back more pieces than they would think is reasonable," said Michael, who immigrated from England in 1980. In the Knesset and in the media, politicians debated the wisdom of sending soldiers to retrieve the body parts. Michael and Sara said it isn't worth risking the lives of other soldiers to do so. "The decision is not ours, it's the army's," said Michael. From the moment his son Eitan entered the army, he continued, he had a premonition that something would happen. Shaking his head, he noted that the premonition was not in place the last time he saw his son on Sunday night when the family had a party to celebrate another son's engagement. His mother Sara smiles at the memory of Eitan at that moment. "We had such a good time, together, all of us. It was so much fun," she said. They didn't hear from him again. He didn't call to tell them he had returned to the base safely or to check in. "It was a point with us, I didn't want him to phone, I didn't want to be nervous about it," said Sara. She told him to just call when he felt like it. On Tuesday morning, both she and her husband got phone calls from concerned friends. Sara was running errands. Michael was in Hadassah hospital where he works as a medical researcher. At first, Sara heard from someone that Eitan was injured. She was relieved. It was a crazy moment, she said, to be walking along the street relieved that her son was injured. She spoke to her husband and they agreed to head home. He went to the bank machine in the hospital to take out cash and saw soldiers. He went up to them and asked if they were looking for him, recalled Sara. They were. He told her the news when he met her at home. Since then their home with a view of the Jerusalem hills has been filled with people round the clock. "Life's a bitch," she said to a number of her friends who sat next to her. "He was the single most wonderful kid in the world. Everyone's little boy is a good boy," said Sara. "He is just mine," said Sara. She always felt that way, she said, but as visitors relate stories of how he went out of his way to help people, she feels she is only getting to know how amazing he really was. During his breaks from the army he would deliver food packages to the poor in the early morning so no one would see him, said Sara adding that Eitan was very modest. One older woman came to the house to tell them that every time Eitan saw her on the bus, he helped her with her packages. Eitan loved Israel. He knew all the paths along the Kinneret because he had hiked it so often. He collected books of Hebrew songs about the country. He would sing them on hikes with his friends, even though people would laugh at him. One night after maneuvers in the army, he climbed up to Mount Tabor to see the sunrise with his friends singing those songs. "He loved life and the country. Judaism was very important to him. He lived for the moment." To Go To Top

TERRORISM: GUILIANI'S TAKE; BUSH'S MISTAKE Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 18, 2004.

THE CONSPIRATORS CRY CONSPIRACY Internet newsgroups have minimal standards. Anybody can write to them, and does. One sees topics such as, "Massive Deception by Israel" and "Is Ethnic Cleansing of Arabs Gaining Legitimacy?" Those headlines are pro-Arab propaganda. They reflect the standard Arab practice of accusing enemies, especially Israel, of what is typical Arab and not Jewish behavior. A major Arab cultural trait is deception. It may be the main trait that the West needs to know about the Arabs. If the American people knew it, they might not let the State Dept., which probably does know, insist on a "negotiated solution." Likewise, Israel would have absorbed the unsettled parts of Yesha, instead of reserving them for the Arabs to negotiate over. A major Arab military practice is ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing, itself, is not evil. The ethics of it depend on the methods and purpose. If the purpose is to separate irreconcilable peoples so as to prevent war, and the methods are benign, it prevents many times the suffering it causes. Thus I recommend voluntary and non-violent transfer of the Arabs out of Israel and the territories, because the Arab presence makes for persecution and war against innocent Jews. The Arabs' purpose in ethnic cleansing is to murder, enslave, humiliate, and dispossess. But they pretend that Israel is clearing them out of the Territories, while they are pouring into it and even into Israel. Our media quotes the Arabs' false complaints, instead of exposing them. Deliberately false propaganda should not be dignified as if merely someone's viewpoint. GIULIANI ON TERRORISM Most people think the world is less safe after 9/11. (Actually, they feel less safe because now that they know how dangerous times are.) Ex-Mayor Giuliani considers it much safer. The attack forced "us" to confront terrorism. Confronting it earlier saves lives later. Previously, international terrorism met with negotiations and self-recrimination. That reaction encouraged terrorists to persist. It was the same approach that led to Mexico being a kidnapping capital, whereas the US has little kidnapping. It was the same approach, a form of appeasement, that let the Nazi menace grow, requiring a greater effort to stifle it. By taking the offense, now, we can stop terrorism. Support for that war, unfortunately, is getting frayed by minor problems with it. We must persevere, said Giuliani. The real problem in the Mideast, he suggested, is poverty, inequality of women, lack of freedom of religion, and resulting anger that is exploited to harm the West. The answer is democracy, under which leaders are accountable to the people (John P. Avlon, NY Sun, 5/10, p.11). We should not let the fine crafting of the article and Giuliani's deserved praise convince us that he understands terrorism. The US has failed to define the war on terrorism properly, to expand it sufficiently, and to persuade the non-Islamist world to embrace it and most Americans of its importance. Giuliani failed to cite evidence for the factors he suggested. Nobody has. Terrorism in the Mideast results from the Arabs' religious intolerance and violence. For that, there is much evidence. Listen to the mosques' constant exhortations to jihad and watch the worldwide jihad! The Arabs' other qualities produce poverty and inequality of women. Since few women go in for terrorism, their anger, if they even have it, is not a factor. Terrorism is an ideology, not an outlet for the impoverished, or else it would be rife in southern Africa. Democracy might not inhibit terrorism in the Arab culture of bigotry and violence but enable their collectively intolerant society to more cleverly direct their energy against other faiths. We do not confront half the terrorist regimes. We do nothing about S. Arabia, Iran, and N. Korea. We subsidize the Palestinian Authority, seeking to turn it into a state, and without seeing to it that it ceases terrorism. Nor can we expect it to. Jihadists do not compromise with their religious imperatives. They must be defeated and uprooted. BUSH'S MISTAKE WITH TERRORISTS Pres. Bush seeks pardon from the Arab countries for the US guards' sadism in an Iraqi prison. Apologies are owed only to Iraqi families. The foreign Arabs don't care about torture of Arabs. They did not object when Saddam did it (and they do to their own people). We should hold firm in Iraq, not be manipulated. We must prepare Iraq for self-rule in a decent manner. We should not let the alien UN into Iraq. Its envoy is part of the Arab problem. If we abdicate our responsibility, Iraq will return to the menace it was, internally and externally (Prof. Steven Plaut, 5/12). Prof. Plaut is correct. Pres. Bush is making a fool of himself. On the other hand, the Arabs probably do object to torture by outsiders. It is dubious whether, in the time we have left there, we could prepare Iraq properly. Its culture may preclude decent development in a short period. AL-QAEDA MAY BE WINNING The US appears to be entering an economic boom, but the stock market is not responding. Most financiers suppose that investors anticipate rising interest rates. One suggests the real concern is that the Mideast is too uncertain and dangerous. Osama bin Laden may be "achieving exactly what he wants, namely, isolating America and Israel, uniting Muslims and Arabs, and creating the beginnings of a holy war against America and Western culture." (Dan Dorfman, NY Sun, 5/10, p.13.) Europe is uniting with the Arabs. Although the US keeps working at getting the Arabs concessions from Israel and at arming the Arabs, the Arabs hate the US. US policymakers don't realize that the issue should not be their oil profits but survival. Appeasement never paid and cannot win the friendship of totalitarian ideologues. To the Arabs, we remain infidels, the ones still capable of barring their march to global dominance. They have in mind a different globalism from the one our free traders propose. WHEN IS SEPARATION NOT SEPARATION? Interior Min. Poraz said that even after an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Israel would have to bomb enemies in Gaza. He suggests first warning civilians. Finance Min. Netanyahu suggested that Israel shut off Gaza utilities until the Arabs hand over the remains of the IDF troops killed. He suggests that photos of Arabs playing with the body parts be broadcast worldwide, to show what the Arabs are like (IMRA, 5/11). Show them with those of Mr. Berg. Comprehensive truth is the best propaganda for the civilized side. If Israel issues warnings, enemy gunmen could remove themselves and material targets o lay in ambush. Advance warning would produce Israeli casualties. It is cruel, not decent. The stated purpose of Israeli withdrawal is to separate the two peoples. As Min. Poraz realizes, however, the withdrawal would not stop the Arabs from pursuing the Jews. As Jewish nationalists realize, it would encourage the Arabs to pursue the Jews. THE "NO CHOICE" EXCUSE When Israel does something particularly stupid, it gives the excuse that it has no choice. Thus Sharon released 450 live Hizbullah terrorists for 3 dead Israeli troops and one live crook. Now Gaza terrorists are holding IDF body parts ransom for more concessions. Israel never acted this way. It does not wrap Arab bodies in pig skin, so jihadists would consider their accession to paradise thwarted. Why? It would offend Arab sensibilities (Prof. Steven Plaut, 5/11, e-mail). The Israeli government reasons thus: (1) It can't do nothing, it has to do something. (2) It can't do something in its national interest, it must do something contrary to it. That is mistaken, too. (3) It must concern itself with the feelings of Arabs who have no feelings for Jews as equal human beings. (4) It releases Arab prisoners to obtain Arab goodwill or to save Jewish lives. Nonsense, Arab religious fanatics do not change their opinion of infidels who act high-mindedly. As superior beings, the Arabs believe, all consideration is coming to them. As for saving lives, the hundreds of terrorists released will take more lives than immediately saved. Let Israel challenge the Arabs with, "You want to exchange a hundred Arabs for one Jew? Does that mean you think each Arab is worth only a hundredth of a Jew?" It isn't fair that the Arabs wage holy war sadistically, but the West won't thwart it with pig skins. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

A MAN WITHOUT A FACE Posted by Yashiko Sagamori, May 18, 2004.

You've seen me on TV, but you don't know my name, and if you run into me in the street, you won't recognize me. That's because my face was covered while I was posing for the camera along with four of my comrades, assembled for the execution of an American. I am one of those responsible, whom your president promised to bring to justice. Good luck! It may come as a surprise to you, but I felt some pity for the poor guy whose head we cut off. He knew what was about to happen and, yet, he went to his death without a fight, like a sheep. He couldn't have gotten away, of course; but, at the same time, he had nothing to lose, and there was little we could've done if he had decided to violate the dignity of our presentation by kicking and screaming, except maybe making his death more painful. He would've been killed anyway; but, at least, he would've died like a man, fighting. On the other hand, we had to make the video, and if he had spoiled it for us, we would've had to execute someone else. Your president is sending your soldiers and civilians alike to die in Iraq in pursuit of the pipe dream of spreading democracy. Our warriors die fighting for the sacred goal of spreading Islam. But the symmetry ends right there. Just look at what all contemporary democracies have in common: they all exist in prosperous capitalist countries populated mostly by Christians or, in the case of Israel, Jews. I doubt this is just a coincidence, since every single prosperous capitalist country populated mostly by Christians or Jews is a democracy. Although India and Turkey are considered democracies, neither of them presents an example to the contrary. Indian democracy is forced to coexist with their ancient caste system, which will easily outlive their democracy as well as any other sign of Western influence. And if you think that Turkey is such a free country, why has no American ever emigrated there in search of liberties unattainable at home? We, Arabs, lack the prosperity of the decadent West. We are not capitalists. We are dirt poor. We have always been poor and always will be. Our most coveted possession, oil, was worthless a few decades ago, before capitalism made the West so powerful, and it will become worthless again a few decades from today, when capitalism dies and the power of the West becomes a thing of the past. And, of course, we are neither Jews nor Christians. We are Muslims. Our desert soil will not support democracy. Nothing grows on it, but jihad. Let me ask you, what on earth could possibly give you an idea that we want democracy? Have you ever seen us do anything at all that could be interpreted as craving for the personal freedom that Americans, in their arrogance, are so eager to spread and to defend with their lives? Of course, we are moving to Europe and your country in ever growing numbers, but liberty is never on the list of personal reasons that cause so many of us to tear our roots from the sand, cross the ocean and settle among our mortal enemies. Our great migration to the West is not a drive to freedom; it is jihad, pure and simple, albeit in its least spectacular form. When America and Europe do not come to Mohammad, Mohammad comes to America and Europe. Some of us achieve great success among the infidel, but most do not even bother, because we know that sooner or later your evil folly will fall apart, as easily and as completely, as the World Trade Center collapsed under our blows, and the world will revert to the simple, clear truth of the Holy Koran. Where will you run when we turn your land into desert? Where will you hide? But let us forget for a moment that democracy in Iraq is impossible. Let your fantasy loose. Imagine that you somehow win and Iraq becomes an American-style democracy. Imagine even that it fights jihad on your side. Of course, based on the performance of its army in the two wars your Bushes have forced on our people, you might be better off with them fighting against you; but imagine that, against all odds, you manage to teach them to fight like you do, cowardly and efficiently. Here's the question: how is that supposed to make you safe from terrorism? How will it stop another bunch of Saudis, or Egyptians, or Moroccans, or Libyans, or Jordanians from flying another couple of jets into another couple of skyscrapers, or plant a few dirty bombs, or poison your water supply, or do any of the things we normally do whenever the opportunity presents itself? The answer is, it won't. You can't win this war. Not the way you're fighting it. Try looking at it from my perspective. The father of the executed American put the blame for his death on Bush and Rumsfield. I understand that you have little reason to trust anything I say; but you may believe me when I tell you that neither Bush nor Rumsfield were among the five men who beheaded the American. I know; I was there. I'm sure the father of the dead American knows it as well. Right now, he is probably going through the most painful days of his whole life, and you shouldn't judge him. God only knows what stupid things each one of us may do or say when forced to see his beloved son die without a purpose, while powerless to defend him and with no hope to ever avenge his death. Only the purpose gives us strength to face tragedy with dignity, like countless Palestinian mothers whose sons and daughters have martyred themselves fighting the Zionist occupation of their land. But let's get back to the dead guy's father. He knows we, Arabs, killed his son, in strict accordance with our culture, our tradition, and our religion. Bush is the only world leader, trying to fight back, although with no chance of success. And yet, the grieving father blames your president. Blaming Islam, Arabs in general, or even just the five of us has never occurred to him or almost anyone else in the world. This is no exception. Whatever we do to uphold the glory of God, the world reacts as if the devastation we visit upon our enemies is caused by something absolutely beyond human control, like bad weather. Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, kill thousands of people each year, but nobody calls for retribution, nobody demands revenge. That leaves me and my brothers blameless. We can murder infidels in front of cameras. We can cut them to pieces and pose with their body parts. We can do anything we want, and nobody, be he friend or foe, is going to blame us for it. Just think about it. You are so proud of your freedom, but in reality it's we who are the freest people on earth. If you believe we are going to surrender our absolute freedom in exchange for the chimera of American-style democracy, you are totally, ridiculously wrong, and I will gladly tear you apart, preferably with news photographers present, to prove it. I remember how at the beginning of the war your newspapers kept guessing if the Iraqis were going to turn on you or greet you as liberators. We adored Saddam, but not because he did anything good for us. He robbed the country blind; his thugs tortured people to death at his whim. This is what a ruler does. This is what any man would do in his place. Only no other man was smart enough to get in his place. That's why we admired him so. And when the Americans came, we greeted them for two reasons. First, we expected to be punished if we failed to extol the new rulers. Second, you had beaten the man we thought was unbeatable. In your country, when a challenger knocks down the heavyweight champion of the world, you all love the winner, don't you? It took us time to realize that, despite your awesome arms and the excellent training of your soldiers, you are weak. You don't have what it takes to win a war against Arabs. You don't understand your enemy. Your president promised to bring me to justice. He might or might not get lucky, but killing or capturing me will change nothing. I am a warrior; I expect to die at the enemy's hands, and I am not afraid of my fate. But how will my death or capture help you? You captured Saddam; did it help you? I, on the other hand, given the opportunity would not only kill your president, but wouldn't miss a chance to butcher your grandmother either - not because she posed any danger for me, but because this is a war, and in a war you do not miss a chance to hurt your enemy. I hope you understand there is nothing personal in it. This is jihad. You thought you won the war when Saddam's army crumbled under your assault, unable to put up any real resistance. Now you know that by the time Saddam's army was completely demolished, the war hadn't even started yet. Now you have a real war on your hands, and you have lost it. It won't be easy to point out when it happened, because it happened gradually, but I can name the exact moment when you reached the point of no return. It was when you allowed Fallujah to survive the murder and mutilation of four American civilians. You failed to implement the only policy that would've given you a chance: submit or die. You failed to destroy Fallujah with all its population. What happened next? Muqtaba al-Sadr, a nobody, a man who has nothing to show for himself except his dead father's fame, challenges you and survives. Now even children are no longer afraid of you. Here's a lesson for you. Winning a war and keeping your armor shiny are two very different tasks. You are about to learn that when you are dealing with an enemy like us, these tasks are mutually exclusive. Nothing exposes your innate weakness better than your refusal to do what needs to be done for fear of causing the hatred of Muslims. Do you think we hate you now any more or any less than we hated you on the eve of 9/11? Are you afraid of how the UN might react if you do the right thing? Doesn't it strike you as strange that we, the obvious underdog, do not care whether you love us or hate us, although you can, in theory, blow us away in less time than it took us to film the beheading? Think about it till we meet again. And we will, I promise. Yashiko Sagamori is a New York-based Information Technology consultant. To read other articles by the author, go to http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko/ or email ysagamori@hotmail.com To Go To Top

AN OPEN LETTER TO THOMAS FRIEDMAN Posted by Dafna Yee, May 17, 2004.

Dear Mr. Friedman: Sometimes after someone has been doing the same job for a long time, he becomes careless. It can happen to drivers and factory workers as well as journalists. In the case of a reporter, the rules that one learned in school, like integrity and double-checking sources, don't seem important anymore and get overlooked after a reporter has developed a reputation and a byline. The person forgets that he is supposed to REPORT the news and not create it himself. So, instead of examining your terms for accuracy, maybe you just decided to make up some on your own because they are catchy and inflammatory, and you've reached a point where no one is checking your work anymore. An explanation for your comparing Israeli "extremist settlers" to Arab jihadists in Iraq in your outrageous article: "Tyranny of the Minorities" could be that you have succumbed to such sloppiness in your articles. But maybe it isn't carelessness that has caused you to use such loaded and false terminology. Perhaps you have legitimate reasons for labeling the Israelis as "extremist settlers." I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and to examine the situation in Israel to find a legitimate reason for your doing so. Since there are really several issues here, we'll examine each one separately. First, your decision to use the adjective "extremist" to label the Israeli residents of Gush Katif (which is the real name of the area where Israelis live) in addition to the misnomer "settlers" needs to be examined. From your earlier writings about Israelis, it is clear that you follow the Arab propaganda lexicon very closely, but adding the adjective "extremist" to the already false term of "settlers" is clearly your own invention. However, I'll try and look at your use of terminology objectively (even though you didn't) and see what the Israelis could possibly have done to lead you to call them "extremists" and to compare them to Arab fanatics in Iraq. Of course -- it's because they have been randomly shooting missiles at the Arab villages for years. No, it can't be that, because it is the Arab terrorists who have constantly bombarded and targeted the Israeli neighborhoods, never the other way around. Then it must be the Israelis' use of their young people, even children, as human bombs deliberately aimed at Arab civilians with promises of martyrdom if they succeed in dying while killing Arabs. No, it can't be that either, because there has not been a single Israeli human bomber! Oddly enough, the "extremist" Israelis don't teach their children that the greatest goal they can aspire to is to kill Arabs; it is only the "peaceloving Arabs" who do that. But don't worry, I don't give up easily. Let's see... What else would an extremist group do? I've got it -- they've hidden in houses and olive groves so they could ambush Arabs as they went by minding their own business. Wrong again. It's always Arab terrorists who ambush Israelis (and sometimes Americans)! This is harder than I thought, to figure out your reasoning. Wait a minute. How could I have forgotten? It was Israelis who pumped bullets -- at pointblank range -- into a 34 year old pregnant Arab woman and then did the same to her four little girls (aged 2-11) in the family car. No, it can't be that either, because Tali Hatuel was an Israeli social worker on her way to urge Israelis to protest Sharon's despicable "disengagement plan" when she and her children were murdered in cold blood by Arab terrorists. (She and her four children were five of the "extremist settlers" you wrote about and in another month a sixth "extremist settler" would have been added to the total!) Or perhaps you called the Israelis "extremists" because they chopped up Arab soldiers that they ambushed and then hid their body parts? No, that can't be the reason either as it was Arab barbarians who did that, too! I'm running out of ideas here. Maybe it's all the tunnels that the Israelis have built to smuggle arms in order to attack innocent Arabs? No, it can't be that because all the smuggling tunnels are in Arab homes and the arms are smuggled FROM Egypt to use against Israelis! The only other reason that I can think of would be that the Israelis get their identity from a group whose purpose for existing is the destruction of the Arab countries. But it can't be that either, because it is the 'Palestinians' whose leaders are known terrorists, and whose very charter states that its purpose is to destroy Israel and annihilate all Israelis. Israelis, in contrast, get their identity from being citizens of a democratic sovereign nation. The hard truth is that the ONLY thing that can possibly be considered "extremist" about the Israelis in Gush Katif is their absolute refusal to leave their homes and to see their enemies move onto their land, enjoying the fruits of three generations of their labor! The second issue is your misuse of the term "settlers." The "settlers" do not consist of a few Israeli mavericks as you are implying. There are approximately 8,000 Israeli residents in Gush Katif (that you wrongly misnamed "Palestinian Gaza") and over 200,000 Israelis in Judea/Samaria (that you wrongly called the "West Bank") whom you disparage by that term. Their homes are in well-established neighborhoods with all modern amenities like schools, clinics, municipal offices, parks, etc., as well as flourishing farms and factories in areas that, under Arab occupation, were barren and empty. Another point about Israeli "settlers" that you either don't know or insist on ignoring is that they are living on ISRAELI LAND! The only agreed-upon "Palestinian territory" is that administered by the Palestinian Authority! Even that territory has only existed since Oslo, when a group of misguided Israelis gave in to world pressure, because they foolishly thought that giving legitimacy to barbaric terrorists would turn them into civilized people who would concentrate on helping their own people get better lives. IT DID NOT WORK! But, the land where Israelis -- including the "extremist settlers" -- live is not land controlled by the Palestinian Authority (which is nothing but a euphemism for the PLO)! Therefore, ALL Israeli citizens, including residents of its border communities such as Gush Katif, Judea and Samaria, live on land that belongs to Israel! Here's a little history lesson for you. ALL that land that was formerly known as Palestine(including what is Jordan today) was promised to the Zionists as an integral part of the terms of the Mandate and approved by the League of Nations. In other words, Great Britain was given the administration of the Palestine Mandate expressly to form a Homeland for the Jewish people there! (The fact that NOTHING was promised to the "Palestinian Arabs" is not surprising considering that they didn't exist as a separate group until Arafat created the PLO in 1964; they adopted the term "Palestinians" in 1967. The "Palestinians" as a separate group of Arabs weren't even recognized by the Arab countries until the Rabat Conference in 1974.) That territory was occupied by Jordan and Egypt for 20 years after the Israeli War of Independence; it was TAKEN BACK in 1967 when Israel was attacked by the combined Arab forces and WON! Just for the record, Arabs did NOT build villages or farms on the land during the 20 years it was occupied by Jordan and Egypt; NO ONE showed any interest in making that land into a country called "Palestine" until AFTER the Israelis had returned and built it up. The Jordanians in Jerusalem didn't even use Hadassah Hospital, which the Jews were forced to abandon, as a hospital. That building, along with many others, were left standing empty, after Jews were forbidden to live there -- on land which Jewish ancestors had lived in uninterruptedly for thousands of years! Another point about "settlers" is that there have been far more Arab immigrants than Jewish ones into Israel because the Arabs in Israel, at least before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, had a higher standard of living than Arabs anywhere else in the Middle East. They also had the lowest infant mortality rates and the highest literacy rates. Masses of Arabs have been immigrating into Israel ever since Jews started coming back in the late 19th century and only increased their numbers after Israel was established. Indeed, there are more new Arab settlements than Jewish ones in the border areas (if you mean by settlements, communities that have been established in the last 10 years). However, the biggest piece of misinformation that you are spreading in your article is not your terminology, as outrageous as that is. It is the false idea that only a minority of Israelis are against the insane philosophies encompassed in the idiocy known as "land for peace" which entails negotiating with terrorists and giving concessions to one's enemies. The fact is that there are a small number of residents in the border communities, especially those who have been misled by both Israeli leaders and their American friends, who might be willing to leave their neighborhoods in their hope that doing so would bring peace. However, NONE of the Israelis who live there are in favor of such a move, if by that allegation you meant eager! Moreover, the majority of Israelis who live in more central parts of Israel don't want them to leave their homes either! THESE BORDER COMMUNITIES ARE PROVIDING SECURITY TO THE REST OF ISRAEL FROM UNRESTRAINED TERRORIST ATTACKS! That is why the Israeli government urged people to move there (and even gave free home loans as an incentive) in the first place! The Israelis in the border communities have lived in their homes for THREE GENERATIONS and they do not want to leave! And despite what their enemies abroad and traitors in their own country say, THEY DON'T HAVE TO! But perhaps I misinterpreted your use of inflammatory terminology and misinformation. If your use of such terms is not a result of carelessness nor from a legitimate concern that the Israeli "extremist settlers" are dangerous, the only other possible reason for your provocative and inflammatory mislabeling of the 8,000 Israeli residents of Gush Katif as "extremist settlers" and comparing them to Arab barbarians, is simply that you are no longer able even to pretend to be objective because of your extreme personal anti-Israel bias! It is writers like you that have cost the NY Times its standard of journalism for which it used to be known. If you can't keep your personal feelings out of your articles, you should consider another line of work. I recommend political spin-doctor as you've obviously had a lot of practice twisting facts to fit your personal ideology. Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

ENOUGH OF THOMAS FRIEDMAN'S TYRANNY Posted by Yuval Zaliouk, May 17, 2004.

Thomas Friedman is completely out of his mind! His blind hatred of legitimate Jewish citizens of Judea, Samaria and Gaza causes him to lose his compass as well as his Jewish heritage. In his latest NY Times attached article titled "Tyranny of the Minorities," May 16, 2004, he has the impudence to compare peaceful Jewish inhabitants to the renegade, murderous gangs of Moktada al-Sadr in Iraq. He calls the Jewish citizens 'extremists' without giving us one example as to what he means by it. Simply put, if Jewish citizens, who lived 36 years in Judea, Samaria and Gaza with the blessings of all Israeli governments, can be evacuated under fire at a whim, why not people who live in Jaffa, Ashdod, Ashkelon and ultimately all of Israel? Is this what Friedman advocates, and if not, what in his opinion is the difference? Here are a few crucial points to remember: 1. Since 1967, the Jewish inhabitants in the territories had full backing and financial support of ALL Israeli governments, including the labor governments of Rabin and Peres. 2. The Jewish inhabitants live in peace in parts of their homeland. They did not murder anybody and are not planning to do so. Their only 'sin; is that they wish to live in these parts of the land of Israel, even if the short sighted Thomas Friedman opposes it. 3. Is a Jew who wishes to live anywhere in the world, let alone in his own homeland, extreme, just for that reason? 4. Thomas Friedman compares the Jewish inhabitants to the extremist Muslim gangs of Al Sadr, despite the fact that the great majority of them are not religious fanatics but secular Israelis. 5. Contrary to Friedman's misleading assertions, no Jewish 'settler' EVER demonstrated any 'disdain for the law.' By any standard, they are living in Gaza, Judea and Samaria legally. 6. The demonstration against the 'settlers' last Saturday is not different from a similar huge demonstration a week before of those in Israel who support them. The demonstrators last Saturday used the safe location of Rabin Square in Tel Aviv. The thousands of demonstrators the week before traveled to perilous Gaza in support of its Jewish citizens. 7. We are yet to witness one tiny Arab-Palestinian demonstration for peace. 8. Indeed, at the moment, polls in Israel show that the majority of Israelis favor evacuation of Gaza. However, all these polls failed to ask such simple question as to the timing and circumstances of such evacuation. Is Friedman, the 'genius,' incapable of analyzing such facts? 9. The 14 Givati soldiers who were killed last week, are certainly not 'victims of the settlement enterprise.' This is a vicious, despicable and crazy assertion. These brave soldiers, who were engaged in door to door combat in order to spare the lives of Arab civilians, were there to destroy rocket manufacturing workshops, rockets used by the Arabs to shell towns and villages inside Israel. 10. Evacuation of Jewish citizens of Gaza will not guarantee that the Arabs will stop their rocket and mortar shelling of Israel, quite the contrary, it will encourage them. No doubt, the Israeli army will have to continue its defensive activity in the Gaza strip even if all Israeli villages are evacuated. 11. Thomas Freidman has delusions of grandeur. He is a legend in his own mind. He believes he is an expert in the Middle East conflict just because he has been writing about it. The left-liberal agenda he is pushing has long gone bankrupt. The Israeli tiny minority of Israel's liberal-left is in total disarray, still prisoners of the long dead Oslo disaster, as a result of relentless Arab violence. 12. The majority in Israel is on the right of the political spectrum, a fact Friedman desperately tries to ignore. Thomas Friedman latest despicable diatribe in the service of Arab propaganda, deserves the utmost condemnation of any justice seeking person. It is high time for the New York Times to fire this ignorant charlatan. Your Truth Provider, Yuval PS. Since I wrote this bulletin this morning, HonestReporting published their comments on the outrage. It is entitled: "Friedman's Calculus: Settlers = Shiite Thugs" NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote on Sunday, May 16: Question: What do the Shiite extremist leader Moktada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army have in common with the extremist Jewish settlers in Israel? Answer: More than you'd think. Both movements combine religious messianism, and a willingness to sacrifice their followers and others for absolutist visions, along with a certain disdain for man-made laws, as opposed to those from God. The big question in both Iraq and Israel today is also similar: Will the silent majorities in both countries finally turn against these extremist minorities to save their future? Friedman has long drawn outrageous comparisons between Israeli settlers and Palestinian terrorists, but he breaks new ground by bringing American victims into his twisted equation. Al-Sadr leads an armed movement attempting to drive Americans from Iraq by killing as many US soldiers as possible. Its members are attempting to impose their will by using shoulder-launched rockets and other weaponry, hiding themselves and their armaments in mosques, and firing at American troops from their religious havens. How are the residents of Gaza, whom Friedman equates with the Mahdi Army, 'fighting' their battle? They utilized the democratic process to make their voices heard, mobilizing supporters to encourage members of the Likud party to vote against Sharon's plan. This, Friedman disingenuously argues, is an appropriate comparison. The distortion is particularly damaging to a region starving for models of democratic process. Comments to: letters@nytimes.com Yuval Zaliouk write the Truth Provider essays. To subscribe, send an email to ynz@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

KOL-OSLO-ISRAEL IS A WICKED ENTERPRISE Posted by Iam Joseph, May 17, 2004.

Every day, most of this media's articles boast the heinous stories of Al Jazeera and other Islamist propaganda of the worst kind - as though such stories are a legitimate point of view. Thus a host of monstrous falsehoods are embedded into the Israeli-Jewish psyche, creating a mindset of guilt and fear. In recent days, a daily onslaught of articles fostering the views of the UN, EU and Arab and European media have been highlighted, targeting Israel for HOMES DESTRUCTION - but you won't find Israel's reasonings here, nor that any of those attacking Israel voiced themselves against the horrific terrorism in the past two weeks. The fact is this is how the Left operates - hiding behind democrasy and free speech selectively and as it suits their heinous agenda. The OSLOites emulate the terrorists who use democracy for their own deathly cause - and after spreading their cancer - they have zilch fear of Heaven when retorting this is what Israelis and Jews also want. No Jews should cry when Heaven smashes these Dathans - how can we when we're so busy mourning our dead? To Go To Top

REVENANT IS RELEVANT Posted by Yishrael Medad, May 17, 2004.

The American writer Carolyn Wells, who died 60 years ago, asserted 'actions lie louder than words'. Be that as it may, words still play an important part in the craft of fooling people. This is especially so in the Arab-Israel conflict. To take one example, the proper nomenclature for the Jewish civilian residential areas in the disputed territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza, as even William Safire has indicated, should be communities rather than the pejorative and negatively connotative 'settlements'. Jews live in communities or, for that matter, in cities, towns and villages. They do not live in 'settlements'. In his August 5, 2001 column, On Language, in the New York Times Weekend Magazine, Safire has written: "Words have connotations. In the disputed territory known as the West Bank, an Israeli village is called a settlement, implying fresh intrusion; a small Palestinian town, even one recently settled, is called a village, implying permanence." Of course, his use of 'disputed' rather than 'occupied', or for that matter, 'liberated', in another example of the importance of how one calls an act or a situation. This phenomenon, of harnessing language to political ideology, is not exceptional nor is it new. In a volume discussing political geography, Richard Muir deals with an 'image system' whereby a subjective perception of reality is promoted via language so as to achieve superiority either at negotiations or other actions that will help establishing borders to territories. The use of 'occupied' and of 'settlements' and 'settlers' is a projection of a desired reality. That Israel's official state institutions such as the Foreign Ministry's information services and their employees continue to use these very terms is unfortunate, to say the least. Incidentally, I am sure that a very good case could be made supporting the proposition that, semantically, Yasser Arafat himself is an 'occupier' of the local Palestinian Arab population. He need not be technically foreign to the area but his policies indeed form an occupation of Areas A and B and do oppress the local population. But what should we term the Jews who live in the territories? A substitute for the word 'settlers' has been hard to come by. I once introduced myself to a British Foreign Office Official at an appointment I had arranged at its London's King Charles Street complex as a 'Jewish civilian resident of a community located in Samaria'. Puzzled momentarily, he quickly interjected 'but I thought I was to converse with a settler'. True, that was too many words, and therein is the problem. I think, though, that a more accurate noun perhaps has been found, one that is more relevant to the reality. It is revenant. According the American Heritage Dictionary, a revenant is one who returns after a lengthy absence. A revenant can be any person who shows up after a long absence such as those who come back to their ancestral home after years of political exile. This is the classic definition although Sir Walter Scott used it in his novel the Fair Maid, to denote a ghost. It stems from the French "revenir," which means simply "to return". Jews lived in the hills of Judea and Samaria for over 3500 years, as nomads, as tribal chieftains and as kings, priests and prophets. They were dispersed once and returned. They were exiled and returned. Despite foreign conquerors, they persisted in returning under the most difficult of political, religious and economic conditions. Their civilization was created in the area as was their literature. Their three most important cities are there. The Torah and the New Testament use the terms Judea, Samaria and Gaza. The Quran records God's command that the Jews should live in the Promised Land. Eighty years ago, the world recognized unabashedly and with no disagreement the right of Jews to reestablish their historic homeland as a political entity. And following a brief 19 year long hiatus, Jews are once again living there. This, then, may be the word we need to employ. One word, of course, does not a victory make. Terminology is never terminal. Nevertheless, a major part of Israel's Hasbara problem, especially in the medium of the electronic media and in academic and other political forums is its lack of ability to create a neutral space for discourse. Once the term 'occupied' is tossed out in any gathering, any adequate response forces the speaker to deal with eighty years of detailed history, intricacies of international law and the interpretation of this or that Convention. If one is referred to as a settler, immediately the audience is disposed to consider the object as a near-monster, an oppressor, one who doesn't belong and so forth. The person described as a 'settler' loses his humanity. He is a stereotype. Those who contend that Jews possess no rights in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, what should be called properly Yesha, have an easier task if they talk about a 'settler'. A revenant, on the other hand, belongs. He has rights to the land, both his personal location and the collective geography. If one needs a humorous moment in the debate, the religious residents of Yesha could be referred to as reverent revenants. There are also irreverent revenants. Other residents could be irrelevant to the situation. Good linguistic advice is that to own a word, one should use it ten times. I have employed it seven times in this article. Perhaps you will join with me in multiplying its use? Yisrael Medad resides in Shiloh and comments on political, media and cultural affairs. He has started a new web blog http://myrightword.blogspot.com/ To Go To Top

UNDERSTANDING EVIL Posted by IsrAlert, May 17, 2004.

This was written by Peter Huessy. Mr. Huessy is president of GeoStrategic Analysis and senior defense associate at the National Defense University Foundation. The Bush administration's foreign and national security policy has generated serious opposition here at home and overseas. This is not unlike the reaction to President Reagan's plan to both deploy intermediate range missiles in Europe and modernize our land, sea and air-based nuclear deterrent. The early 1980's demonstrations throughout Europe, coupled with the push for a nuclear freeze here in America, made it appear as if the new President was intent on blowing up the world. Former Carter administration officials were sought on a daily basis to appear on morning, evening and weekend talk shows, warning of impending doom, the collapse of arms control, possible conflict with the Soviet Union, and the deterioration of NATO. For the intellectual left in America, Reagan's bold foreign and defense policies were seen as fundamentally representative of a narrow, U.S. interest, reflecting the selfish concerns of the military industrial complex, war planners and DOD officials. In particular, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, and the evening television news shows were unanimous that the US President, an uninformed actor, naive in the ways of the world, could not be trusted with US security policy. Cooler heads in the State Department, it was hoped, would prevail on the former California governor to seek coexistence, not confrontation, with the leaders in Moscow. Critical to this strategy, we were told, was to get the two leaders from the US and the Soviet Union together at a "summit" to freeze our respective nuclear arsenals. Fast forward twenty years later. In early 2001, the earliest manifestations of the new Bush administration security policy was a speech at the National Defense University where the President outlined the need for missile defenses, an overall counter terrorism strategy, and stronger controls over the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as a strong, robust but reduced and more balanced deterrent force of nuclear weapons. The reaction mirrored that of 1981. The same media outlets, the same articles, same television commentators, wringing their hands in worry, despairing of a "cowboy" governor from Texas, way over his head in the nuanced, fuzzy liberal world of his opponents. An assertion of US interests, such as defending ourselves from ballistic missiles, or foregoing signing-off on a foolish energy consumption commitment such as called for by the Kyoto Treaty, was universally derided as wrong headed, "unilateral", representative of a "go it alone" policy. The assumption by the diplomats at the United Nations and their friends in the rogue states and adversaries of the United States was that US policy, in order to be seen as "correct and proper", as one diplomat described the thinking at the time, should also reflect the interest of others, such as China, the Sudan, Ethiopia, Sweden, Ecuador, and, of course, France. A sort of "world consensus" was the proper framework within which US policy could operate. The idea is that if all nations put on the table what they want, and it is all thrown together and stirred into some kind of international mush, the result must by definition be more moral and reasonable than ideas put forward solely by the United States. Thus it is the United Nations sees nothing wrong with rotating the chairmanship of the Security Council between Iraq and Syria when discussing terrorism. Or having Libya chair the UN Human Rights Commission. Or having nations under investigation for violating their pledges under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, (the NPT) remain on the board of governors of the IAEA, which passes judgment on whether sanctions should be visited on just such nations. All states are, of course, equal. Who is to say, for example, what state's assertion of "narrow" interests is any more valid than another state's argument? The necessity of viewing all member nations of the UN with nearly equal interests leads to the ritualistic kabuki dance whenever the US government seeks "international agreement" on some serious issue. As soon as France, or China, or Russia or Syria dissents, the media immediately lashes out at the administration for having not made a significantly generous offer or proposal to the UN. This is true for Kyoto, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. On Kyoto, the entire developing world, including China, Brazil, Mexico, India, and Egypt was exempt from the C02 emission standards, with the result that after 100 years from its enactment, the global warming elements in the atmosphere in 2105 would be some 5% below where they would otherwise have been. Boy, that's progress! On Iraq, the world is well aware of the constant 12-year game of cat and mouse Saddam played with the UN inspectors, with even British scientist David Kelly, wrongfully identified as the source of BBC's assertion that the Iraqi threat was "sexed up", wrote before his death that the only way to end Iraq's programs of weapons of mass destruction was through regime change. On North Korea, despite a nearly decades-long "carrots and carrots" diplomacy, we are still facing a rogue nation with nuclear weapons and a companion missile program, despite the Clinton administration's State Department down-grading the country to a "nation of concern", (no axis of evil there!), and providing tons of fuel oil and food, and beginning the process of building two new nuclear reactors. But each time the North Korean government refuses to engage seriously about its commitment to a nuclear free Korean peninsula, spokesmen for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace or the Arms Control Association are beating up our President for not being forthcoming enough or sufficiently attune to the dynamics of getting along in the international sandbox on the geostrategic playground. And so it goes. While our former UN Ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick described this intellectual phenomenon as "blaming America first", I think it needs amending to "Blame only America!" It may not be well understood, but the sophisticates within our government and universities are wedded to what I call the Rodney King school of diplomacy-"Why can't we all get along". Any conflict, argument or disagreement is immediately the responsibility of the United States to resolve, but we have to do it on everybody else's terms! I watched this at the United Nations myself where I worked for three years. It was the time of the October 6th war launched on Israel, the 1973-4 oil embargo, the subsequent escalation in oil prices and the founding of the United Nations Environment Program, where I worked. We were tasked with identifying how developing countries could produce energy in an environmentally sound way while still being independent of the petroleum imports causing such havoc with their national economies. The head of the UNEP energy office, Dr. Ishrat Ushmani, formerly lead of the Iranian nuclear energy program, directed the study. We recommended a mix of nuclear, renewable and coal production, including higher efficiencies. When the report was submitted for approval within the ECOSOC, the reaction was predictable---all nations with the exception of Australia, the United States and Canada opposed the report's conclusions. This was my first professional face-to-face confrontation with "political correctness". The end result was the governing council for UNEP stamped "draft" on the report, its conclusions lost in some discarded file cabinet. The European nations were particularly negative, arguing about the evils of nuclear power and the bullying attitude of the United States. For me, a graduate student at Columbia in both international affairs and law, it was a rude awakening to the globaloney set at the UN, where pretend speeches were made on pretend policies from pretend countries-all pretending to take and do serious things. Arms control suffers from this same deficit. In order to get agreement from a sufficient number of UN members to secure a Security Council recommendation, or to get even a bilateral agreement with North Korea or Iran on their nuclear programs has or will require such a compromise of America's basic security needs as to make such agreements worthless. A good example is the just completed UN Conference on Disarmament. One news story from the National Journal explained it this way: "The U.N. Conference on Disarmament yesterday ended its 2003 session without reaching consensus on a program of work, according to a U.N. press release. This is the fifth straight year that the conference has been unable to reach agreement on what to discuss, according to the U.N. release. Because the conference operates by consensus, a single member can prevent the entire body from formally discussing an issue." While the Washington Post was ecstatic about the 1995 agreement with North Korea, praising its historic significance and patiently explaining to us hard liners why the problems of Pyongyang's "loose nukes" was no more. The hardliners in Congress, critical of the Clinton administration's supposed "diplomatic triumph", were described by Walter Pincus as having been effectively chastened, hopefully never to emerge from their caves again. And so it was with respect to Iran, Iraq, and terrorists elsewhere. As vividly explained by Richard Minister's "Losing Bin Laden", and Dick Morris's "Off With Their Heads", the sought for international consensus never emerged to deal with any of these rogue states nor international terrorism. The UN, in fact, cannot even agree on a definition of what constitutes terrorism, and thus furnishes aid, comfort and recognition to one of the longest running terrorist shows going - the PLO. In order to hold on to the fiction that some kind of universal agreement could be reached on proliferation and terror, liberal enthusiasts of this new world order must also rely on a false foundation that blames the US for the problems in the first place. When asked why it was that Al Qaeda attacked the United States two years ago on September 11th, former intelligence officer Ray McGovern states flatly that it is because of our treatment of the Palestinian people and support for "repressive governments" in the Middle East. To the nuanced and intellectual McGovern, the Islamic terrorists hate us because of support for Israel, while Osama Bin Laden's embrace of Saddam, the Mullahs of Iran and the Taliban is somehow associated with a "concern" about repression!! In short, says McGovern, while he urges fellow intelligence officials to resign in protest over the fraud perpetuated by the Bush administration in seeking regime change in Iraq, America had in coming on September 11th. At the same time as he excuses the murderous acts of our enemies by asserting, "we made them do it". After all, to believe anything else is simply inconsistent with this idea that "we can all get along". The fervent hatred of US military power drives this dogma, because the use of Army, Navy or Air Force firepower absolutely implies the complete lack of agreement between the US and its adversaries. Drawing a line in the sand doesn't help much with those who insist we keep retreating backward. To believe in the necessity, however unfortunate, of using US and allied military power requires a belief in the presence of evil in the modern world. An evil that cannot be negotiated or compromised with. Nuance doesn't help here, folks. And so when President Bush cited Iran, Iraq and North Korea as parts of an "axis of evil", it became apparent that "splitting the difference" with our enemies wasn't really in the cards. When Reagan inherited a crumbling credibility in America's fortitude, he forthrightly put forward a plan to rebuild our armed forces, in particular our strategic nuclear Triad. What did the apologists for our adversaries propose? The nuclear freeze, the very same proposal put forward by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. A freeze, which would have rendered obsolete our strategic deterrent long before the more modern and updated Soviet nuclear arsenal. At the time, all right thinking people argued a freeze should be supported. Sprouting from the feeble minds of bubble-headed Vermonters, (where I spent most of my child-hood), the freeze supporters equated the US nuclear umbrella protecting Taiwan, the Republic of Korea, Japan and all of western Europe, with a Soviet deployment of missiles aimed at coercing NATO and culling more and more nations into the Soviet orbit. In the 1970's alone, some dozen-plus nations involuntarily joined the Soviet gulag, just as President Carter warned us to "get over our inordinate fear of communism". When Nietzsche warned that God was dead in the last decade of the 19th century, he was prophesizing the result when men decide they themselves are God. And so it was with the dawn of the 21st century, we look back at the past one hundred years and the evil during which the hideous tyrants of our time-Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, Hitler, Saddam, and the Iranian Mullahs---destroyed much of mankind. With such evil there cannot be a "deal". There is not the possibility "we can all get along". We did not "make them do it." This our courageous President understands. Thank God. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

"UNDERSTANDING" DESERTERS Posted by "Sergio Ovadiah Tezza (Hadar), May 17, 2004.

Richard Shulman (ricshulman@aol.com) wrote this on "Understanding" Deserters. The Attorney General of Israel is supposed to enforce the law. Instead, he expresses "understanding" of those who refuse to serve in Yesha. Although he thinks they are mistaken, he says they have principles (Arutz-7, 5/11). Their principles are based on self-hatred and ignorance. They don't realize how badly the Arabs are acting in Yesha, and how benignly Israel has acted. If they had real principles, they would demand that Israel act firmly in Yesha and fulfill its claims there. I think the problem here is being misunderstood... The issue is the legitimacy of a personal choice to follow one's conscience rather than orders... even if it means paying dearly for that choice. Mazuz is right. The right of any religious soldier to say NO loud and clear to anyone ordering to remove Jews from their land and destroy synagogues and homes to create Judenrein land is an INALIENABLE right. No army is above the Laws of Torah. The excuse of "we are (or were!) following orders" has NEVER been acceptable, has it?... What are they all afraid of, that finally people start saying what they think and may be even acting according to Torah values?... Of course the fascists from the right and from the left are all fibrillating against Mazuz... But there are moral values that are above Tzahal. And one of them is that the life of ONE Jewish soldier is MORE precious than the life of any number of Arabs, and that's the opposite of what the army nowadays teaches and practices in Israel... And any soldier refusing to serve in the line of combat under the conditions and orders that sacrifice even one fingernail of a soldier so as not to hurt arabs in Jenin or Gaza, is a true Jewish hero. To Go To Top

AIPAC STIFLES DEBATE ON THE SHARON WITHDRAWAL PLAN Posted by AFSI, May 17, 2004.

At its annual conference in Washington, D.C. on May 16th 2004, the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee rejected the participation of all Israeli members of the Israeli parliament who campaigned against implementation of the Prime Minster's withdrawal plan. Herbert Zweibon, National Chairman of Americans for a Safe Israel expressed shock that the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee has stifled all debate on Prime Minister Sharon's plan for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, including uprooting 21 Jewish communities there and others in northern Samaria. "Israel is a parliamentary democracy whose Prime Minister is not elected directly. Mr. Sharon's party, Likud, won elections for its domestic and defense policy platforms. In a referendum, the Likud party has rejected the entire so-called "disengagement" plan. Furthermore, there is opposition to its implementation from all corners of the Jewish State. Citing the escalation in terrorism, the rejection of the plan by all Arab leaders, and President Bush's apparent backtracking on his previous support for retention of some populations centers and cities in Judea and Samaria, Mr. Zweibon asked "What is Sharon expecting to get in return and how can he bank the nation's very survival on nebulous promises of support which can be rendered useless by a change in the American administration?" "At the very least those who attend the AIPAC conference should hear every side of the issue, and those legislators who are guests should not be misled into thinking that all American supporters of Israel agree with the Prime Minister." AIPAC also ignores American Christian supporters of Israel who have publicly averred their firm opposition to Israeli withdrawals. "It seems to us that AIPAC is ignoring its mandate at a time of great danger for America and Israel." Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI is a pro-active pro-Israel advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128, Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717; by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website: www. afsi.org. Helen Freedman is Executive Director. To Go To Top

HUMILIATION IS JUST TOO HORRIBLE - ISN'T IT? Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 17, 2004.

Perhaps it would be better for Americans to adopt the methods of the Arab Muslims for extracting information from prisoners instead of merely humiliating them. I recall when U.S. CIA Station Chief William Buckley was captured by the Muslim terrorists in Lebanon (sorry, "militants"). Their final method of torture to make him talk was to slip a catheter with a balloon attached down his throat and into his stomach. (This method was refined by the Soviets as I recall.) Then the balloon was inflated so as to compress and decompress his internal organs, resulting in screaming pain. I understand that a tape of his agony was sent to the U.S. but, what the heck, he was only one guy. We have lots of guys, don't we?! Buckley was sent to Tehran for interrogation where in 1986 the Khomeinist mullahs cut off his head. (1) The Syrians have a conventional Arab Muslim method for torture and interrogation. They take a male prisoner, cut off his testicles and, before he dies, stuff them into his mouth for a final gesture of humiliation. Ask the Israelis about the Syrian methods of interrogation. (1) Yes, indeed, our politicians were disgusted with the methods of humiliation used to get information about other terrorists out of reluctant terrorist prisoners. I wonder how much sleep they lost over American casualties or those who will yet fall victim because we couldn't ask Muslim prisoners about coming operations with methods that would make them want to talk. Strange, I didn't see anyone bleeding or dying in those pictures - just plain old humiliation. Sometimes, when we really, really need information, we Americans send special prisoners to Jordan where the method of interrogation is less delicate - Arab Muslim style. But, President Bush feels he has to apologize frequently so the Left Liberal Media will feel he is debasing himself properly in their vaunted judgement. I wonder how upset the Media were when fellow journalist, Daniel Pearl of the Wall St. Journal had his head sawed off - along with appropriate Muslim proclamations of "Allah Akbar" (G-d is Great). I'll bet they mourned for the time it took them to get the story out. As for Rumsfeld, he must learn to be more considerate of our enemies - even if it costs American lives. Who does he think he is, America's Secretary of Defense? So what if we are fighting an enemy that fades away into their civilian crowds of human shields - who often are delighted to protect him/them. We should stick to the Geneva Convention that was adopted during the years of trench warfare and generally ignored in practice by most armies. In war, there are few saints. We must take our casualties and keep our mouths shut if we are to win their hearts and minds - or so the saying goes. Are Americans viewed as expendable? But, terrorist are not? Or at least not to be humiliated? Why can't we use psychological interrogation methods, even they are humiliating - if they work? We know that every people has their own special psychological weakness. We know that Muslims, especially "Jihadists" will not talk with conventional interrogation but, since the Arab Muslim culture rests on the twin pillars of Pride and Shame, it just isn't fair to play on their weaknesses. Do we have so many soldiers to spare? Or, at least, that seems to be the opinion of those in Congress who professed to be shocked by having seen naked pictures of prisoners. Frankly, I am more embarrassed by their shy shock and careless attitude toward to the welfare of our soldiers than I am by these pictures. The beheading of Nick Berg was shocking. Surely, Senator-Candidate Kerry, John McCain, Carl Levin, Ted (Chapaquidik) Kennedy - among all the spokesmen who feel we have no right to obtain vital information by whatever means that work must be feeling righteous as they vomit forth their indignation for the cameras. They should stop apologizing for effective interrogation methods being tried and get on with the job of winning the war in Iraq. Surely we have lots of soldiers to spare and unlimited space for graveyards. We just don't need the information that bad - Right? There are lots of articles in the papers, magazines, Internet, etc., castigating our leaders and our military who are in harm's way. Along with these came a single spaced list into my Email of how our 775 U.S. service members died. It was 58 pages long as of May 15th. (2) I wonder how many of the above 775 "expendable" Americans might have made it through IF we had prior intelligence from those "reluctant-to-talk" Jihadists? But, they are all dead and now we can wonder about those who will be killed because we are so embarrassed over humiliating Muslim prisoners. I also wonder how many of the complaining mothers, fathers, wives, etc. would complain so vigorously if they thought the information held in the minds of the prisoners would have or could have yet saved their loved ones? BREAKING NEWS: Consistent with the discovery of the enemies' planned terror operations, a roadside bomb with Sarin, a binary poison nerve agent, exploded near an American convoy in Bagdad today, May 17th. Gee. I thought we couldn't find any of Saddam's WMD -(Weapons of Mass Destruction) - including NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical). This then is the first 'prima facie' evidence of Saddam's WMD. Two American soldiers were treated for exposure. Sarin was the gas used by the Terror Cult on 3 Japanese subways March 25, 1995 that killed 11 people outright and injured more than 5,500, including the hospital staff who treated the injured. (3) Osama Bin Laden and other Muslim Jihadists have promised a similar attack on American and European cities. Only those planning the attacks and those tasked to carry them out will know where, when and how. Should one of the participants be captured, I am sure the doctrine of questioning the prisoners will be done with several lawyers present to defend them and from interrogators a distance of 30 feet. When we have Americans scattered about, dead and dying in our cities, (as happened in Halabja in March 1988 when Saddam gassed a town of his own people killing 5,000 civilians, injuring 10,000) - then the Geneva conventioneers can claim they did their job. International observers estimate that Saddam Hussein's forces killed 50,000 to 100,000 people with WMD during their 1988 campaign. (4) Keep in mind that the "Jihadists" are planning to kill you in the name of their Allah. If we don't know who they are, when they are coming or what they are planning on doing - they will succeed. ### 1. "Chopping Heads" by Amir Taheri NEW YORK POST May 14, 2004 2. http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/printer_051704D.shtml 3. "SARIN POISONING IN TOKYO SUBWAY" http://www.sma.org/smj97june3.htm 4. "SARIN BOMB BLAST FIRST SIGN OF SADDAM'S BANNED WEAPONS" "PA" news http://news.scotsman.com/print.cfm?id=2939035&referringtemplate=http%3A%2F%2Fne 5/17/04 To Go To Top

THE TIME OF TRUTH FOR THE TEMPLE MOUNT Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, May 17, 2004.

Three modern "prophecies" have been spoken in the last generation, yet few have listened. The first, was in a song by Naomi Shemer just weeks before the June 1967 "Six-Day-War". The second, spoken in his Yeshiva - Rabbinical Seminary - three weeks before the war, by Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook. The third was said, in the middle of the war, just after the heat of battle ended in victory, by Mordechai "Motta" Gur. "Prophecies" of liberation, "prophecies" of consolation, to the nation of Israel, that had suffered occupation, destruction, exile, torture and murder, too long. Weeks before the outbreak of the 1967 Six-Day-War, "Yerushaliyim Shel Zahav - Jerusalem of Gold" written by Naomi Shemer was released. It spoke of the eternal connection between the Jewish People and Holy City of Jerusalem. But not just the modern half of "Western Jerusalem" that had spilled out of the Old City Walls, that had sprung up during the last 100 years of fervent growth, seen in the return of Jews to Zion. No, "Jerusalem of Gold" cried out about the heart-wrenching situation that had prevailed since the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. For 19 years, the Jordanians had occupied the Old City of Jerusalem and the "Eastern" side. For 19 years, in violation of the 1949 Armistice agreement with the newly established State of Israel, Jordan - the late King Hussein - denied Jews access to the Western Wall, the outskirts of their most holy site, the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount. It is one of the last vestiges of the Jewish People's Holy Temple - the "House of G-D" - destroyed by the occupying Roman Army 1,900 years earlier. "The Shofar is heard again on the Temple Mount, in the Old City," the song declared. "Jerusalem of Gold" spoke to the sufferings of the Jewish People and the hope that the situation would end. The war broke out and it became a massive hit, the unofficial anthem of the war. Three weeks before the war began, during Yom HaAtzmaut celebrations - Israeli Independence Day - at his Yeshiva, Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook, son of the venerated former Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, gave a rousing lecture on the joyous significance of the day. But then he took his students by surprise, switched gears and began lamenting the situation, in a tearful cry he asked, "Where is our Jerusalem (the Old City and Temple Mount)? Where is our Hebron? Where is our Jericho?" Teaching his students that the holiday joy was not yet complete without them. After the victory, his words rung with "prophetic" intent, as if he demanded from above the return of the Jewish People's inheritance, and was granted it. The 1967 Six-Day-War was fought on all fronts. The Egyptians were fought in the south, in Sinai. The Syrians tried their hand, in the north, on the Golan Heights. But Jordan held the prize. Initially, the Israeli government called on King Hussein to stay out of the war, but he would have none of that. Over-inflated from Egyptian President Nasser's ranting to drive the Jews into the sea, King Hussein took the fateful plunge instead - that had already been "foreseen" - he opened another front in Jerusalem and the center of the country. Jordanian soldiers shot at Israelis - civilians and soldiers - from the Old City Walls into "New, Western Jerusalem," the fighting was fierce. But the Israeli government decided not to repeat the mistake of Ben-Gurion's government in the 1948 war. Rather that lose the Old City of Jerusalem a second time, they decided to liberate it. Soon the nation would hear those words that still send ripples of joy to Jews. Motta Gur, commander of the front, announced over his army radio the third "prophecy," "Har HaBayit B'Yadenu - the Temple Mount is in our hands." They had liberated the Old City of Jerusalem. Almost 1,900 years after the Romans destroyed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, after 19 years of separation from the most holy place on earth, the Jews had returned home. Who still can't hear those words of "prophecy" without being moved? The full weight of 19 centuries was lifted off the backs of the Jewish People. "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" Yet in contrast to all those "miracles," all those hopes and dreams finally fulfilled, several "peace initiatives" envision a reversal of history, a slap-in-the-face to "The G-D of Israel". A plan being promoted by former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo called, "The Geneva Initiative - a model for a permanent Israeli-Palestinian agreement," calls for the Temple Mount to be given to the "Palestinians" permanently, with the help of the rest of the world. The Ayalon-Nusseibeh petition drive also seeks to give the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount to the "Palestinians". Even the "Roadmap" plan that the US, EU, UN, and Russia have devised - and the Sharon government has accept - puts Jerusalem and the Temple Mount on the chopping block, "up for negotiations". Long ago, when the Roman occupation forces burnt the Holy Temple and razed it to the ground, and then later destroyed the rest of Jerusalem; the Jewish People defeated in war after a valiant attempt to expel the invaders, tired and forlorn, accepted the "Judgment of G-D." Jews yearned in every generation for the Messiah to come, waiting for him to take them out of exile and bring them back to Judea, the Land of Israel, Zion and Jerusalem, to rebuild their "Holy House of G-D." In 1948, with the establishment of the State of Israel, after almost 1,900 years, Jews now could return home unhindered by "foreign occupiers." But the victory in the War of Independence was bittersweet. Where was Jerusalem - the Old City? That 1948 Israeli government, led by David Ben-Gurion, decided to consolidate victory elsewhere and not to capture the Old City. That would have to wait for the future. The Jordanians occupied her. That future time came in 1967, with lightning victory on several fronts, but most importantly, in Jerusalem. Jews took the initiative then and with help from above, they reunited with their holy site, the Temple Mount. Great joy encompassed the nation, 200,000 Jews came out that Shavuot - the Feast of Weeks - just days after the war's end, to celebrate at the Western Wall. Joy seemed complete again... So how is it that this generation is contemplating the unthinkable? Generations of Jews prayed for the eventual return to the Holy City of Jerusalem, the prayers and dreams of generations and millennia materialized in 1967. And today, there are those who want to reverse history, to give away the Jewish People's patrimony? Ironically, rather than by force of arms - something the Arab occupiers tried and fail to do - some Jews contemplate doing voluntarily, through "peace agreements". How could they spurn the "Blessings of G-D"? How could they try to reverse Jewish history? How could they ignore the "prophecies"? Now is the time for every Jew - and gentile - to take a stand. "Not by force, nor by might, but by MY spirit," says the Holy One of Israel. Now is the time of truth for the Temple Mount! Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko To Go To Top

CAN THE LEFT CLAIM INNOCENCE WHEN ITS HANDS DRIP WITH THE BLOOD OF ITS PEOPLE? Posted by Matar, Nadia, May 17, 2004.

If we had a truly nationalist government, it long ago would have positively responded to the requests to place the Oslo criminals on trial. We would no longer hear the insolent voices of the left , that call for leaving Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and the dismantling of the settlements. Instead of dancing on the blood of our fellow Jews, and using every possible media opportunity to spread their incitement against the national camp, against the Likud, and against the settlers, the left would have lowered its eyes in shame, and would have asked forgiveness from the people of Israel. Shimon Peres, Yossi Beilin, Yossi Sarid, Ron Pundak, and the other Oslo criminals would be long behind bars for being guilty of collaboration with the enemy, for the giving of arms and ammunition, and for turning cities in our homeland into cities of refuge for monstrous murderers. No politician any longer would suggest capitulating to the arch-murderer Arafat, a worthy successor to Hitler. Such a public trial would make it clear, once and for all, that the architects of Oslo are the ones who are truly responsible for the terrorist attacks in recent years. Although the Arabs are directly guilty for the murders of Jews, the Oslo criminals are responsible for the success of the Arabs in carrying out their fiendish designs. It was the Oslo criminals who created the murderous monster called the "Palestinian Authority," which fully cooperates with the Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and the Hizballah. The Oslo criminals brought the arch-murderer Arafat and his band of murderers to Israel. The Oslo criminals gave the murderers weapons, ammunition, and cities of refuge. The Oslo criminals tied the IDF's hands. The Oslo criminals, including Ehud Barak and the women of "Four Mothers," fled from Lebanon with their tail between their legs. They thereby brought Lebanon and the Hizballah within range of Israel. The Oslo criminals are responsible for the murder of the more than 1000 victims of Oslo. The national camp warned and demonstrated against these cursed accords. And yes, the Oslo criminals are responsible for the killing of thirteen soldiers during the past several days. They are the ones who led to the IDF no longer being in Gaza. Because of them, the city has turned into a murderous hell, controlled by cannibalistic monsters who create weapons and ammunition within Gaza against Jews everywhere. But, despite all, not only did the Likud governments not put the Oslo criminals on trial, thy continued the policy of Oslo - a policy of submission to terror, tying the hands of the IDF, in opposition to the will of the majority of the people. Bibi Netanyahu was elected as the opposite of Shimon Peres - but instead of eliminating the PLO, he fled from Hebron, signed the Wye Accords, and shook Arafat's hand. Ariel Sharon went even further. He was elected as the opposite of the plan of Amram Mitzna for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza - but instead of eliminating the Hamas and the Jihad, Sharon wants to reward the Arab murderers, by adopting the Mitzna program - a program quite similar to that of the Hamas, with a call to uproot settlements, expel Jews, and make those regions of Israel Judenrein. The plan of defeat, flight, and surrender, that is shared by Ariel Sharon and Peace Now, does not represent the thoughts of the majority of the people of Israel. Ever since the killing of the thirteen soldiers, our office has received nonstop telephone calls from citizens not known to us, who want to establish a tremendous protest against the policy that is forced upon the IDF, that takes pity on the enemy, but sacrifices the lives of our soldiers instead. They want to take to the streets and scream that a truly moral country cares, first of all, for its citizens and not for the enemy. Accordingly, instead of sending our soldiers on foot to a deathtrap within a hostile and dense population, the IDF should have bombed the enemy's territory from the air, even if this entailed the killing of many Arab civilians, the majority of whom support Arafat and his continued call for terror and the murder of Jews. The majority is fed up with the Oslo policy of tying the hands of the IDF, out of the fear of harming a hostile Arab population. The majority is fed up with the daily humiliation. My goodness, a Jewish mother and her four daughters were murdered at close range by the Arab enemy. Not a single voice in the Arab world condemned the massacre. This terrorist attack should have been followed by an IDF response so harsh that the Arabs would beg for their lives. Yes, for the massacre of the Hatuel family we should have razed the entire Arab village from which the Nazi murderers came, with all its inhabitants. This is the only language that they understand. But Israel did not respond, for fear of "harming the Arab populace." Once again, Jewish blood is free for the taking - oh, what shame! The same holds true for the Arab gunfire at the participants in the memorial ceremony for the Hatuel family. Only two Arab terrorists fired at hundreds of Jews, men, women, and children who hit the ground. Next to them are dozens of IDF soldiers with tanks, APCs, and the most sophisticated weaponry in the world. The IDF could have stopped the terrorist fire in half a second. It should have shelled the area from where the terrorists were shooting. But the IDF did not fire, because it might have harmed the hostile Arab population. The army thereby endangered the lives of Jews, and brought shame upon itself, and upon the entire Jewish people. Once again Jewish blood is free for the taking - oh, the shame of it! The people of Israel is fed up with the policy of being merciful to the cruel. The people is fed up with the incitement and lies of the left in the media. The people is fed up with the politicians who act in accordance with the Oslo policy of surrender, defeat, and flight. The people is strong, and waits for a proud and strong Jewish leadership, who will declare :that all of the Promised Land belongs to the people of Israel, according to the Torah of Israel. The answer to Arab terror is not the deportation of Jews, but the accelerated construction of Jewish settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. True moral behavior is not the offering of the other cheek, but attacking and defeating the Arab enemy who murders Jews in cold blood and plays soccer, barbarically, with the heads of IDF soldiers. The left is panicking, because it understands that the results of the Likud poll also represents the will of the majority. In order to circumvent this will, the left today is dancing on the blood of our soldiers, and spreads lies and incitement. It falsely equates Gaza and Lebanon. It recreates the defeatist "Four Mothers" which receives media coverage all out of proportion to what is newsworthy in order to deceive the public and let it think that there is a majority among the people in favor of rout and retreat. But all this will be of no avail to the left. The people is wise. The people knows that whoever flees from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza will eventually seek to flee from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The people do not believe the incitement of Shimon Peres and his band against the settlers of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The people does not forget that ,today's inciters are responsible for the curse of Oslo. We must demand more than ever: "Put the Oslo criminals on trial!" Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

CONNECT THE DOTS Posted by Deb Kotz, May 17, 2004.

Here is a powerful poem written by Rena Cohen. CONNECT 'lynched, and held up his bloody hands to the cheering crowd outside'. the 'exploded near a popular Tel Aviv night club, killing and wounding'. bloody 'rammed the U.S.S. Cole, killing'. dots 'detonated, killing himself and others in a Jerusalem pizzeria'. or 'the second plane crashed into the Towers, smoke pouring out'. they 'my name is Daniel Pearl and I am a Jew'. will 'powerful explosion in Bali this afternoon, killing ' connect 'debris from the explosion littering the busy Casablanca street'. you. 'explosions today in Istanbul, killing '. Connect 'detonated in the path of a train in Madrid today, killing'. the 'continuous reports of attacks against the population in Southern Sudan'. bloody 'manufacturing the deadly poison ricin' dots 'the charred bodies were hung from a bridge' or 'pregnant Israeli woman and her daughters were shot and killed today' they 'dancing in the Gaza streets, holding up severed body parts '.. will 'beheading of a twenty-six year old American' connect' Deb Kotz is an active member of the Brandeis Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and maintains an email list to distribute articles of interest to the local community. She can be reached at DebKotz@aol.com To Go To Top

UN CALLED A "TOOL OF ZIONISM" Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 17, 2004.

Bin Laden accuses the UN of being a Zionists' tool. He offers a reward for the murder of the UN representative in Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi. You see, explains bin Laden, the UN is working (to do what?) under cover of providing humanitarian aid to Iraq. Mr. Brahimi, for his part, boasts of never having shaken the hand of an Israeli or other Jew (James Taranto, NY Sun, 5/10, p.7). You may laugh at bin Laden's accusation against the UN, because the UN spends half its time condemning Israel and ignoring most other problems, including problems inflicted by the Arabs. Facts and Western logic are not relevant to the Arab mentality. The Arabs feel obsessed to blame someone else for the mess the Arabs make for themselves. Otherwise, the Arabs could not bear the shame. The Arabs have discovered the utility of Zionism and the Jewish people as universal scapegoats. They blame almost everything on the Jews. They adopted the Czarist-Nazi conspiracy/fraud theory about the Jews controlling the world. When the US appeases the Arabs less than 100%, the Arabs complain that US foreign policy is controlled by Israel. They contend that this policy is 100% pro-Israel. The facts show otherwise. US policy ought to be 100% pro-Israel, for that would help the US in the war on terrorism and against enemies of the US. But US policy is not. Few countries act in their own national interest. For example, the Arabs keep making war, and the West often appeases them. ACTUALLY, THE UN IS MORE A TOOL OF OPPRESSORS The US is annoyed with the UN. It rebuked the UN for electing Sudan to a third term on the UN Human Rights Commission. Sudan tramples on human rights (IMRA, 5/6). Yes, the Sudan Arabs are perpetrating genocidal ethnic cleansing. Once again, the US and not the UN, is the moral voice from 42d Street. Nevertheless, moralists keep condemning the US and urging it to let the UN handle world problems. The US did not tell the UN not to protect the blacks in Sudan. The Sudan is run by an Arab minority, which will become the majority after enough genocide. Other Arab states are complaisant. So, too, is the US civil rights movement. Faculties that demand diversity are silent about Sudan. Where are their principles when Arabs oppress blacks? To Go To Top

DOOR-TO-DOOR Posted by Janet Kasten Friedman, May 17, 2004.

This essay was originally distributed by Rabbanit Friedman on Sunday, May 2nd, 2004, the day of the Likud Party Referendum on the Sharon Gaza Surrender and Retreat Plan. It has been distributed by the Root and Branch Association of Jerusalem. Like many other residents of the Yesha [Liberated Judea, Samaria and Gaza], I have been phoning and visiting Likud members in a campaign against the Disengagement Plan. I hope the voters reject the plan, as I believe it would be very dangerous not just for the settlements, but for the whole country. I was at a Torah class for women, and the teacher read us a quote from "Eim HaBanim S'maichah". This book was written by Rabbi Shlomo Teichtal, a Hungarian rabbi who had been anti-Zionist but regretted his original position during the gathering Shoah (Holocaust) in which he perished. Rabbi Teichtal describes the Bible portion in which Moses sent spies to check out the Land of Israel. The spies came back to the camp of the Children of Israel with frightening stories of a land which "eats its inhabitants". They went from house-to-house all night, undermining the morale of the Jews, persuading them that there was no military solution to gaining the land of Canaan. "Propaganda" was the modern word which Rabbi Teichtal used for their evil speech. The divine punishment for believing this propaganda was another 40 years in the desert. In pre-Holocaust Europe, many rabbis and secular leaders rejected the Zionist appeal to settle the land of Israel, including, Rabbi Teichtal. When he reversed his attitude, he said that the "tikkun", the moral rectification for the sin of rejecting the land of Israel, should be a similar door-to-door propaganda campaign singing the praises of the land of Israel and urging Jews to settle there. This idea seemed to attract the sudden notice of many people simultaneously at a critical time. Various people read out this passage publicly many times in the last few weeks to encourage the campaigners throughout the country. It was not easy for many of us to overcome our natural shyness in knocking on strangers' doors. Women especially were uncomfortable with this kind of assertiveness. My teacher, however, had an even more uncomfortable lesson to teach us. We residents of Yesha, the "settlers", have inadvertently allowed a "disengagement": A disengagement between ourselves and the rest of the country. We live in our isolated settlements, with our own schools, our own rabbis, our own ideologues, our own fashion in clothes and many other things, and we don't frequently share the wonderful things we have with others. Arutz-7 was a bridge between the settlement movement and "amcha", the people; and before the government could try to hurt settlements, they first had to silence Arutz-7, at least in its most accessible form, the radio. Leftist extremists in the media, academia, and government have spent years marginalizing the settlement movement ("money for the poor neighborhoods, not for the settlements!") in a "divide and conquer" approach. We didn't know how to stop their propaganda, and we all had many other things to do, like build the settlements, and raise our large families within them, which appeared more important, and perhaps rightfully so. Anyway, the leftist propaganda appeared beneath contempt, so we innocently assumed that truth would prevail. That was our mistake. Maybe it was even a sin, a lack of enthusiasm for the mitzva (commandment) of loving our fellow Jews. We should not have allowed ourselves to be marginalized, "disengaged" spiritually from our fellow Israelis and Jews. As the Israeli left became increasingly more extreme, we, who believe in the unity of the People, Land and Torah of Israel should have been the vanguard of the outreach movement, the leaders of Israel. We should also have noticed, in our contacts with people outside our communities, that even our modes of speech were different, and that should have caused us to make a more concerted effort to communicate. On the rare occasions when groups from the Yesha communities met with groups such as urban residents or kibbutzniks, the results were warm and exhilarating. Apparently our own modesty and unselfishness as a group may have prevented us from doing more. Nevertheless the failure to have more of these meetings is still somewhat inexplicable. But the past is over and done. Today [Sunday, May 2, 2004] the elections will be held, and the Likud voters will decide whatever they decide. Sharon will do whatever he does. The campaign against the Suicide Plan will be finished, for better or for worse. Nevertheless, we settlers need to hold on to those addresses. We now have an opportunity to rectify our community's shortcoming. We should contact these people again, this time without pamphlets, discs and propaganda, but only with warmth and love of our fellow Jews. We can become friends, share our history and mutual values, and help each other. We started out strangers, but we are strangers no longer. We also need to change our attitude towards the people we have known for years, taking a more proactive role in communicating. We don't have to jump onto a soapbox and rant ideological speeches at family gatherings, but we do need to be frank about our beliefs, our hopes and our lives. We should contact people frequently, so they will remember that they have a cousin (or old school friend, old army buddy, former neighbor, etc) in such-and-such a settlement, and that we work at ..... and have ...... kids, and other details of our lives. This puts a human face on "the settlers" and prevents the demonization that the media seems to love pinning onto us. Surrendering land to our enemies is a victory for terror. Surrendering the public discourse to leftists is a victory for post-Zionism. Shavua Tov from Liberated Kochav HaShachar. Janet Kasten-Friedman, who made aliya (immigrated to Israel) in 1971, is a founding resident (1980) of Kochav HaShachar in Binyamin, a mother of eight and grandmother of five, available for the national cause 24/6. To Go To Top

WAR ON TERROR Posted by David Frankfurter, May 17, 2004.

The ubiquitous "War on Terror" is something we in Israel are finding more and more difficult to understand. This would seem a peculiar. Israel deals with terror on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Even more strange from an Israeli writer who comments so frequently on the subject. Is the "War on Terror" morally selective? Why is killing a terrorist leader who advocates indiscriminate violence against civilians, women and children in one country an "extra-judicial killing," while in another an integral and legitimate part of the "War on Terror" sanctioned by international law? How is that the US imposes economic sanctions against Syria for its support of terrorism, while the European Union expands its trade agreements and financial support of Syria? The list of apparent anomalies goes on and on. Andrew C. McCarthy, former US Assistant Attorney, said something that, for me, threw a whole new light on this "War on Terror." (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200405130837.asp) The reason that the "War on Terror" doesn't make sense is simple: "Terrorism is not an enemy. It is a method. It is the most sinister, brutal, inhumane method of our age. But it is nonetheless just that: a method. You cannot, and you do not, make war on a method. War is made on an identified - and identifiable - enemy." How simple. The "War on Terror" is a phrase that we use to hide the truth from ourselves . The western world is fighting an enemy that it does not even have the courage - or maybe the common sense - to name. David Frankfurter is a writer on the Middle East conflict. He sends "Letters from Israel" emails to subscribers. Email him at David.Frankfurter@iname.com or go to www.livejournal.com/users/dfrankfurter/ To Go To Top

KOFI THE KING Posted by IsrAlert, May 17, 2004.

This is from the New York Post; it was summarized on the Little Green Footballs (LGF) website (http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog). A very disturbing column from Amir Taheri on France and Russia's plans to turn Iraq into another UN-managed disaster area, with Lakhdar Brahimi'an Israel-hating Algerian'in charge. WITH just seven weeks to the scheduled transfer of power to the Iraqis, the United States seems to be preparing to throw the baby out with the bathwater in exchange for a resolution from the U.N. Security Council. Convinced that the Bush administration is looking for an exit strategy with the help of the United Nations, France and Russia have already started raising the stakes on the new Iraq resolution sought by the Americans. In a series of recent statements and leaks, the two veto-holding powers have made it clear that they will not settle for anything less than a humiliating abdication by the United States of its responsibilities in Iraq. To begin with, they want Lakhdar Brahimi, the U.N. point-man in Baghdad, to name the new Iraqi government. The Algerian diplomat has already made it clear that he is looking for 'fresh faces,' which means excluding all those who have worked with the U.S.-led Coalition since liberation. In other words: Not only will the liberators have no say in who governs Iraq in the transition, but those Iraqis who have worked hard to make liberation a success will also be punished for their efforts. Brahimi and his French and Russian backers also insist that the United States should have no control over the newly created Iraqi armed forces, police and civil defense corps. This would create two military presences in Iraq: one led by the Americans, the other by Mr. Brahimi. It is not clear what each of those two would do. Would the Americans be cantoned in remote bases, spending time in a Desert of the Tatars exercise in waiting for suicide bombers to strike? At the same time, however, the Brahimi plan envisages that all bills will continue to be sent to the Americans, who have allocated over $80 billion to the Iraqi project. In other words: The U.N. rules, the Americans pay. Oh, to be sure, Mr. Brahimi will consult the U.S. and U.K. allies on occasion. But the two coalition partners will have no more of a say in what happens than will Russia, France and China, who opposed the liberation of Iraq in the first place. The veto-wielding trio still refuse to acknowledge that there was liberation. Instead, the Franco-Russian 'concepts' circulating for a new resolution speak of 'ending the occupation.' This means that Iraq was free under Saddam Hussein but became occupied territory when the Coalition forces arrived. Paris and Moscow believe that the Bush administration is desperate enough to accept almost anything. This is why they insist that the future U.N. interim czar should have the power to revoke any of the numerous edicts approved by the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Iraq Governing Council - e.g., Brahimi could cancel the edict that banned the Ba'ath Party. He also intends to cancel the statement of principles that commits Iraq to building a Western-style democratic system rather than a modified version of Arab despotism. 'A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse!' shouted Shakespeare's forlorn hero. 'A resolution, a resolution, the whole of Iraq for a resolution!' shouts the Bush administration now. Contacting the White House Mailing Address The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Phone Numbers Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 FAX: 202-456-2461 TTY/TDD Comments: 202-456-6213 Visitors Office: 202-456-2121 E-Mail President George W. Bush: president@whitehouse.gov Vice President Richard Cheney: vice.president@whitehouse.gov To Go To Top

TAKING OUT IRAN'S NUCLEAR CAPABILITY Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 16, 2004.

If Israel and America are consulting with U.N. lawyers abut the legal rights to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, they are wasting their time. If Iran completes its nuclear program and mounts nuclear war heads to their long range missiles, Tel Aviv and the U.N. Headquarters could be nuclear dust. If they were worried the Iranians will get angry or the "Jihadists" will blow up more trains or buildings, we will be worried about the wrong thing. I would not even give them a warning to stand down their nuclear projects. In the time that they get that warning the Ayatollahs could launch whatever they have and trust to Allah. The correct choice given the alternatives is to launch a saturation missile attack with conventional and tactical nukes on all known nuclear installations and missile sites. Never mind what Kofi Anan or Jacques Chirac might say. The choice is to either pre-emptively stop the Iranian development of being a nuclear threat to the region and world or stop them now. When the Ayatollahs dedicated to Global Jihad have achieved their nuclear launch capability, it will be much too late to stop them by talk or by force. We are already experiencing the same possibility with North Korea. Even China has now accepted the threat of being targeted by their unpredictable hostile neighbor. Iran is far more dangerous given their radical religious leaders and their belief that all nations must accept Islam. Their goal is Global Domination of the world by Islam. In legal terms "Time is of the essence" would translate to "There is no time left". Either take them out now or face the time that a religiously driven Iran who exists in a 7th century mode with 21st century weapons will threaten the existence of the entire world. Israel knows she will be a prime target and she has no choice unless she wishes to be vaporized following the Bush-U.N. dictum of UN-natural restraint. Perhaps we are all too busy to worry about Iran. Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney are blubbering apologists for a stupid display of porno pictures while Sharon is trying to please everyone by bugging out of Gaza. The leaders of both these countries seem to be ignoring a far greater threat then angry Muslims whose leaders practice hideous torture and don't bother with humanitarianism. If we don't take out Iran's nuclear capability within a few months, there will not be much more to talk about. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). To Go To Top

ISRAEL'S CANCER Posted by Iam Joseph, May 16, 2004.

Cancer is within - that's how Cancer cells work, and spread outword. Today, Colin Powell emulates the OSLO song: "A Pal state is assured no matter what." This will no doubt encourage greater atrocities with impunity - with a free hand to continue how the terrorists please - and 'NO CONDITIONS" attached. While all things have a conditional factor attached - none is given to Israel. The situation is thus because of OSLO's mad-cow approach to a '3-State' charade without conditions - its premise being to stem a demography disaster, without attaching any conditions: not even negotiating a most obvious condition of the Pals living in the new state - a contradiction to their own defense of OSLO's alledged goal. Why no fear of the same population explosion inside Israel - even after abandoning 3/4's of the land - even after the first '2-State solution' of Jordan failed its promise - ask the mad-cows! And why blame the likes of Powell and the Eurabians: they could'nt dream of a better solution to the Jewish Problem. Thanks to the Dathans within Israel's heartline. This mad-cow Dathanic evil can only be stemmed when we hear Israel fighting back first and foremost by attaching absolute "Conditions" before entering into this hell, AND WHEN THESE BASIC CONDITIONS ARE REJECTED - AS SURELY THEY WILL IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE EURABIAN GOAL - Israel will then see the light in that tunnel is actually a speeding Death Train. This is something mad-cow OSLOites wish not to acknowledge - its shame is worse than death - thus the cry they are saving Israel - when in actuality they are saving only their deathly shame? The alledged 100,000 march of Israelis is the result of the Left OSLOites spreading their poison of disinformation and fear tactics among an already confused and numbed public, told to save their lives by donating their hearts to those sworn to Israel's destruction: it is Dathan telling Israel to turn back from Israel and return to Pharoah - with a Golden Calf on their prostrated shoulders. The Euro-Holocaustians never had it better. Will the ground open again and swallow the Dathans and their camps - Heavens knows. Israel does not appear to have any conditions - and the world at large is gleefully accepting the status quo: A STATE WHERE ITS' POPULATION LIVES NOT IN THAT STATE BUT IN ISRAEL. AND LET'S CALL IT A 2-STATE AGAIN. ITS GUARANTEED TO WORK - HISTORY MUST NOT BE HARKENED TO. To Go To Top

DOES ISRAEL'S LEADERSHIP NEED HEALING? OR EVACUATION! Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 16, 2004.

In my last article of May 14th, "Investigate: Was Gaza Action A Provocation For Withdrawal?", I questioned the decision of sending troops into Gaza at this precise time and, perhaps, under-equipped, under-manned and at greater risk on the ground. It appeared to me that Prime Minister Sharon, in collaboration with Shimon Peres, may have believed that they needed a clash of sizeable proportions in order to provide the Left with an opportunity to stage a successful "withdrawal from Gaza" campaign. Sharon could then sit back and let the Left build up the momentum for either another nation-wide referendum, new elections or simply bulldoze it through the Knesset. If my sense of what was happening was even slightly correct, then Israeli soldiers were being sent in unnecessarily on the ground to trigger a firefight with the Arab Muslim Palestinians and generate casualties of their own. In fact, that happened. 13 Israeli soldiers were killed the week of May 15th when air strikes may have accomplished the same mission and without Israeli casualties. The Arab civilians would have been warned to evacuate for the Phildelphi route to be widened and for the weapons, workshops to be exploded - without casualties. Consider the number of empty buildings Sharon and those before him exploded in order to pacify the Israeli public after a particularly horrifying terrorist attack. I received some first comments expressing shock and statements to the effect that such a heartless decision could not be possible by our esteemed leaders. I suspect that those Jews with good memories or academics with a professional recall of history would NOT express surprise at the perfidy of Israeli/Jewish leadership for political, personal or other reasons. In fact, several of them responded to that article, agreeing with me in even stronger terms than those I used. I suppose I could offer instances of world leaders betraying their own nations by staging events that either led them into war or to the deposing of leaders in Africa, South America, Europe - to install governments and leaders more to their liking. History is replete with such misuse by leaders of their populations in order to manipulate them, enrage them and guide them into disastrous ventures. The Gulf of Tonkin rings a danger bell.... But, let us return to Israel. In late 1979 and the early 1980s I wrote several articles speaking about Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres and other Labor Party leaders, colluding and conspiring with Yassir Arafat to evacuate the settlers - then quite a small number. It was illegal according to Israeli law at that time to meet with anyone in a terrorist organization, as the PLO was so classified. But, various Labor leaders were seen doing so. Their un-declared purpose was to eject the settlers of YESHA (Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza). Not much has changed except that all of Israel,s governments have sent pioneers to settle these areas since 1969 and there are now 250,000 men, women and children living in YESHA, with 8000 living in Gaza/Gush Katif. Try to imagine how Israel could possibly evict, evacuate, dismantle, dismember all these communities, people, homes, farms, factories, wineries, businesses - built by these people,s sweat equity and often with their own money. Now Sharon, a key planner of this band of protective settlements, many of which are now large cities, tells us all that "he knows best" and his new decision is for "the greater good". Today, May 16th it was reported "that several settlements in YESHA received horrifying notices demanding that the residents to leave their homes before they are destroyed: Beit El, Karnei Shomron and Negohot." We don,t know who sent them and are checking to confirm this. I received the same comment of disbelief - even from settlers then, that our own Jewish leaders would not possibly betray or mislead their own people. Some years later it became common knowledge that these illegal meetings and planning did take place but, I don,t recall any retro-active investigations or indictments by the Leftist Supreme Court of anyone for meeting with illegal organizations and possibly going to prison for collaborating with known enemies. Israel was still at war with those countries and organizations who swore to eliminate the Jewish State. Such conspiracies would be categorized as high treason. But then again, high level crooks in politics, military, intelligence, etc. never went to jail in Israel. Only protesters of these policies are arrested or put into administrative detention - too often and without trials. Let's move on: Recall the first "Intifada"? December,1987? Within the then Unity government, Yitzhak Rabin was Defense Minister and Shimon Peres was Foreign Minister. Both left the country at the same time which itself was unusual - except it also coincided with the initiation of the first "Intifada". Rabin went to America to meet President George H.W. Bush, the father, and former head of the CIA to secure his backing for his "evacuation" policy. Peres went to England to visit Margaret Thatcher and to France to meet Francois Mitterrand to implore them (and to influence other Europeans) to put pressure on Israel,s government to force Israel into an International Peace Conference where Israel would be alone against all the other nations who would push Israel to give up everything in her heartland in compliance with Arafat,s demands. In retrospect it was not surprising that Yassir Arafat kicked off the "Intifada" in the Rafah section of Gaza just after their departure. As the fighting ramped up both Rabin and Peres refused to come back to stop the rioting or insurrection (later called: "Intifada"). Only when that fire got a good start about 2 to 3 weeks later, did they return. I wrote several articles then that this looked to me like a staged event to assist their mission of securing foreign pressure with the likely participants being Rabin, Peres, Arafat and the CIA (at the behest of the U.S. State Department) who were deeply experienced in launching revolts in countries outside of America. I opined that this seemed staged in order to push the Rabin-Peres agenda to evacuate the settlers. Naturally, there was no investigation, because this was Israel. But, the expected consequences were that this first "Intifada" was supposed to 'prove' that settlers had to be forced out of Gaza, Judea and Samaria (incorrectly called the 'west bank' by most of the world,s media). Naturally, no one believed that Israeli leadership would conspire with Yassir Arafat and foreign governments against their own people...but, they did. This led to the Madrid Conference in 1991, where, as predicted by me and others, Israel was 'ganged up on' by several world governments, including and especially the U.S. State Department through Baker,s "Jew Boys", Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller and Daniel Kurtzer. The Madrid International Conference conferred dignity upon Yassir Arafat, the master terrorist, converting him into a legitimate statesman with whom it was Kosher to negotiate. Then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was warned that this was a trap but, like PM Menachem Begin at Camp David, he was certain he could handle it. Both were tragically wrong. At the very beginning of the Madrid Conference, I forecast that the State Department would "quietly influence" one of the members to call for a stand-down of nuclear capability in the region - aimed primarily at Israel. Like clock-work, the Egyptian delegate called for the Middle East to be a "Nuclear-Free Zone", which was aimed solely at removing Israel,s crucial deterrent for the purpose of a safe attack by the Arab Muslim countries in the future. Then, we had Oslo in 1993 where the same players conspired in deep cover with foreign interests to create a State for a people who never existed as a nation, let alone as a collective people. Here again, we find Rabin, Peres, Yossi Beilin with a few Leftist professors linked to Norwegians (whose nasty treatment of their Jews during the Nazi Holocaust is well documented). Again, any question of treason or betrayal of the Jewish people was quashed. Several years ago, a Knesset member proposed an investigation of Oslo and to name the foreign interests who participated. Shimon Peres went ballistic, threatening to quit the Knesset whereupon, his staunch friend, Arik Sharon moved to stop any effort to investigate how Oslo came to be - especially with no input from Israeli military or security advisors. Such an investigation, if it revealed treason, coupled with all the Jews murdered as a result (1500 killed, tens of thousands wounded - many maimed for life), would have forced even the Radical Leftist Supreme Court under Aharon Barak to indict and sentence the conspirators. This would be a bigger scandal than any of the financial manipulations recently being investigated. But, as I said before, crooks, traitors, embezzlers of high rank are never indicted and never go to jail in Israel. So, is it possible that this week troops were deliberately sent in, on the ground, with insufficient protection, at this particular time to start a clash that would in turn give the Left ammunition with which to shout, have rallies, parade grieving parents in front of TV cameras shouting for withdrawal in order to roll out the "Hate the Settlers" campaign? Would Sharon use his brilliant military tactics to enforce his political will on his own people who had just voted 60% against his "Disengagement/Dismemberment" campaign? Would all the levers of power be pulled, such as securing the pre-planned timely outpouring from the Hebrew Media, namely the Left,s 3 newspapers: Ma,ariv, Yediot Aharonot and Ha,aretz? Was it merely circumstantial that Sharon allowed the Left to silence the single voice of the Right: ARUTZ SHEVA,s radio station before he began his crusade to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Jews in order to assist the election of his "good friend" President George W. Bush of the Bush Family Dynasty and the Baker Cabal? Would the planning of this betrayal go back to the ARUTZ 7 "night of the long knives"? Do you think it went back further, perhaps to Oslo - or even earlier to the late 1970s? Israel has a cancer in her political body that has metastasized. Unfortunately, the Jewish people have always had these small 'killer cells' in their collective. Over the years it has grown to the point that the patient is possibly terminally ill and may die. Sorry for the identification with the Cancer Ward but, it serves best to illustrate what is happening to the Jewish people and the Jewish State. These people are like the "Erev Rav" who came out of Egypt with Moses and the Jewish people. They poisoned the Jews in the desert to build and worship the golden calf and are doing the same thing now. Only now they are worshiping the vested interests of foreign countries, like those included in the infamous Quartet: the U.S. (especially the State Department), the U.N., the E.U., and Russia. The gathering of the Leftists in Rabin Square on Saturday night, May 15th, to parade, shout and honor the deity of betrayal they constructed seemed a replay of worshiping the golden calf. Unless we rally and tear these killer cells from our body, Israel and the Jewish people will disappear in a wave of savage Arab Muslims enabled by those who hate being Jewish. Mordecai Vanunu, the infamous Jewish traitor, said that the State of Israel should not exist. There are others at the highest levels of the Jewish nation who agree with him or, at least, believe that the State should not be Jewish or 'so' Jewish. So, dear readers, don,t be shocked or surprised when you find Jewish leaders in Israel or the Diaspora, with whom you may have grown up, who are engaged in treason and other acts of perfidy and betrayal. Perhaps there is still hope. Reports coming out of Israel indicate that "thinking Leftists" are saying that the "Hate the Settlers" campaign has gone too far and the 13 soldiers killed in Gaza were searching for illegal weapons and weapons, factories hidden by Arab Muslim Palestinians as well as the tunnels used to smuggle them in from Egypt under the Philadelphi route on the Egypt/Gaza border. This was an action to prevent war against Israel. The soldiers were NOT put at risk to protect the settlers. As for any investigation by objective, non-politicos - don,t count on it. If there is any investigation, it will inevitably flow through the "Old Boys, Club" (as it always has in the past) dedicated to conceal, NOT to expose, NOT to embarrass and certainly NOT to put any high ranking crooks in jail. Did you really think that Sharon would or could be indicted for taking money for the Greek Island affair (or anything else)? Were any of those who took foreign money for their election campaigns indicted? Ehud Barak? Sharon? The crooks have Israel by the throat - just like Putin has Russia - or any of the other thugs and dictators we know so well. In any case, Bush needs a Gaza 'win' before his November election; the oil boys need to pacify the Terrorist/Bankers (Saudi Arabia) and Sharon has agreed to make the settlers the sacrificial goats "for the greater good of all" - or so he says. As for the jaded pundits who express disingenuous shock that leaders in Israel, America or Europe could possibly manipulate or even betray their own people for self-serving political goals, I suggest the following: Leave the epi-centers of Washington, New York (the U.N.), Jerusalem, London, Paris, Brussels, etc. where political perfidy is an everyday practice. Get thee to a library, or search historical web-sites and go through the documents of history to see how often Prime Ministers, Presidents, Kings, Monarchs etc. betrayed their own people by staging phony events in order to persuade their people to go along with their particular political needs and planning. The waters they swim in are swamps of intrigue, making corruption a normal way of life. A decent man could lose his moral compass if he is immersed every day with crooked politicians, swindlers of their own peoples' priorities and rights. Of course, there is always the possibility that the people will rise up as they should in a real democracy, clean out the government and the biased Supreme Court and start fresh. Read America's Declaration of Independence. It says exactly that. I wonder how the people of Israel would respond to a Knesset that isn,t a political rubber stamp, a Military which is not a rite of passage for future Leftist politicians and a strong, honest Prime Minister. Israel's security position would certainly be stronger in the volatile Middle East if she stood up strongly as a Jewish State for her rights of sovereignty as well as security. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). To Go To Top

MERE FLESH AND BONES? Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, May 16, 2004.

Tradition has it that Redemption will arrive when the Jews cry an amount of tears that outweigh the tears that Esau wept when he heard that Jacob had received the blessing from Isaac. I cried a good part of last week, I hope my tears made a dent in the national quota required of us. The front page images of our soldiers on their hands and knees, sifting through sands, in search of remnants of the bodies of their fallen comrades were distressing to say the least. On one hand, it was Holy work. On the other hand, seeing our boys unarmed and in a prone position left us all feeling more than a bit vulnerable- and with a lot of questions. The mother of one soldier prays, "Please G-d, no soldier should injure a fingernail to get back my son's ear." The father of another fallen soldier demands that the Prime Minister "Return the bones that belong to me. I gave you a whole son, I want all his bones...I don't have his heart. I don't even have some of his heart." Both are legitimate outpourings of grief which demand an appropriate response from the government, the military and from all of us - after all, we Jews are a collective body and we've lost some precious souls and significant parts. I found it ironic, in a sickening sort of way, that last week also saw Israel's Chief Pathologist dismissed as Director of the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute. It seems the professor was involved in a number of controversies, including the unauthorized use of body parts for research and other purposes. The esoteric meaning behind the value attached to dried bones or pieces of flesh is above and beyond most of us. But we need only take a glimpse at the uncanny connections between ancient and modern Jewish history to realize that something extraordinarily profound is occurring. Remember the frantic search for Joseph's remains that Moses makes prior to leading our people out of Egypt? The fact that our soldiers' remains were being hidden so close to the Egyptian border, that our soldiers were killed while looking for weapons which were being tunneled via Egypt and that Egypt's cooperation was required in order to get some of those parts back, is both disturbing and worth reflection. If you recall, Joshua completes the mission for Moses... "Joseph's bones, which the Israelites had brought up from Egypt, were buried at Shechem in the tract of land that Jacob bought for a hundred pieces of silver from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem. This became the inheritance of Joseph's descendants." (Yehoshua) Not only is Shechem Joseph's final resting place, but it's also the place where he was sold into slavery by his brothers. Today, Shechem is called "Nablus" and it's a hotbed of Arab terrorism. In case you're wondering whatever became of Joseph's grave, well.... In October 2000, Palestinian's attacked the Israeli soldiers who were guarding the tomb and the Yeshiva students who were studying there. One of our soldiers was wounded in the assault and the Palestinians prevented him from being evacuated. While then Prime Minister Ehud Barak was attempting to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority over safe evacuation, the soldier bled to death. Barak decided to order a unilateral withdrawal in order to reduce tensions in the area (does this sound familiar?). Under the Oslo Accords the Palestinian Authority was supposed to safeguard Jewish and Christian Holy sites, but within two hours of the Israeli retreat, Arab mobs ransacked, burned and reduced the tomb and its surrounding structure to rubble. This was all done under the watchful eye of the Palestinian Authority. [It should be noted that additional desecration to the site occurred in the winter of 2003. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had little to say about the matter]. Ghoulish. There is no other way to describe unfolding geopolitical events. Several weeks ago we were immersed in a debate over the brutality depicted in a celluloid, technicolor presentation of a crucifixion. In the last two two weeks the world has been exposed to the real time, flesh and blood perversions of Western armed forces and barbaric Islamic mobs. We've watched gruesome battles, lynchings, prisoner abuse, executions, the massacre of a pregnant woman and her children, football with stolen body parts, and a decapitation. Welcome to the dark ages - and you thought we had progressed. There are nations that go to war under the banner of Jihad, imperialism, freedom and democracy, love for the motherland or extreme nationalism. Regardless of whether they win or lose or whether their fight is just, their flags will ultimately bear the stain of acts of rape, plunder and desecration. Modern Israel is far from a state pristine innocence, but our wars have always been defensive. Historically speaking, our ancestors who were bolder, more courageous and possessed more faith, were willing to initiate wars in order to avenge or prevent rape, plunder and desecration. There's nothing wrong with that -it's called self-preservation and amounts to a sanctification of life. Preserving the values and moral foundations of the past has always been the Jewish way of ensuring the future. The notions of self-sacrifice and accountability may sound archaic, self-righteous and biblical to many who are immersed in self gratification and the present. But without these ancient precepts, life becomes downright barbaric -as we have seen these past few weeks. We Jews don't have the option of retreat. There are no peace partners on our horizon, only brutal enemies. Indeed, while tens of thousands of Peace Now activists were demonstrating on behalf of capitulation, Arafat was simultaneously calling on his people to "terrorize your enemies." The Arabs are intent on butchering us whether we withdraw from Gaza or not. The news is hardly pleasant and nobody is comfortable with the following BBC account: The house off Salahudeen Street was home to S'ham Abu Libdeh. She lived in it for nearly 40 years, and she raised her seven children there. I spoke to her as she picked her way through the rubble that is now all that is left of her house. Mrs Abu Libdeh said there was no warning that the bulldozers were coming. "The Israelis gave us no time," she said. Well Mrs. Abu Libdeh, losing a house can be rough, but your terrorist neighbors and friends (including women) don't give us Israeli civilians any warning or time before slaughtering us in buses, cafes, cars, homes and at our Shabbat and Festival tables. Too bad the BBC didn't see fit to file this newsworthy report about recent Israeli casualties in Gaza: An elderly Palestinian woman in the building complained that she was thirsty, and the soldier agreed to accompany her to the first floor for water. Palestinian snipers were waiting and shot and killed him. They then opened fire on other soldiers who went to rescue him. In all, two soldiers were killed, and two were moderately wounded. It's not a time to be loving, kind, forgiving and patient with the enemy. Extreme kindness in a time of war can kill a person and is in itself a desecration. There is a time to kill and a time to hate. It is forbidden for us Jews to surrender our lives because we didn't have the heart to treat the enemy as an enemy. That we value the lives of evil individuals over our own is perhaps the greatest blasphemy of all. That tens of thousands of Israelis can pour into the streets to support what amounts to a surrender and exploit the incidence of our fallen soldiers as a catalyst for their protest, but that same number was incapable of organizing a demonstration of outrage at the murder of a very pregnant Israeli mother and her four children is a profoundly tragic commentary on the condition of our collective body, national soul and very tired bones. "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel..." (Ezekiel 37:11) Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

EUROPE IS SICK Posted by David Ben-Ariel, May 16, 2004.

This was written by Jan Willem van der Hoeven, Director of the International Christian Zionist Center in Jerusalem (www.israelmybeloved.com). Contact them by email at iczc@org.il It is astonishing that many Europeans today have more dislike - sometimes even hatred - for the President of the United States, George W. Bush, than they feel towards those who have been leaders in the terrorist movement - those who have made this world, including Europe, an increasingly danger-filled place. The one who, after terror brought down the twin towers in New York and crushed a large part of the Pentagon, is willing to lead the free world in this battle against the scourge of terror; he seems more maligned and hated than the Islamic terrorist leaders themselves. Yasser Arafat, who while he was in Lebanon allowed training for many of those who later went forth to terrorize different nations in Europe - the Basques, the IRA, the Red Army Faction, and others, causing many deaths and casualties - has been received as a head of state by many in Europe. Europe, by way of Norway, awarded him the Nobel Prize for peace together with deceived Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin. Even though he, by way of his thugs, relieved the Central British Bank in Beirut of close to 600 million dollars worth of assets - the bulk of which he had transported to his private bank accounts in Switzerland - he nevertheless receives millions of dollars worth of assistance from Europe without facing any legal proceedings for bank robbery or massive financial corruption. Arafat has made the world a far less safer place, by teaching the trade that has now been perfected by the likes of Osama bin Laden, Hamas in Gaza and the Hizbollah. And still, most the politicians in sick and spineless Europe shield and protect this man. In addition, they are willing to pour millions of dollars into the hands of the 'poor' Palestinians via the blood-soaked hands of one of the wealthiest terror chiefs on earth, hoping it will somehow be used for his bereft Palestinian people. So as not to upset the feelings of Arafat and his coterie, these leaders are unwilling to really find out how the money they gave in the name of their nations is used. It is truly beyond words. But George W. Bush, they can hate. The Americans who bailed us Europeans out against the Nazis when we were too weak to fight, who rebuilt Europe with their tremendous assistance via the Marshall plan, who again are at least doing something to fight this scourge of terror that seeks to envelope us all - they can be criticized. They can be safely maligned, because Bush does not have a network of terrorists in Europe or elsewhere to blow up our metros in Paris, our trains in Madrid, our British soldiers in Ireland or spoil our Olympics in Munich and maybe later in Athens. The President is fair game! No, Americans will not stoop so low - and yet it is they, who take the fight against this terror seriously in Afghanistan, in Iraq and wherever they can bring these people to justice, that are hated by many in sick, arrogant and spineless Europe Well Mr. Bush, here is one European who appreciates you and is not ashamed to thank you for your efforts to make this world a little bit more of a safer place. Yes, may God bless you, even as some self-destructive leftists in your own nation are joining the choir of many of these Europeans - calling you, not the terrorists, the big danger to this world. My Europe is free today from Nazi terror, not because of the United Nations, or resolutions against Hitler's regimes, or through well-willing European diplomats like Chamberlain. Europe is free today because there were Americans like you who were willing to fight for us when we had lost the ability to fight for ourselves! God bless you, Mr. President! To Go To Top

PRAYER BEFORE GOING TO BATTLE - NEW VERSION Posted by Arieh Zaritsky, May 16, 2004.

This is from Hatzofeh, 14 May 2004. It was It was translated by Aaron Lerner of IMRA (imra@netvision.net.il). . . . And save us from the Central Commander who announced to the nation in complete seriousness that we are sending our sons to battle instead of bombing the enemy from the air - in order not to hurt Palestinian civilians. Put wisdom into the head of the head that decided to rely on the Palestinians to evacuate [Border Police Cpl.] Madhat Yusuf from Joseph's Tomb [IMRA: he bled to death], and now shows mercy on the Palestinians and cruelty to the IDF soldiers. Please bring him and the idiots who also refused to bomb Jenin to understand the meaning of "all who show mercy to the merciless ultimately are merciless to the merciful". Please save us from our leaders. We can already handle our enemies." To Go To Top

JORDAN PLANS TO "TRANSFER" ARAB REFUGEES TO NO-MAN'S LAND Posted by Bryna Berch, May 16, 2004.

Arab leaders say nothing can be done to make the Middle East more democratic or bring it into the 21st century until the poor Palestinians (PPs) are given a home. But they don't want the PPs in their countries. They don't really like the PPs, and they don't trust them - PPs are troublemakers in everybody's country. But feeling sorry for the PPs makes a good excuse to try to destroy Israel. But there's an easy solution that 1. gives the PPs a home; 2. doesn't violate Israel; 3. and keeps the PPs from doing mischief in other Arab countries. Arabs own 99.9% of the Middle East and much of it is vacant. So take a little piece and make it the PPs homeland. Why take land from Israel, which only has 1/10 of 1% of the land? "Informed government sources" are quoted on the Jordanian newspaper Al-Arab al-Yawm's website as saying that Jordan will transfer some 300 Iraqi refugees who consider themselves "Palestinian" to the buffer zone between Jordan and Iraq in the next few weeks. The refugees in the Al-Ruwayshid camp arrived with the onset of the United States' war in Iraq last year. The sources said that the Jordanian government's intention to evict them follows the failure of all negotiations between the UN High Commission for Refugees [UNHCR] and several Arab countries to host these refugees in their countries. The government plans to offer the refugees two choices: either return to Iraq, or move to the no-man's land. In any event, Jordan is determined to tear down the camp at the end of this month. To Go To Top

PA POLITICIANS DIRECT MOSQUE HATE SERMONS Posted by Itamar Marcus, May 16, 2004.

PMW has repeatedly demonstrated the close coordination between the goals of the PA political leaders and the official sermons of the religious leaders. PA religious leaders have regularly defined the Jews as the enemy of God and the murder of Jews the will of God, while the PA leaders were recruiting suicide bombers. Now for the first time there is explicit documentation that the religious leaders receive direct instructions from the PA political leaders as to the precise hate messages to preach. This week the PA daily reported that the PA political appointees called a meeting of the "the religious teachers, the sermon conductors, and the Imams of the mosques" to spell out the political message they were to preach in their mosques, attacking the US and Iraq in their sermons. The following was the article that appeared in the PA daily documenting the political directions to the religious leaders. Headline: "During a religious meeting in Hebron the religious teachers, the sermon conductors, and the Imams of the mosques were called to expose the crimes of the two occupations, the American and the Israeli... "During a religious meeting that took place yesterday in the Al-Sheik Ali Bakaa' Mosque in Hebron, the religious teachers, the sermon conductors, and the Imams of the mosques were called to carry the responsibility and the trust that is laid upon their shoulders and expose the crimes of the two occupations the American [occupation] in Iraq and the Israeli [occupation] in Palestine... Head of the Department of Mosques, Sheik Mohammed Samir Al-Dwiek, gave a briefing of the suffrage and the disasters that the Muslims in Iraq and Palestine are exposed to... It is noteworthy that the meeting was held under the auspices of the Director of the Wak'f in Hebron, Sheik Salah Al-Natsha, and with the presence of Sheik Salah Al-Kawasma, Director of Religious Preaching... and [in presence of] head of the Department of Mosques, the Supervisors of the District's Mosques, and Imams..." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 13, 2004] Itamar Marcus is founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.pmw.org.il). To Go To Top

ISRAEL MUST GET ITS PR RIGHT, FOR ALL OUR SAKES Posted by Gabrielle Goldwater, May 15, 2004.

This was written by David Yelland and appeared in the Times yesterday. I LUNCHED this week with a friend, Poju Zabludowicz, a man whose profile deserves to be higher in this country. He's a real-estate billionaire and a generous patron of contemporary art. His personal collection is one of the most significant in London. Poju is close to the Hollinger negotiations and wants to buy The Jerusalem Post. I rate his chances as better than 50-50. Poju is also passionate about the image of Israel around the world, and today is an appropriate day to discuss this: it is Israel's 56th birthday. Poju personally funds the British Israeli Communications and Research Centre, which lobbies to promote (or, let's face it, defend) the image of Israel in the UK. Israel has, in my opinion, the worst public relations of any nation, institution or corporation in the world. Despite the work of people like Poju, the Israelis have no spokespeople able to defend the Jewish state in the media. The result is that it is being outmanoeuvred by both terrorists and peaceful Palestinians such as Hanan Ashrawi. I'm no defender of everything Ariel Sharon has done, though I think he is more sinned against than sinning. But the bigger picture is that both Israel and the Jewish people have got their message about as wrong as is possible in recent years. They have simply lost the argument, which is unfair, sad and very dangerous. The result is that terrorists, using as their tools al-Jazeera and many fools in the Western media, are better at PR than the democratically elected Israeli Government. What Israel needs to do is get its message right. It needs a civilised spokesman or woman and it needs to communicate with confidence the fact that the state is a lonely democracy surrounded by hostile forces. It is also about time the Jewish State made the point that its people have provided the world with some of the greatest who have ever lived. It's not as if they don't have a case! Where on Earth would we be without the Jews? The answer is about 200 years in arrears. They have given the world some of the brightest, most creative people of historic significance, yet I do not think I have ever heard that argument made by a Jew in public. Personally I have never even heard such an argument made in private. But I tell you, it ought to be. Let me see . . . let's take a few names in no particular order. How about: Albert Einstein, Marcel Proust, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Popper, Modigliani, Bob Dylan, Michael Dell, Alan Greenspan, Edward Teller, Mark Rothko, Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, Richard Avedon, Jacob Epstein, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Lawrence Weiner, Sigmund Freud, Elie Wiesel, Franz Kafka, J. D. Salinger, Jerry Seinfeld and Norman Rosenthal . . . is that enough? What more can these people do to prove themselves? Without the Jews, this world would be a dull, uninspired and far less civilised place. It isn't that the Israelis are frightened. These are very brave people. But they, as a people, instinctively prefer to avoid attention, and just as importantly the idea of 'boasting' about the Jewish contribution to the world goes against the grain. But as time goes by it is going to become more and more important that the Israelis and the Jews get their message honed. It is of huge importance that they do so because the world needs a vibrant and secure Israel ' and the Jewish people deserve a home. Israel has a great story to tell but it is simply failing to do so. It needs to get its message across quickly and effectively before it is too late. NIALL FitzGerald's parting gift to Unilever, which he has led for nearly eight years, is a Lb 7 million rebranding exercise including an impressive new logo, which is being put on its diverse range of products, from Knorr to Findus and Hellmann's. My fear is that this has been done for all the wrong reasons. Internally, I am sure putting the Unilever 'U' on every product will galvanise morale. However, externally this exercise will mean nothing to the consumer, which is surely the stakeholder that matters most. When companies start talking to themselves and not the outside world, trouble is sometimes not far away. To Go To Top

ANTI-SEMITISM: WHAT DOES IT MEAN? Posted by Dafna Yee, May 15, 2004.

Anti-Semitism is not a very big word, is it? Both the words "HATE" and "LOVE" take up less space and yet the shorter words are no more emotionally charged. The word "WAR" is even smaller. Nevertheless, you can see that this word is so important that it is found in every country today. Even if you cannot read the language, you can pick out this word or its translation from front-page stories nearly every day of the week. Why should this word merit so much use? Perhaps we can find the answer if we learn its meaning. Its usage transcends language and cultural boundaries. If it is just the hatred that is described by the dictionary definitions, then a word like "misogynist" (hater of women) should be equally represented. As that is not the case, we must look for another explanation to provide some insight into why anti-Semitism is so enduring and universal. While Roget's Thesaurus does not have a synonym listed for "anti-Semitism," surprisingly enough, a search on the web came up with a word that works very well -- "scapegoat." In fact, there is a psychotherapist in Great Britain, Simon Crosby, who devotes his entire practice to "scapegoating." His definition of the term reads: "Scapegoating is a hostile social -- psychological discrediting routine by which people move blame and responsibility away from themselves and towards a target person or group. It is also a practice by which angry feelings and feelings of hostility may be projected, via inappropriate accusation, towards others. The target feels wrongly persecuted and receives misplaced vilification, blame and criticism; he is likely to suffer rejection from those who the perpetrator seeks to influence. Scapegoating has a wide range of focus: from "approved" enemies of very large groups of people down to the scapegoating of individuals by other individuals. Distortion is always a feature." According to Crosby, scapegoating has a recognizable psychodynamic process in which, "feelings of guilt, aggression, blame and suffering are transferred away from a person or group so as to fulfill an unconscious drive to resolve or avoid such bad feelings. This is done by the displacement of responsibility and blame to another who serves as a target for blame both for the scapegoater and his supporters." Crosby goes on to point out that, "Scapegoating frees the perpetrator from some self-dissatisfaction and provides some narcissistic gratification to him. It enables the self-righteous discharge of aggression." He also incorporates the definitions of two other authorities: "scapegoating is an example of projective identification, with the primitive intent of splitting: separating the good from the bad" [Scheidlinger, 1982]. On another view, scapegoaters are insecure people driven to raise their own status by lowering the status of their target [Carter, 1996]." (These quotes are from The Scapegoating Society website: http://www.scapegoat.demon.co.uk/) Apparently, the words "scapegoating" and "anti-Semitism" have largely interchangeable meanings and the term anti-Semitism qualifies as a recognizable type of scapegoating. As this is the case, we can understand anti-Semitism as a mentally unhealthy, but unfortunately very common, dynamic by which too many people handle their negative feelings. Apparently, Crosby himself is unaware of the connection. (I wrote him a letter asking him to correct his oversight but he never responded.) Of course, defining anti-Semitism as a form of scapegoating offers only one possible explanation for its continued application through the ages, and more than one meaning can certainly exist concurrently (and undoubtedly, does). Unfortunately, it turns out that learning that anti-Semitism is possibly a manifestation of a common psychological phenomenon, doesn't help someone to live with its presence. May G-d help us reach a point where anti-Semitism becomes an archaic term with its meaning only of historical and scholarly interest. Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

INVESTIGATE: WAS GAZA ACTION A PROVOCATION FOR WITHDRAWAL? Posted by Emanuel Winston, May 15, 2004.

A question has arisen worthy of a Court of Inquiry in respect to the sudden increased number of soldiers killed in Gaza. The questions to be asked, demanded of Sharon, Mofaz, Olmert, Peres is this: WAS THERE A DISCUSSION TO DELIBERATELY ELEVATE THE ACTIONS IN GAZA IN ORDER TO PROVOKE A PUBLIC OUTCRY FOR WITHDRAWAL - AFTER SHARON'S REFERENDUM TO WITHDRAW FROM GUSH KATIF WAS LOST IN A LANDSLIDE VOTE? Was there an agreed program to use action in Gaza, with expected casualties, to give the Left an opportunity to ramp up their protests? Were the soldiers sent in for legitimate goals, to clean out weapons' factories and weapons' smuggling tunnels BUT without sufficient strength and protection? Why were forces sent into Gaza at this time when there was no apparent reason other than to provoke a high profile clash? We have already seen the Leftist Hebrew Media seeming well-prepared to make front page headlines, in effect, urging the readers to demand withdrawal. This was coupled with slogans to blame the settlers for the casualties of the soldiers in a provocative "Hate the Settlers" campaign. Clearly, this mix of propagandists had set the stage for another public outcry as when Rabin was assassinated. Was this a strategic move by Sharon in order to save his plan for withdrawal urging public support with some hysteria thrown in? Were Israeli soldiers sent into Gaza to deliberately draw fire with attendant expected casualties? If so, how many people, both political and military, would have been co-conspirators in this operation? If ever there was a time for the Knesset to call to account Sharon, Mofaz, Olmert, Lapid, Peres, et al now is that time. Also the Inquiry should cover foreign involvement in any planning, funding and/or participation in what seems to be a well-constructed multi-faceted plan to force through the Sharon/Bush Withdrawal Plan. IF any of this is even slightly true, then the culprits should stand trial for murder and/or treason. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). To Go To Top

FIRST COMES GAZA Posted by Steven Plaut, May 15, 2004.

Anyone notice that in Colin Powell's speech this evening, he made it clear that any withdrawal of "settlements" by Israel from the Gaza Strip would be a positive first stage towards the complete removal of all "settlements" everywhere, presumably including neighborhoods of Jerusalm regarded by Powell as "settlements"? Remember how the Likud lemmings were trying to sell the "disengagement plan" as a way to take the heat off Israel regarding the West Bank, by tossing to the US a bone in the form of a judenrein Gaza Strip? Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

WE MUST SAVE THE THREATENED JEWS OF GAZA Posted by Ken Heller, May 14, 2004.

PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON HAS ANNOUNCED THAT HE WILL UNILATERALLY WITHDRAW FROM GAZA, FORCING 8,000 JEWS FROM THEIR HOMES, FARMS, SCHOOLS, SYNAGOGUES AND THEIR BEAUTIFUL COAST LINE...ALL OF THIS TO CAPITULATE TO ARAFAT AND ALL THE ARAB TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS. WHILE IT IS TRUE THAT SHARON'S OWN LIKUD PARTY VOTED AGAINST WHAT HE CALLS HIS "DISENGAGEMENT" PLAN, THAT WILL NOT STOP HIM FROM SEEING THAT DIABOLICAL PLAN TO FRUITION. THIS WILL SERVE TO REWARD AND INCREASE TERROR AND SERVE TO DESTABILIZE THE ENTIRE REGION. THE 21 COMMUNITIES THAT MAKE UP GUSH KATIF HAVE BANDED TOGETHER TO LAUNCH A CAMPAIGN DESIGNED TO PREVENT THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SHARON "DISENGAGEMENT" PLAN. THESE EFFORTS CONTINUE. THERE IS NO REST FOR THESE PEOPLE, HAVING TO FIGHT THE ARABS AND THEIR OWN DICTATORIAL GOVERNMENT. FUNDS ARE NEEDED TO PAY FOR FREE BUSES TO BRING ISRAELIS TO GUSH KATIF SO THEY CAN SEE THE BEAUTY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE AREA FOR THEMSELVES. THE FUNDS WILL ALSO BE USED TO PAY FOR BOOKLETS THAT WILL BE MAILED TO EVERY ISRAELI HOME, PLEADING THE CAUSE OF GAZA JEWS. A FILM, CELEBRATING THE BEAUTY OF AND JEWISH LIFE IN GUSH KATIF IS BEING MADE WHICH WILL BE WIDELY DISTRIBUTED. PLEASE HELP THIS EFFORT BY SENDING YOUR TAX DEDUCTIBLE CONTRIBUTION TO: "FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF" and mail to KEN HELLER PO BOX 459 HUNTINGDON VALLEY, PA. 19006 THE NEED IS AS URGENT NOW AS IT WAS BEFORE THE LIKUD VOTE. THE CAMPAIGN CONTINUES TO BE CONDUCTED. IT CANNOT SUCCEED WITHOUT THE HELP OF JEWS WHO WANT TO BE CERTAIN THAT "NEVER AGAIN" WILL BE THE REALITY AND NOT JUST AN EMPTY, MEANINGLESS PHRASE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENUINE CARING AND CONCERN...AND SUPPORT !! KEN HELLER Ken Heller is a pro-Israel activist and heads the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For A Safe Israel. He can be reached at kjhnha@aol.com. To Go To Top

ISRAEL'S MILITARY BALANCE: 2004 Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 14, 2004.

Sometimes we lose focus on the bigger picture as Muslim Jihadists ramp up daily terror in Israel and globally. Israel is fighting two wars. One is the war against well-known terror which occurs every day - called low-intensity war-fare. For the other, the IDF (Israel Defense Force) is preparing for a conventional, area-wide war, waged by the surrounding Arab and Muslim countries, many with hidden weapons of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) - including NBC (Nuclear, Biological and Chemical). Those who belong to any or all of the various terrorist organizations, Hamas, Fatah, Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades, Tanzim, Islamic Jihad - and all the others connected in neighboring countries, such as Al Qaeda and Hezb'Allah (in Syria and Lebanon, are funded and run by the organization in Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, et al). Although comparing the quantifiable vital statistics in the Military Balance between Israel and her hostile neighbors is an indispensable necessity, there are other leading factors to be assessed which are non-numerical. Warfare has changed in almost every facet. It always had layers to be reviewed but now, those layers include primitive, backward nations and terrorists who have the capability of leveling cities and contaminating vast areas with NBC (Nuclear, Chemical and Radioactive materials). Men and equipment do not move without pre-planning or without having the mind-set to do so. Many nations have armies but in most nations, they exist for security and self-defense. They are not necessarily poised to attack at a time of their leaders' choosing - which cannot be said to describe the Arab/Muslim nations who use their treasure NOT for the benefit of their people but to keep military forces ready in an actionable status. Israel has had to maintain her forces in a quasi-alert status for over 55 years. Given the prior 7 wars, the Jewish nation did not know when one or more Arab countries would alert their standing armies instantly to a war footing and move from camp to menace Israel's borders. This would require Israel to call up reserves from her mostly civilian forces and move to some pre-positioned equipment and transport equipment to all fronts from main depots. The last example of a standing army moving from camp was Egypt and Syria's secret assemblage of forces and surprise attack during the Jewish High Holy Day of Yom Kippur 1973. Add to that the factor of a pre-planned saturation missile attack from Iran, Syria and, Yes - even Egypt, all of which can occur within minutes. Presently Egypt - with a $60 Billion dollar U.S. investment is a military colossus which could easily represent a vital threat to Israel, especially if the Muslim Brotherhood succeeds in overthrowing the current Egyptian government. Here the Balance of Counter Force was conditional upon the ability of the enemy to quietly assemble its forces over a convenient period of time. What the enemy is able to accomplish over a year or more, Israel had to do within a 24-48 hour period. Therefore, the Balance of Power was highly skewed in favor of any aggressor(s) who could be triggered by the orders of 'usually' one man, the dictator of that country. Israel's enemy (ies) rely on not being challenged or faced with a pre-emptive strike as they quietly gather their forces. At one time Israel had a doctrine of defense that called for preemption which was dropped due to pressure from the U.S., E.U., U.N., et al. America has since adopted the doctrine of preemptive strikes for themselves, recognizing that threats from WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) leaves little time to negotiate or slowly prepare defensive forces. Israel is still being pressured to restrain herself and NOT conduct preemptive strikes. The Balance of Power during the first days of any war for Israel rests on a sliding scale of efficiency which, for Israel, begins on the low end and rises exponentially as her reserve forces are assembled and moved to the front(s). It is expected that in future war, Israel's enemies will do everything in their power to impede her civilian mobilization as a vital part of attack planning. This would include blowing up roads, setting ambushes, utilizing the Israeli Arabs and Arab Palestinians as an organized 'Fifth Column', dispensing chemical and/or biologically loaded missiles, both at troops and civilians. For Israel, chaos in the cities will delay mobilization and draw vital forces to the trouble spots. Regretfully, Israeli leaders have not made training civilians, particularly retired soldiers, a priority so they could quickly and efficiently assemble to guard their own neighborhoods and communities. Some may recall the wild confusion when Saddam launched 39 SCUD missiles at Israeli cities. There was no organization to deal with the confusion or mass exodus out of Tel Aviv each evening before the expected missile strike times. Here again, while equipment can be numerically categorized, it is the non-quantifiable, deceptive mind-set of various Arab Muslim leaders that cannot be added up on a calculator. In term of Balance of Power, it rests on a sliding scale of mixed components - some of which do not lend themselves to actuarial tables. PSYCHOLOGICAL MOTIVATION For example, there is a broad area of psychological motivation which defies numerical evaluation. The Arab Muslims have an accumulation of rage, often driven and stirred up by their religion - Islamic Fundamentalism. There is also the matter of reclaiming what can only be referred to as a macho-driven Pride and Shame for prior lost wars to the infidel dhimmi (low class outsider). Being beaten 7 times on the field of battle by an enemy always discounted as weak and contemptible creates a certain pathological rage - only satisfied with blood conquest. - not political agreements. That is what their leaders tell them, what they sing or chant during huge demonstrations, what they teach their children - to hate and kill the Jews. "In Blood and Fire, we will redeem you, O Jerusalem." is their continual chant. Rage is a highly motivating factor. Capturing Jerusalem is a highly symbolic act which is intended to prove the capability as Muslim warriors which will also 'prove' that Allah supercedes HaShem, the G-d of the Jews. According to Koranic or Shari'ah law, politically-driven written agreements may be used temporarily to regain strength and then re-engage the enemy. Such agreements when accepted by one's adversary are looked upon as indicative of weakness which usually encourages and accelerates the next attack. Yassir Arafat frequently described Oslo as a "Hudabaiya Treaty" in speeches to Arabs in Arabic on September 13, 1993, the day Oslo was signed and often thereafter. (Mohammed signed a 10 year peace treaty with the Jewish Koreish (also spelled: Qurayza) tribe of Jews in order to pray in Mecca, but he returned with a stronger army in 2 years, massacred all the men and sold the women and children into slavery.) Psychological warfare may be practiced as a science by the West but, within the Arab culture, it is endemic. Myth and hyperbole quickly become fact. At the same time of conventional warfare, it is anticipated that the Mullahs will encourage Arab Muslim civilians to launch massive human wave attacks on Israeli cities and towns and to block the roads to prevent mobilization. This tactic falls within the hysterical willingness to commit ritual suicide which allows a Muslim a "guaranteed entry into warrior's heaven" and other benefits. Here again, the street mobs with shrieking women and men, firing guns into the air are the rule, not the exception. Conversely, Israel's motivation among her civilian army is that they cannot sustain even one loss. Losing one war means that Arab Muslim soldiers would plunder, kills all the Jews - including women, children and the elderly. They say they will in so many words - declaring this is their "scorched earth" policy. The Israeli soldiers and general population know the Arab tendency to savagely mutilate captured prisoners - cutting off body parts, burning, etc. Israeli soldiers are motivated by the fact that they and their families have no where to retreat to. Unlike the Arab Muslim nations with vast lands which could never be conquered or occupied by the comparatively small Israeli forces, Israel has little strategic depth, militarily speaking - even with Judea, Samaria, Gaza, the Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights. Israelis have long recognized their peril and must follow the philosophy of Ein Breira (No Choice). Clearly, the motivation of the fighting soldier is a 'Force Multiplier' in the Balance of Power which cannot be calculated in numbers. COSTS OF WAR As a result of 7 aggressive wars by the Arab Muslim nations, Israel has had to use its GNP/GDP to purchase and/or build war making equipment at enormous expense. Unlike such nations as German, Japan or, more recently, Iraq 1991, Israel was never compensated by the aggressor nations who lost each war. Because Israel was never allowed to complete its victory to the point of the enemies' surrender, Israel could neither force a peace nor demand war reparations. Every war in which Israel was forced to fight - including continuous terrorist attacks, she lost the blood of countless dead and wounded soldiers and staggering costs in dollars. Israel's Balance of Power was greatly affected by the nation's single budget which had to counterbalance the individual Arab nations? budgets which were often pooled collectively, funded by oil or given by donor nations - including the U.S. Such nations as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria/Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Libya...who initiated and participated in wars against Israel wasted their nation's treasure on war rather than build a productive society. Each promptly began to rebuild their military after each loss - with more and better equipment. Israel was consequently forced into an endless, expensive arms' race to maintain a credible military balance and deterrence against attack. Arabs respect strength of arms. This is Israel's best deterrent against major war. Therefore, Israel is forced to rely upon U.S. aid to a great extent, coupled with onerous terms of restraint, thus lowering necessary preemptive action. This destruction of equipment provided a profit windfall to weapons' manufacturers in almost every nation of the Free West - in addition to Russia, China, North Korea, etc. Such sales were in the trillions of dollars and thus considered a profit base for these nations. War was profitable and, therefore, to be encouraged or at the very least not terminated. Most every major nation relies upon weapons' sales as a profit center, both for cash flow and employment. Keeping Israel from total victory in each of the 7 wars initiated by the Arab/Muslim countries, was a policy decision by most of the Free West, including America, to appease Arab oil nations but, this policy also served to keep the arms manufacturing plants in production. An arms race against well-funded and numerous hostile nations is a major factor in considering the Military Counter Balance in the Middle East. If there were an objective World Court with unbiased, genuine authority, Israel's claims against these nations could very well exceed one Trillion dollars as compensation for wars thrust upon her. Clearly, the cost of defense is a compelling factor in assessing the Balance of Power for any nation. COST OF TERROR Another phase of a non-numeric view of the Balance of Power comes with Terror -which is defined as "low-intensity warfare". The alert and cost status to keep the military and police in the field continuously is staggering. The cost in lives, killed, wounded and maimed for life in incalculable. Multiple Israel's casualties by the number 55 to calculate the ratior of what such losses would mean in America. For example, since Oslo (September 13, 1993) at least 1500 Israelis have been murdered by Arab Muslim Terror x 55 would be equal to 82,5000 Americans. Plus, hundreds of thousands wounded, many maimed for life. Arab Muslim nations have funded proxy Terrorist organizations which are constantly in motion - always able to choose the times and places of attack. The main bankers, weapons' suppliers, Terrorist Organization sponsors have been Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria, Iran and (until recently) Iraq. While each of these nations, in themselves remain an armed threat which is quantifiable, they also act as financial enablers of numerous Terrorist organizations. I must note that the U.S. State Department - despite confirmed knowledge of Arab Muslim Palestinian terror - continues to press Congress to fund Yassir Arafat's corrupt Palestinian Authority. One must add to that those funds paid yearly by the so-called donor nations of the E.U. (European Union). All seem to understand that these funds do NOT go to civilian infrastructure and the Palestinian Authority for civilian benefits but, rather to Yassir Arafat to maintain his terrorist organizations. Despite complaints and proofs laid before the E.U. (European Union), they remain political and financial supporters of Arafat's Terrorist organizations. Here the Balance of Power gets fuzzy because the Terrorists operate amidst the civilians in uncountable numbers. They deliberately use women and children to commit terror acts and to hide behind. They recruit the so-called 'civilian' Arab Muslim Palestinians as suicide bombers, spotters, snipers who are a hostile 'Fifth Column' situated in the heartland of the Jewish State of Israel. It has long been anticipated that, in time of war internally, local Israel Muslim Arabs would move to mine roads and undertake other sabotage intended to tie up Israeli troops and keep them from getting to their staging areas during mobilization. Therefore, Israel must field combat troops from the reserves to interdict Terrorists, which depletes time from proper training for war, in addition to wearing out the reservists and depleting equipment. The cost for each reserve soldier to leave his school or job and family is impossible to assess but it is a cruel price Israel must pay in order to defend her people from Terror and to be prepared for the constantly threatened full scale War. The cost of maintaining a sophisticated army on a war footing is far greater than the expense of maintaining Terrorists within the Arab Muslim civilian population. Here again the Balance of Power tips both ways against Israel - depending on circumstances. As mentioned previously, we must factor in the Europeans, Arabs, Muslims and America as donor nations. Much publicity has been given to the several Billions of dollars poured into the coffers of Terrorist(s) and Terrorist organizations by the various donor nations. Here the Balance of Power cannot necessarily be measured in numbers of men or armaments. The donor monies allow Terrorist networks to be established on a global basis which penetrates the political establishment via Terror or bribery. It is anticipated that Europe and America will pay a heavy price for not confronting Muslim Terror networks long before 9/11. This is definitely a 'Force Multiplier' that cannot be physically counted. Perhaps it can be guesstimated, but it is highly effective in draining away forces, thereby tipping the Balance of Power. A stark example is the American forces being worn down by Saddam's Ba'ath Party insurgents, joined by other Muslim Terrorists - euphemistically called "foreign forces" or mujahadin. Here again we observe the phenomenon of Arab and Muslims voluntarily migrating to a war zone to confront the infidel. It can be anticipated that the same mix of 'Jihadists' who poured into Iraq from surrounding Muslim countries will migrate into Gaza or whatever territory is surrendered to them as another Arab Muslim Palestinian State. Israel will be under constant assault for years with terror launched from territories abandoned or given over to appease not the terrorists but, Israel's friend, America. And it will be the organizational and training center from which to launch global terrorist attacks. Another alliance that represents the Counter Forces is that between Terrorists motivated by religion - namely, radical Islam and other Terrorists who simply wish to overthrow the government in power in their region. With that, one can add criminal elements such as the Drug Cartels and Counterfeiting rings who connect and ride in with the Terrorists. Syria has been especially active in smuggling drugs and counterfeit currency, in addition to supporting the numerous terrorist organizations. Each acts as a support mechanism for the other - particularly in cash flow operations. For many, being employed as Terrorists is both a salaried job with guaranteed payments to your family if you are 'martyred' and for the young men, it is a thrilling life which they will sacrifice to get to 'martyrs' heaven. It is also a dramatic way to escape the poverty and boredom of backward nations who are held back from modernization by radical Muslim clerics and dictators. Here again, these alliances cannot be numbered - except to estimate their power as a 'Force Multiplier'. PROPAGANDA'S USE IN THE MILITARY BALANCE On a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate Arab Muslim Palestinian Propaganda around 8 - while Israeli Counter Propaganda would barely reach a 2. For reasons that are totally unexplainable, the Arab Muslims seem to understand how to motivate and manipulate world opinion while the so-called "Smart Jews" cannot seem to even grasp the rudimentary elements of Propaganda (in Hebrew called 'Hasbara' - which means 'explanation'). While all major nations have recognized the need for Propaganda, Israelis are generally too late with their explanations, mostly inarticulate in English and resistant to employing professional spokesmen or thinkers. In Israel every officer seems anxious to express his opinion, often admitting or accepting blame for incidents which, on further inquiry, are often proven to be false. By the time they offer a well-researched denial, the story is off the front pages or TV news and the negative impact as told by the Arabs is firmly embedded. (Israel also faces this problem internally, caused by pacifists of the Left who actively subvert Israel's fighting capability and the morale of her civilians and military population. They are one and the same, because Israel must rely on her civilians fulfilling the role of a reserve army.) Here, the Balance of Power is radically tipped as the Arab Muslim Palestinians and the Arab Muslim nations successfully court world public opinion, causing many governments and their people to turn against the Jewish nation. This results in embargoes, cancellations of contracts (military and civilian - economic and scientific). The willingness to vote sanctions against Israel in world organizations is tremendous - especially in the United Nations. Here we find that words are, indeed, mightier than the sword. Add to that the manipulation of language by the World Media, who still call Terrorists 'militants' when they commit atrocities against Israelis or Jews. Granted there is always the oil weapon as a persuasive factor but, the Israelis make it easier by literally abandoning the field of pre-emptive Propaganda and failing at an effective explanation of their actions - after the fact. Israel and the Jewish establishment watched passively while anti-Semitism ramped up - especially in Europe - encouraged by Arab Muslim Propaganda. This anti-Jewish attitude (always on a low flame) can easily be placed on the high burner, deeply effects Israel's Military Balance of Power in real numbers. The cutbacks of Military Development programs due to a shortfall of funds did strike at Israel's military readiness and Balance of Forces. Managing insurgency in a restrained manner in order to assuage world opinion raises the costs exponentially. In brief, Israel's Military Balance rests on many factors besides the inventory and cost of tanks, plane, missiles and soldiers. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). To Go To Top

ARE ISRAELIS EASILY DUPED? Posted by Richard Shulman, May 14, 2004.

IMRA suggests that the people of Israel lack the sophistication to understand the difference between non-binding "sense of the Congress' resolutions" and binding treaties. AIPAC does know, but would try to assure Israelis that such a resolution indicates US policy. AIPAC was about to mount a campaign in behalf of PM Sharon's abandonment plan, including asking Congress for such a resolution. The Likud referendum rejected the plan before AIPAC got started (IMRA, 5/7). That is a serious charge against AIPAC. If true, it would not be ordinary demagoguery but a far more reprehensible treachery. AIPAC should do some soul-searching. It generally supports whatever government is in Israel. It ought to develop a pro-Israel policy of its own, and explain, when it has to, that, Israeli policy is contrary to Israeli national security and Jewish national development. Instead, AIPAC's policy often conflicts with Jewish interests, thanks to AIPAC's blind followership. Imagine the intellectual dishonesty of an organization that before an Israeli election has one policy, and afterwards, has another! Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

STAYING MORALLY SUPERIOR TO SHARKS Posted by Yashiko Sagamori, May 14, 2004.

Here's a joke so old that some of you may not have heard it. A young officer of Her Majesty's Navy fell overboard and was attacked by a shark. He tried to outswim it, which, as you understand, was a pretty hopeless task. Fortunately, he was saved at the last possible moment, and while he was standing, all wet, on deck and the disappointed shark was still snapping its terrible jaws in the air, one of the sailors asked him, "Lieutenant, you have your dagger on you. Why didn't you try to fight the shark off?" The lieutenant's response was, "You don't cut fish with a knife." What's really funny about this joke is how precisely it describes the civilized world's approach to the War on Terror. We have one hell of a dagger on us. We could've fought it off. But we've been taught to never cut fish with a knife, and we are not going to, despite a very significant difference between the maladroit naval officer and us: there is no one to pull us out of the water. If we don't save ourselves, the shark will eat us. It's as simple as that. However, at this particular moment, we, along with the rest of the world including all our false friends and genuine enemies, have more important issues on our mind. We are busy condemning the terrible crimes committed by the US military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. While Saddam was still in power, the prison was famous for atrocities against its inmates. Nevertheless, while Iraqis were enthusiastically torturing and killing other Iraqis there, the world had many more important issues to take care of. For some strange reason the prison, where untold thousands of people suffered brutal torture and painful death for the terrible crime of displeasing Saddam, became the center of the world's attention only after a happy looking young woman in an American military uniform was photographed standing next to a naked, hooded prisoner. On some of those photographs the young lady is laughing her head off, pointing at the prisoner's genitals. The spot that attracted her attention was modestly edited out of the pictures, so we will never know whether her laughter was an expression of happiness at the sight or meant as ridicule. Not that it makes any difference. The participants in that unsavory affair have once again proven that no matter how incredibly disgusting and idiotic a sick person's imagination may be, someone has already done something much worse and enjoyed it tremendously. The common outrage against this incident is perfectly understandable. What I find very hard to understand, however, is a total lack of common outrage against certain other recent events. Take, for instance, the spontaneous celebration in Fallujah, which culminated in the murder of four American civilians and mutilation of their bodies. Or consider the execution-style murder, also by Arabs, of an 8-month pregnant Jewish woman and her four young daughters. A few governments and international organizations made some vaguely appropriate but totally meaningless sounds. Arabs unanimously pronounced the killers heroes; nobody objected to that. Neither the EU nor the US stopped their financing of Arafat's gang of murderers; nobody expected them to. The most eloquent reaction came from the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. He strongly condemned a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia, but managed not to even mention the murder of the Jewish woman and her children although the two attacks occurred within hours from each other. Had he sent Arafat an open letter congratulating him on his latest accomplishment, the effect would've been exactly the same. Why does the world take the murder of Jews and Americans by Arabs in stride, while even the slightest perception of mistreatment of Arabs at the hands of Jews or Americans causes such widespread protests? I think two factors are at play here: first, the fact that the murderers are Arabs; second, that their victims are Jews or Americans. It's quite possible that I have it all wrong, and the truth is exactly the opposite: first, it's the fact that the victims are Jews or Americans; second, that the murderers are Arabs. Or maybe the world doesn't really care who does the killing as long as the victims are Jews and Americans. Especially Jews. Do you have a better explanation? Let's now talk about morals. Why was bombing innocent civilians of Belgrade moral, while decisively putting down the vicious rebellion in the completely irrelevant and inherently hostile town of Fallujah was not? Why were Arabs allowed to desecrate Joseph's Tomb? Why is Muqtaba al-Sadr allowed to use the "sanctity" of another irrelevant Iraqi town, Najaf, to evade capture and prosecution? Why would evicting Israel's enemies from Israel's land by the Israeli government be immoral, but evicting Israelis from Israel's land by the Israeli government would not be? The usual reference to the Geneva Conventions is moot in this case. The Geneva Conventions assume that both sides of the conflict follow them and explicitly free one side of obligations when the other side doesn't comply. During WWII, responding to German violations of the international rules of war, the Allies began systematic destruction of German cities, ruthlessly killing civilians. Was it cruel? Very much so. Was it unfair? Not at all. German civilians brought Hitler to power; German civilians had to pay a terrible price for that mistake. There was not a single military object in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. But the civilian population of those cities, and, to a lesser degree, the rest of Japan, had to pay for their support of the militaristic policies of their government. Without such inevitable cruelty, we wouldn't have won the war. By the way, there were no military objects in the Twin Towers. The Madrid commuter trains were 100% peaceful. The car and the pregnant woman with her four children were going about their business presenting no danger whatsoever to anyone at all. The two reservists lynched in Ramallah in 2000 were soldiers, but the treatment they received at the hands of the Arabs was a blatant violation of the Geneva Conventions, as was the murder of the four American civilians in Fallujah. The list of unpunished Arab crimes is long and getting longer by the hour. By common sense, by basic fairness, and in full compliance with the international law, Arabs have lost their right of protection that the Geneva Conventions grant to innocent civilians during armed conflicts. Arab innocence is no more. And if our civilization is to survive, sooner or later, Arabs will have to pay a terrible price in blood for their celebrations of mass murders and mass murderers, for their systematic turning of their own children into cannibals, for their support of terrorism, for their jihad, for their hatred towards everything healthy that exists in our world. This will be terribly cruel, but absolutely fair. Unfortunately, the obvious fact that our enemies happen to be less moral than even sharks does not mean that our own morals are beyond reproach. The perverted games that a few American soldiers played with the inmates at Abu Ghraib are far from the worst of our deeds. For instance, the compensation paid with our hard earned money to the families of killed enemies is shamelessly immoral. This whole war for which we are paying with hundreds (soon, it will be thousands) of our soldiers killed and tens (soon, it will be hundreds) billions of dollars is itself an obscenity. Don't take me wrong: I am not suggesting that Arabs should be left alone; I am saying that our war against them should have been conducted in a way that would render them forever incapable of ever again hurting the United States or Israel, and it is getting more obvious every day that this is not going to happen. Bush's abject apologies are way more obscene than whatever those soldiers have done to Iraqi prisoners. Someone should've explained to him that demonstrating good will towards people whose culture has failed to produce the concept of good will is counterproductive and, therefore, immoral: when we let them live, they perceive it as our weakness, because they themselves never miss an opportunity to murder those who are weak. Even more obscene is the celebration by the Democrats of the scandal during a presidential campaign. They would gladly sacrifice the country if only they could rule over its ruins. What makes it even worse is the obvious futility of their efforts. The powerful Clinton clique will never let a Democrat win the elections this year, because such a victory will destroy Hillary's presidential ambitions. And in 2009, when Hillary moves into the White House, the immorality of the United States will need a different scale for measurement, a scale which will leave sharks barely visible even with a powerful microscope. But the most immoral of all today is the government of Israel, which is ready to surrender its land to an evil, but impotent, enemy, while substituting the defense of its citizens' lives with symbolic gestures, unable to postpone the next mass murder of Jews by Arabs even by a few hours. In response to my calls for an honest war, a reader sent me a letter asking how the Jews would keep their moral superiority over the Arabs if the former finally start fighting the latter in earnest. I explained to him that in the eternal struggle between good and evil, good inevitably wins, because the right to decide what's right and what's wrong invariably goes to the victor. Therefore, the only way to lose one's moral superiority to a shark is to allow oneself to be devoured. My sincerest apologies to the sharks for the unflattering comparison to Arabs. Yashiko Sagamori is a New York-based Information Technology consultant. To read other articles by the author, go to http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko/ or email ysagamori@hotmail.com To Go To Top

THE SEARCH FOR BODIES CONTINUES Posted by Bryna Berch, May 14, 2004.

Hundreds of IDF soldiers resumed the search this morning for the remains of soldiers who were killed in the blast of their armed personnel carrier on Wednesday in southern Gaza. The searching soldiers, in lines of ten, are crawling in the sand, combing the area for anything that could prove to be the remainder of their friends. The search is taking place on both sides of the Israeli-Egyptian border, as the force of the blast scattered pieces hundreds of meters in all directions. Military correspondent Danny Shalom of HaTzofeh newspaper noted that Egypt's approval for Israeli searchers to enter Egypt was "given, ridiculously enough, by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak - who is no less responsible than the terrorists for the smuggling of explosives into Gaza." Israel has often blamed Egypt for "not doing enough" to stop the smuggling from Egypt to Gaza. Palestinian terrorists fired at the Israelis engaged in searching for their comrades, and other Israeli forces returned effective fire; between 12 and 16 terrorists were killed. IDF Chief Rabbi Col. Yisrael Weiss said today that the search for the remains would continue even on the Sabbath. He explained that it was a matter of "saving lives," for if the forces were to abandon the area for the Sabbath, "the terrorists would return, and our soldiers would be returning to a very different and more dangerous situation on Sunday morning." Significant remains of three soldiers killed in the blast have been identified, and they will be buried today. Corp. Elad Cohen, 20, will be laid to rest in Mt. Herzl, Sgt. Lior Vishinsky, 20, will be buried in Ramat Gan, and Sgt. Eiman Gadir, 24, will be laid to rest in his Bedouin village of Bir al-Mahsir. The two other soldiers killed in the attack were Lt. Aviv Hakani, 23, from Ashdod, and Sgt. Zohar Smeilov, 20, of Ofakim. Defense Minister Sha'ul Mofaz said today that ambulances of the United Nations Relief Works Association (UNRWA) had taken remains of soldiers killed in Tuesday's attack to PA-controlled areas. Arab residents of Gaza were filmed gleefully holding and playing with body parts shortly after the attack on Tuesday morning. Though the PA later returned some of the remains, Mofaz demands that UN Secretary-General relate to the fact that representatives of the world body facilitated the abuse of Israeli corpses. Mofaz said that it is inspiring "to see IDF soldiers turning over every granule of sand in order to bring their comrades to burial - as opposed to the inhumanity of the Palestinians in their abuse of the IDF soldiers and in their use of ambulances of the UN and UNRWA to bring body parts to their side. This shows who we're dealing with." To Go To Top

OUR STALINGRAD Posted by Moshe Feiglin, May 14, 2004.

The voice on the other end of the line had a heavy Russian accent. Two days earlier the majority of Likud members had voted against Sharon's disengagement plan, and I assumed that this was just another person wishing to congratulate and encourage us. "That was our Stalingrad", the person said. For a moment I didn't understand what he meant. "Stalingrad was the battle that decided the fate of the Second World War. This doesn't mean that after Stalingrad things were easy, there was still a long way to go. It took another two and half years of bloody battles until victory, but that was the turning point." "The referendum on Sunday was our Stalingrad." There's something to be said for this comparison. The meaning of the referendum is not that from now on things will be easy, but that the direction has changed. We can expect hard battles and probably some failures, but we are no longer fighting a rearguard action. The disengagers are doing so. Sharon simply has to destroy a Jewish home with a bulldozer. He has to show the entire world settlers being dragged protesting from their homes, he has to show the Left the walls collapsing, he has no alternative. Why? Because Sharon is a Zionist. The fundamental ethos of Zionism was and remains the normalization of the Jewish nation. The rejection of Jewish uniqueness, of the Almighty of whom a Jew gives witness by his very existence, and of the national task that the Jew has taken upon himself over thousands of years of history, is a direct result of Zionism. The collecting together of the Jews in a modern state, and their integration in the family of nations based on Western values, is the means used to achieve the longed-for normalization. It is impossible not to respect the greatness of the Zionist revolution that wiped out the curse of the exile (that also adhered to Judaism). However, despite this respect and appreciation, it cannot be denied that from its beginning Zionism has contained the seeds of its own destruction, and this is what is now happening. The aim of Zionism was not Eretz Israel but the solution of the Jewish problem, by establishing a state like all the others, and turning the Jewish people into a nation like all the others. Eretz Israel was the means and not the end. When it seemed that the conquest of the country served the aim, we conquered and expelled, and settled the country. Not that it appears that fleeing the country serves the same aim of normalization, the classic Zionist desires to flee, to uproot, and to destroy. Of course, the issue is far more complex than such a superficial analysis. There are, of course, nationalist Zionists (the founders of the Likud) whose Jewish identity does not permit them to so easily go to the other extreme, but our experience with the leaders of the Likud indicates that nationalism by itself, with all it importance, is not enough. At this point in time we therefore have a combination of an ideology that has exhausted itself and is leading us to internal collapse, and a person who is very efficient at carrying out this destruction. So what do we do now? The struggle must focus on two planes: political-social, and public. The Political-Social Struggle The referendum of Likud members was an excellent example of concerted action by all ideological forces in a political framework. The Yesha Council did a wonderful job in personal circles outside the party machine. The opposition committees set up inside the party also acted efficiently and with coordination. This activity must continue. The relations established between the belief-based public and the national public must be preserved. Those who knocked on the doors of the Likudniks must be encouraged to phone them once a month, and encourage meetings. This is perhaps the most important task of the Yesha Council today. If we succeed in maintaining these strong links, no bulldozer will be able to overcome us. Within the Likud, Manhigut Yehudit will continue all the steps it began with not insignificant success. Amendment 19c to the Likud Constitution is still on the agenda and will in the end prevent the prime minister from passing tragic decisions in the government. Conferences of the Likud Central Committee, preventing ministers straying from the right path, and consolidating forces within the Likud, are assignments that we shall continue with great energy. These combined activities directed at all Likud members as well as at Central Committee members, MKs, and ministers, will create a situation in which Sharon will find himself acting without backing from his party or from the public. But it is not enough to act only within the Likud. The Public Struggle Here we arrive at a point of truth that I didn't want to touch on. In a democratic state in which government by the majority turns into a dictatorship by the minority, in a situation in which the wishes of the nation and the commitments made to it are trampled underfoot, law-observing and non-violent citizens have recourse to a honorable and democratic remedy: Non-violent civil disobedience. The broad public must understand that the destruction of a neighborhood in Negohot, Beit El, or Karnei Shomron is a test case. If the people who came to Gush Katif on Independence Day will not leave their homes again when they hear of such intended destruction, Sharon will realize that his chosen path is possible, and he will continue along it. Obviously we must scrupulously avoid any forms of violence, but the entire country must shake to its foundations if any attempt is made at uprooting a settlement. Sharon must understand that he is not just playing a democratic game (which is valueless in his eyes) but is dealing with something far deeper. We must make him realize that his rule will only be weakened by such actions. Sharon will then think of other solutions, until he leaves the stage of history and gives up his place, with G-d's help, to belief-based leadership. Such leadership will extend Israeli sovereignty to all areas of Eretz Israel in our hands, and will make supreme efforts to develop and settle them, just as is required by the values of Judaism and by the Likud Constitution. Moshe Feiglin was a cofounder of Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership), a group of people inside the Likud party who want to see Israel adopt a more Jewish character. Feiglin has emphatically said he does not want a theocracy, but he does want a State based on Jewish values. The Manhigut Yehudit website address is http://www.manhigut.org. To Go To Top

USA MUST HAVE GUTS TO TERRORIZE TERRORISTS Posted by David Ben-Ariel, May 13, 2004.

This essay was written by Rabbi Meir Kahane, Zt"l, of blessed memory, and appeared in "USA Today" on February 12, 1987. It is archived at http://www.kahane.org/meir/usa.htm If we ever hope to rid the world of the political AIDS of our time, terrorism, the rule must be clear: One does not deal with terrorists; one does not bargain with terrorists; one kills terrorists. And if that rules is too much for the United States to stomach, let it resign itself not only to the constant threat of kidnapping of Americans in the Third World, but worse, bombs in U.S. department stores, and other public places. One of the great problems with Americans is that - being a decent people - they assume that everyone else is equally decent. They assume that everyone else is equally decent. They assume that, all humans being equal, all cultures are therefore similar in concepts and values. But that is simply not so. And the Middle East is just not the Middle West. The Middle East and the Moslem-Arab world possess their own unique cultures and values that in so many cases are at variance with those of the West. Human rights - especially those of non-Moslems or non- Arabs - simply do not have the same absolute value that they do in the West. Above all, it is not decency or goodness of gentleness that impresses the Middle East, but strength. Because of this, the U.S. is looked on as a paper tiger - with all the accompanying contempt. President Reagan's constant flexing of muscle, with absolutely no reaction to the murder of U.S. Marines and the kidnapping of U.S. citizens, has created for him an image of one who speaks loudly and carries a small twig. That is the heart of the problem. The answer? Never, ever deal with terrorists. Hunt them down and, more important, mercilessly punish those states and groups that fund, arm, support, or simply allow their territories to be used by the terrorists with impunity. It is abundantly clear that Syria wished to, terrorists would be deprived of huge areas of haven in Lebanon. But why should Syria want to? Or Iran? They're happily enjoying Western agony without suffering one bit. And that is the key: Make them suffer. Terror in Syrian and Iranian cities will soon enough convince those two unworthy states that it is unhealthy to support terrorism. And if towns and villages that support terrorists in Lebanon are mercilessly dealt with, they, too, will soon enough turn on them. The question is whether the United States has the stomach to defeat terror or whether Americans will sink into what the Rabbis of the Talmud call "the mercy of fools." When one refrains from terror against terrorists, he is not better than they. He will be deader, and there is nothing moral of ethical about that. The choice is clear and once again, the Rabbis put it well: "If one comes to slay you, slay him first." (Brachot, 58 ) To Go To Top

ABANDONING OUR JEWISH OBLIGATIONS IS THE REAL CAUSE FOR TERROR Posted by Women in Green, May 13, 2004.

This was written by Gary Cooperberg Would it have occurred to anyone, in the aftermath of 9/11, to negotiate with Bin Laden, perhaps suggesting to give him Manhattan for a promise of no further acts of terror? Would any sane American leader as much as suggest pulling out of Iraq, a foreign and independent nation, in reaction to the decapitation of Nicholas Berg? Yet in reaction to far many more acts of inhumanity and cold-blooded murder, Israel is expected to negotiate with her enemies and give them parts of our own homeland! It would be bad enough if only our enemies would make such an outrageous suggestion. But those who claim to be our friends, and even many of our own governmental leaders are also doing so. Shimon Peres, after hearing the grisly news of the murder of our soldiers, had the nerve to state, "We have nothing to do in Gaza. We should just leave." Such a statement is a reward to both those who bombed our soldiers, as well as the "heros" who murdered a pregnant mother and her four little daughters in cold blood for the "crime" of choosing to live in that part of our homeland. Simple common sense would dictate that if someone comes to steal that which belongs to you, you fight to keep what is yours. Why would it enter anyone's mind to negotiate with or, even worse, give away parts of our homeland to thieves who seek not only your land, but your very existence? We choose to forget some very basic facts in the war for our survival. First and foremost we forget that there is no such thing as a "Palestinian" people. Those who masquerade under that pseudo identity all came from real Arab nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. This new peoplehood was concocted in a very effective propaganda effort to deny the legitimacy of Israel. It has worked so well that even our present Prime Minister has suggested to build a "Palestinian" state upon Jewish soil in the futile hope to placate our enemies and so-called "friends". What our leaders refuse to admit to themselves, aside from the fact that these Arab impostors have absolutely no valid grounds to demand any Jewish Land to create yet another Arab state, is that such a move will only serve to further endanger the Jewish State and encourage even more terror against our people. Yes, indeed, the Gaza Strip is overcrowded with a huge Arab population. This problem was begun by Egypt, prior to Israeli liberation in 1967. It was the mistake of this country not to have forced Egypt into caring for their own brothers by removing them to the Egyptian side of the border at that time. Meanwhile an entire generation of poverty-ridden Arabs has been nurtured on the lie that Israel has stolen their land! Israel has never sought to rule over Arabs. She did seek to welcome them into Israeli society and help them raise their standard of living. Instead of accepting the welcome, the Arabs only recognized Israel as an oppressor and sought to destroy her. It would seem that Israeli leaders read in the Bible that it says when you are slapped in the face you should turn the other cheek. What they failed to realize is that this particular adage is not to be found in the Jewish Bible. In our Bible we are admonished, "When someone comes to murder you, rise up and kill him first." It may not sound very nice, but that is just the way it is. Here in Israel we have an entire population who not only comes to murder us, but has already done so on countless occasions and in the most barbaric manner. How dare our leaders so much as suggest negotiations with such people? The only rational response. . . the only Jewish response, is to destroy our enemies completely before they murder any more Jews. Peace will never be achieved by negotiating with such people. We have tried this too many times only to discover that it really doesn't work. If Sharon has, at long last, returned to his senses, (and I truly doubt this), he would launch an offensive in the Gaza Strip which will completely route our enemies and enable us to rebuild all of Gaza as a Jewish neighborhood to help ease the absorption of millions more Jews who are about to return home from all over the world. There is no moral imperative to live with our enemies or to reward them by abandoning our obligations to our homeland. Indeed, it is a sin to even consider such actions. It is for the sin of Oslo that so many of our innocent civilians have been murdered. Terror is our reward for abandoning our Jewish principles. Only by returning to those eternal principles will we succeed in uprooting terror and bring genuine peace both to our homeland and the world. Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

EXCERPT FROM "A VERY HARD WEEK" BY YAFFA GANZ Posted by Anthony and Ruth Rose, May 14, 2004.

...In Hebrew, one always places the noun - the essence we are speaking of - before the adjective it comes to describe. We say "yeled tov" - a boy who is good (rather than "a good boy"). The "boy" is the essence; he comes first. The description "good" follows. But in the Torah, the description of Ishmael is out of order, backwards, just the opposite of normative Hebrew. He is not called an adam pra'I - a man who is wild. He is called a pereh adam. He is first and foremost a pereh - a wild creature - who is described as appearing in the form of adam - a man. This is our enemy. This is who we are fighting. This is what we must remember.... To Go To Top

IRAQ, INDIA, PALESTINE Posted by Steven Plaut, May 13, 2004.

Bernard Lewis is brilliant as always. His article is called "Iraq, India, Palestine" and it appeared yesterday in the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Lewis, professor emeritus at Princeton, is the author of "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East," just out from Oxford U Press. The U.S. turn to the United Nations for help in Iraq raises two questions, one of perception, the other of substance. There can be no doubt that this appeal, in the context of the events in Fallujah, will be perceived in many circles in the Middle East -- and not only in the Middle East -- as signifying fear and flight, in other words, as the beginning of a scuttle. It is now clear that what happened in Fallujah in March was a carefully staged replay of what happened in Somalia in October 1993, when American soldiers were seized, lynched, dismembered and dragged through the streets. This was intended to achieve the same result -- a precipitous American departure. The line that Americans are degenerate, soft and pampered -- "hit them and they will run" -- has been a major theme of Islamic terrorists for some time now. It was temporarily silenced by the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, but then revived by what was seen as public dithering and wavering. The turn to the U.N. will be perceived, or at least presented, as final and conclusive evidence of their view of America, and may well serve as the starting point of a new wave of terrorist action against Americans, reaching far beyond Iraq and perhaps even as far as these shores. One is reminded of Ehud Barak's decision to withdraw the Israeli forces from Lebanon. The decision was right and indeed long overdue, but the manner of the withdrawal was disastrous, and led directly to the current Intifada. I remember a conversation in an Arab country at the time, when I was told triumphantly: "The Israelis have become soft and pampered, like their American patrons. Our Lebanese brothers have shown us the way." Perceptions, even if inaccurate, are powerful and important, and may at times be self-fulfilling. The second point is one of substance. The record of the U.N. in dealing with conflicts is not encouraging -- neither in terms of fairness, nor of efficacy. Its record on human rights is even worse -- hardly surprising, since the members of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights include such practitioners of human rights as Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. In dealing with conflicts, as a European observer once remarked, its purpose seems to be conservation rather than resolution. * * * A case in point: In 1947 the British Empire in India was partitioned into two states, India and Pakistan. There was a bitter military struggle, and an estimated 10 million refugees were displaced. Despite continuing friction, some sort of accommodation was reached between the two states and the refugees were resettled. No outside power or organization was involved. In the following year, 1948, the British-mandated territory of Palestine was partitioned -- in terms of area and numbers, a triviality compared with India. Yet that conflict continues, and the 750,000 Arab refugees from Israel and their millions of descendants remain refugees, in camps maintained and staffed by the U.N. Except for Jordan, no Arab state has been willing to grant citizenship to the Palestinian refugees or to their locally born descendants, or even to allow them the rights of resident aliens. They are now entering their fifth generation as stateless refugee aliens. The whole operation is maintained and sustained by a massive apparatus of U.N. officials, some of whom have spent virtually their whole careers on this issue. What progress has been made on the Arab-Israel problem -- the resettlement in Israel of Jewish refugees from the Arab-held parts of mandatory Palestine and from Arab countries, the Egyptian and Jordanian peace agreements -- was achieved outside the framework of the U.N. One shudders to think what might have been the fate of the Indian subcontinent if the U.N. had been involved in its partition. The question of substance is of course of far greater importance in the long term. The question of perception is immediate, but could have long-term consequences. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

THE IMAGES WE SEE -- AND THOSE WE DON'T Posted by Jeff Jacoby, May 13, 2004.

The death of Nicholas Berg is a horror. It is a bitter, brutal reminder of why we are at war -- something that much of America's political and media elite, in their binge of outrage and apology over the Abu Ghraib abuses, have lately seemed all too willing to forget. I don't for a moment minimize the awfulness of what some American soldiers did to their Iraqi captives in that prison. Their offenses may have fallen far short of the savagery that Abu Ghraib was notorious for under Saddam Hussein, but in their cruelty and urge to humiliate, and in the sadistic glee with which they posed for those obscene photographs, they reek of the depravity we went to Iraq to uproot. As one who believes that this war was necessary above all on moral grounds, I'm sickened by what they did. But I'm sickened as well by the relish with which this scandal is being exploited by those who think the defeat of the Bush administration is an end that justifies just about any means. I'm sickened by the recklessness of the media, which relentlessly flogged the graphic images from Abu Ghraib, giving them an in-your-face prominence that couldn't help but exaggerate their impact. And I'm sickened by the thought of how much damage this feeding frenzy may have done to the war effort. We do remember the war effort, don't we? Surely we haven't forgotten the jetliners smashing into the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and 3,000 innocents dying in a single morning. Or the monstrous Saddam, who filled mass graves to bursting, invaded two neighboring countries, and avidly sought weapons of mass destruction. Or the reason why 130,000 US soldiers are on the line in Iraq: because establishing a democratic beachhead in the Middle East is critical to cutting off the terrorists' oxygen -- the backing of dictatorial regimes. My sense is that the public *hasn't*lost sight of any of this. But for weeks now, a goodly swath of the chattering class has been treating the war as little more than a rhetorical backdrop against which to score political points or increase market share. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift, for instance, reacted to the Abu Ghraib revelations with a column urging the Democratic presidential candidate to milk the moment for all it was worth. "If ever there was a moment for John Kerry to come out swinging, this is it," she wrote. "It is the biggest story of the war, and he is essentially silent." There are many thoughtful things one might say about Abu Ghraib, but only someone eager for the US campaign in Iraq to fail and George W. Bush to be defeated could possibly describe it as "the biggest story of the war." In any case, the Kerry campaign has hardly been silent on the prison scandal. It is using it as a fundraising hook, sending out mass e-mails urging supporters to petition for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation -- and to donate money to the Kerry campaign. Poor Nick Berg. The anybody-but-Bush crowd isn't going to rush to publicize his terrible fate with anything like the zeal it brought to the abused-prisoners story. CBS and the New Yorker couldn't resist the temptation to shove the Abu Ghraib photos into the public domain -- and the rest of the media then made sure the world saw them over and over and over. But when it comes to video and stills of Al Qaeda murderers severing Berg's head with a knife and brandishing it in triumph for the camera, the Fourth Estate is suddenly squeamish. As I write on Wednesday afternoon, the CBS News web site continues to offer a complete "photo essay" of naked Iraqi men being humiliated by Americans in a variety of poses. But the video of Berg's beheading, CBS says, "is too gruesome to show." No other network and no newspaper that I have seen shows the gory pictures, either. What exactly is the governing rule here? That incendiary images sure to enrage our enemies and get more Americans killed should be published, while images that show the world just how evil those enemies really are should be suppressed? Offensive and shocking pictures that undermine the war effort should be played up, but offensive and shocking pictures that remind us why we're at war in the first place shouldn't get played at all? Yes, Virginia, there really is a gaping media double standard. News organizations will shield your tender eyes from the sight of a Berg or a Daniel Pearl being decapitated or of Sept. 11 victims jumping to their deaths, or of the mangled bodies on the USS Cole, or of Fallujans joyfully mutilating the remains of four lynched US civilians. But they will make sure you don't miss the odious behavior of Americans or American allies, no matter how atypical that misbehavior may be, or how determined the US military is to uproot and punish it. We are at war with a vicious enemy, and propaganda in wartime is a weapon whose consequences can be deadly. Nick Berg lost his life because the Abu Ghraib pictures were turned into a worldwide media event. Yes, those who did it were sheltered by the First Amendment. That makes their actions not better, but worse. Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe. This piece is archived at http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/ articles/2004/05/13/the_images_we_see____and_those_we_dont/ His website address is http://www.JeffJacoby.com. To Go To Top

RESPONDING TO THE PUBLIC TIDE Posted by Bryna Berch, May 13, 2004.

The peaceniks - with vision that extends 2 millimeters into the future - are calling for leaving Gaza. They ignore that Israel's enemies - the US State Dept, EU and UN - have already completed plans for Israel to evacuate Shomron and Judea. And east Jerusalem. We're talking a half million Jews here. Doing it in salami slices doesn't change the bottom line. Fortunately, there are some sane voices, who understand we shouldn't leave Gaza. If anyone leaves, it should be the Arabs. Calls are increasingly being heard, aided by some of Israel's media, for Prime Minister Sharon to hasten the withdrawal from Gaza, in light of the recent IDF losses there. Opposition leader MK Shimon Peres, for instance, demands that Ariel Sharon either decide to withdraw from Gaza, despite the Likud referendum, or call new elections. A prominent newspaper article written by a founder of Four Mothers - the group that initiated the public campaign leading to the panicky withdrawal from Lebanon four years ago - calls outright for a withdrawal from Gaza, "even if it looks like weakness, in order to take our destiny into our own hands." The father of one of yesterday's victims was similarly widely quoted today to the same effect: "I don't want my son to be a sacrifice in vain; and he won't be, if we now get out of Gaza. After all, no one really wants to stay in Gaza, except for the Likud members..." Likud MK Chaim Katz, one of the leaders of the successful intra-Likud campaign against the unilateral withdrawal plan, therefore called upon Prime Minister Sharon today not to give in to these voices. Responding to claims that the tragedies of the past two days were the fault of the Likud voters, Katz told Arutz-7 today, "There is absolutely no connection between these tragic events and the results of the referendum. The army would have continued operating, in any event, against the terrorist infrastructures in both Zeitoun and the Philadelphi route." Katz placed the blame, instead, upon those who "tie the army's hands and force it to wage the war with tweezers, instead of with all its strength. We should fight like the Americans do. When they see someone firing at them from within a mosque, at that moment it ceases being a mosque, and becomes a military target instead. We have to take the same approach [regarding the weapons factories in residential buildings]." A group called the Three Fathers has announced its formation. Comprising parents of victims of Arab/Palestinian terrorism, its leaders are Moshe Keinan, whose son Avihu was killed last September in a battle with terrorists in Al-Bureij, Gaza; Zechariah Komemi, who lost his son Raanan around the same time during an operation against a leading terrorist in Shechem; and Baruch Ben-Yosef, whose son Yehuda was killed when he was mistaken for a terrorist over a year ago. The organization demands that the authorities allow the army to fight the anti-terror war without restraint. Members demonstrated today outside the Supreme Court against its decision not to allow the army to raze structures used by terrorists to perpetrate attacks. Contrary to the many calls to leave Gaza, Tourism Minister Benny Elon says that Israel must transfer the Arab refugees out of Gaza and dismantle the refugee camps. Elon says that this must be done in order to prevent further catastrophes such as those of the past two days. "Dismantling the terror infrastructures by repeated entries and exits to the refugee camps, involving losses of our soldiers, will not solve the problem," Elon said today. "Without transferring the Arabs, there will not be peace in this land." Minister Uzi Landau of the Likud, writing in Yediot Acharonot today, made it clear that the soldiers killed in the past two days had nothing to do with protecting Gush Katif. "Their deaths were rather connected with protecting the residents of Israel within the Green Line," Landau explained. The reason the terrorists are able to produce Kassam rockets that endanger Sderot and the southern Kibbutzim, he wrote, is "because we [are not there and] have not been there for a while." Regarding yesterday's attack, Minister Landau wrote that it occurred in an area "that even according to Sharon's disengagement plan would have remained under Israeli control." There, too, IDF forces are forced to operate to protect mainland Israel from the smuggling of modern weapons. "What's clear," Landau writes, "is that each place we 'disengage' from and where terrorists remain, will end up like Zeitoun: We will have to re-enter again, not because we want to, but because that is the reality forcing itself upon us." To Go To Top

SHARON ENCOURAGES THE ENEMY; NEVER MIND BABY SEALS, SAVE THE JEWS Posted by Arieh Zarietsky, May 13, 2004.

HARSH RESPONSES AND RED LINES From: Marcel C, up2zionsg8@yahoo.com Anyone notice that it's only after PM Sharon laid out his retreat plan that the enemy has raised the level of the ongoing war in Gaza? -The fans of retreat fail to realize that their talk only encourages the enemy. I don't know how many times I've heard the present PM of Israel say that harsh responses were on the way. They all turned out to be empty words from a hot air bag. Remember the IAF attack on the empty terrorist base in Syria How about all the empty buildings targeted? It's no wonder that the enemy has become so bold and brazen. They don't believe the hot air bag and know that he will not get permission from Washington to defeat them. Arafat laughs because under president Bush's protection he knows Sharon is still too cowardly to touch him. Sharon used to talk about red lines that the Palestinians would not be permitted to cross. Now Mr. Sharon only talks of retreat, and the only line he has is the one to Washington where he recieves his orders(restraint, restraint, measured response, consider the consequences, don't harm the peace) not to win this Oslo war. It would make Bush's relationship with Egypt and his 'other' strange allies problematic if Israel were to defeat the Palestinians. El Presidente wants so much to reward evil. He dosn't fool me with his nightmare vision of a Plaestinian state. Israel can never survive neighbors like this. So the people of Israel suffer under their perverse leaders who hold America's interests above Israel's survival. Sharon is tired and needs to retire gracefully brfore he causes more damage. WWII--WWIII From: Natan Cleorin nat@bgu.ac.il The German Nazis claimed to fight the civilized world but tried to annihilate the Jews -- The Arab Moslems claim to fight the Jews but try to annihilate the civilized world... "Forget the whales and the baby seals. SAVE THE JEWS!" From: Walter James OBrien gasturbine@myway.com Maybe we need bumper stickers that say just that. Anyone who doesn't know in their hearts that today we are waging a continuation of the 2nd World War, NOW, in our time, on our land, in the USA, in Iraq and in Israel, is a blithering idiot. Western civilization is fighting for its very existence as we speak. If we lose this we enter a new Dark Ages from which we shall not emerge for a thousand years. Best regards, Walt O'Brien Charlottesville, VA, the town where modern democracy was born... To Go To Top

BUSH WON'T DO THE RIGHT THING; QUARTET ONE-SIDED, ON WRONG SIDE Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 13, 2004.

NOW BUSH SAYS THE ARABS SHARE HIS VISION Pres. Bush said, "Jordan and the US share a vision for a free, stable, and prosperous Middle East." Most analysts consider Jordan and Egypt moderate, adds reporter Barry Schweid (NY Sun, 5/7, p.1). The Arab vision does not include Israel, IMRA would point out. Does Bush's? What does he mean, "analysts?" What analysis do they do of the "moderation" they attribute to Jordan and Egypt? Those Arab states constantly side with terrorists against Israel, preach hatred of Israel, and defame Judaism. The people of Jordan and the government and people of Egypt boycott Israel and Israelis. That hardly is moderate. It simply is a different tool of jihad. Egypt is the PLO's main backer, allowing arms smuggling to it. Jordan blocks arms smuggling. What Jordan really wants is difficult to know. Its government may be supporting sovereignty for the P.A. Arabs publicly, while fearing it privately. If the P.A. had a state contiguous with Jordan, it probably would smuggle arms into it and encourage Jordanian Arabs to overthrow the regime and consolidate with the P.A.. Far from stability, that! A PLO takeover of Jordan would threaten both Israel and S. Arabia. Hardly in the US interest is that scenario. To suppose that the government of Jordan wants a free Middle East, while not having freedom, itself and knowing that the P.A. is run by terrorist totalitarians, is ridiculous. Jordan's vision is not for freedom, stability, no prosperity. Pres. Bush's statement is ridiculous if he believes it, and misleading if he doesn't. ARAB "WITNESSES" P.A. gunmen fired missiles at Israeli tanks in Gaza. An IDF helicopter fired a missile back. Arab residents and doctors said the missile killed a "militant" and a civilian and wounded 22. A bomb wounded some Arab boys. Some Arab witnesses said the boys blew it up while playing with it. Other Arab witnesses said the IDF set it off accidentally (IMRA, 5/5 from Haaretz). How does "Haaretz" know those were witnesses? Because they clamed to be? Believing in deceiving the press, the Arabs play fast and loose with the facts. Arab doctors do not make reliable witnesses. The head of the P.A. Red Crescent is Arafat's brother, notorious for wildly inflated casualty figures and false refugee figures during the Lebanon War. HIZBULLAH ATTACKS, AGAIN Under the guise of laying up an anti-aircraft barrage, Hizbullah fired on the western Galilee section of Israel. Israel retaliated by destroying two Hizbullah posts. The Israeli Army declared that Israel is determined not to allow Hizbullah to make such attacks (IMRA, 5/5). If Israel were determined not to allow Hizbullah to make such attacks, then it would destroy all the Hizbullah posts, not just two. Israel makes empty threats and boasts. Why? Whom does it think it is fooling? It is not intimidating the Arabs. They keep pressing until finally smashed back. CALLING ON BUSH TO DO THE RIGHT THING The Quartet adopts Arab demands against Israel, ZOA urges Pres. Bush to disband it. It does not seek peace (IMRA, 5/6) or it acts counter-productively about it. The State Dept. has been as pro-Arab as the rest of the Quartet. It is unwise to suppose that Pres. Bush would do the right thing and disband the Quartet. Sec. Powell has explained that he won't allow Israeli reservations about the Quartet's Road Map to change it OPPORTUNISTIC COALITIONS "United for Peace and Justice brings together hundreds of activist organizations from across the country, from the National Organization for Women to the controversial American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee." (Christopher Rovzar, NY Sun, 5/7, p.3.) The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (AADC) believes in Islamist jihad, meaning war and injustice. It does not want the US to weaken allies of the terrorists and enemies of the West, such as Saddam's regime was. It must have a Muslim concept of resenting foreign efforts in their part of the world, even efforts to help them. What do the Muslims care about Saddam's imperialism, mass murder, attempts to develop weapons of mass-destruction, and truce violations, offending principles of peace and justice! AADC does not belong in a legitimate anti-war movement. Legitimate movements in the past used to accept Communist participation. That gave the Communists a forum and an opportunity to set the agenda if not usurp the movement. THE QUARTET COALITION The Quartet seeks a "viable, democratic, sovereign, and contiguous" Arab state in Yesha. It calls on Israel "to exert maximum efforts to avoid civilian casualties" and to "ease the humanitarian and economic plight" of the Arabs. Israel should not "undermine trust" as by deportation, attack on civilians, confiscation and/or demolition of 'Palestinian' homes and property." Let there be a "comprehensive ceasefire as a step towards dismantlement of terrorist capabilities." Let there not be a security fence, "appearing to prejudge the final borders of a future Palestinian state." (IMRA, 5/5.) Past ceasefires gave the Arabs time to restock munitions and reorganize decimated militias. Then they attacked Israelis, while demanding that the Israelis honor the ceasefire that the Arabs were dishonoring. The world lets the Arabs get away with such inconsistency. Europe ignores how much Israel might need a security fence (although the value of the fence is dubious, and offense is a better means of winning, which should be Israel's objective with jihadists). With jihadists, there is no agreeing to end a war, for they pocket the proceeds of agreements and then resume the war. That is what Israelis must learn and tell the rest of the world. For now, it should tell the Quartet that a fence that merely "appears" to prejudge the final borders doesn't prejudge it. Better still, Israel should formally declare the Road Map void because the P.A. builds rather than destroys terrorism; consequently, the Quartet no longer has a function. The Quartet should stop striving to set up a second Palestinian Arab state in the Jewish homeland, after the Palestinian Arabs have proved themselves jihadist enemies of the Quartet. The Quartet wants a viable Arab state? How can it be viable, when its leaders build terrorist instead of civilian infrastructure, divert money to war instead of employment, steal instead of invest, brainwash in bigotry instead of educate about modern life, and attract impoverished Arabs instead of reducing their high birth rate? The Quartet wants a democratic Arab state? Is that just another slogan? The P.A. is a totalitarian dictatorship, somewhat theocratic already. Israel should "strive" to minimize civilian casualties? What does it think Israel has been doing? What about the Arabs, who strive to maximize civilian casualties? Why not condemn them? What does the Quartet mean by "undermine trust?" The Arabs want to chase out the Jews, whom they indoctrinated religiously to distrust, while the Arabs earn distrust by violating all their peace agreements. The Quartet is one-sided, on the wrong side. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

IDF LOSSES HAVE NOT CHANGED POSITION ON DISENGAGEMENT PLAN Posted by Dafna Yee, May 13, 2004.

In a message dated 5/13/2004, imra@netvision.net.il writes: If the prime minister evacuates 40 illegal outposts in Judea and Samaria, among them populated outposts, should the NRP leave the Government or stay? I'd like to say that using the term "illegal outposts" to describe the established Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria is not only false, it undoubtably prejudiced the answers in the poll! (And every one of the "outposts" are populated!) Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

CURIOUS MORAL BLINDNESS: UN/EU INDIFFERENCE TO MURDER OF JEWS Posted by Marian Dreyfus, May 13, 2004.

Kofi Annan ecu@un.org Kofi Annan EU Parliament civis@europarl.eu.int EU Parliament EU Court of Justice info@curia.eu.int EU Court of Justice Sirs: Why is the organizational voice of which you are a part so curiously mute when a Jewish man is beheaded by savages? Why when a pregnant woman in Israel is shot dead at point-blank range with her four small daughters in a car, for no sin other than breathing while nonMuslim,are you oblivious of moral rot and obligatory renunciation of human dignity and rights? Absolute silence, when uyou are blatantly nonstop noise at the gall of Israelis to save their precious lives from the brute monstrousness of fantatic hordes without a molecule of decency for humankind? I am puzzled: where is your right to continue in your vaunted organizational personnae, given the absence of decency and response to human pain when it concerns anyone without a Mustafa or Abdul or an oil derrick next to his business card? Why should the world pay obeisance to such as yourselves when you bring shame on your organizational mandate and indignity to your provenance? When Israel builds a fence to keep out terrorists, the United Nations and the European Union are up in arms because it makes it difficult for terrorists to kill more Jews. Although I live in the Far East, I want you to know that your depraved indifference to the maiming and murdering of Jews is not going unnoticed. Your organizations have lost all moral credibility. It is time to close up shop and begin farming your hedgerows and manioc again. MDS Dreyfus, Huazhong University of Science & Technology, Wuchang Campus, Wuhan, China To Go To Top

WHAT CRUEL, SICK BASTARDS Posted by Bryna Berch, May 12, 2004.

Abu Ghraib was an aberration, not US policy. Beheading Nick Berg, like massacring the IDF soldiers in Ramallah and like wanting to dicker goodies for the return of Jewish body parts is Islam, a very sick religion. This editorial from today's New York Post (www.newyorkpost.com) says it well. In case the world needed a reminder of why America is waging its War on Terror, it got one yesterday. It's hard to imagine the terror that must have filled Berg in those final moments as he realized his hooded captors really were going to kill him. It wasn't enough that they slaughtered the young Philadelphia businessman like a sheep and held his severed head aloft as if it were a trophy. No, they filmed the whole thing for the world to see. Soldiers don't behave like that. Only cowards and thugs do. Now it's time to ratchet up the response to this war. Forget Abu Ghraib. The abuse committed there by a handful of soldiers was not typical; nor is it acceptable. But the beheading of Nick Berg is par for the course for al Qaeda. Of course, the terrorists of Muntada al-Ansar, an al Qaeda offshoot, claimed they were acting in retaliation for the Abu Ghraib abuses. Bull. There were no known abuses at Abu Ghraib when Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and Italian hostage Fabrizio Quattrocchi were murdered by Islamic terrorists. And the events at Abu Ghraib had not yet come to light when frenzied crowds in Fallujah burned and mutilated the bodies of four Americans and strung them from a bridge. No, the massacre of Nick Berg had nothing to do with Abu Ghraib. Instead, this slaying was about the war against the West in general - and America, in particular. Indeed, the beheading may have been carried out personally by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a top aide of Osama bin Laden. Some people - some Americans - have forgotten about 9/11. That attack should have been enough to justify all-out war. But the hand-wringing over the war in Iraq - and over even the modest steps America took to defend itself, like the Patriot Act - suggests that folks truly have lost sight of what the war is about. Yesterday they got a shocking reminder. And now they know: This war cannot be waged with half-measures. It can end only with the total annihilation of those who practice butchery and barbarism. Those who have set as their goal the destruction of America. There is no negotiating with such people. There can be no compromise with those who mean to destroy us. Yesterday, the White House promised to "pursue those responsible and bring them to justice." That's the least of it. America has to come out swinging. And not stop until every last one of the savage thugs is dead. If that means a resumption of major combat in Iraq, so be it. Would it mean another division or so of combat troops to get the job done? Turn to our garrisons in Europe, or Korea, to get them. In sufficient numbers to get the job done. To hell with political sensitivities in the region. To hell with negotiating with radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Najaf and the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah. To hell with handing Saddam Hussein over to Iraqis, as some want to do, and risking some reverse - perverse - kangaroo trial that results in his survival. Evil, cutthroat terrorists need to be eradicated. Let's face it: This is a job that's going to take overwhelming - yes, brutal - force. There is simply no "nice" or painless way to accomplish this. As yesterday's slaughter showed (yet again), the enemy is bound by no moral compunctions. America won't go that far. But it had better steel it's backbone and get ready to fight like it means it. It's the only way to win this war. To Go To Top

SHARON URGED TO PERSIST BY HALKIN AND TWERSKY. BAD ADVISE Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 12, 2004.

PM Sharon's abandonment "plan had seemed promising" and his leadership "had been picking up speed." Now that the referendum rejected it, the country is out of ideas. As for Arafat, he "has systematically sabotaged every attempt on the part of more positive forces in the P.A. to rein in terrorism and find points of agreement with Israel." His people realize that they have lost their four-year-old war of terrorism. Their economy is in shambles, their society in chaos, and their morale depressed; Israel's economy is recovering. They now may have no leader who can control terrorists and whom Israeli concessions can appease (Hillel Halkin, NY Sun, 5/4, p.10). No genuinely "positive forces" in the P.A. have been identified. None exist. Mr. Halkin and David Twersky both are contributing editors whose Op-Ed pieces harp on an alleged need for Israeli concessions. Both fail to explain the dangers of such concessions. Both fail to explain what the Arabs want -- conquest. Neither admits the impropriety of the victim, Israel, making concessions to the aggressor, the Arabs. Were these editors born yesterday, so as to have no knowledge of failed appeasement, in our time, by the West of the Nazis, Communists, and Arabs, but in other times, too, such as by Athens of Sparta and of Macedon? In this piece, Halkin supposes that when the P.A. was more centrally controlled, it had leaders whom Israeli concessions could appease. Israel did make concessions. The Oslo concessions positioned the PLO for making this war! The current four-years of terrorism is intensive, but terrorism against Zionism was organized about 1920. Call it an 84-year war of terrorism. In view of the relentless Arab goal of conquest, the speed that Sharon's leadership "had been picking up" was a rush to divest Israel of secure borders, strategic depth, and the national patrimony in favor of mortal enemies with a poor claim to them. Sure his plan had seemed promising to the Quartet -- enemies of Jewish sovereignty. His plan was a first installment in amortizing Zionism. That does not seem to occur to Halkin and Twersky, so long as Israel withdraws from territory they want to give to the Arabs. They may assert some general statements about security and peace, but fail to justify them in any detail. Nor can they. Their schemes would bring insecurity and war. After all, Arab policy is to conquer Israel in phases, meaning phases of concessions of territorial withdrawal! Halkin plays into the Arabs' hands. Proponents of these phony "peace plans" argue that since there is no other official plan, the currently offered plan must be accepted. That is specious logic. Either a plan is good or poor. If poor, it should not be adopted. There might well be other and better plans devised, but the Israeli system of government and media keep serious and loyal statesmen from emerging. The Jewish people are not out of ideas. Rather, self-serving leaders of my Jewish people have a way of ruling out nationalist plans as unthinkable. They prefer plans that please their critics. Ignoring scruples, they and Israel's enemies disregard the referendum and Israel's enemies urge Sharon to pursue some version of the discredited abandonment plan. They do this without every having justified the plan, just stated easily refuted but largely repressed, grandiose claims about it. A nation that focuses on sacrificing to its mortal enemies has not long to live. The best plan would seek to advance Israeli rather than Arab interests; is patriotic rather than treasonous; reduces Arab ability to make war rather than enhances it. As Halkin admits, Israel has worn down the P.A.. Then let conditions in the P.A. deteriorate so much that the Arabs have to move out, to survive! Let Israel give that deterioration, instead of the P.A. treasury, an assist! Before that can happen, someone has to tell Pres. Bush that his "vision" of Arab statehood in Yesha is neither ethical nor feasible. Compromise will lose the war on terrorism. We Americans are in a sad state, when we cannot identify our enemies. Likewise, we Jews are in a sad state when we don't know what "pro-Israel" means and are ignorant of life-and-death issues. When we don't know right from wrong, something is not right and we are wrong. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

SHARON: THE GREAT GENERAL? Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 12, 2004.

It would seem that in Sharon's monomaniacal obsession to protect and advance his crime family, he has forgotten the most basic concepts of warfare. We have gotten used to the fact that the dedicated, Jewish nationalist is long gone but now even the militarist is gone. All we have left is the pathetic shell of a burnt out, old man desperate to save his personal fortunes and those of his gang. How long must the Nation of Israel bear the burden of this man and his crime syndicate? How many more Jews must be murdered by terrorists or needlessly killed in criminally stupid military actions in order to protect his sons and their "business partners" from criminal prosecution? How many more revelations about multi-million dollar "loans" or Greek Island deals or Russian pipelines will it take before it penetrates into the public mind that our brave and distinguished Prime Minister is nothing more than a greedy, corrupt, two-bit, Third World Generalissimo? Over 60% of the Likud has said NO to Sharon. Not to just his retreat-under-fire plan but clearly to him. If we were to factor into this the fact that many thousands of Likud members were illegally prevented from voting or had their votes "changed" then the percentage of the Likud opposed to Sharon is near to 70%!!! I ask the membership of the Likud: Why do you tolerate him as head of your party? Why are there no serious efforts to throw him out of the Likud? Do not be afraid of new elections. New elections with a decent, dedicated, JEWISH leader of the Likud will result in an even larger support for the party. This is a DEBKAFile Special Report from today. It is entitled: "Sharon and Mofaz Face Extreme Options in Gaza." It is archived at www2.debka.com/article.php?aid=844 Eleven Israeli servicemen died in action in two fatal incidents in the Gaza Strip in 36 hours: six were killed by a roadside bomb on mission to destroy Palestinian weapons workshops in Gaza's teeming Zeitoun neighborhood, five troops, a highly trained team, were killed while searching for Palestinian arms-smuggling tunnels along the Philadelphi strip in Rafah. The combination of two deadly attacks and painful loss of life force Israelis to look straight at a grim reality they has been ducking for almost four years. Quite simply, the country is at war. Suddenly, its television screens are filled with rumbling convoys of tank carriers and buses packed with soldiers in full combat gear heading for the front line. On Wednesday, May 12, Israel's Defense Forces were engaged in one of the most dangerous tactical moves for any army. A full infantry brigade - Givati - withdrew from the Gaza City's Muslim extremist stronghold of Zeitoun after 60 hours locked in fierce house-to-house fighting and a hunt for the remains of the six comrades blown to bits by a bomb that turned their armored personnel carrier into scrap. As Givati left, a fresh brigade moved in under fire. Thirty kilometers (18 miles) to the south, the military rushed an expanded armored brigade to the flashpoint Philadelphi corridor running along Israel's border with Egypt. By midnight, DEBKAFile's military sources counted an IDF force more than a division-strong, including tank and artillery units, deployed within a few ours inside the Gaza Strip. Last year, when a "Defensive Shield"-type operation was contemplated in the Gaza Strip - the second half of the large-scale counter-terror campaign Israel carried out against the West Bank two years ago, IDF officers estimated it would take a force of about a division and half - which would more or less cover the strength pumped in Wednesday night. The scale of this deployment suggests one of three optional operations is afoot: broadening the 20-meter wide 8-km long Philadelphi strip that marks the Gaza-Israel-Egyptian border; a knockout blow in Rafah or Khan Younis for Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees - where Arafat loyalists are hand in glove with the Lebanese Hizballah group; or an ambitious bid for both goals at once. By Thursday, additional fronts may catch fire in the central and northern Gaza Strip. In the north, Deir al-Balah and Beit Lehiya are Islamic Jihad and PRC strongholds, sources of Qassam missile attacks, that the army is itching to hit. Israeli military planners may also take the opportunity of attacking Gaza City and Palestinian military targets on the coast from the air or sea. Military affairs pundits strenuously deny a second "Defensive Shield" is in the offing. However, it would take only one order from the general staff to the forces already deployed to blow up any local operation into a full-blown campaign even more complex than the 2002 push into West Bank cities. Israeli forces would face urban combat in one of the most densely populated areas of the world. It is still unclear whether prime minister Ariel Sharon plans to authorize defense minister Shaul Mofaz to go forward on this path. Both are ardent champions of Sharon's "disengagement" plan, but this week's disasters have pushed them up against extreme choices: Pull up stakes in the Gaza Strip at once, evacuate Israeli troops and settlers in a few days - meaning headlong flight - or remove the gloves and go for full-scale warfare. Neither option was in the minds of Sharon and his deputy, Ehud Olmert, when they first floated their disengagement trial balloons. They were so busy courting US endorsement that they failed to heed the relevant political realities at home and correctly evaluate Palestinian military preparations in the light of regional events. This failure landed Sharon and his plans in the soup in his own Likud party and generated this week's military fiascos in Gaza. What they missed was the detailed and audacious plan drawn up by Palestinian, Iranian and Lebanese Hizballah tacticians in Damascus, Beirut and Ramallah for a campaign of violence to force Israel to turn tail and flee the Gaza Strip instead of leaving in organized fashion by means of Sharon's 2005 withdrawal outline as endorsed by President George W. Bush. DEBKAFile believes a joint planning group representing these terrorist organization has established a base in the Gaza Strip and plotted the March 2 attack at the Erez border crossing by terrorists driving vehicles disguised as Israeli army jeeps. The group went on to stage the double suicide bombing at Ashdod port on March 14. Most recently, it planned the cold-blooded shooting on May 2 of Tali Hatuel and her four small daughters at the Kissufim junction, the blast that destroyed the APC in Zeitoun on May 11 and the explosion at Philadelphi a day later. Sharon's failure to go after these aggressors would provide Yasser Arafat with his biggest victory in the four years of his violent confrontation with Israel, and the Hezbollah with its second triumph after the IDF's 2000 exit from southern Lebanon. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

THE ISLAMIC BARBARIANS ARE AT THE GATES OF JERUSALEM Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, May 12, 2004.

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

BURYING THE DISTINCTIONS Posted by Honest Reporting, May 12, 2004.

Today's bombing of an Israeli armored personnel carrier in southern Gaza follows a similar attack on Tuesday in northern Gaza that took the lives of six IDF soldiers. In Tuesday's attack, Palestinians paraded the remains of the Israeli soldiers through the streets, before reporters, and in a video of a soldier's head that was broadcast throughout the Arab world. This coincided with the release of the horrific video of Iraqi terrorists' decapitation of an American citizen. Together, Tuesday's acts illustrated once again the utter moral depravity of terrorist Islam. A report from Cox News Service would have readers believe that Israel shares that moral depravity. Craig Nelson and Margaret Coker draw the following equivalence in their report on the Gaza outrage: According to both [Judaism and Islam] the failure to bury any part of a body is considered a desecration. In the long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict, however, politics often have swept these customs aside. Israel often keeps the bodies of Palestinian suicide bombers and does not return them to their families for a proper burial. For starters, the assertion is false. Israel's standard practice is to quietly bury the remains of Palestinian suicide bombers on Israeli soil, with dignity. The purpose is to avoid a celebratory hometown funeral, in an effort to reduce the adulation that Palestinian society showers upon homicide bombers. Yet Cox News somehow equates this Israeli policy with yesterday's barbaric Palestinian desecration of the dead. Moreover, Nelson and Coker draw a false moral equivalence between Palestinian suicide terrorists, who intend to kill as many innocent civilians as possible, and the fallen IDF soldiers, who imperiled their lives in ground raids so as to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties. The deep moral rift between Israeli/Western humanitarianism on the one hand, and Islamic fundamentalist sadism on the other, lies at the very heart of the Mideast conflict. Nelson and Coker, by burying that distinction, malign Israel and distort a key aspect of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Cox News, headquarted in Atlanta, produces 17 daily and 25 weekly newspapers. The Cox News article was published online in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Comments to: letters@ajc.com), and the Palm Beach Post (Send comments by clicking here). HonestReporting subscribers are encouraged to be on the lookout for the lumping of humane Israeli policy together with the monstrous acts of Islamic terror - this, ostensibly, in the effort to provide 'balance' and 'objectivity'. Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167. To Go To Top

MUSLIM EUROPE Posted by Daniel Pipes, May 12, 2004.

"Europe becomes more and more a province of Islam, a colony of Islam." So declares Oriana Fallaci in her new book, La Forza della Ragione, or, "The Force of Reason." And the famed Italian journalist is right: Christianity's ancient stronghold of Europe is rapidly giving way to Islam. Two factors mainly contribute to this world-shaking development. The hollowing out of Christianity. Europe is increasingly a post-Christian society, one with a diminishing connection to its tradition and its historic values. The numbers of believing, observant Christians has collapsed in the past two generations to the point that some observers call it the "new dark continent." Already, analysts estimate Britain's mosques host more worshippers each week than does the Church of England. An anemic birth rate. Indigenous Europeans are dying out. Sustaining a population requires each woman on average to bear 2.1 children; in the European Union, the overall rate is one-third short, at 1.5 a woman, and falling. One study finds that, should current population trends continue and immigration cease, today's population of 375 million could decline to 275 million by 2075.To keep its working population even, the E.U. needs 1.6 million immigrants a year; to sustain the present workers-to-retirees ratio requires an astonishing 13.5 million immigrants annually. Into the void are coming Islam and Muslims. As Christianity falters, Islam is robust, assertive, and ambitious. As Europeans underreproduce at advanced ages, Muslims do so in large numbers while young. Some 5% of the E.U., or nearly 20 million persons, presently identify themselves as Muslims; should current trends continue, that number will reach 10% by 2020. If non-Muslims flee the new Islamic order, as seems likely, the continent could be majority-Muslim within decades. When that happens, grand cathedrals will appear as vestiges of a prior civilization - at least until a Saudi style regime transforms them into mosques or a Taliban-like regime blows them up. The great national cultures - Italian, French, English, and others - will likely wither, replaced by a new transnational Muslim identity that merges North African, Turkish, subcontinental, and other elements. This prediction is hardly new. In 1968, the British politician Enoch Powell gave his famed "rivers of blood" speech (http:/http://www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/rofblood.htm/ www.hippy.freeserve.co.uk/rofblood.htm) in which he warned that in allowing excessive immigration, the United Kingdom was "heaping up its own funeral pyre." (Those words stalled a hitherto promising career.) In 1973, the French writer Jean Raspail published Camp of the Saints, a novel that portrays Europe falling to massive, uncontrolled immigration from the Indian subcontinent. The peaceable transformation of a region from one major civilization to another, now under way, has no precedent in human history, making it easy to ignore such voices. There is still a chance for the transformation not to play itself out, but the prospects diminish with time. Here are several possible ways it might be stopped: Changes in Europe that lead to a resurgence of Christian faith, an increase in childbearing, or the cultural assimilation of immigrants; such developments can theoretically occur but what would cause them is hard to imagine. Muslim modernization. For reasons no one has quite figured out (education of women? abortion on demand? adults too self-absorbed to have children?), modernity leads to a drastic reduction in the birth rate. Also, were the Muslim world to modernize, the attraction of moving to Europe would diminish. Immigration from other sources. Latin Americans, being Christian, would more or less permit Europe to keep its historic identity. Hindus and Chinese would increase the diversity of cultures, making it less likely that Islam would dominate. Current trends suggest Islamization will happen, for Europeans seem to find it too strenuous to have children, stop illegal immigration, or even diversify their sources of immigrants. Instead, they prefer to settle unhappily into civilizational senility. Europe has simultaneously reached unprecedented heights of prosperity and peacefulness and shown a unique inability to sustain itself. One demographer, Wolfgang Lutz, notes, "Negative momentum has not been experienced on so large a scale in world history" (www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-03/aaft-eph032103.php). Is it inevitable that the most brilliantly successful society also will be the first in danger of collapse due to a lack of cultural confidence and offspring? Ironically, creating a hugely desirable place to live would seem also to be a recipe for suicide. The human comedy continues. Daniel Pipes is a political analyst, with expertise in the Middle East. He can be reached at http://www.DanielPipes.org. This article appeared in the New York Sun yesterday. To Go To Top

LETTER FROM EREZ, GAZA Posted by Judy Balint, May 12, 2004.

This was written by Stuart Pilichowski, who lives in Mevaseret Zion. "Machsom Erez" is the name of the industrial zone south of Ashkelon in Israel. It's in the northern most part of the Gaza Strip. Gaza City is further south. It's where Barak used to meet with Arafat. The industrial zone has an entire array of businesses: an Egged bus company repair depot, metal shops, furniture shops, and of course, my personal interest, sewing factories for all kinds of textile operations. The labor is cheaper than the factories in Israel proper because the workers in Erez are Palestinian. About 5,000 Palestinian laborers enter the zone each day. The pay rate isn't the highest in the world, but as they say, it's steady work. Most of the workers are men. Even the sewing machine operators. Say "sewing machine operator" and I used to think woman. Not here. I never could get comfortable with the idea of working in a facility with Palestinian men with scissors at their side while I was walking through. That's why I haven't been to Erez in years; since the Intifada broke out. I was there this morning. The place is a ghost town. Some Israeli workers still come to work. Palestinian workers have been banned from entering since the latest round of hostilities has erupted. It's like driving through a movie studio that has facades built for scenery. Nothing seems real. Israeli business owners don't know what the future holds for their businesses. Now here's the thing that I find difficult to understand: A crazy Palestinian strives to become a suicide bomber. So he attempts to detonate a bomb. Where? In the Israeli industrial area Erez that is providing work for 5,000 Palestinians!?!?! Doesn't he realize that - poof! - no more work guys; because you are no longer getting in?!?! The Israelis were employing many, many thousands of Palestinians throughout PA cities and towns before the Intifada began in October 2000. All that employment and prosperity is gone. Poof! No more food on the table. While I hate making comparisons to Nazi Germany, because I believe the Nazis are in a class by themselves, the Nazis diverted their focus from the War effort in order to annihilate the Jews. Here too, the Palestinians are cutting off their means of survival. And for what? I don't know. I gave a chayal, soldier, a lift early this morning into Erez. It was about 9:00AM. He told me six soldiers were killed in the fighting in Gaza. I heard nothing on the radio. I thought I misunderstood his Hebrew. But the Army needs time to notify the families that their 19 or 20 year old sons were killed in the fighting. The kids were killed when their armored personnel carrier was blown up by terrorists. The terrorists are now parading in the streets with body parts. We're supposed to sit around a table and negotiate peace? With who? The terrorists are issuing demands in order to give up the body parts. We're supposed to sit and negotiate peace? With who? Wednesday morning: The PA has issued a press release asking the terrorists to give up the body parts. That's more than I expected. But I look to all the other "peace loving" Palestinians to issue their statements. Where're the leaders of the Geneva Accords? Where's Sari Nussbeih? Don't they have feelings and sympathy for what the families of the fallen soldiers are going through? Any press releases or protests from anyone out there about a pregnant mother and her four kids murdered in cold blood? Or is that acceptable these days? As always, we should be looking not to these folks for salvation and deliverance, but rather we should turn to the One who is directing all from above. We have to do ours and He'll do his. (When Arik builds settlements he's our hero and god. When he changes his philosophy he becomes anathema and we all of a sudden turn real religious, right?) We can't let the terrorists have a victory by tricking us into giving up our faith in the Almighty. Stuart Pilichowski and Judy Balint are part of the Jerusalem Diarists group, people who are recording their experiences living in Israel today. "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" by Judy Lash Balint (Gefen) is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com To Go To Top

JAILED BUT INNOCENT UNDER THE RULE OF LAW Posted by Herbert Sunshine, May 12, 2004.

To: Tommy Lapid Dear Mr. Lapid: As an Attorney at law who has taught and practiced law in the United States for 35 years, I am compelled to address a troubling question to you and to Attorney General Mazuz. If the Defendant, Noam Federman was not indicted, because of the incredibility of the purported witness, why then does he remain in jail? If he is in jail without charge, why then is he not charged? If he is not charged. does this not suggest his innocence? Which leads me to my first question. Why, in the democratic, enlightened modern State of Israel are there prisoners jailed for their beliefs? The essential first reason for the Rule of Law is to protect the unpopular. Those who rule should make and enforce laws that are neither arbitrary capricious nor unjust, and not solely protective of the privileged. With love of a more just Israel, Herbert B. Sunshine Herbert B. Sunshine is a retired Professor of Law (U.S.), now living with his wife, Mikimia, in Israel. To Go To Top

IT'S SUMMER CAMP TIME AGAIN - WILL THIS YEAR BE AS GOOD AS THE LAST? Posted by Bruce Tuchman, May 12, 2004.

This article is entitled "Arafat Living In The Past?" and was written by Stephen Winn, Deputy Editorial Page Editor of the The Kansas City Star. It appeared September 16, 2000 on the Opinion Page. Contact Mr. Winn by phone at (816) 234-4477. It was reprinted on the Gamla website (http://www.gamla.org.il). Dear Mom and Dad, Just a quick note to say I'm having a great time at summer camp. This morning the counselors showed us some fantastic kidnapping tactics, and we got to "gun down" all the victim's bodyguards. Propaganda class was a little boring. But as a reward, afterward they let us practice knifing people from behind! I never realized there were so many ways to wreak havoc and terror! See you soon. If you were a Palestinian parent living on the West Bank, this is the kind of letter you might have received from your 15-year old son this summer. When the program directors are old PLO operatives, summer camp is more than just nature walks and goofy songs. A New York Times story last month detailed how the Palestinian Authority uses 90 summer camps on the West Bank and Gaza to train tomorrow's terrorists. Tens of thousands of children attend the camps. Pictures showed masked teenagers rehearsing the kidnapping of an Israel official and assembling Kalashnikov rifles. Some campers talked about how they would someday fight against Israel. A 16-year-old boasted about how the Palestinians would seize Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Well, some people will shrug, what do you expect when an old terrorist like Yasser Arafat is left in charge of things? But how could he and other Palestinian leaders be so stupid? Years ago they supposedly agreed to abandon violence and work toward a future in which the Palestinians and Israel could co-operate and live together in peace. The Palestinian Authority simply hasn't lived up to its promises. And its summer camps are a perfect example of how Palestinian leaders continue to live in the past as they let the possibility of a Palestinian State slip through their fingers. President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians a country of their own at the Camp David talks this summer. But Arafat refused, insisting that he could not "give up" Jerusalem and its religious sites. The Islamic sites incidentally have long been under the operational control of Arab authorities. Incredibly, Arafat also demanded the right to flood Israel with Palestinian refugees even if they had a state of their own. Arafat apparently wanted rhetoric, not an actual country. Even Israel peace activists were stunned. After blowing, his chance at Camp David, Arafat, as in days of old, was off on a world tour to drum up support for his intransigence. He met with the Russian president, for example, as though Moscow were a powerful patron for Arab autocrats rather than an economic cripple and international laughing stock in dire need of assistance itself. Perhaps the most devastating sign that Palestinian leaders are trapped in the past is their willingness to listen to other Arab leaders around the Middle East who urge ceaseless struggle against the state of Israel. Not ceaseless struggle for their own countries, of course. But they want the Palestinians to keep fighting Israel as their proxies. In rejecting Clinton's pleas to accept a state with American and Israeli guarantees, Arafat chose to listen to the advice of other Arab leaders who said he could not abandon the struggle for Jerusalem. Unlike Arafat, these other Arab leaders rule over actual countries with tanks, missiles, warplanes and thousands of regular army troops. Yet they have been unable for decades, through either war or diplomatic pressure, to win control of Jerusalem's Old City. Having failed themselves, they assign the task to the stateless Palestinians under the leadership of an aging bumbler they have mocked and scorned for decades. To fully savor the hypocrisy, consider that the Arab countries once had control of Jerusalem's Old City themselves. They didn't give it to the Palestinians, however. They let Jordan's King Hussein have it, and he lost it after foolishly joining the Arab war against Israel in 1967. Jimmy Carter, who among, recent American presidents has shown the most sympathy for Arab concerns, once made this remark: "I have never met an Arab leader that in private professed the desire for an independent Palestinian state." This is something that Arafat should have figured out a long time ago. The only country that has ever given the Palestinians land is Israel. The only Mideast country that has ever actually offered them a state complete with the economic and military support it would need to survive is Israel. Yet Israel is the country that Palestinian leaders still teach their children to hate. They may no longer be active terrorists, but they are still fools. To Go To Top

A HEROIC ACT: Slaughtering a Women and Her Children Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, May 12, 2004.

Last week's slaughter of a pregnant woman and her four little daughters, for instance, was described on Voice of Palestine as "an act of heroic martyrdom." As reported by Arabic media expert Dr. Michael Widlanski, the station repeatedly used the terms for "heroic martyrdom" to describe the terrorist act, and called the murders "heroic martyrs." David Bedein laments the fact that "Not one U.S. news outlet reported that the PA praised, justified and glorified this week's cold-blooded murder of a pregnant woman and her four children... There are times when only the news that fits a future peace process will get printed, even as the blood flows." Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org To Go To Top

EDWARD ALEXANDER ON DIVESTMENT: FOUAD AJAMI ON THE CURSE OF PAN-ARABIA Posted by Steven Plaut, May 11, 2004.

Dr. Alexander is professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle. His article appeared in the Jerusalem Post (http://www.jpost.com). Dr. Ajami, of Johns Hopkins, is the author of "The Dream Palace of the Arabs" (Vintage, 1999). This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal Online (http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108431652940408675,00.html). "America's 'Divestment' Bigots: Pushing 'divestment' on US campuses" by Edward Alexander. This appeared in the Jerusalem Post. In September 2002 Harvard president Lawrence Summers charged that at Harvard and universities across America, faculty-initiated petitions were calling "for the university to single out Israel among all nations as the lone country where it is inappropriate for any part of the university's endowment to be invested." In August 2003 Judith Butler, a professor at UC Berkeley and signatory to nearly every anti-Israel petition, including the divestment one circulating on American campuses, published a rebuttal of Summers called "No, it's not anti-Semitic" in the London Review of Books. Summers had chivalrously gone out of his way to say that "Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic in their effect, if not their intent"; to annihilate this distinction was a primary aim of Butler's counterattack. Using the tu quoque (you too) argument she called Summers's accusations "a blow against academic freedom, in effect, if not intent." His words have had "a chilling effect on political discourse." Apparently the chill had not taken hold at Harvard itself, which would in November play host to Oxford's Tom Paulin, famous for urging that Jews in Judea and Samaria "should be shot dead." Butler perfunctorily assented to Summers's recommendation that anti-Semitism be condemned, but seemed incapable either of recognizing it in such to her mild "public criticisms" as economic warfare against Israel, or calls for its dismantling, or assaults on Zionism itself, or opposing any effort Israel might make to defend itself against suicide bombers. She saw no difference between Jews intentionally murdered by suicide bombers and Arabs accidentally killed by Israeli efforts to repel would-be murderers. Butler asserted that nobody examining the divestment petitions could take them as condoning anti-Semitism. "We are asked to conjure a listener who attributes an intention to the speaker: So-and-so has made a public statement against the Israeli occupation, and this must mean that so-and-so hates Jews." But Summers was perfectly correct in stating that one need not "hate Jews" in order to perform actions or utter words that are "anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent." Take a well-known case: When Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, he harbored no hatred of Jews or intention to harm them. He said of Fagin: "He's such an out and outer I don't know what to make of him." The reason for Dickens' puzzlement was that he did not indeed "make" Fagin, and therefore didn't know what to make of him. Fagin was ready-made for Dickens by the folklore of Christendom, which had fixed the Jew in the role of Christ-killer, agent of Satan, inheritor of Judas, thief, fence, corrupter of the young; to which list of attributes Butler and her comrades now add "Zionist imperialist and occupier." Has Oliver Twist often been anti-Semitic in effect? Of course or does Butler think it is for their concern over the homeless in Victorian England that Arab publishers keep cheap translations of the book in print? Her ultimate use of the tu quoque strategy is to make Summers himself guilty of what he attacks. Why? Because he assumes that Jews can only be victims. Apparently the hundreds murdered and the thousands mutilated by Arab terrorists between September 2000 and the time Butler published her essay were not sufficient to meet her stringent requirements for (Jewish) victim status. But if Israelis are not the victims of Palestinian aggression, why is getting on a bus in Jerusalem or going to a cafe in Haifa a form of Russian roulette, far more dangerous than prancing about as a "human shield" for Yasser Arafat? WHAT BUTLER'S essay leaves out is even more blatant than what it includes. It omits history altogether, torturing a text and omitting context. Did it never occur to Butler that the divestment effort is the latest installment of the 50-year-old Arab economic boycott of Israel? Equally egregious is the omission of context that is compulsory for those who have made the "Palestinian cause" the cornerstone of campus liberalism. The "occupation" which they bemoan did not precede and cause Arab hatred and violence; it was Arab hatred and violence that led in June 1967 as in April 2002 to occupation. But the crucial omission from Butler's essay by somebody who has relentlessly insisted on the political implications of language is the political implications of the language of advocates of divestment. The Harvard/MIT divestment petition that Butler champions was promoted at MIT by Noam Chomsky, a person who would be rendered almost speechless on the subject of Israel if deprived of the epithet "Nazi." It was promoted at Harvard by professors calling Israel the "pariah" state. Butler was herself one of the "first signatories" of a July 28, 2003 "Stop the Wall" petition that uses the Israeli-Nazi equation beloved of nearly all denigrators of the Zionist enterprise in asserting that "concrete, barbed wire and electronic fortifications whose precedents... belong to the totalitarian tradition" were transforming the Israel "defense forces" and indeed "Israeli citizens themselves into a people of camp wardens." So it would seem that, to quote Butler, "Language plays an important role in shaping and attuning our... understanding of social and political realities," except when it happens to be the anti-Semitic language that demonizes Israel as the devil's experiment station, black as Gehenna and the pit of Hell. "The Curse of Pan-Arabia" by Fouad Ajami. Consider a tale of three cities: In Fallujah, there are the beginnings of wisdom, a recognition, after the bravado, that the insurgents cannot win in the face of a great military power. In Najaf, the clerical establishment and the shopkeepers have called on the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr to quit their city, and to "pursue another way." It is in Washington where the lines are breaking, and where the faith in the gains that coalition soldiers have secured in Iraq at such a terrible price appears to have cracked. We have been doing Iraq by improvisation, we are now "dumping stock," just as our fortunes in that hard land may be taking a turn for the better. We pledged to give Iraqis a chance at a new political life. We now appear to be consigning them yet again to the same Arab malignancies that drove us to Iraq in the first place. We have stumbled in Abu Ghraib. But the logic of Abu Ghraib isn't the logic of the Iraq war. We should be able to know the Arab world as it is. We should see through the motives of those in Cairo and Amman and Ramallah and Jeddah, now outraged by Abu Ghraib, who looked away from the terrors of Iraq under the Baathists. Our account is with the Iraqi people: It is their country we liberated, and it is their trust that a few depraved men and women, on the margins of a noble military expedition, have violated. We ought to give the Iraqis the best thing we can do now, reeling as we are under the impact of Abu Ghraib -- give them the example of our courts and the transparency of our public life. What we should not be doing is to seek absolution in other Arab lands. Take this scene from last week, which smacks of the confusion -- and panic -- of our policies in the aftermath of a cruel April: President Bush apologizing to King Abdullah II of Jordan for the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Peculiar, that apology -- owed to Iraq's people, yet forwarded to Jordan. We are still held captive by Pan-Arab politics. We struck into Iraq to free that country from the curse of the Arabism that played havoc with its politics from its very inception as a nation-state. We had thought, or implied, or let Iraqis think, that a new political order would emerge, that the Pan-Arab vocation that had been Iraq's poison would be no more. The Arabs had let down Iraq, averted their gaze from the mass graves and the terrors inflicted on Kurdistan and the south, and on the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala and their seminarians and scholars. Jordan in particular had shown no great sensitivity toward Iraq's suffering. This was a dark spot in the record of a Hashemite dynasty otherwise known for its prudence and mercy. It was a concession that the Hashemite court gave to Jordan's "street," to the Palestinians in refugee camps and to the swanky districts of Amman alike. Jordan in the 1980s was the one country where Saddam Hussein was a mythic hero: the crowd identified itself with his Pan-Arab dreams, and thrilled to his cruelty and historical revisionism. This is why the late king, Hussein, broke with his American ties -- as well as with his fellow Arab monarchs -- after the invasion of Kuwait. His son did better in this war; he noted the price that Jordan paid in the intervening decade. He took America's side, and let the crowd know that a price would be paid for riding with Saddam. But no apology was owed to him for Abu Ghraib. He was no more due an apology for what took place than were the rulers in Kathmandu. But this was of a piece with our broader retreat of late. We have dispatched the way of Iraqis an envoy of the U.N., Lakhdar Brahimi, an Algerian of Pan-Arab orientation, with past service in the League of Arab States. It stood to reason (American reason, uninformed as to the terrible complications of Arab life) that Mr. Brahimi, "an Arab," would better understand Iraq's ways than Paul Bremer. But nothing in Mr. Brahimi's curriculum vitae gives him the tools, or the sympathy, to understand the life of Iraq's Shiite seminaries; nothing he did in his years of service in the Arab league exhibited concern for the cruelties visited on the Kurds in the 1980s. Mr. Brahimi hails from the very same political class that has wrecked the Arab world. He has partaken of the ways of that class: populism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and a preference for the centralized state. He came from the apex of the Algerian system of power that turned that country into a charnel house, inflicted on it a long-running war between the secular powers-that-be and the Islamists, and a tradition of hostility by the Arab power-holders toward the country's Berbers. No messenger more inappropriate could have been found if the aim was to introduce Iraqis to the ways of pluralism. Mr. Brahimi owes us no loyalty. His prescription of a "technocratic government" for Iraq -- which the Bush administration embraced only to retreat from, by latest accounts -- is a cunning assault on the independent political life of Iraq. The Algerian seeks to return Iraq to the Pan-Arab councils of power. His entire policy seeks nothing less than a rout of the gains which the Kurds and the Shiites have secured after the fall of the Tikriti-Baathist edifice. The Shiites have seen through his scheme. A history of disinheritance has given them the knowledge they need to recognize those who bear them ill will. American power may not be obligated -- and should not be -- to deliver the Shiites a new dominion in Iraq. But we can't once more consign them to the mercy of their enemies in the Arab world. At any rate, it is too late in the hour for such a policy, for the genie is out of the bottle and the Shiites will fight back. Gone is their old timidity and quietism. Their rejection of Mr. Brahimi's diplomacy is now laid out for everyone to see. For his part, Mr. Brahimi knew that the Americans were eager to dump, and he rightly bet on the innocence (other, less charitable terms could be used) of those in the Bush administration now calling the shots on Iraq. They were unburdened by any deep knowledge of the country, and Mr. Brahimi offered the false promise of pacifying Iraq in the run-up to our presidential elections. His technocracy is, in truth, but a cover for the restoration of the old edifice of power. Fallujah gave him running room; its fight for a lost, unjust dominion, was his diplomatic tool. His prescription, he let it be known, would calm the tempest in that sullen place. The Marines were fighting to bring that town to order. The Marines were not Mr. Brahimi's people: Their fight, and their sacrifices, he dismissed as a "collective punishment" of a civilian population. Mr. Brahimi should know a thing or two about collective punishment. His native Algeria has provided enough lessons in what really constitutes the indiscriminate punishment of populations that come in the way of military power. In the scales of military power, the Arabs have not been brilliant in modern times. But there is cunning aplenty in their world, and an unerring eye for the follies of great foreign powers. The Arabs can read through President Bush's stepping back from his support for Ariel Sharon's plan for withdrawal from Gaza. There are amends to be made for Abu Ghraib, and those are owed the people of Iraq. Yet here we are paying the Palestinians with Iraqi coin. The Palestinians will not be grateful for our concessions; and they are to be forgiven the only conclusion they will draw. Those concessions have already been taken as the compromises of an America now in the throes of self-flagellation. We can't have this peculiar mix of imperial reach, coupled with such obtuseness. It is odd, and defective in the extreme, that President Bush chose the official daily of the Egyptian regime, Al-Ahram, for yet another interview, another expression of contrition over Abu Ghraib. In the anti-Americanism of Egypt (of Al-Ahram itself), the protestations of our virtue are of no value. In our uncertainty, we now walk into the selective rage of the Egyptians, a popular hostility tethered to the policies of a regime eager to see us fail in Iraq -- a regime afraid that the Iraqis may yet steal a march on Egypt into modernity. Cairo has no standing in Iraq. Why not take representatives of a budding Iraqi publication into the sanctuary of the Oval Office and offer a statement of contrition by our leader? Our goals in Iraq are being diluted by the day. There has been naivete on our part, to be sure, and no small measure of hubris. We haven't always read Iraq right, but if we abdicate the burden and the responsibility -- and the possibilities -- that came with this war, our entire effort will come to grief. In Najaf on May 7, in a Friday sermon made from the shrine of Imam Ali -- Shiism's most revered pulpit -- Sheikh Sadr-al-din Qabanji, a respected cleric with ties to Ayatollah Ali Sistani, called on the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr to quit the city. "Listen to the advice of the ulema," he said, using the term for the recognized men of religion. "Come, let us together find another way, go back to your homes and provinces." The defense of Najaf, he said, belonged to its people, and the bands of young "Sadrists" were told to return to the slums of Baghdad. We haven't stilled Iraq's furies, and our gains there have been made with heartbreaking losses. But in the midst of our anguish over Abu Ghraib, and in our eagerness to placate an Arab world that has managed to convince us of its rage over the scandal, we should stay true to what took us into Iraq, and to the gains that may yet be salvaged. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

ARAB SHOW NO RESPECT FOR JEWISH REMAINS Posted by Barry Shaw, May 11, 2004.

Following the explosion of the IDF armoured vehicles in Gaza and the death of six Israeli soldiers, Palestinians were filmed playing games with the body parts of the deceased. Two Palestinians, riding a motor bike, were seen carrying the head of one of the Jewish victims while bystanders took kicks at it. This was filmed by Al Jazeera TV and parts were replayed on Israeli television. Members of Islamic Jihad made an announcement that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would follow in the soldiers example while displaying body parts on a table. The Israeli Defense Force has entered sections of Gaza in massive force with the intention of recovering all the body parts of the missing dead soldiers in order to bring them for burial in Israel. This latest Palestinian display of gross inhumanity and depravity follows in the tradition of their lynching of two IDF soldiers in Ramallah. Barry Shaw writes the "View from Here" essays from Israel. To Go To Top

THE TRUE UNTOUCHABLE Posted by David Wilder, May 11, 2004.

It's difficult to write - there's too much to write about. There are three subjects in particular, which are, I believe, related. As I write this, I'm watching Israel television news. Today's news have dealt with only one subject: the murder of six Israeli soldiers by Arafat's killers, this morning, in Gaza. The six, traveling in an Armored Personnel Carrier filled with ammunition, were on their way back to their base, following a night of activities in Zaytun. Together with other Israeli soldiers, they participated in searching for terror factories, producing Kassam missiles and other deadly weapons. Their vehicle passed over a 100 kilo bomb, buried in the street, operated by remote control. The resulting explosion caused a fire ball which could be seen from miles away. Pieces of the APC, together with the soldiers, were splattered around the area. Within minutes, Arab barbarians began accumulating body parts of the Israeli soldiers, cannibalistically displaying them before cameras, demanding that other terrorists be released from prison in exchange for the ransomed body parts. A short film of the terrorists, pointing to a severed head and demanding the release of terrorists, was shown on Israeli television, Channel One news. Israeli soldiers, attempting to salvage their comrade's remains, were attacked by Arab terrorists, surrounding them and shooting at them. Hundreds of troops were brought to the scene to protect their friends-in-arms. The Israeli Chief of Staff, Lt. General Moshe 'Bugi' Yaalon stated during a brief press conference that Israel will not participate in any negotiations with the Arafat-terrorists who perpetrated this war crime. Radio commentators noted that the IDF chose to send soldiers into the Zaytun neighborhood rather than destroy the weapon's factories from the air because of the large numbers of civilians who live in the area. In other words, the Arab's lives are worth more than Israeli lives. That's subject number one. Subject number two: A few days ago, seven Hebron residents were notified that arms, granted them by the IDF, were to be confiscated. Central Command General Moshe Kalpinsky, signed orders ordering that their weapons be taken from them. This, due to police recommendations that these people might be 'dangerous.' One of the men whose weapon is to be taken from him, Tel Rumeida resident Shalom Alkobi, is a member of the Hebron emergency security squad. He carries a weapon wherever he goes, for clear reasons of self-defense. He has a letter from the Prime Minister's office stating that the Shabak, the Israeli intelligence services, had nothing to do with this decision. In other words, our good friends, the police, are at it again. In reaction to these military orders, the resident's attorney, Naftali Wertzberger, sent a furiously-worded letter to Kaplinsky, writing that the orders are blatantly illegal. A person legally holding a weapon must be granted a special hearing, with the reasons for the confiscation clarified, allowing the person a chance to defend or explain himself. A hearing such as this was never held. In addition, the orders give absolutely no reason for the confiscation. The Hebron community sent an equally enraged reaction to the General, accusing him of abandoning Hebron's Jews by ordering that their weapons be taken from them. Interestingly enough, one of the people to receive a confiscation order was not male, rather a Hebron housewife. Her name is Elisheva Federman. Elisheva is the wife of administrative detainee Noam Federman. When her husband's weapon was taken from him and he was jailed, the security forces suggested that she be licensed to carry a weapon in order to be able to protect her family, should the need arise. However, a few days ago, the Hebron police deemed Elisheva, mother of seven young children, living without her husband for eight months, too dangerous to have a gun, even at the cost of her life and her children's lives. Subject number three: I've saved, perhaps, the best for last. Speaking of Elisheva and Noam Federman. This morning Elisheva had a rare opportunity to see her husband without having to look past the bars of a jail cell. Noam has been in prison for almost eight months, the only Jewish administrative detainee in Israel. He's not been tried, or convicted. But he's in jail. This morning Elisheva met Noam at... where else, at the Jerusalem Municipal court. Almost two years ago Noam Federman was jailed, and then placed under house arrest, having been accused of masterminding the infamous "Bat-Ayin" Jewish terrorist ring. Subsequently three men were charged and convicted of trying to blow up an Arab girls school. Two other men were arrested and jailed, but later acquitted of all charges brought against them. Noam's accuser was one of those convicted. He named about 50 people who supposedly participated in the plot, but of them, only Noam was arrested. That was, again, almost two years ago, just as the investigation was beginning. (See: Noam Federman presenting the Twilight Zone- http://www.hebron.com/news/noamtwilight.htm) As a result, Noam was placed under strict house arrest. While trying to legally overturn the house-arrest orders, the Israeli intelligence services had Noam jailed as an administrative detainee, thereby, for all intensive purposes, circumventing the courts, who almost always uphold 'Shabak' arrests, 'for security reasons.' This morning, Noam and Elisheva met at the Jerusalem court for another hearing dealing with the Bat Ayin case. Suddenly the prosecutor asked for the judge's attention and stated that the state was dropping all charges against Noam in the Bat Ayin case for lack of proof. Their one, star witness, started telling different stories, and his instability led them to reconsider their case against Federman. The surprised judge then asked the next, logical question. "So now Federman can go home?." The prosecutor quickly jumped up and exclaimed, "No, of course not, he's still an administrative detainee." It should be noted, that, according to media accounts, this is Noam Federman's forty first acquittal. Speaking later with Elisheva, she told me that the Shabak claims that the Bat Ayin case was only one of the reasons Noam is being held in jail. The other reasons are, of course, secret Bolshevism, at it's best, in Israel, 2004. What can I say? Things here are really mixed up. Concerning subject number one: about the six soldiers massacred this morning in Gaza, only to have their remains stolen by their killers - if the news media had made as big a deal of the Tali Hatual family killings a week ago as they are today twith the soldiers, maybe the soldiers would still be alive. Maybe the government would have allowed the IDF to unleash it full fury, thereby preventing today's bloodshed. But no, after all, Tali and her four murdered children were only civilians, residents of Gush Katif. They opposed Sharon's disengagement plan, almost making them 'enemies of the people.' Concerning subjects two and three: the weapons and the Federmans: In reality, they are nothing more than a continuation of subject number one. The Arab's lives are worth more than Jewish lives - it's preferable to attend Israeli soldier's funerals rather than wipe out terrorist nests from the air, even at the cost of 'innocent' Arab lives. So too, it makes no difference if Jews have weapons to protect themselves or not. We can be jailed without due process of law and abandoned to the will of the same barbarians who steal dead human remains. Clearly, according to the lexicon of the current Prime Minister (and some of those who preceded him) settlers are distinctly lower class citizens, similar to the Hindu untouchables. As untouchable as Ariel Sharon may think we are, in the end, it is he who will be remembered as a cast out, an historic relic, whose infamy will rival that of such villains as Josephus Flavious, and others of his caste. He will be remembered as the true untouchable. ==================================== The Jewish Community of Hebron mourns the death of Ariel Begun, son of Rabbi Dov and Nava Begun, who was taken from his parents, wife and young children at too young an age. May they be comforted amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com To Go To Top

THE RETURN OF THE ARAB BOYCOTT Posted by Michael Freund, May 11, 2004.

This is an article of mine from today's Jerusalem Post about attempts being made by the Arab states to revive the boycott of Israel, and the steps that should be taken to counter this trend. Once a vaunted weapon in the Arab world's arsenal against the Jewish state, the boycott largely fell into disuse in recent years, with several Arab countries openly ignoring its provisions. Now, though, it seems that a renewed effort might be underway to revive the embargo, as a means of further isolating Israel and hurting its economy. It is imperative that the US and Israel take steps now to prevent this from happening. Take, for example, the recent four-day summit held by the Central Boycott Office at the end of April in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Attended by representatives from 19 Arab countries, the conference decided to add 10 international firms to its blacklist, including two American companies, because they do business with Israel (UPI, April 29). That means, in effect, that nearly the entire Arab world, with the exception of Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, continue to see themselves as active participants, to one degree or another, in the embargo against Israel and have yet to disavow this shameful and discriminatory tool. Even more worrisome is the fact that Iraq's ruling interim governing council decided to send a delegation to the meeting. According to Ahmed Khazaa, the boycott office's commissioner general, the Iraqis agreed to respect the Arab boycott and pledged not to do business with Israel. Speaking to reporters, Khazaa read a statement, which said the conference had discussed "Israeli attempts to penetrate Iraq" and that the Iraqis "cannot but be against such attempts" (Associated Press, April 29). The Iraqi agreement to abide by the embargo is particularly astonishing given that Baghdad is still under US control, at least until the end of June. If Iraq is to serve as the model for a new and friendlier Middle East, then joining the Arab boycott of Israel hardly seems like an auspicious way to start. The Palestinians are also working overtime to try and breathe new life in to the boycott. At a meeting tomorrow in Kuala Lampur of the ministerial committee of the Non-Aligned Movement, the Palestinian delegation will reportedly call on the 118 member countries to suspend all trade ties with Israel. As Palestinian Ambassador to Malaysia Ahmad Al Farra told a Malaysian newspaper earlier this week, "It is not enough to be angry or to condemn the Israelis... we want the UN to initiate economic sanctions against Israel" (New Straits Times, May 10). Similar calls have been made elsewhere in the Arab world in recent weeks. Lebanon's senior Muslim cleric, Grand Mufti Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Qabbani, is said to have reaffirmed his support for the boycott after being accused of renting property to a company that sells goods produced by the Estee Lauder cosmetics firm. "Qabbani is determined that no company connected with Israel should be given any help to sell its goods in Lebanon," a cleric close to the Mufti told a Lebanese newspaper (Beirut Daily Star, May 8, 2004). And Syria's Ministry of Economy issued a statement last week barring four European ships from docking in Syrian ports because they had made stops in Israel. The Syrians also added nine companies to a national blacklist due to their ties with the Jewish state (Associated Press, May 6). Even in countries considered close to the US, there are signs of mounting agitation to re-impose the embargo. Last month, the National Union of Kuwaiti Students issued a call to prohibit "American and Zionist goods" (DPA, April 19). In 2003, the Saudi government banned three American companies from doing business in the Kingdom because of the boycott, while in January of this year, two cameramen for a Spanish television network were denied entry to the Arab League's headquarters in Cairo when it was discovered that they were Israelis (AP, January 20). The Arab embargo, of course, has nothing to do with Israeli policy, and everything to do with Arab opposition to the very existence of the Jewish state. Indeed, it was first launched on December 2, 1945, or more than two years before the founding of the State of Israel, when the Arab League Council declared all Jewish and Zionist products to be "undesirable to the Arab countries." Application of the boycott later waned during the 1990s, but it was formally revived two years ago at a meeting in Damascus. Though current compliance with is said to be spotty, and is far less thorough than it once was, it would nevertheless be a mistake for Israel and the United States to ignore the Arabs' renewed interest in reviving the embargo. After all, the use of this economic weapon is a throwback to the darker days of regional conflict and tension. If US President George W. Bush is serious about promoting reform in the Middle East, then he should take a firm stance against the renewal of the Arab boycott of Israel. The embargo is an affront to the principles of free trade, and will only make Arab-Israeli reconciliation even more difficult to achieve. Moreover, the boycott not only targets Israel, but it also harms US economic interests abroad. As the Office of the US Trade Representative said in its 2004 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, "The Arab League boycott of the state of Israel is an impediment to U.S. trade and investment in the Middle East and North Africa." It is therefore essential that Washington wield its diplomatic and economic clout to forestall a resurgence of this weapon. While US law has forbidden American companies since 1977 from complying with the embargo, Congress should consider passing new legislation to punish countries that brazenly continue to support it, such as Syria and Saudi Arabia. And the US should also make it clear to Iraq's new rulers that taking part in the boycott is simply out of the question. America cannot allow Iraqis, and other Arab states, to fall back into the bad habits of yesteryear, such as rejectionism and obstinacy. The only way the Arab world can possibly hope to progress is to cease fighting the battles of the past, and to start embracing the realities of the present: chief among them that the Jewish state is here to stay. And there could be no better symbol of a new Arab approach then by renouncing the boycott of Israel, once and for all. The writer served as Deputy Director of Communications & Policy Planning under former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. To Go To Top

NICK BERG, WEST CHESTER, PA, BEHEADED IN IRAQ Posted by IsrAlert, May 11, 2004.

This comes from Msnbc (http://www.msnbc.com). Video on Islamic militant Web site appears to show beheading of American - The video showed five men standing over a bound man who identified himself as an American from Philadelphia. After reading a statement, the men pulled the man to his side and cut off his head with a large knife. They said the death was revenge for the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Updated: 1:28 p.m. ET May 11, 2004 CAIRO, Egypt - A video posted Tuesday on an Islamic militant Web site showed a group affiliated with al-Qaida beheading an American civilian in Iraq, saying the death was revenge for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers. The video showed five men wearing headscarves and black ski masks, standing over a bound man in an orange jumpsuit - similar to a prisoner's uniform - who identified himself as Nick Berg, a U.S. contractor whose body was found on a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday. "My name is Nick Berg, my father's name is Michael, my mother's name is Susan," the man said on the video. "I have a brother and sister, David and Sarah. I live in ... Philadelphia." After reading a statement, the men were seen pulling the man to his side and putting a large knife to his neck. A scream sounded as the men cut his head off, shouting "Allahu Akbar!" - "God is great." They then held the head out before the camera. Berg was a small-business owner from the Philadelphia suburbs, his family said Tuesday. "For the mothers and wives of American soldiers, we tell you that we offered the U.S. administration to exchange this hostage with some of the detainees in Abu Ghraib and they refused," one of the men read from a statement. "So we tell you that the dignity of the Muslim men and women in Abu Ghraib and others is not redeemed except by blood and souls. You will not receive anything from us but coffins after coffins ... slaughtered in this way." The video bore the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American." It was unclear whether al-Zarqawi - a lieutenant of Osama bin Laden - was shown in the video, or was claiming responsibility for ordering the execution. Internet site has carried previous statements. The Web site on which the video was posted is known as a clearing house for al-Qaida and Islamic extremist groups' statements and tapes. The family of Berg, 26, of West Chester, Pa., said they were informed by the U.S. State Department on Monday that Berg was found dead near a highway overpass in Baghdad. Berg's mother, Suzanne Berg, said her son was in Iraq as an independent businessman to help rebuild communication antennas. He had been missing since April 9, she said. "He had this idea that he could help rebuild the infrastructure," she said. The U.S. military Tuesday said an American civilian was found dead in Baghdad, but did not release his identity. State Department spokeswoman Susan Pittman said she couldn't release the name of the dead American, but said she not aware of more than one civilian found dead in recent days. The military said there were signs of trauma to the body. Suzanne Berg said she was told her son's death was violent but did not want to discuss details. Berg, who was in Baghdad from late December to Feb. 1, returned to Iraq in March. He didn't find any work and planned again to return home on March 30, but his daily communications home stopped on March 24. He later told his parents he was jailed by Iraqi officials at a checkpoint in Mosul. "He was arrested and held without due process," his father, Michael Berg, told the Daily Local News of West Chester recently. "By the time he got out the whole area was inflamed with violence. The FBI on March 31 interviewed Berg's parents in West Chester. Jerri Williams, a spokeswoman for the Philadelphia FBI office, told The Philadelphia Inquirer the agency had been "asked to interview the parents regarding Mr. Berg's purpose in Iraq." Parents last heard from son in April On April 5, the Bergs filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia, contending that their son was being held illegally by the U.S. military. The next day Berg was released. He told his parents he hadn't been mistreated. The Bergs last heard from their son April 9, when he said he would come home by way of Jordan, Turkey or Kuwait. But by then, hostilities in Iraq had escalated. Suzanne Berg on Tuesday said she was told her son's body would be transported to Kuwait and then to Dover, Del. She said the family had been trying for weeks to learn where their son was but that federal officials had not been helpful. "I went through this with them for weeks," she said. "I basically ended up doing most of the investigating myself." IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

HOW'S THIS FOR STUPID ROBBER TRICKS? Posted by Marcus, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, May 11, 2004.

This happened two weeks ago, but the images in my head were just too funny - sick, but funny - to not send it on.... It appeared April 27, 2004 in the Irish Examiner. A Hamas suicide bomber blew up two armed Palestinians who tried to rob him at gun point in the Gaza Strip. Hamas claimed the stickup men worked for Israeli intelligence, while Palestinian security forces said the two were ordinary thieves. Rather than give up his explosives, the bomber detonated them, killing himself and the two robbers near the border fence between Gaza and Israel. Palestinian security officials said the the gunmen were criminals who were involved in a car theft ring that brought stolen vehicles from Israel to Gaza. Hamas said the bomber was on his way to try to infiltrate into Israel, accompanied by another Hamas member and a guide, when they were stopped by the armed men. The robbers forced the bomber to lie on the ground and tried to steal the bomb, but the militant detonated it, killing all three. The other Hamas man and the guide escaped. There have been cases of rival groups stealing each other's explosives, but no group claimed the two gunmen, and their families did not go to the hospital to take the bodies, indicating that the two were not militants, who are revered in Palestinian society. A Hamas official said that whatever their intention, the two should be considered agents of Israel. "Anyone who tries to stop a fighter from doing his work is a collaborator," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Hamas has been threatening punishing retaliatory attacks since Israel killed the founder of the Islamic group, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, in a helicopter missile strike on March 22, and his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, in another missile attack three weeks later. Because of the threats, security was especially tight for Israel's independence day holiday today. Police set up roadblocks on highways, checking drivers, as Israelis crowded public parks and forests for traditional holiday cookouts. Palestinians were banned from entering Israel, as they have been since a double suicide bombing attack that killed 10 Israelis in the port of Ashdod on March 14, idling about 16,000 Palestinian workers who have entry permits. In Gaza, tens of thousands of Israelis streamed to Gush Katif, a bloc of Israeli settlements, to celebrate Israel's independence day and protest at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw from all of the coastal strip by next year. The members of Sharon's Likud Party will vote on the plan on Sunday, with polls giving Sharon only a slight lead. In an independence day interview on Israel TV, Sharon appeared confident that he would win the Likud vote on his disengagement plan. By this time next year, he said, we will be in the midst of disengagement from Gaza. In the northern West Bank, Israeli troops raided the Tulkarem refugee camp with jeeps and armoured personnel carriers and conducted house-to-house searches. Soldiers exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen, killing two and seriously wounding a third. Israeli military officials said one of the dead was Ashraf Nafa, 21, the Hamas leader in Tulkarem. The other was Amjad Amra, 21, from the Islamic Jihad group. The officials said both had links to Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas and planned attacks against Israelis. The wounded man, a member of Hamas, was taken to an Israeli hospital. Lori Lowenthal Marcus is President of the Zionist Organization of America, Greater Philadelphia District (Eastern PA, Southern NJ, Del.). Their website address is WWW.ZOAPhilly.org To Go To Top

THE FUNCTION OF LEADERSHIP Posted by Mikimia and Herb Sunshine, May 11, 2004.

Dear Ehud Olmert, How refreshing to hear you expound about a democracy where leaders and the public have no connection Which makes one ask, who elected you to represent Israel? Do you know the function of a real leader? A leader of any nation must not make war on his own people. A leader of a Jewish State must never abandon Jews to sadists Foremost, a leader of a Jewish State must never surrender one inch of our Holy Land no matter how many our enemies may be. We are not locusts; they are not giants. Mr. Minister, by your logic the Jews must leave this world, since there are 6 billion enemies and only 6 million of us. Listen to the voice of the Israeli people before the electorate informs you loudly. With love of Israel, and with fear of its misleaders, Herbert B. Sunshine is a retired Professor of Law (U.S.), now living with his wife, Mikimia, in Israel. To Go To Top

DEFEATING OIL Posted by Israel BenAmi, May 11, 2004.

This is a Caroline Glick's column in the Jerusalem Post. It appeared May 7, 2004. To understand what must be done to defeat the forces of Islamic fascism, we must understand its strengths and vulnerabilities. In a word, they are the same: Oil. Last Saturday we were given a reminder of this fact in the form of a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. In the Red Sea port city of Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, jihadi gunmen opened fire on foreign workers in the offices of the Swiss-based ABB Lummus engineering firm in the city. In all, the four terrorists, all Saudis, killed two Americans, two Britons, one Australian and one Saudi national. The attack was distinctive because of its target. Yanbu, as the western endpoint of Saudi Arabia's east-west oil pipeline, is one of the backbones of Saudi Arabia's oil industry. Some nine hundred thousand barrels of oil are pumped to Yanbu daily. Saudi Arabia's daily oil production of 8 million barrels constitutes ten percent of the world's total daily output. But that is not what makes Saudi Arabia so important. Saudi Arabia's oil is crucial to the global economy because it is the only country in the world that can easily ratchet up its production in a significant way - to as much as 10.5 million barrels per day. When oil workers go on strike in Venezuela, or when terrorists attack New York and Washington, the Saudis raise their supply and thus act as the shock absorbers of the global economy. Add to that the fact that Saudi Arabia has 25% of the world's proven petroleum reserves and the point becomes clear: An attack on Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructures is an attack on the global economy. And indeed, the point was well taken. By mid-week, the price of crude oil futures for next month had surged to a 14 year high at just shy of $40 per barrel. And this is nothing. The Yanbu attack did not actually cause any damage to the pipeline or the Yanbu port. It merely sent a message. Saudi Arabia's oil is devastatingly vulnerable to strategic attack. The kingdom exports most of its oil through two main terminals, Ras Tanura and Al Jubayl on the Persian Gulf side of the kingdom. A major attack on one of the terminals could cripple global oil markets for months, sending the world into an economic depression more devastating than that of the 1930s. As The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, an attack that causes Saudi output to drop just 2.5 million barrels per day would raise the price of oil to $100 per barrel. Wednesday, Pakistan announced that it had uncovered a plot to hijack a plane in Pakistan and fly it into a structure in the UAE. A plane crash into Ras Tanura, according to Dr. Gal Luft, the executive director of the Washington based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, "could take 3 to 4 million barrels off the market overnight." As one oil analyst told the paper, an attack on Saudi oil supplies is "one event to which no one has an answer." The attack at Yanbu would not be particularly troubling if it could be seen as an isolated event. Yet, since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, there has been a string of attacks and attempted attacks on the oil economy in Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Over the past year of US-led occupation of Iraq, Iraqi oil infrastructures have been sabotaged no less than 100 times. These attacks have severely degraded Iraq's daily production capacity from its pre-war average of 2.5 million barrels. If last week's coordinated seaborne attack on the Basra oil terminal in southern Iraq had been successful, the Iraqi oil economy would have been crippled and the reverberations of the attack would have been felt worldwide. Osama bin Laden himself has explained that Al Qaida seeks to destroy the US by destroying the oil economy. According to Luft, "It is absolutely clear that we are looking at a growing phenomenon of terrorist attacks launched directly against oil infrastructures with the aim of destroying the international economy." Aside from the specter of a strategic attack on Saudi oil, the oil economy suffers from an additional structural weakness. Global demand for oil is rising steeply each year as India and China rapidly develop. Yet supply is not rising to meet this demand. According to Luft, "Growth in demand is outstripping exploration and recovery at a rate of 3-4 to 1." More discouraging still is the fact that over the next 10 to 20 years proven reserves will become increasingly concentrated in the hands of Arab and Islamic producers. Whereas today 66 percent of the world's proven oil reserves are controlled by Middle Eastern regimes, at current production levels, by 2020, those regimes will control 83 percent of the world's petroleum. And conquest of these lands to secure stable oil supplies does not provide an answer. As Luft notes, "The Iraqi case makes clear that it is one thing to conquer the oilfields. It is another thing completely to secure supplies from sabotage. The US has not been able to do that in Iraq and there is no reason to believe that it will have an easier time anywhere else." The problem we are facing in our war against Islamic terrorism, not only in Israel but throughout the non-Islamic world is that we are fighting an enemy that we are economically dependent on. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the financial and ideological engines of the global jihad. Yet, the structural flaws in the oil based economy - insufficient long-term supply, vulnerability to sabotage and concentration of resources in the hands Middle Eastern rogue states - point to the inherent weakness of these regimes: they are wholly dependent on their oil revenues. In Saudi Arabia, oil revenues make up 90-95% of total export earnings while oil and gas constitute 85% of Iran's total exports. In the coming years, as demand outstrips supply, two things can happen. The global economy can be seriously damaged, or the major consumers of oil will seek alternative sources of energy to fuel their cars and airplanes. If the latter transpires, Saudi Arabia and Iran will cease to be capable of financing their holy war on the non-Islamic world and the war will end. But how long will it take to find fuel sources capable of replacing oil? The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security's work has shown that the way to diminish, with an eye towards ending global dependence on Middle Eastern oil is already at our fingertips. The technologies for developing and using alternative sources of transportation fuel already exists. Getting them on tap is largely a matter of public investment and private demand. Among the rewards is victory in the terror war by ending our enemies' ability to sponsor it. In the short run, hybrid cars already exist and some three million cars that combine electric batteries with gasoline engines are already on the road in America. These "plug-in" cars can run on batteries for some 100 km before being recharged. Once the battery empties, the car immediately shifts to regular gasoline. Alternatively, the battery can be recharged by plugging the car into a 120-volt outlet for the night. In the medium and long term, gasoline at the pump can be replaced by coal, biomass or natural gas-based methanol and corn or sugar-based ethanol. According to Luft, both fuels can be integrated into already existing transportation infrastructures and can run on internal combustion engines. An added benefit is that neither fuel emits carbon dioxide. Indeed, some four million cars already on the roads in the US are capable of running on ethanol and methanol as well as gasoline. For an auto manufacturer, building engines that can run on these fuels involves an investment of a mere $100 per car. Methanol can currently be produced at 50 cents per gallon. For the US, which holds a quarter of the world's known coal reserves, as well as for China, which also has abundant domestic coal resources, moving to methanol transportation fuel could, according to Luft, reduce US demand for oil by half in the next 10 to 15 years. US power plants are already using clean technologies to convert coal into methanol. Luft explains that all of these options are preferable to the hydrogen fuel cell technologies that have been touted from time to time in the past few years because "It will take 40-50 years for the technology to become viable and we don't have that kind of time." For Israel, the need to develop alternate fuels should be a national priority and it is not beyond our grasp. Israeli scientists have made significant inroads in solar and wind energy, but have devoted less energy to synthetic fuels such as ethanol and methanol. With Israel's increased economic cooperation with India, which has a large domestic auto industry and a domestic demand for cars rising by over 50 percent per year, there is room for Israeli cooperative efforts with Indian car manufacturers to build electric hybrids and alcohol fuel friendly internal combustion engines. Our tiny landmass, coupled with our high population concentration in the coastal plain makes Israel a perfect place to test out plug-in hybrid cars. It would both reduce pollution and act as a catalyst for demand overseas. If the US economy were to suffer from an oil shock as a result of a debilitating attack on the Saudi oil supplies, the cost for the US of supporting Israel could well become prohibitive for American politicians sensitive to their public's demand for cheaper fuel. As Luft points out, during the oil shock of 1973, bumper stickers began appearing on US highways declaring, "We want oil, not Israel." On the other hand, if Israel can outlast the oil economy, a new world, no longer fearful of Arab oil wrath will open up to us. The possibilities then would be limitless and the chances for true and lasting peace will no doubt be great and real. To Go To Top

ARIEL SHARON'S COWARDICE PRODUCES DIRECT RESULTS Posted by Steven Plaut, May 11, 2004.

It has not taken long for Ariel Sharon's pusillanimous "deal" with the Hizbollah to produce major repercussions and to undermine Israeli national security in the most serious manner. You will recall that Sharon ordered the release of some 450 terrorists from Israeli prison as a "payment" to the Hizbollah to release the corpses of three Israeli POWs, whom the Hizbollah had murdered in cold blood. It was predicted in this corner that this would serve as precedent for the PLO and its affiliates to follow the example of the Hizbollah, and that Sharon's cowardice would serve as an invitation to other terrorists top murder Israelis and then hold their bodies as extortion. Sharon's Likud amen chorus approved the cowardly deal, sighing that there was "just no choice", the same sigh heard every time Israel does something astronomically stupid and for which there is not the slightest excuse. The correctness of that earlier prediction came home with a vengeance today in the Gaza Strip. An Israeli Armored Personnel Carrier was blown up today when it ran over a large mine placed in the road by Palestinian terrorists, and then the explosion set off additional explosions from the ammunition inside the APC. Six Israeli soldiers were literally blown to pieces. Ah, but then the "pieces" have now become the subject of Palestinian sport and extortion, thanks to Ariel Sharon's cowardice and appeasement of the Hizbollah. News reports are saying that Palestinian ghouls ran to the scene and seized body parts of the Israeli dead, playing games with them (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1084251772855 and http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/426159.html Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

YOSSIE UNDERSTANDS WHY Posted by IsrAlert, May 11, 2004.

This was written by Isaac Kohn who lives in Brooklyn, New York. It appeared in Arutz-Sheva yesterday "Abba?" "Yes, Yossie?" "Can you explain some things I don't quite understand?" "OK. Let's sit here on the couch and I'll see what I can do." Sitting down, the father looked at his son. "OK Yossie, go ahead." "Well, Abba. Our current events teacher begins every class with the latest news, mostly world news. Since this Oslo War began and then the war in Iraq, our class is very interesting. We discuss the terror and war here in Israel and we try to compare and relate it to the war over there in Iraq." "That's wonderful. You must really know what's going on in the world at large." "Yes, I do. And that is where my confusion comes from." "Such as?" "Well? let me be specific." "Remember our neighbors who were killed on the bus last year? The world refers to their murderers, the terrorists as 'militants' or as 'freedom fighters.' In fact, even the American Secretary of State, Powell, said that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.' In other words, there is an aura of legitimacy the world bestows on those that are killing and murdering us. Yet, in the war in Iraq, the media has found the correct description of such sub-humans. In every report from that region, these murderers are referred to as 'terrorists' or' hoods' or 'thugs'. "And... and..." Yossie stammered, his eyes misting with tears. "Go on, son, go on," the father said soothingly. "And... the horrible murder of the entire Hatuel family. The Nazi-like execution of little children and their pregnant mother is accepted as just another rainy day. The media is silent. The world doesn't even sigh at the sight of such brutality. I just don't understand." The father nodded. "Do you want a response now?" "No, not now. I have other difficulties in comprehending and sifting through the various words, descriptions and American responses to the on-going terror and murder." "OK. Go on." "The teacher read a news item from Fallujah, where the fighting is quite fierce. The news report related that forty-five 'thugs' were holed up in the minaret of a local mosque. They were firing from the mosque at the surrounding American forces. The place, the American Commander was told, is a holy-site to the Moslems and shooting at it is blasphemy and disrespectful to Islam. The populace warned him of 'violent reactions' if he were to send his troops against those holed up in there. But it seems that the commander does not understand Arabic." "He doesn't?" the father chuckled. "No. He simply ordered the tanks to blast the mosque to smithereens and sent those forty-five killers to the grave they deserve. When asked how he can do that to the 'holy' place, he responded: 'When terrorists are holed up in there, that 'holiness' doesn't exist. Hence the immediate, uncompromising attack and obliteration. Those inside the minaret will never attack again.' That was an answer as it should be. After all, the lives of his troops were in the balance and his immediate decision was to insure their safety by eliminating those holed up in the minaret. "But when those killers were holed up in the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem, the whole world was in an uproar warning Israel not to attempt to storm the compound. Even the Pope let it be known how angry the Christian world would be if Israel violated the sanctity of that Christian 'holy' site. And Israel's response? How totally different than the Americans in Fallujah! The terrorists, with world (and US) blessings, were permitted to leave, to leave to a luxurious freedom in vacation spots all over Europe. These 'hoods' were given a passport to freedom so that they may continue on another day to spill Jewish blood." "Are you ready for an answer, now?" "No. Not yet." " OK? go on." "Throughout the ongoing Oslo War, Israel has accused the Arab side of using Red Crescent ambulances to transport fighters and ammunition. The need to stop these vehicles for routine checks, lest they are bringing in more explosives, was roundly condemned by every nation, the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Peace Now and other organizations determined to see Israel obliterated. "Yet, out of Fallujah comes the same news. It seems that ambulances in Iraq are being used to transport explosives and armaments for use against the coalition forces. The US army already said that they would not allow such blatant provocations to go unchallenged. How can they? An ambulance is an ambulance is an ambulance, no?" "Right. To answer..." "Wait. Not yet." Relaxing deeper into the couch, the father smiled and nodded for Yossie to continue. His voice raised in agitation, Yossie continued: "The teacher told us that the renegade Shiite leader, Sadr, was designated as a legitimate target for elimination. In other words, if he persists in attacking the American soldiers, his fate will be sealed. Whether a Marine, a sharpshooter or by mortar from a tank, a contract has been taken out on his miserable life. The ultimatum was issued: surrender and live, continue and die. "Yet, the murderers of our people, the Yassins, Rantisis and the arch-murderer Arafat, are protected while alive, and eulogized upon their death. When Israel targets their enemies, it is called 'illegal government terrorism' and the world clamors to the Mukata compound to offer bodily protection for the terrorists. If Israel issues a warning that the Hamas leaders are in the gunner's sights, the world raises a loud and ugly clamor and protest. "Why, Abba, is it okay for the Americans to shoot at those who hide behind women and children and use them as human shields, but Israel must take precautions not to fire lest a civilian be killed? Why must Israel sacrifice dozens of her soldiers - as in Jenin - just so the world will be placated. And still Israel is accused of deliberate targeting of civilians? "Why, Abba, is the world so indignant and shocked - and rightfully so - in hearing and seeing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers, while the torture and lynching of our soldiers receives only cursory remarks? "Why, Abba, is the world so delighted in the almost, and perhaps still to be, expulsion of Jews from their homes and lands, while the world screams and rants at Israel's settling and building on lands never, ever occupied by any Arabs? "Why is the world so viciously antagonistic in their demand that Israel allow in millions of supposed refugees, while the same world is silent and doesn't demand the return of Jews to the Arab countries from which they were forcibly expelled? "And why, Abba, is the fence we build such a major issue? Aren't there many other fences built in order to prevent undesirables from entering and harming innocent civilians? How is the fence built between Texas and Mexico different? Or the one in Kashmir?" He stopped, and began to cry. "I am frustrated by all these questions, Abba." Gently caressing the boy's cheek, the father responded: "Because, Yossie, we are Jews." Yossie understands now. Perfectly. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

THE PENDULUM SWUNG Posted by Arlene Peck, May 11, 2004.

There was a time, actually, not so very long ago, that I would have made a bet that Israel had the worst public relations in the world. Aw, but that was before I realized that we, in the United States, also had a tiger by the tail, the same as Israel. We also have an election coming up and like most of my fellow Americans I am walking around confused as to which of these two men would be the lesser evil. I have voted in every election since reaching voting age. This is the first time I have no idea who to cast my ballot for. I hate them both. Bush, as bad as he may be, is supposedly better for Israel. According to a recent Zogby report, the vast majority of Arab Americans favor Kerry. That, folks, is an issue which concerns me greatly. Kerry's billionaire wife, Theresa, from what I've heard, makes donations to organizations that fund Hamas. A lot of issues worry me. In the past couple of years, I've watched my country go from a favorite tourism spot for the rest of the world to a hated entity. In addition, I resent the billions and billions of dollars which are going into the "re-building" of Iraq. They hate us and want us dead. Nor am I happy about paying almost $3.00 for a gallon of gas. Our economy is down the tubes and our entire work force is being farmed out. All of the on e - time American employees now seem to be originating from India. We are not happy campers. We are also at the stage now where our daily press, despite the overwhelming evidence otherwise, are stressing how our government wants to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. We have never dealt with an entire culture that breeds terrorism and haven't the faintest idea how to deal with it now. We, as Americans, are naive and have absolutely no conception of the mindset of the Islamic fundamentalist. I receive a lot of e-mail and one, that I think perfectly shows the mentality of the enemy, is from a young Arab girl in Jordan. She has been questioning what her father and brothers, who are members of Hamas, tell her. This is the most recent message I received from her. hi Mrs maybe you are wondering why i wasen't writing to you the last days; My father knew about me; he saw somthing that i had written about islam; he got very angry; he had beaten me and he said that i was no longer his girl; and that i was a kafir so i was his slave. he raped me in front of my mother... then he denied me to go out of my room; i'm writing to you from his laptop that my mother had succeeded to pass to me; so i have to hurry bye The most recent "incident", (and, it's a biggie), surrounds the deplorable pictures that the Arab world is making into a PR bonanza. Do you remember the mileage the CNNs and BBCs of the world made out of "Poor downtrodden Arab boys throwing stones at the big bad Israeli soldiers?" Or, what about that set-up picture that went around the world of the kid hovering behind his father while under attack by the Israelis? One picture is worth a thousand words and folks, our enemies are loving the pictures of the abuses of Iraqi prisoners. We are going to pay dearly for them. I, like everyone of consciousness, am also appalled by the scenes of treatment of captive prisoners at the hands of our soldiers. Yet, these humiliated and mistreated prisoners are alive. They will once again return to their families and loved ones. (Do terrorists have loved ones?) And, probably be compensated in the millions by our tax dol lars. I don't have a doubt in my mind that had the situation been the other way, these same Iraqis would kill burn and mutilate our soldiers. And, as a finale, they'd pass out candy, shoot rifles and celebrate while serving the victims' intestines on platters for the crowd. Hey, they've already done that in Israel. And remember how they dragged the burned American corpse through the streets? So we in the United States are now facing the very same statute of conduct that Israel has been living under. I don't remember the world-wide cry when that happened. They are savages and barbarians with absolutely no reverence for life. While countries like Israel, and we as Americans, cannot betray the principles and values that we stand for, it's open season for the world of Islam. They can shoot down an eight month pregnant woman with her four little girls and have it reported as "fighters in conflict." What I have never been able to fathom is how scenes of Arab atrocities are glazed over and cheered by much of the world. And, it's interesting how now the pendulum has swung and my fellow countrymen are facing the same harsh criticism. The usual suspects of the anti-Semitic press seem confused. As usual, they allude to the perceived United States tilt toward Israel and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. And, how such a case alienates Iraqis and Arabs in general. However, if the truth be told, we are finally coming to grips with the fact that land has nothing to do with the jihad or the ingrained hatred. We are fighting the same enemy and it's beginning to sink in. I'm in no way condoning torture and believe that the Geneva Convention is something to be upheld. The stupid conduct by a few is coming down h eavily on our country and we will pay dearly for it. These soldiers who did such stupid and evil things put their fellow soldiers in great danger because the savages will have justification to do what comes naturally for them. The recent transgressions by American soldiers is detrimental to our international image in the same way that the hundred or so soldiers who made their displeasure of the Israeli defense so public a while back harmed Israel when they hit the world of electronic news. Again, I believe that the actions of a few have already cost us. We are Americans and I've always believed that Americans don't do things like the pictures showed. But, then again, I used to believe that the United Nations was a good thing and cigarettes were cool and couldn't do any damage. Arlene Peck is an internationally syndicated columnist and television talk show hostess. She can be reached at: bestredhead@earthlink.net and www.arlenepeck.com To Go To Top

SHARON AND THE REFERENDUM Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 11, 2004.

VIEWS OF SHARON "Yediot Ahronot" and the "Jerusalem Post" consider PM Sharon foolish and arrogant to have thought he would carry Likud with his plan that flouts its platform (Foreign Ministry, 5/3). Yes, he was arrogant for betraying his own platform and the people who voted for him as their protector. No, he was not foolish for thinking he could bulldoze his way through. He manipulated the information about the plan and the levers of power. Originally, his plan was thought likely to get endorsed by the Party voters. He did not anticipate the dedication of volunteers who reminded them that the government sent them to Yesha to recover the Jewish patrimony and bolster security. What would those newspapers say now that he has betrayed his referendum, and is scheming to push through his plan with or without a national referendum? Why did he call it if he does not abide by it? DR. LERNER EXPLAINS REFERENDUM RESULT The people of Israel are fed up with Osloite propaganda. The country' economic recovery leaves them less desperate to "do something," anything, about the Arabs. Likud members were informed by thousands of volunteers that the plan really means piecemeal surrender to terrorism and ultimate subjugation for all. Hence they voted it down. So could the rest of the country. The name-calling of opponents by PM Sharon doesn't mean permanent estrangement from them. But the Left now is depicting Likud as extremist and out of touch with the rest of the country. By not campaigning against the plan, Sharon's Party rivals kept the referendum from being thought a contest for Party leadership. They kept out other extraneous issues from clouding the main issue, security (and betrayal) The dire consequences for Israel of defeating Sharon's plan are not coming to pass. Pres. Bush doesn't want to punish Israel during his own election. Neither does Sharon. The Shinui threat to leave the coalition, if the referendum were defeated, proved to be mere bravado. Its own voters don't want it to. Sharon said since the vote that he will not resign, thereby reducing his likelihood of being indicted (IMRA). SHINUI ON THE SCHEME The Shinui Party now says, ignore the referendum, and retreat. A year and-a-half ago, when Labor proposed essentially the same thing, Shinui head Lapid said that a unilateral retreat would confirm the terrorists (Arutz-7, 5/3). Israeli politicians often are right the first time. The second time, they play politics or show their true feelings, as they betray their promises. They cannot be trusted. Rabin, Peres, Netanyahu, Barak, Sharon, and Lapid have proved that. WHITHER LIKUD? Prof. Steven Plaut suggests that patriotic Likudniks form a new nationalist Party, leaving behind the leftists and functionaries intent only on keeping their jobs by the grace of the Party leader. Then the voters could have a real choice (5/3, email). Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

POLITICAL PERSECUTION Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 11, 2004.

Much to the dismay of Israel's anti-Jewish Secret Police, they can not seem to find any real "Enemies of the State" to lock up. Thus they must constantly invent enemies and conspiracies to justify their multi-million dollar budgets. Occasionally their claims become too ridiculous for even their most loyal supporters in the inJustice establishment to support. The Bat Ayin non-conspiracy is the most recent of the SHABAK's blundering attempts to create a Jewish Underground. With bugles blowing and gongs banging, the fantasizers at the SHABAK announced that they finally "got them." A real, honest-to-goodness, Jewish underground. Dangerous, religious fanatics intent on harming innocent Arabs and who knows what else! After about two years of playing around with this there were two convictions (based on confessions extracted under very dubious circumstances) for a bomb that harmlessly went off near an Arab school and another two for the unlicensed transporting of military equipment. In the mean time a dozen families suffered the full force of the Secret Police's persecution. Many sat in dungeons (yes dungeons and not jail cells, there are real dungeons in Israel) for months on end until they were completely exonerated of all the charges against them. Even then the harassment did not stop. Least you wonder why the village of Bat Ayin is deserving of such attention. Rest assured that the fact that Mosheh Feiglin's Manhigut Yehudit movement was born in Bat Ayin and that a number of key members of the group live there has absolutely no connection to the SHABAK's persecution of the people there. After all the boss of all bosses of the SHABAK is the Prime Minister himself and we all know what a fair minded believer of DeMockracy our Prime Minister is. This is a news item from Arutz-7 and is archived at http://www.israelnationalnews.com/print.php3?what=news&id=62203 State Drops Case against Federman in Bat Ayin Conspiracy (IsraelNN.com) Hevron resident and Kach activist Noam Federman will not face criminal charges for alleged involvement in the Bat Ayin conspiracy case. Federman, who has been in administrative detention for over six months, was alleged to have been the brain behind the plans to attack Arabs, but today the State Prosecutor's Office is dropping the indictment due to a lack of evidence tying Federman to the case. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

SO WHAT SHOULD THE UNITED STATES DO REGARDING IRAQ? Posted by Barry Rubin, May 11, 2004.

So what should the United States do regarding Iraq? There is no satisfactory solution but the best option depends on a simple, unpleasant but all-important premise that goes like this: The United States will be unable to control events in Iraq once it transfers power next month for several reasons. --Knowing the Americans are on their way out, radical groups and terrorists will escalate attacks so they can pretend they forced them to leave. --Even aside from this problem, however long the United States stays in Iraq, tries to build democracy, arrests extremists, kills terrorists, or helps write laws is of no importance. These things will not last. --As long as U.S. forces are there and running the country, Iraqi factions and gunmen will target America. Once the Americans are gone, they will fight a power struggle among themselves. A year ago, on May 27, 2003, I wrote in this space that the situation in Iraq was a disaster for many reasons: Inability to establish local governments or regional authorities, to get the economy going in the face of so much sabotage and violence, to end infighting between the State and Defense Departments, the dissolution of Iraq's army, and--most important--to choose a designated powerful figure who would attract support and create a real governmental infrastructure.. Last November, I pointed out: "Why should Iraqis view [the] continued [U.S.] presence as benefiting them? They face violent threats to their daily existence, which also sabotage prospects for higher living standards or democracy. At the same time, continued American presence offends nationalistic and Muslim sensibilities, allowing opposition movements to mobilize more support. "The longer the United States keeps [all the ambitious individuals, interest groups and movements that want to be running the country] from getting their hands on power and loot the more likely they will consider America their enemy." These points still hold true. It is, sadly, too late to salvage the original American goals for building democracy, if they were ever possible in the first place. Indeed, almost unnoticed, U.S. policy itself has changed. The ambitious talk about democratizing the Middle East and pushing regimes toward change has gone. What remains is a declaratory pro-democracy policy--the United States just says it favors reform but only promotes it with speeches, public relations' efforts, and perhaps some future small-scale money and training aid to liberal forces. There will be no U.S. military action against Syria or Iran, or political-economic pressure on Saudi Arabia or Egypt to change their societies or way of governing. What then can the United States do in Iraq? The basic answer is: turn over power during the next 12 months and leave. Aside from maintaining close relations with the Kurds, to ensure their area stays relatively stable and democratic, and giving aid as an incentive to any moderate forces to be friendly there is little else they will be able to influence. Consider these points: --Any elected or appointed regime in Iraq will face tremendous opposition to the point of civil war. Even the best coalition representing the broadest possible number of interest groups with the most honest possible officials is not going to be able to govern the country. --Does the United States want to become a participant in an Iraqi civil war between Islamists and nationalists, Sunnis and Shias, and among ambitious would-be tyrants? --Does the United States want to be the sponsor of a regime that will be overthrown and thus be blamed by the victors? --Does the United States want to be the sponsor of a regime that survives and wins that war by ruthless repression and killing tens of thousands of people? --No matter how the United States leaves Iraq, radical Shia Islamists, al-Qa'ida terrorists, and pro-Saddam forces will claim they threw it out. The only thing that will shut them up is when the victorious side in Iraq wipes them out without mercy. Presumably Iraq's next real ruler will be a military strongman or a nationalist Shia-dominated regime with some Islamic flavoring. Its attitude toward the United States will depend on how much mileage the rulers think they can get by blaming America for all their problems compared to how much American help they will need for reconstruction and help against their own enemies. The alternative is an ongoing war in which radicals unite against U.S. presence while American taxpayers finance an attempt to rebuild an economy for extremists to inherit. As long as Iraq's next rulers have not been decided through trial by combat too many people will have an incentive to wreck the country, prevent any restoration of order, hate the Americans, and murder average Iraqi citizens. Historians will spend decades sorting out what went wrong. Some will say this outcome was inevitable, others that the United States should have managed things differently, still others that too many Iraqis wanted extremism and that only a silent minority preferred a real democratic and moderate state. Iraq will still be an example to the Arab world which may benefit U.S. interests, though the message is far different from the one the invasion was intended to teach: Push the United States too hard, it will overthrow you, and your society will dissolve into a massive internal conflict. Professor Barry Rubin is Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). To Go To Top

FALSE PROPHETS, FOURTH REICH, FOREFATHERS, JEWISH REFUGEES AND PATRIOTS Posted by Evelyn Hayes, May 10, 2004.

to keep "the inheritance of the tribe of the children of Judah according to their families: Ashdod with its towns and villages, Gaza with its towns and villages--as far as the Brook of Egypt and the Great Sea with its coastline. (Joshua 15:20, 47) The Minister of Defense has made terrible remarks against the Jewish State in Israel, denying its birthright and prophesizing its mutilation. He should be required to read Joshua, sing Kol Ribon on Shabbos, read Judges 13 to 16, and study the microfilm and learn that Jews were living in Gaza before the Egyptians invaded the new nation in 1948 having returned to where Jews were refugeed again and again. The Minister of Defense is not defending his country; he is retreating not only from mandate and land but out of victory, Jewish history and Bible. His is failing to defend his country as a patriot to all it represents. It is said that non-believers should be excused from war because they are undermining the will of their soldiers. Mofaz has never recognized the self evident truths of his nation but is recognizing the blatant lies of all those who have gathered against Jews in Gaza and all Israel. A Defense Minister who puts politics first, is putting his guard in a blind spot. A Defense Minister who decides with the Quartet is excluding Gd as the world power. Mofaz is also recognizing the Fourth Reich, the Quartet. The EU is excusing the misuse of its humanitarian aid for jihad weapons and corruption. The UN is where Kofi Anan's son is involved in the corruption of the UN aid to the people of Iraq. The RF is somewhat liberating its Jews who have suffered great pogroms and abuse in their land. The US who is standing by Israel the most is being pressured to accept jihad immorality and evil as a member of the Quartet whose circumference is limited to a Romanesque Reich crusading with Jihad. Mofaz accepts that Jewish civilians can be killed indiscriminatly as well as soldiers. Remember PM Rabin said as soon as they kill an IDF soldier, Oslo is over. Mofaz had idolized the cannons against Israel. How many have been kidnapped, maimed, killed, incinerated even as civilians? Rabin kept 29 holy sites and demanded respect for Jewish holy sites and Jewish identity; Mofaz ignored the destruction of the Tomb of Yosef and the ancient Shalom Synagogue, specifically stated to be in Jewish control in the signed accord televised and witnessed on the Whitehouse Lawn in 1995. Now Mofaz denies Jewish negotiations as well as facts and fatalities. We will never forget pregnant beautiful mother Tali and her full house emptied by the vicious, vile murder of Tali and her four daughters and to-be-born son from Gaza, not because they were Jews of Gaza but because they were Jews like Nava and Dr. Applebaum murdered in suburban Jerusalem. Mofaz is recognizing the Fourth Reich and accepting an unnation to destroy its nation not only by murder but by theft and dismantlement. Does anyone remember the 100 beehives taken from a Schneerson in Kfar Chabad and only one was returned from Arab crooks in the Hebron hills, the stolen dentist offices, the cars, the weapons, the poisonous gas? Mofaz is not only accepting false witness but false facts that still are verifiable. Perhaps Mofaz should read the best seller of Arafatistan, Mein Kampf, to understand the enemies' techniques and his gullibility which has proven not to be the gullibility of the Likud voters. Furthermore, considering that warlords are the ruthless rulers installed in the redeployments, perhaps recalling that Kol Ribon Olam was written by Yisrael ben Moshe of Najara as rabbi of Jewish Gaza in the sixteenth century, perhaps the Minister of Defense that is raging at his citizens and would raze Jewish homes and in effect erase Jewish history, would pray for the miracles of the L-rd which created the Modern State of Israel, an independent nation that the foolish Jewish politicians would make dependent on those who do not care if the Jews are killed, who blame the Jews for the deaths of their innocents, who cannot condemn suicide murder, who harvest the same anti-semitic rallies and media caricatures as in the time of the Third Reich, who are partners in theft with the modern day beast, who are advocates of the Big Lie and who deny all the Commandments that support liberty, justice, human dignity and life itself. Anyone who believes the Big Lie of Palestinianism is denying the Big Truth of Hashem's inheritance and will for the Jews who chose not to kill, steal, lie and recognize there is a power higher than politics with warlords and that is the one and only Lrd, our Gd. Notwithstanding all the facts above, a Minister of Defense who fails to see the dangers to Ashdod, Sderot and Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion by any further withdrawals to jihad, is extending the tunnels from Egypt and bending the peace with Egypt and Jordan to favor victory to the defeated and disfavor Jewish security in Auschwitz borders. Having given too many firsts, Minister of Defense Mofaz is putting Israel last, dismantling its settlements, strength and independence for unsettlement, world condemnation and jihad. Declaring Israel strong, Mofaz has accepted cuttings and shavings. Like Samson the Nazirite, cuttings weaken and double the suicide. The Jewish Gazirite is strong and a stability in southern Israel for all Israel... When recognizing that the Jews are the real refugees, chased across the globe and then chased back, false prophesies, Big Lies and the Fourth Reich will become fading phantoms. When recognizing accountability and the merit and rights of the Jews, evil will be demerited. Let our people stay where they belong and are needed, where they experience miracles and are Israel's great producers and patriots. Not only does Israel need to be true to itself. The whole world needs Israel to stay independent and Gdfearing because warlords are creating fear and destruction everywhere and against everyone. Mr. Mofaz, I predict that in five years there will be a great leader in Israel and everyone will remember Yosef and vacation in Jewish Gaza, pray in Hevron and Shilo, have relatives in Beit El, be safe in Netanya and blueberries will be plentiful in the Golan. Pan Jihad will be another imperialism that disintegrates in history to the joy of everyone in other places around the globe, too. I predict a New Unity of Nations will be united for all people in the world and rid of all the embezzlers of aid to the poor. I predict the warlords of jihad and the supporters of a New World Order will be poorer than their victims and the slaves of Sudan will bless Israel as they enjoy a new Exodus. I predict Big Lies will succumb to real truth by the Hand of the Gd of Israel who created the world for everyone for goodness sake. Evelyn Hayes is author of The Plague Series: "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, because their hearts are softened to accept the unacceptable" and "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." and "Thirteen, REDEMPTION, because" To Go To Top

IT IS NEAR TO ME, NOT FAR Posted by Barbara Ann Zweifler, May 10, 2004.

Israel. More than a place, more than a people. What is Israel? If you ask this question of two Jews expect at least six answers. From me, you could get at least ten. And I've never even been there. Only with Israel it is possible to never have set foot in it and yet know at the deepest levels of your being that here exists the only place on earth that your soul will find home. The Torah is a scroll - it rolls up and out from both ends. It appears to be infinite because it is infinite. The layers just keep rolling up, rolling out then rolling inward again. Israel is also our Torah. Israel the place is the material manifestation and extension of our Torah. The history of her land and her people tells and retells the Torah. We are the chosen people called Israel who resolutely, despite all impossibilities, strive through millennia to return to the place called Israel. Teshuva. Return. My concept of the chosen includes the choosing. Na'aseh V'nishmah - We will listen, and we will do. We made a choice too. And all choice engenders responsibility. Israel is a responsibility, a sacred, awesome, seemingly impossible responsibility. The pride of bearing it brings sorrow and joy, power and humility, insight and redemption. Israel above all things is the sacred covenant between our people and Hashem. Israel is where my cousin works as a policeman and a soldier. Israel worries me every day. I think about this cousin that I only know because of this computer - this beautiful cousin and his beautiful wife and children - will he come home tonight? How difficult was his day? Was there another attack near his home or near where he was stationed? Israel is where my good cousin Eli and thousands of people like Eli risk their lives every day to protect my souls only home. This is the Israel of the every day - the Israel of cable news headlines, of terrorism and strife, of blood, grief and dissent. Then there is the Israel of the heart, the Israel that makes me wonder every day what I, in New York, can do to help, to return. The infinite Israel that I see in my mind's eye when I pray. The joyous, golden land where my heart is filled to bursting. The smells, the sounds, the searing, endless sky, the undeniable presence of Hashem. Israel. Home. Nothing clears the mind like no alternative. We have no alternative home. No matter where we live upon this planet, we all have cried, "Next year in Jerusalem!" This longing exists in me at a physical level. I only accepted my Judaism five years ago, when I began to study and truly discover myself. Torah and Israel named the nameless longing that had lived in me my entire life, the massive hole, the feeling of purpose undefined, the fear, passion and ecstasy. If you feel this you will know what I mean. If you have not felt it, there is no adequate explanation. But if you are a Jew it is there, a dim spark, burning inside you. Israel the place is Israel the people. The separation is painful, almost cruel. It is the impossibility of the return that will never be impossible. Israel is my home, my heart and my soul. Israel is me, Israel is you. Next year in Jerusalem. To Go To Top

BLAMING ISRAEL FOR ABU GHRAIB? Posted by Honest Reporting, May 10, 2004.

While the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal has everyone asking how US soldiers could commit such acts, the Canadian Broadcasting Network suggests this answer: The Israelis made them do it. On the May 4 broadcast of CBC TV's National News (see video in RealVideo or Quicktime), correspondent Neil Macdonald delivered the lead story from Washington - political fallout from the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse pictures. Macdonald makes a bizarre shift from Iraq to turn his report against Israel, proposing to viewers that the occupation of Iraq and George Bush's unprecedented alliance with the right wing government of Israel has placed Americans overseas in danger. Macdonald then focuses the camera on a retired US diplomat, Eugene Bird, who makes the outlandish suggestion that the Mossad may have been behind the tortures: We know that the Israeli intelligence was operating in Baghdad after the war was over. The question should be: Were there any foreign interrogators among those that were recommending very, very bad treatment for the prisoners? CBC's Macdonald - delivering the top story for the Canadian nightly news with the broadest public reach - brings no facts or sources to substantiate these grave charges. Further, by including Bird's statement (from a news conference of former US diplomats critical of President Bush's support for Israel), Macdonald manipulated two unrelated stories in a way that only a journalist with an anti-Israel agenda would have even considered. Eugene Bird, afforded a prominent voice by Macdonald, is far from a neutral Washington expert: Bird is president of the Council for the National Interest, an anti-Israel lobby group whose mission statement is to restore a political environment in America in which voters and their elected officials are free from the undue influence and pressure of a foreign country, namely Israel. Moreover, Bird (who held no senior diplomatic position above foreign service officer) writes regularly for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, a journal known for its strong anti-Israel bias. Last month he called upon Americans to write to their congressmen and the President 'and urge them to adopt an Israel Accountability and Security Act.' Bird's insinuation that the Mossad was behind the Abu Ghraib abuses is the type of material we've come to expect from crude Arab propagandists like Al Jazeera, who in fact issued a similar report, 'Israeli Lessons for the US in Iraq', quoting a Palestinian Authority official who believes that what the Americans are doing to the Iraqis amounts to a 'carbon copy' of what the Israelis have been doing to the Palestinians. 'I am inclined to think that the Americans copied the Israeli techniques. I can't prove it in an objective manner, but the striking similarities are overwhelming.' HonestReporting readers will recall Macdonald's long history of anti-Israel bias during his four-year tenure as CBC Mideast correspondent. Now, 10,000 miles away in Washington, Macdonald is finding even more creative ways to promote Arab conspiracy theories of unfettered Zionist evil. In summary, with his report on Abu Ghraib Macdonald (1) makes a forced association between Israel and an unrelated topic that is generating viewer outrage, and (2) via a highly questionable source, promotes an unsubstantiated claim that shifts blame for Abu Ghraib upon Israel. Comments to: letters@cbc.ca Honest Reporting monitors the media for inaccuracy and unfairness in how they report the news about Israel. Ther website address is http://www.honestreporting.com. You can help support their research online or by sending contributions to: HonestReporting, 400 South Lake Drive, Lakewood, NJ 08701-3167 To Go To Top

TASHBIH SAYYED Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, May 10, 2004.

I am writing to you now as important Christian allies of the Jewish people and Israel. Many of you have printed my own articles in the past. Thank you. For those of you who have seen Honest Reporting's movie, Relentless, you'll remember Tashbih Sayyed as that outspoken Muslim publisher who defended Israel's case. Tashbih does this weekly in his weekly print newspaper, Muslim World Today, and in Pakistan Today. Visit both www.paktoday.com and www.muslimworldtoday.com for a rare treat. He literally places his life on the line for opposing the mainstream Muslim attitudes vis-a-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict. I have had carloads of Arab students follow my own car after presentations at colleges...so imagine what this brave man has to deal with. Major Arab/Muslim organizations like CAIR and others have been trying to put him out of business by working on his advertisers, supporters, and the like. Tashbih and I have been in touch. He'd like to get his print newspaper, Muslim World Today, in circulation throughout the US and elsewhere as much as possible. So far his subscriptions are down to around 20,000 due to the activities of those who want his voice and the voice of Muslim moderation silenced. I promised Tashbih that I would alert my friends to see what we all could do to increase those subscriptions, etc. That would help him with his advertisers. He is available for speaking arrangements too, and the fee would help to keep his paper afloat also. He'd make for one heck of a unique spokesman for programs on the Middle East. Please read one of his numerous articles below. You can find others on the above websites. We cannot afford to let the jihadists silence such rare voices as Tashbih's. Think about what can be done to help, please. Thanks for all that you do for Zion's sake. This request falls into that category as well. You may contact him directly at mail@paktoday.com By the way, if you visit www.muslimworldtoday and scroll down to the central Analysis editorial, A La Alaa, you'll see one of my own essays. When you read what follows, realize that this was written, published, and spread all around the world by a Muslim gentleman. What can be done to insure that he is not silenced? Sayyed is editor-in-chief of "Pakistan Today," a California-based weekly newspaper, and president of Council for Democracy and Tolerance. Sayyed's article is entitled "The Fence" and was published in "Pakistan Today" on October 7, 2003. Evidently the homicide bombing at Maxim restaurant in Haifa that killed 19 more innocent civilians is not going to mute criticism of the security fence. The critics know that the fence is the only option left for Israel to secure itself, but in their crooked wisdom, they think that angering Arabs is not profitable. The world is aware that Israel's efforts to establish peace in the region are religiously frustrated by terrorist groups. But they do not find the courage to challenge the Arab world's blatant backing of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. And the U.S., Europe and Russia blinded by their geo-political strategic expediencies, refuse to see the dangers of appeasing a radical mind. Secretary of State Colin Powell's statement that the U.S. administration is unhappy about the route of the security fence displays very clearly this short sighted mentality. Arabs too, will not realize that the death and destruction unleashed on the peaceful Israelis by their "holy warriors" is killing their chances of ever living in peace. I agree with the view, "Feelings of frustration and rage that grip the heart after a terror attack like in Haifa's Maxim restaurant, push aside individual and public powers of reasoning. They lead to a demoralizing conclusion that Israel lacks a Palestinian partner for any resumed peace process, and so it has no choice other than to live by the sword." I have experienced the truth behind this logic many a time. Every time a homicide bomber strikes in Israel, the Arabs in Palestine lose some more support. Every act of terror adds to the list of those who are convinced that so long as Islamist Arabs exist on the historical Palestine land, peace will continue to delude. With every act of barbarism, the view that Muslim Arabs have to be evacuated from Palestine continues to gain currency. Arab radicalism is hurting the cause of Islam too. There is a growing concern in the Muslim world that the Muslim Arabs should not be permitted to hold Islam hostage. They should be forced to rein in their leaders. Radical Islam's hatred for freedoms and civilized values is destroying the image of Muslims everywhere. Muslims want to do something about it. They do not want to remain silent any more. "Just because Islam was born in Arabia, should not be enough to give the Islamists the right to corrupt the message of peace into an evil ideology - Wahhabism," they say. A need is being felt for a fence in the Muslim world too. Muslims also need to erect a fence to emphasize a division between Islam and radical Islamism. Some times a fence becomes the only choice between life and death. China built the wall to keep the barbarians out. Citizens in the big U.S. cities build walls around their houses and install iron and steel grills on their windows to secure their loved ones. Israel too has a right to defend itself by constructing the fence. If there was any doubt, Haifa bombing should remove it. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, asserting that it was in response to the Israeli government's decision to go ahead with the construction of the security fence. They know perfectly well that it is not Israel but their homicide bombers who have forced Israel to build the fence. Casting terrorism as an Islamic act is criminal. It is the duty of the Muslim Arabs to stand up and condemn the terrorists if they need to be seen as Muslims. Remember, Islam allows neither suicides nor homicide bombings. These Islamic Jehadists, Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah assassins live among them. People know them and recognize them. Their failure to discourage them is a proof that they do not understand Islam. This silence of the "faithful" explains the paramount need for a division between the terrorists and the citizens of Israel. This silence is damaging the interests of the true Muslims. The silence of the "faithful" and the political correctness of the world is complicating an already difficult situation. Israel's experience with the world should be enough to convince any one that the Jewish state stands alone. It has come to realize that the problem is not "occupation" or settlements or the fence. It is much more. That's why Arabs in Palestine did not accept Ehud Barak's generous offer for a peace agreement. Under this offer Israel would have conceded most or all of the land it conquered in 1967. Yasser Arafat rejected it because it did not contain any hope for the total destruction of the Jewish state. Similarly, if the international community was really sincere in establishing peace in the region they would not have insisted on being even handed. They would have demanded of the Arabs to relinquish their policy of seeking the total annihilation of Jewish people. The Haifa bombing has re-enforced the belief that concrete actions are a must to eliminate the daily threats to the lives of the innocent. But any action in this regard has to be very well planned and well thought out. The policy makers in Israel should be aware that Yasser Arafat's removal and the destruction of the terrorist power bases in Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia will definitely force the remnants of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah to unleash the full force of their terror in a last bid to regain control. Other criminals will also try to take advantage of the vacuum created by the removal of the terrorists as it is happening in Iraq. Israel should be prepared not only to deal with all the hell that will break loose but should also be ready to handle the post terror environment. Clouds that thunder do not rain. The premature announcement of Israeli leaders of their decision in principle to get rid of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, did not help the cause of Israelis. It helped the terrorists to build a defensive wall around Arafat. Many analysts who agreed with the principal of getting rid of the terrorist, could not agree with the wisdom of making the decision public. If terror has to be eradicated, it will be wise not to run around screaming of the plan. Just do it. The results will not only inform the politically correct but will also silence them. Israel can begin the process by seeking support of the new Arab government in Palestine headed by Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala) in achieving this final solution. Abu Ala's response will go a long way in determining whether the civilized world can trust him or not. Bush administration should also be asked to demonstrate by its actions, conclusively, that they really understand the real nature of terrorism. If the barbaric hijackers who attacked New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, were terrorists then the animals who are killing the innocent Israelis are also terrorists. Terrorism is terrorism - a scourge that threatens our civilization anywhere and everywhere. President Bush will have to show the same focus and determination in dealing with the Arab terror in Palestine as he displayed in the immediate aftermath of black Tuesday. For the U.S. president, who divided this world so passionately, in two camps - either you are with us or with the terrorists, to call Israel's security barrier a "problem," smacks of hypocrisy. And White House's suggestion, that the administration "would not rule out" subtracting the money Israel spends on the barrier from its $9 billion loan package reeks of double standard. At the end of the day, I ma sure, Israel will have to fight her war alone. For the nations who stood in silence, as Adolf Hitler continued with the holocaust, are once again showing their real colors by preaching to treat her at par with Hamas and Islamic jihad. Once again, the humanity is reminded of the fact that the powers who are in the business of seeking gains by appeasing terror are not going to change. They will try their utmost to remain on the right side of Arab powers. Israel should not ignore the fact that anti-Semitism is still alive and kicking. The post Nazi Europe has not been able to shed its anti-Semitism totally. Islamist anti-Semitism finds a very important and critical ally in the post Nazi Europe and a post Stalinist Russia. Lets face the truth, if Israel has to survive, it has to act alone. That's why it's decision to go after the terrorist camps in Syria was not only justified but necessary. The world has to know that if nobody else is ready to stand up and challenge the scourge of terror, Israel will. Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites around the world. To Go To Top

A VOICE FOR KILLING Posted by David Bedein, May 10, 2004.

Palestine Authority radio, known as the PBC "VOICE OF PALESTINE", remains the most influential media tool in the hands of the Palestinian government. It has been in business ten years as the official voice of the Palestinian people and since the genesis of Palestinian Authority self-rule. You hear the VOICE OF PALESTINE everywhere in the Arab street. It sets the public tone. VOICE OF PALESTINE was founded by Yassir Arafat and overseen by the highest echelons of the nascent Palestinian Authority, providing radio feeds that are played in every Arab marketplace and every home in areas ruled by the PA. The radio airwaves for the VOICE OF PALESTINE were provided for the PA from Israel's Ministry of Communications with the idea that the Palestinians would be able to broadcast messages of "peace" on their own radio and in their own language. Despite this, during the past ten years, The VOICE OF PALESTINE has consistently praised Arab terror attacks. Last week was no exception, when all of Israel stood in shock at the Arab terror drive-by murder of a pregnant woman and her four little girls. Two Arab terrorists executed each little girl at point blank range with a shot to each one's head, the youngest child being only a two-year-old, after they first blew their mother to bits. The murders were witnessed by a CNN crew who watched with horror only 30 meters away. Mike Swartz, the CNN producer, had the good sense to use his vehicle to block any further traffic from driving into the terror trap on the highway. Israeli soldiers who arrived on the scene were able to kill the Arab terrorists, but not before the four little girls in the van had been finished off by their murderers. Dr. Michael Widlanski, an Arabic media expert at the Hebrew University, formerly a reporter for the New York Times and the Cox Syndicate in Jerusalem, who is also an academic who recently completed his PhD on the subject of Palestinian Authority media, listened carefully to The Voice of Palestine during the hours that followed the attack. The VOICE OF PALESTINE described the men who carried out the attack that left a pregnant mother and her four children dead as "an act of heroic martyrdom." The VOICE OF PALESTINE radio station repeatedly used the term is tish-had (heroic martyrdom in Arabic) and mustash-hidin (heroic martyrs) to describe the act committed by "two youths." After reporting the attackers' names, the radio repeated again that they were heroic martyrs. Widlanski recorded the VOP constantly referring to the victims of the shooting attack only as "five settlers" without mentioning that the attack claimed that they were a pregnant woman and her four children. The Monday morning broadcast of the Voice of Palestine added that that the five "settlers" who were killed were mukharibun - terrorists. The reference to the settlers as terrorists was in a VOICE OF PALESTINE report that the settlers were preparing to build a new neighborhood in a settlement near Gaza. Once again, VOICE OF PALESTINE did not condemn the attack that killed a pregnant mother and her four children, but did vigorously condemn the "cowardly act" by Israel of attacking a Hamas radio station which had exhorted Palestinians to carry out further attacks against Israelis. There were no reported Arab casualties in that Israeli attack. Meanwhile, Palestinian Media Watch reported that the Palestinian Authority's official daily newspaper glorified yet another murderer - a man who was responsible for a cold-blooded murder of an Israeli father and his 2 daughters, labelling him "a beacon of light for generations to come." Palestine Media Watch, an agency that translates Arab broadcasts, noted that "According to the daily newspaper, 'Al-Hayat Al-Jadida', Samir Quntar, the murderer of Dani Haran and his two daughters in Nahariya in 1979, is a Palestinian hero and 'authentic role model'..."(sic). Palestine Media Watch further quoted the following statement which appeared in the PA official daily newspaper: "Samir Quntar, a name of pride in the history of the prisoners of the [Palestinian] national movement. A name that he created, during the resistance in Lebanon and the hours of heroism in Nahariya [the terrrorist attack in which Dani Haran and his daughters were murdered]. A name that is written in the blood that dripped in the interrogation dungeons. [Quntar] wrote the noble history of this name in letters of fire and light during the battles of the struggle! [Quntar] was and will continue to be a beacon of light for us and for the generations to come and an authentic role model. Every day that passes Samir's pride grows, and our pride in him grows greater and greater." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May, 6, 2004] So there you have it. The official media outlet of the Palestinian Authority, an entity with diplomatic relations with 138 nations around the world, endorses the cold-blooded murder of parents and their children. That is the same Palestinian Authority which receives direct aid from all of the western democracies, including the USA to the tune of more than 10 billion dollars in its ten years of existence. The United States taxpayer used to fund Palestinian Television also until word got out about children's shows teaching small children to become martyrs. For the past week, the U.S. State Department was asked if it would condemn the PA's official media outlet, THE VOICE OF PALESTINE for endorsing the cold-blooded murder of a pregnant mother and her four children and no answer was received. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department did issue a statement in which it states that it "expects" the Palestinian Authority to fight terrorism. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv was asked what basis the U.S. had for assuming the "expectation" that the PA would fight terrorism would be heeded? The answer from the U.S. State Department spokesman: "Because they committed themselves to doing so." The U.S. government does not feel under much pressure to condemn the Palestine Authority for directing its official media outlet to praise, justify and glorify those who would murder a pregnant mother and her four little girls. And why no pressure? The answer is simple: Not one U.S. news outlet reported that the PA praised, justified and glorified this week's cold-blooded murder of a pregnant woman and her four children. If people don't know about it, why worry about it? There are times when only the news that fits a future peace process will get printed, even as the blood flows. Now readers of this article know what the VOICE OF PALESTINE and the official Palestinian Authority newspaper really communicate to their people, perhaps those readers will be motivated to contact the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, Dr. Daniel Kurtzer, one of the architects of the Oslo Process, to ask him why the U.S. cannot at the bare minimum condemn the Palestine Authority for inciting its own people in its own language to murder innocent human beings. David Bedein is the bureau chief of the Israel Resource News Agency, located at the Beit Agron International Press Center in Jerusalem and a Fellow, Center for Near East Policy Research, Wellesley, Mass. This article appeared today in Front Page Magazine and is archived at frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=13318 To Go To Top

WHERE IS THE ROAR? Posted by David Frankfurter, May 10, 2004.

Dear Friends, A week ago I wrote of my profound sadness at the brutal murder of Tali Hatuel and her four daughters. Many of you wrote to me to express your sadness and outrage. Outrage that the official Palestinian position, as expressed in all its outlets, including the official press, was that the perpetrators of this crime were 'heroes' and 'martyrs' deserving of the highest levels of praise. In general, the Arab press - both English and Arabic - reported on the crime in similar terms, always omitting the critical detail that the 'five settllers' killed were a pregnant woman and her five little children. Never mentioning the way they were killed - bullets to the head at point blank range, nor that they bled to death, helplessly strapped into their car seats. Nor the additional sickening detail that the terrorists actually videotaped their rotten deed to make sure it would be memorialised. The international community has, for a significant change, responded - albeit in muted tones. Even Amnesty International issued a press release condemning the attack (news.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE15049004). Nevertheless, as one of you aptly wrote to me 'where is the roar'? (http://www.livejournal.com/users/dfrankfurter /23515.html?thread=48727#t4827). In the absence of this roar of protest, things remain unchanged. A week after burying his family, David Hatuel was to hold the customary grave-side memorial service and say the traditional Kaddish prayer for his wife and children. Family, friends and neighbours gathered to join him at this painful memorial service. Young and old came. Even the children wanted to say farewell to their little friends. Destroying a family was not enough for these Palestinian Arabs, to whom nothing is holy. Two terrorists were determined to rob the Hatuel family even of their final Kaddish prayer. They disguised themselves as Jewish women, and planned to join the mourners - and then open fire, killing as many as possible during the service. Seeing that security at the memorial service was too tight for them to get in, they settled for shooting rounds of bullets from their automatic weapons at the crowd from a nearby house. The newspaper reporters caught the frightening scene on camera. Little children screaming in sheer terror. Parents lying on top of toddlers to protect them from the bullets with their own bodies. Parents fleeing with children under their arms. Panic on their faces. Thank G-d, the terrorists were killed without any Israelis being hurt by their bullets, and the army quickly bustled everyone away from the site. But the terrorists achieved their objective. One can only imagine the trauma caused to the families and little children targetted by these terrorists. And Tali Hatuel and her children were robbed of their final Kaddish prayer. I write this with tears, with prayers for peace. At the same time, I ask you, my friends around the world: Where is the roar? David Frankfurter is a writer on the Middle East conflict. He sends "Letters from Israel" emails to subscribers. Email him at David.Frankfurter@iname.com or go to www.livejournal.com/users/dfrankfurter/ To Go To Top

THE CULTURAL ELITES IN ISRAEL ARE SICK Posted by Ariel Natan Pasko, May 10, 2004.

True, cultural elites in most western countries today are anti-nationalist, anti-traditional, and tend toward degrading whatever general society holds in esteem, but it still hurts me to see this degenerate phenomenon in Israel. After recently awarding the prestigious 2004 Israel Prize to the Judeo-pathic Israeli artist Yigal Tumarkin; now the Israeli "guardians of culture" have decided to honor Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, with the 2004 Wolf Prize, even though he is an admirer of Nazi Germany's favorite musician. Barenboim is currently the musical director of the State Opera House in Berlin and of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and an inveterate Wagner perpetrator. Once, art, music and literature, were produced in Israel to build up national identity in the fledgling Jewish State. Jews were returning home after nearly 2,000 years of abusive exile, and they wanted to reconstitute their own independent national - Hebrew - culture. Though sometimes at odds with the traditional Jewish religious establishment, the New Hebrew - "Israeli" - culture drew heavily from Jewish, and especially biblical sources. But today, the cultural elites in Israel have spurned "Jewishness" for a more secular global identity. They've even become self-hating. When an artist like Tumarkin can create pieces like, a pig wearing "Tefilin" (phylacteries worn by Jewish men during prayer), and a lithograph of an aerial view of Jerusalem's Old City, with a huge thumbprint superimposed over it, written in pen on the top commenting, "From June 1967 Jerusalem started to turn ugly. Why? It's a fact," and be awarded the Israel Prize, you know that the "gurus of Israeli culture" have lost it. The pig is the most disgusting animal in Judaism, and the Holy City of Jerusalem is held dear by nearly all Jews. Tumarkin has said, "When you see the "Haredim" - ultra-Orthodox Jews - you can understand why there was a Holocaust," justifying Nazi anti-Semitism. Tumarkin hasn't gained his reputation for works of art, so much as for his habit of lashing out at religious Jews, right-wingers, and Sephardim, whomever he dislikes. He once said, he wished he had gunned down Israeli politicians on the right, Raphael Eitan and Rechavam Ze'evi. Tumarkin has also remarked that his "true contribution will be the taking of a submachine gun instead of pen and pencil, and killing the religious settlers on the West Bank." Tumarkin has also stated that he doesn't feel there's a need for a Jewish State. In his petition to Israel's Supreme Court - trying to stop the prize to Tumarkin - National Religious Party Memeber of Knesset Shaul Yahalom wrote, "It is unreasonable that a man, as an artist and as a sculptor, whose actions bordered on criminal activity, who acted violently towards his family, disrespected people and the values of the Jewish people and made racist and anti-Semitic remarks, will receive in a democratic Jewish state the Israel Prize." Yet he was just awarded the 2004 Israel Prize for sculpture... One of Barenboim's many sins is that he forcibly played Richard Wagner's music at the 2001 Israel Festival in Israel, after earlier agreeing not to do so. And why was he asked not to play Wagner? Because, when chosen to play at the festival, his announcement that he intended to break the Israeli taboo and play Wagner created such a controversy in Israeli society, that the festival organizers decided to cancel his performance, until he agreed not to play it. Wagner, was a known anti-Semite, his music was revered by Hitler and the Nazi leadership, and commonly played in Concentration Camps. Wagner's music has been "persona non grata" in Israel for decades; it still brings back horrible memories to many in Israel, especial Holocaust survivors. Yet Barenboim, in a flash of "I know better than you" cultural elitism, chose to disregard his prior commitment to the Israel Festival Committee, and play Wagner as an encore anyhow. Barenboim is also an outspoken supporter of the so-called Palestinians. He's been to Ramallah in Samaria - the West Bank - several times to play concerts and give musical workshops, although Israel is at war with them. Barenboim has said he knows that some Israelis hate him for going to Ramallah and working with the Palestinians, "I can live with that," he's said in defiance. Barenboim recently promised to help "Palestinian" children learn classical music, while backing their demand for a state of their own. He said that he would contribute the US$50,000 award to a "Palestinian" music conservatory in Ramallah. But the Wolf Prize Committee, like the Israel Prize Committee before it, chose to honor one of the "beautiful people," who don't care how much they hurt Jews or insult Israeli society. The Israel Prize is the most highly regarded award in Israel. Under the auspices of the Education Ministry, it was first awarded in 1953, and has been awarded every year since then on Israeli Independence Day. The prize is presented to the recipient before members of the Knesset, the Prime Minister, the President, and members of the Supreme Court of Israel. Although the Wolf Foundation - that awards the prize - has the status of a private non-profit organization, and the prize money comes from the annual income of the foundation's investments, it has the status of a quasi-governmental prize. The award rules are embodied in the 'Wolf-Foundation Law-1975," approved by the Knesset, and the Foundation is subject to the control of the State Comptroller of Israel. The prizes are awarded in the Chagall Hall of the Knesset, with the participation of the Speaker of the Knesset, the Minister of Education, who is the Chairman of the Council of the Wolf Foundation, Trustees, and members of the Council. The diploma and honorarium are presented to the recipients by the President of the State of Israel. In protest over the awarding of the prize to Barenboim, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, earlier announced that he would boycott the 2004 Wolf Prize award ceremony. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem - that fights global anti-Semitism - backed up Rivlin's boycott of Barenboim, because Barenboim "aroused the ire of so many Israelis by playing music [composed] by the notoriously anti-Semitic composer." Wiesenthal Center Director Dr. Efraim Zuroff said that Barenboim's violating the agreement not to play Wagner at any publicly funded concert, indicated "not only his lack of integrity, but also his unbridled arrogance and extreme lack of tolerance." Zuroff called Barenboim's act "cultural rape" and decried Barenboim's "obsessive efforts to force his views on the Israeli public and to demonstratively and derisively ignore the feelings of the majority of Israelis who are offended by the playing of [Wagner's works]." This is the sickness of the cultural elites in Israel today, "They know better, and to hell with what society thinks." Tumarkin only has to be disgusting, perverse, degrade all that is holy and beautiful, and have the artistic talent of a four-year-old to get noticed. Become self-promoting, attack the competition, cry foul, attack Haredim and "settlers," question the legitimacy of Israel itself, and they drown him in accolade, awarding him Israel's most prestigious prize. Barenboim - admittedly a great musician - but a lousy politician, acts insultingly and hurtful to great numbers of Israelis, supports the enemy - the "Palestinians" - in wartime, and ditto, the "culture gurus" drown him in accolade, awarding him the Wolf Prize. Tumarkin and Barenboim also have another similarity; both have broken the post-Holocaust Israeli taboo of a Jew returning to Germany. Tumarkin moved from Israel to Germany to learn art in the 1950s. Barenboim once described in his autobiography how, when in 1954 he was asked by the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler to play with the Berlin Philharmonic, his father said no. It was too soon after the war for a Jewish boy to travel from Israel to Germany. Yet today Barenboim is the musical director of the State Opera House in Berlin. Both seem to have chosen to overlook Germany's Nazi past. Once, the arts, tried to portray "the good, the true, and the beautiful," and Jewish artists, writers, and musicians used their talents to "redeem" Judaism and Jewish culture from its millennia long exile among the nations. Hebrew culture was dignified, uplifting and full of hope. No more, today's "beautiful people" in Israel or as they're called in Hebrew, "yofay nefesh," i.e. the beautiful souls, deliberately try to disgust and degrade, to hurt and incite. Long detached from Jewish culture and values, Israel's "artsy-craftsy" elite, promote love for the enemy in wartime, and hatred of other Jews, not just like them. Israel's cultural elites have virtually abandoned support for an independent Jewish State, regularly delegitimizing Israel, while supporting the "Palestinians," and lionize people like Tumarkin and Barenboim. These "beautiful people" have internalized all the millennia long Jew-hatred of the Judeo-paths, anti-Semites, and Nazis among the nations and turned it on their fellow Jews. These "beautiful people" have turned ugly... The cultural elites in Israel today are very sick. The struggle for Israel and Jewish survival isn't just political, military, or economic, but also over the "soul" of Israel, i.e. a cultural struggle. Ariel Natan Pasko is an independent analyst and consultant. He has a Master's Degree in International Relations & Policy Analysis. His articles appear regularly on numerous news/views and think-tank websites, in newspapers, and can be read at: www.geocities.com/ariel_natan_pasko To Go To Top

MY HUSBAND THE SAGE Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, May 10, 2004.

We don't discuss politics and we hardly ever talk about the current security situation. Heck, the guy doesn't even read my articles. He says that they're too deep and heavy for him. But if you listen carefully, this man of few words can encapsulate seemingly complex issues in a nutshell. Yep, the sabra who grew up in the same neighborhood as the Rabins, Dayans and Sharons has a better handle on what's going down here in Israel than many of our most learned academics and media icons. So this morning, while I was preparing tuna sandwiches for the kids and he was brushing his teeth, I took note of my husband's 7AM remarks on the top news stories of today. What follows is my commentary on his comments. News Item #1: Shaul Mofaz told a gathering in Eilat that settling the Gaza Strip was a historic mistake, and there will be no more Jewish settlers in the Strip in five years time. Ilan's Comment: Does Mofaz know if he'll be here in five years? Ellen's Commentary: This is not incitement. This is a basic truth. None of us, including today's policy makers, knows what tomorrow may bring. What we do know is that this land is our eternal inheritance and that the righteous endeavors of the Jewish residents of YESHA have a better than excellent chance of outlasting many of our current leaders and the defective ventures that they've undertaken. News Item #2: Daniel Barenboim angered both President Moshe Katsav and Education Minister Limor Livnat by talking about "occupation" instead of music when he accepted the Wolf Prize on Sunday at a formal ceremony in the Knesset. Barenboim plans to donate the 100,000 dollars which comes with the Wolf Prize to a Palestinian music conservatory in Ramallah. Ilan's Comment: In his next life, Barenboim will be born a Palestinian. Ellen's Commentary: Again, no curse is intended. If the maestro is so tied to the destiny of the Palestinian Arabs and this is truly where his heart is, then it seems only right that he be given the opportunity to live with those whom he most identifies with. News item #3: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Cabinet ministers Sunday that he was devising a new plan to withdraw Israeli troops and Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip... Ilan's Comment: Isn't it amazing how those who have everything are so comfortable giving away the possessions of others? Ellen's Commentary: No further explanation needed. There was another top news story that failed to elicit a coherent verbal response from either one of us. Top News Story: A pair of Palestinians dressed as women were killed by Israeli soldiers yesterday after spraying bullets at a memorial service for a pregnant mother and her four daughters slain in an ambush last week. Commentary: It seems that in the above case, our actions would speak louder than words. Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael.com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

AN AMERICAN CHRISTIAN ZIONIST REFERENDUM Posted by Ruth Matar, May 10, 2004.

Dear Friends, When Sharon first announced his Gaza disengagement plan, we went on a day of tree planting, to demonstrate our faith that the communities of Gush Katif would always remain in Gaza. For some three months I have been recuperating from ankle fractures suffered when leading one of the buses Women in Green brought to Gush Katif. It has been a slow recovery, and I have really missed communicating with you all. Hopefully, with G-d's help, I will now be able to again send you a letter from Jerusalem each week. I read with great interest a report that appeared in the Jerusalem Post, that our American Christian Zionist friends intend to hold a referendum, patterned after the recent referendum of the Likud Party. The referendum will deal with the provocative question of whether there should be another Arab State within Biblical Israel. President Bush has been proposing the Road Map Plan, along with the EU, UN and Russia. The Road Map is in open defiance of the Promise the Lord made to the Jewish People, as set forth in the Bible. The proposed Christian Zionist referendum could not come at a more important time. President Bush will be standing for re-election this coming November, one of the crucial issues he faces at that time is his policy towards Israel, as represented by the Road Map. Bible believing Christians generally agree that the Road Map is a reward for terrorism. Moreover, President Bush has not as yet recognized that the Road Map is essentially a Saudi Arabian plan for Israel, which threatens Israel's very existence. In addition, the Moslem threat to the Judeo-Christian values held by Western Civilization is very real, and its spread and threat must be taken seriously by President Bush. When President Bush finally recognizes the strong opposition against the Road Map by his American Christian Zionist constituency, upon whose support his re-election largely depends, he may well abandon his support of the Saudi Road Map. He also must take seriously the fact that Saudi Arabia is not America's true friend, and its Moslem values are in direct conflict with those held by Christian America. We, in Jerusalem, therefore, look forward to the results of the upcoming Christian Zionist referendum with great anticipation, and fervently pray for its success. Israel views such a referendum in a very positive light, since it is a fulfillment of Biblical promises, and is in fact a reaffirmation of the strong beliefs of the founding fathers of American Democracy. Their strong belief in the Bible, which continue to this very day in the Christian Zionist communities, has made, and continues to make America a light unto the nations. With blessings and love for Israel, Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

DOES BEN GURION UNIVERSITY SERVE ISRAEL AS WELL AS IT CLAIMS? Posted by Bryna Berch, May 10, 2004.

An Open Letter To the Governors and Officials of Ben Gurion University: Academic Excellence and serving Zionism and Israel are your banners! So how come: A faculty member at BGU writes that Israel defending its children constitutes genocide of Palestinians? Lecturers at BGU publish articles denouncing Israel as a fascist, apartheid, terrorist state, planning to perpetrate nazi-like atrocities? The articles of a BGU lecturer are published in antiSemitic magazines and on web sites of Holocaust Deniers and Neo-Nazis, including the "Zundelsite"? A lecturer at BGU endorses a man widely seen as a Holocaust Trivializer, a fraud, and an anti-Semite? BGU lecturers openly endorse mutiny and insurrection by Israeli soldiers and other forms of lawbreaking? Outright lying and distorting the truth - which is what some of your anti-Israel tenured professors do - are not acceptable forms of free speech. If anything, I consider them a form of student-abuse. A Concerned Zionist To Go To Top

BUSHWACKED Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, May 10, 2004.

As unbelievable as it may seem, yesterday we saw a new level of barbarism, even for the Palestinian Authority. As recalled, last week the Hatuel family was brutally murdered, at point-blank range by Palestinian barbarians (an 8-month pregnant woman and her four little girls). Yesterday afternoon, at the remembrance ceremony for them, the Palestinians laid an ambush, fully knowing that there would be there women and children and again, deliberately targeting civilians; not just an act of barbarism but against all international law. Looking at CNN this morning, it isn't even reported. Nor has any comment been heard by the European apologists for all of the Arab barbarism. Anyone throughout the world that does not accept barbarism for its own sake, must strongly condemn this atrocity. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org To Go To Top

RETREATING FROM LEBANON LED TO PROPOSED RETREAT FROM GAZA Posted by Bryna Berch, May 10, 2004.

This was a news item in today's Arutz-7 (http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com). Sgt. Denis Laminov, who was killed on Friday in a Hizbullah attack in the Mt. Dov region, was buried in his hometown of Holon. He is the 17th Israeli to have been killed in Hizbullah-initiated attacks since Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon four years ago. In contrast to the relatively low number of Hizbullah-related casualties, many analysts assess that the withdrawal was a major factor leading to the outbreak of the Oslo War five months later and its almost 950 Israeli casualties. "It appears that the withdrawal from Southern Lebanon had a great influence on the Palestinians," wrote Shlomo Brom of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, for instance. "The withdrawal from Lebanon reinforced the perception among them that Israel is vulnerable to terrorism and guerrilla warfare, and that the staying power of the Israeli public has been damaged. This example encourages them to keep on with the struggle, based on the assumption that Israel's resolve will break first. In this limited sense, the unilateral withdrawal may be seen as having given the Palestinians an incentive to continue the violent confrontation." According to Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, who served as Deputy Defense Minister in the past, Hizbullah has 12,000 rockets in Lebanon that can reach as far as Haifa and Hadera. Maariv's military analyst Amir Rappaport writes today that "sooner or later, Israel will initiate a large-scale attack against Hizbullah." IDF forces uncovered another arms-smuggling tunnel in southern Gaza last night. To Go To Top

THE "FIGHTING ANTI-SEMITISM" CAMPAIGN Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, May 9, 2004.

This was written by Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. We have developed the English-language booklet "Fighting Anti-Semitism: How to Deal with New Anti-Semitism." This booklet has been prepared by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs jointly with the Ministry for Diaspora and Jerusalem Affairs and is distributed by the latter (www.jcpa.org). The booklet seeks to educate Israelis and Jews about "new anti-Semitism" and to provide them with answers to frequently-expressed anti-Semitic and anti-Israel assertions and accusations. The educational booklet is also available in Hebrew and Russian. There also is a DVD presentation in six language versions: Hebrew, English, French, German, Spanish and Russian. Israelis can obtain the booklet-DVD kit by calling a toll-free number (03-606-6300). Regards, Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Chairman of the Board of Fellows, JCPA Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org To Go To Top

TENURED EXTREMISM Posted by Steven Plaut, May 9, 2004.

This was written by Jonathan Calt Harris. It appeared on the New York Sun (http://daily.nysun.com/standard/ ShowStoryTemplate.aspPath=NYS/2004/05/ 04&ID=Ar01100&Section= "The Jews are not a nation....The Jewish state is a racist state that does not have a right to exist." One might expect these comments to have been uttered by a neo-Nazi or a militant Islamic leader. Sadly, these words were uttered by an instructor of Middle East studies at one of America's most prestigious universities in the course of delivering a lecture at Oxford University. In title, Joseph A. Massad is an assistant professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. In practice, he is one of the most vitriolic voices in academia. A self-described "Palestinian Jordanian," Mr. Massad teaches courses on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islam, and modern intellectual thought. As assistant editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies, he writes frequently on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Zionism, and Palestini an nationalism. But since his appointment to Columbia in 1999, Mr. Massad has swiftly established himself as one of the university's most controversial faculty members. The Columbia Conservative Alumni Association, for example, lists him among "Columbia's Worst Faculty." He finds the West to blame for virtually every ill he perceives in the Arab/Muslim world. Poverty? It results from "the racist and barbaric policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank." An absence of democracy in the Arab/Muslim world? It's the fault of America. In fact, in a review of Bassam Tibi's "Political Islam and the New World Disorder," Mr. Massad attacks Mr. Tibi's assertion that the Islamists are even in part responsible for the democracy deficit: "Tibi blames the Islamists, rather than the ruling autocratic elites and their patron, the United States, for the lack of democracy in the Arab and Muslim countries." The 1991 Gulf War? Mr. Massad's view of it is limited to "the fact that US forces strafed the retreating Iraqi soldiers on the Basra-Kuwait highway after their withdrawal from Kuwait,savagelymurdering in the process thousands of Iraqis." Nowhere does he mention that American forces were responding to Iraq's unprovoked invasion of Kuwait, saving Kuwaitis from Iraqi oppression, or that Iraqi troops were well treated after they surrendered. And what does Mr. Massad think of militant Islam? When not deriding the existence of the "so-called Islamic `threat,'" Mr. Massad faults the American government for its creation. Thus, he reduces the October 24, 1983 suicide bombing in Beirut, in which 241 American Marines were killed, to the consequences of "US imperialist aggression." Mr. Massad goes yet further to apologize for militant Islam. He challenges the argument that Islamists oppose democratic reform, but without providing examples. In response to a study which found that the vas t majority of terrorist attacks against Jews and Israelis in the 1940s and 1950s was the work of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr. Massad contests without supporting evidence: "Many other groups held views of Jews similar to those of the Muslim Brothers and could very well have been the perpetrators of these attacks." To him, the Holocaust is not a searing event of world history but rather something that is put in quotes or with a small "h." Indeed, he sees "the holocaust" as a self-serving rewrite of history invented for propagandistic reasons. "Israeli demands that Palestinians recognize the holocaust are not about the holocaust at all, but rather about the other part of the package, namely recognizing and submitting to Israel's 'right to exist' as a colonial-settler racist state," said Mr. Massad."The Palestinian people should continue to resist this Zionist package deal." Mr. Massad declared this Holocaust refusal of the Palestinians, "the only re maining obstacle to a complete Zionist victory, one that seeks to be sealed by Zionism's rewriting of both Palestinian and Jewish history." Moreover, in his view, Israel resembles Nazi Germany. Mr. Massad writes of "stark" similarities between Nazi prisons and those Israeli prisons used to detain "the children and young men of the stones and Molotoy [sic] cocktails." Mr. Massad indiscriminately cites statistics from anti-Israel organizations like the "Unified National Leadership of the Uprising" that "thousands of women have miscarried as result of [the Israeli Defense Force's use of] poison gas and tear gas grenades." Instead of offering corroborating evidence, Mr. Massad seizes on this anti-Israel political organization's spurious claims to establish his thesis that Israel is a ruthless totalitarian regime. According to Mr. Massad, Jews seek world domination - or at least domination of America. "From the infamous czarist Protocols of the Elders of Zion to genocidal Nazi propaganda, Jews as a `power-hungry' people was a notion that was part and parcel of the anti-Semitic lexicon of hate. Today's Israeli Jewish supremacists seem to agree with the anti-Semites asserting that if Jews do not control the entire world, at least they control America," he said. As evidence for a Jewish conspiracy, Mr. Massad quotes an American rabbi who expresses gratitude that American Jews have now become "full partners in the decision-making at all levels" of government, and who explains his surprise that a receptionist at the State Department speaks "perfect Israeli Hebrew." Jews are responsible for anti-Semitism, according to Mr. Massad. He blames anti-Semitism on what he calls, "complicity between Zionism and anti-Semitism." Terrorism against Israel is desirable, Mr. Massad says. "It is only by making the costs of Jewish supremacy too high that Israeli Jews will give it up." Mr. Massad makes clear that the "resistance of Palestinians" should not be restricted to military targets but should also include "civil institutions." In keeping with this analysis, he hails terrorists who target Israeli civilians within Israel's 1967 borders as "anti-colonial resistors." All Jews are evil, according to Mr. Massad. He defines "Jewish supremacists" as those Jews "not confined to Mr. Sharon and the Israeli Jewish rightwing which is anyway a majority in Jewish Israel, but also to liberal and leftist Jews." Regardless of political views, then, every Jew is what Mr. Massad calls a "supremacist." Israel is racist, in Mr. Massad's view. This is Mr. Massad's conclusion from its not supporting an unqualified "right of return" of Palestinians to Israel. Mr. Massad rejects out of hand Israel's fears of being overrun demographically by an unfettered Palestinian right to immigrate, portraying this as another extension of "Jewish supremacy." In sum, Mr. Massad's views - his denial of th e existence of the Jewish people, his belittling of the Holocaust, his charges of "Jewish supremacy " and racism, his conspiracy theories about Jewish dominance, and his calls for terrorist strikes against Israeli civilians - all smell of rank anti Semitism. In April 2002, Mr. Massad delivered a public lecture at a Columbia sit-in. During the lecture, he denigrated Israel as "a Jewish supremacist and racist state" and declared, "Every racist state should be destroyed." He gave a similar talk at Oxford University in March 2002, where he proclaimed, "the Jews are not a nation" and a "Jewish state is a racist state that does not have the right to exist." Mr. Massad claims that his students' evaluations of his classes are "full of support" for him, but a review of those comments reveals something quite different - clear condemnation for his relentless bias against America, Israel, and Jews. Columbia University student evaluations of Mr. Massad, available at "Culpa" (http://culpa.info), raise serious questions about his method of presentation. They suggest that as the instructor of even survey courses, he actively sought to corral his students into adopting his own vitriolic views of Israel. "This course should have been called, `Why Palestinians Hate Israel,'" wrote one student. "There was a massive and frustrating bias to the material presented in class," said another. Yet another student asked, "Can you imagine if a psychology professor declared that he was only going to teach the `Nurture' theory and assume that he was correct and therefore the `Nature' side of the argument would be disregarded? Massad should be embarrassed about how he teaches (not to mention Columbia)." Whatever the purported subject matter of his courses - from comparative literature to ancient Greek philosophy - Mr. Massad takes the opportunity to launch into anti-American harangues. "You'll spend most classes wonder ing how an apoplectic rant about US foreign policy that relates only vaguely to Plato or Aristotle is supposed to represent the `core' of your Columbia education," a 2002 student said. Mr. Massad has labeled the critics of his work the "thought police," but if his own students are to be believed, it is he who acts as the "thought police" in the classroom. Mr. Massad is soon up for tenure review. Should this once distinguished university stoop to provide a permanent forum for his views, it would signify a truly stunning oversight. Regardless of format, audience, or purported subject matter, Mr. Massad consistently and almost single-mindedly advances a stridently anti-Western and anti-Jewish diatribe. He knows no distinction between a classroom lecture and advocacy at a public demonstration. Thus, as Martin Kramer noted, "There is no difference between what Joseph Massad teaches and what he preaches." Indeed, for Mr. Massad, a fair presentation is neither offered nor sought. His opinion constitutes the whole of instruction, and methodology is merely an advocate's hammer. Whether bending evidence to support a theory or cudgeling dissent, Mr. Massad's record discloses a belief that the end justifies the means, and the end is pure ideology. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

AND THE WORLD STILL REMAINS SILENT Posted by Women in Green, May 9, 2004.

This was written by Rachel Raskin-Zrihen on May 7, 2004 There are only a couple of possible explanations for why the world is not out even now, protesting the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and her four young daughters by Palestinian gunmen. I think it's clear that had the shooters been Israeli soldiers and the victims a Palestinian family, millions of righteously indignant protesters would have hit the streets and the airwaves calling for the capture and punishment of the murderers and, no doubt, the immediate dismantling of "the Zionist entity." They do that when a Palestinian civilian gets unintentionally caught in the crossfire. They do it when actual gunmen and terrorists are killed. They do it when fences are constructed to keep the killers out. They do it when terrorists' houses - their houses, not their families - are destroyed. They do not do it when defenseless Jewish women and children are gunned down in the street. There are only a limited number of explanations for this - none of them very pleasant. One must realize that we are talking about the intentional murder of a pregnant woman and four little girls. Someone had to take aim at and shoot an obviously pregnant woman and four small children ages 2 to 11. This was not a case of accidental collateral damage. This was a targeted killing. And, I'm sorry, but there is absolutely no moral equivalency between the targeted killing of an armed (or even an unarmed) terrorist mastermind, and the murder of an unarmed pregnant woman and her children, no matter how much certain people would like there to be. It is the difference not between apples and oranges, but between apples and skyscrapers. Had the victims been any other pregnant woman and her children, practically anywhere else in the world, there would have been a deafening hew and cry. So, either much of the world is OK with the Jews as victims or they have a very low opinion of Arabs. What I mean is, that unless there is a collective understanding that Jews are unimportant, expendable or worse, justifiable targets, the only other explanation is that the world feels the Palestinian Arabs are simply incapable of civilized behavior. Unless the world is collectively thinking, "well, they're Arabs, what do you expect?" then we can explain the deafening silence over this atrocity only through worldwide, systemic and deeply entrenched anti-Semitism. I'm not crazy about either explanation, but I think I hope it's the former, because there is some chance for the Arabs themselves to change that perception by behaving in a civilized manner, and by calling on their misguided brethren to do so, too. The latter explanation, on the other hand, has terrifying and far-reaching implications that I'd prefer not to contemplate, and which people all over the world, in the United States in particular, are dismissing as impossible. Unfortunately, those of us familiar with history know that dismissing unpleasantness out of hand doesn't make it go away. On the contrary, it allows it to fester and grow. If the international acquiescence to or rationalization of the murder of that Jewish family isn't a function of anti-Semitism or a belief that no better behavior can be expected from Palestinian Arabs, then it can only be a fear, a terror as it were, that to speak out against the wholesale slaughter of innocent Jewish men, women and even children may bring the wrath of the proverbial Hun down upon the protester. If that's it we're all doomed, of course, because that means the terrorists have already won. (What make these murders even more horrendous, is the fact that the Arabs involved deliberately came up to the car afterwards and slaughtered the children at close range.) Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

MURDERER OF FAMILY IS A BEACON OF LIGHT FOR ARAB FAMILIES Posted by Itamar Marcus, May 9, 2004.

A week after the horrific murder of an Israeli mother and her four daughters the Palestinian official daily has glorified murderer who was responsible for similar murder of a father and his 2 daughters, labeling him "a beacon of light for generations to come." According to the daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida Samir Quntar, murderer of Dani Haran and his two daughters in Nahariya in 1979, is a Palestinian hero and authentic role model." The following appeared in the PA daily on in an article dedicated to the "suffering" of Quntar in and Israeli prison: "Samir Quntar, a name of pride in the history of the prisoners of the [Palestinian] national movement. A name that he created, during the resistance in Lebanon and the hours of heroism in Nahariya [terrrorist attack in which Dani Haran and his daughters were murdered] a name that is written in the blood that dripped in the interrigation dungeons. [Quntar] wrote the noble history of this name in letters of fire and light during the battles of the struggle... [Quntar] was and will continue to be a beacon of light for us and for the generations to come and an authentic role model. Every day that passes Samir's pride grows, and our pride in him grows greater and greater." [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May, 6, 2004] Itamar Marcus is founder and director of Palestinian Media Watch (http://www.pmw.org.il). To Go To Top

NO KADDISH FOR TALI TONIGHT Posted by Judy Lash Balint, May 9, 2004.

This was written by Harvey Tannenbaum, who lives in Efrat. The bulletproof buses brought hundreds of people together to Kissufim for this was the 7th day after the murder of Tali Hatuel and her four children last week. The "Haskaara'(memorial) began at 5:30pm with the afternoon service on this Lag Ba'omer day in Kissufim in Gush Katif. David Hatuel, the widower of Tali and father to the four dead girls and his son who was never to be born, recited the kaddish after Aleynu in Mincha. The Tachanun prayer was omitted on this Lag B'omer day. The speakers began to say psalms and speak, from Rav Kaminsky, the Rabbi of Gush Katif, the head of the regional council, and others. The 7 day mourning period was about to end when suddenly from the same houses(yes the IDF did NOT raze them last week), PLO/HAMAS terrorists dressed as women began firing onto the crowds of those who were attending the memorials. The children, women, and men began to drop to the pavement and lie prone to avoid the volley of bullets. IDF and security personnel began to fire at the terrorists. The 'intent' according to the first investigation of the IDF was that the terrorists dressed as women were going to mingle amongst the mourners .Their goal was to start shooting and firing from within the crowds! As the children and babies cried, panic broke out as the return fire was coming from the memorial service participants who were armed, along with the IDF. Mothers and children were separated with some mothers laying prone on the ground as their babies crawled away during the cross fire. The IDF spotted the two 'terrorists' and killed one who was dressed as a woman 'settler'(according to some reports). The bulletproof buses began to inch their way towards the Jews flat on the ground, trying not to run over the children who were crawling along the road during the crossfire. The hundreds of participants were able to board their buses after the IDF killed the terrorist. Tali Hatuel and her children, dead only seven days and seven nights never received their final kaddish from David, the husband/father. The Jews had to run out onto their buses without the final kaddish. Once again, perhaps orchestrated from the PLO/HAMAS/and other unnamed Israeli leaders, a tragedy was averted. Tali Hatuel....to you and the children, we are sorry that we could not complete the memorial 7 day service to you tonight. It is 2004 and we Jews are still running and turning our cheeks, more concerned over not razing empty houses of Arab terrorist shooters in Khan Yunis and other locations to obey our Supreme Court. Harvey Tannenbaum and Judy Balint are part of the Jerusalem Diarists group, people who are recording their experiences living in Israel today. "Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times" by Judy Lash Balint (Gefen) is available for purchase from www.israelbooks.com To Go To Top

YMCA SUPPORTING "PALESTINE" WITH KIMBERLY-CLARK FUNDING Posted by Leo Rennert, May 9, 2004.

This is by Chaya Rivka Chiloni and it is archived at http://groups.msn.com/JEWISHTHOUGHT/general.msnw? action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=1183&LastModified= 4675470766042344629 The YMCA is pursuing an aggressive anti-Semitic campaign called "Free Palestine". The reason I can label the campaign anti-Semitic and not merely anti-Israel is because part of their policy is to compare the IDF's battle against terrorists to the crucifixion! (Please see the B'nei Brith article about the situation at the bottom of this email). The most visible corporate sponsor of the YMCA is Kimberly-Clark, who, according to their web site, have offices in the "country" of Palestine. Please encourage K-C NOT to continue to support the YMCA until they have stopped their campaign that includes publications that contain language like the following: "Following the cross of Jesus is to act in solidarity with the victims of the day, as Jesus was crucified with the people who were branded as 'terrorists' by the authorities of this time. The Palestinians are currently crucified, humiliated, and denied their human rights and dignity. The cross is the victory of the powerless. According to biblical faith, God is the protector and defender of the poor and dispossessed, and they are their heirs of the Kingdom." Please join MEET in sending letters, phone calls, and emails to Kimberly Clark's President and Board of Directors. Log onto http://www.kimberly-clark.com for contact email. Please write your local newspapers, synagogues, and churches and urge them to contact the YMCA and Kimberly Clark. This is the letter I wrote to Thomas J. Falk, President and CEO, Kimberly-Clark. Dear Mr. Falk: Kimberly Clark's support of the YMCA is tacitly supporting anti-Semitism. The YMCA compares Israel's Defense Force responses to genocidal terrorism to the crucifixion. That means that every time we buy Kleenex brand tissues, Scott brand paper products, Huggies diapers, or Kotex, the American public is indirectly supporting a modern day blood libel. We request that you discontinue your support of the YMCA until they discontinue and apologize for their dangerous incitement. Also, under your list of countries where you operate, you list Palestine. There is not and never has been a country called Palestine. Chaya Rivka Schiloni is Director, Mid East Education Team (M.E.E.T.). Write her at Suite 72 322 Pine Tree Road Ithaca, NY, 14850-2819. To Go To Top

THE PROGRAM FOR A FULL SOLUTION IN THE TERRITORIES Posted by the Hebron Community, May 9, 2004.

READ IT AND WEEP! NOW YOU UNDERSTAND WHY ARIEL SHARON IS DETERMINED TO PRESS FORWARD WITH THE 'DISENGAGEMENT' FROM GUSH KATIF. This article is called "The program for a full solution in the territories". It was written by Shimon Shifer and Nachum Barnea and appeared in Yediot Achronot, Thursday, May 6, 2004. The head of the National Security Council, General (Res.) Giora Eiland, presented, in the past months, a program for a total solution to the question of the territories. The program was presented, with the permission of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to a number of international factors, including the American National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her staff, and German Foreign Minister Yoska Fischer. In Israel the program was presented to, besides Sharon, the IDF Chief of Staff, his deputy and other senior members of the security services. Sharon's disengagement plan was due to be a factor in this total solution. The program was due set off as a European initiative, to which Israel would agree. The primary participants in implementing this would be the Egyptian government, the Jordanians, the United States and the European Union. The program includes the following factors: 1. Israel retreats from all the land in the Gaza Strip and evacuates all the settlements. 2. Egypt allocates 600 sq. kilometers of land to the Palestinians - 30 km. long on the Israel-Egypt border, and 20 km. wide into Sinai, including the sea coast which was once the city of Yamit and Pitchat Rafiach. This additional territory will enlarge Gaza by three. 3. In return, the Egyptians will receive alternate territory which is 200 sq. km. including Nachal Paran in the Negev and the a tunnel which connects Egypt to Jordan via an overland connection, under Egyptian sovereignty. 4. Jordan receives free access to the Mediterranean Sea, via the overland tunnel and to the Gaza port. Also the Saudis and Iraqis will receive access to the Mediterranean, via the same route. 5. The Palestinians will receive 89 percent of the West Bank. Israel will receive 11 percent of the territory in the West Bank, which is enough to include the settlement blocks in Judea and Samaria. 6. The Palestinians will receive a large deep water port in Gaza, via large international investments, in Pitchat Rafiach. 7. Egypt, Jordan and the United States will receive patronage over the Palestinian territories. 8. The agreement would be signed during a peace conference hosted by Egypt, under President Mubarach, with the participation of the President of the United States and the heads of state of Russia and Europe. Sharon's victory in the referendum which was held on Sunday was supposed to pave the way to further this program. Due to the results of the referendum, a large question has arisen, whether it is possible to continue to present this program to international forums? Eiland refused to react to the queries of "Yediot Achronot." From IMRA this morning: "Sharon To Offer 40 Outposts To Retreat Moloch?" by Aaron Lerner. Israel Radio political commentator Channan Crystal said this morning that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon can evacuate scores of outposts in Judea and Samaria, including outposts that for all in intents and purposes are full sized settlements, without requiring cabinet approval. Crystal predicted that the NRP and National Union would find themselves in a dilemma as leaving the coalition would then enable Sharon to retreat from Gaza, a move that does require cabinet approval. It is not clear if Crystal was presenting a plan he heard of or if he was proposing it himself. Crystal has a long history of "journalistic activism", lobbying on the airwaves to promote actions he believes should be implemented. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com Dr. Aaron Lerner is Director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava) Tel 972-9-7604719/Fax 972-3-7255730 INTERNET ADDRESS: imra@netvision.net.il Website: http://www.imra.org.il To Go To Top

OUR HISTORY - AND ISRAEL'S Posted by Ariel Garnett, May 7, 2004.

Q) Why did Hashem not give us the land of Israel in Moshe's time, or in Abraham's? A) There are many answers. One of them is that he did not want to kick the Cannanim out of Israel before they started behaving disrespectfully towards the land. After that, Yehoshua (Joshua) came and conquered it. The Jews lived peacefully until they went into Babylonian exile, when the Purim story happened. Here we see that there are many reasons we left Israel. We are still in the second exile, but even now some Jews live in Israel, because of Theodore Hertzel. The pioneers came and made the land fertile. Now there are so many Jews there, but so many Jews are scattered over the world. Le Shana ha'ba B'yirushalayim! (Next year in Israel!) Ariel Garnett is 9 years old and lives in New York City. To Go To Top

BUSH TO REVIVE HIGH-LEVEL US-PALESTINIAN DIALOGUE. QUREI/RICE TO MEET. Posted by IsrAlert, May 9, 2004.

This was published in the Palestine Media Center (PMC), the official arm of the PA. It is archived at www.palestine-pmc.com/details.asp?cat=1&id=1301 It was translated by Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA). The Palestine National Authority (PNA) said Friday it "highly appreciates" the latest statements by US President George W. Bush and expressed hope that the upcoming meeting between Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei and US national Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Berlin on May 17 and Secretary of State Colin Powell's talks with Palestinian officials in Jordan next week would be a prelude to the resumption of the US-Palestinian relationship and dialogue. "I believe that the Quartet's statement (on May 4) and the statement by President Bush in the presence of (Jordan's) King Abdullah (on Thursday) are completely different from the contents of President Bush's letter of guarantees to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon," Palestinian Minister for Negotiations Saeb Erakat told the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam on Saturday. "We highly appreciate these positions," and consider the statements "a positive indicator," Erakat added. Both American and Palestinian sources confirmed that US President Bush decided to send his national security adviser Rice to Berlin for talks with Palestinian PM Qurei on May 17. Rice is to meet Qurei in Berlin on the first day of a previously scheduled trip to Germany, which begins 24 hours after Powell ends a brief visit to Jordan, where he will attend a May 15-16 meeting of the World Economic Forum, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "It will give him the opportunity to talk with the Palestinians, with Arab leaders at the meetings about developments in the region, Iraq, Middle East peace, reforms efforts and things like that," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. Bush said Thursday that at Jordan's King Abdullah's suggestion, he would send a letter to Qurei stating "my desire for a just peace." Rice "will convey to him (Qurei) directly what the president has said in public: (Israeli) Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon's proposals, if implemented, provide an historic opportunity that the Palestinians should seize upon. And she will also underline that the Palestinians have obligations under the roadmap - including to fight terror - that they must live up to," said National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. In Gaza City, Qurei confirmed to AFP that he would meet Rice soon but that no date or venue had been decided. Qurei said the main issues on the agenda would be "the plight of the Palestinian people, who are suffering a lot, the peace process and the roadmap" peace blueprint. The meeting between Qurei and Rice would be the Palestinian premier's highest-level talks ever with a US official. Bush designated Rice last year as his chief Middle East troubleshooter, but she only made one trip to the region, 10 months ago. Erakat expressed hope that Qurei-Rice meeting "will be a prelude to restoring US-Palestinian relations to what they had been." "This is a high-level meeting between the two sides. We hope that the US-Palestinian relationship and dialogue would be restored," he said. President Bush said on Thursday after meeting at the White House with Jordan 's King Abdullah II that he would broaden dialogue with the Palestinians. "We will expand dialogue between the United States and the Palestinians," Bush said. He also said he remained "committed to the vision I laid out here in the Rose Garden in 2002 of two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security," and "to the establishment of the Palestinian state that was viable, contiguous, sovereign and independent," Bush said. The UN Security Council endorsed the Quartet-drafted "roadmap" in Resolution 1515 in November. Bush Sets Preconditions for Palestinian State However at the same time, Bush insisted that a change in Palestinian leadership was a precondition and said that such a state would probably not be created by 2005. In an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, published on Saturday, Bush said that the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, as set down in that blueprint, was not as realistic as it was two years ago. President Bush nevertheless called for efforts to establish an independent Palestinian state as quickly as possible. Bush drew furious criticism from Palestinians and Arab nations last month when he embraced a unilateral plan by Ariel Sharon to pull out of the Gaza Strip but keep parts of the West Bank and deny Palestinian refugees the right to return to land that was theirs when Israel was created in 1948. Since coming to power in January 2001, President Bush has refused to receive Palestinian President Yaser Arafat at the White House or to allow US officials to deal with him. The US President told Al-Ahram he planned to send a letter to Palestinian PM Qurei saying it was time for the emergence of a new Palestinian leadership capable of facing up to "extremists" and creating institutions that would lead to the emergence of a Palestinian state. Earlier in a statement apparently aimed at appeasing Palestinian fears but was counterproductive Bush told the US-owned Alhurra satellite TV station on Wednesday: "And my commitment to the Palestinian people is, when peaceful leaders emerge, when people are willing to fight off terror, they will have a great opportunity to see this state emerge. And America will help." On May 4, the "Quartet" for the Middle East, comprising the UN, the US, the EU and Russia, sought to revive the roadmap by cautiously endorsing Sharon's unilateral plan to pull out of the Gaza Strip, seizing on the proposal as way to breath new life into the moribund "roadmap." At the same time, the "Quartet" reassured Palestinians that any final settlement would be negotiated. If Israel proceeded with a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, all land and Israeli-built infrastructure should be handed over to a "reorganized" Palestinian Authority in cooperation with the international community and Palestinian civil society, the Quartet said. Bush told Al-Ahram the Sharon plan was a "chance not to miss." US President Justifies Accord with Sharon Earlier Bush tried his best in two TV interviews on Wednesday to justify his accord with Sharon on April 14 and to appease Arab fears. "I stood up in front of the world and said that the Palestinian people ought to have their own state. I'm the first President to have ever said that. And my assurance is, is that I have not changed my vision of two states living side-by-side in peace," Bush told Al Arabiya satellite TV station on Wednesday. However, he reiterated his support for Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan. "I felt that a withdrawal from the Gaza by the Israeli Prime Minister, as well as the withdrawal from four settlements from the West Bank by the Israeli Prime Minister, was a step toward peace. And at the time he did so, I called for the United States and others to seize this moment -- the Quartet and the European Union and Russia and the United Nations, and hopefully the World Bank, to seize this moment and to help the development of a Palestinian state that will be at peace with its neighbors," he added to the US official Alhurra Television on the same day. Colin Powell said he believed the Arab world and European allies had overcome their "shock" at President Bush's endorsement of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's controversial disengagement plan. In an exclusive interview with AFP, Powell said: "People are now looking at how we can use this opportunity, how can we go forward," Powell said, maintaining that the Israeli prime minister's proposal and the president's decision to accept it had jolted the languishing 'roadmap' for peace back to life." "What the President did with Prime Minister Sharon was to essentially break us out of this cycle that was really going nowhere," Powell said. "We were talking a lot about the Middle East peace process (but) we weren't making any progress," Powell added. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

TEN FALSEHOODS HELD AS TRUTHS IN THE ARAB-MUSLIM WORLD Posted by IAmJoseph, May 8, 2004.

Here is a brief example of ten Falsehoods held as Truths in the Arab-Muslim world: 1. MOSES WAS A MUSLIM. The reason given is because Moses was obedient of G-D, and the word Muslim means being Obedient, therefore Moses is a Muslim. This is a lie by omission - there is no mention of Moses' Hebrew/Jewish ethnicity which predates Muslims and Islam. Clearly this is an historical lie, posing as religious belief, and a means of both negating and robbing Jewish heritage. Muslims do not reject such lies. The acceptance of this lie - based on such a devious spin for its derivative usage, sets the tone for all other lies. It is a theological FALSEHOOD. 2. THE JEWISH TEMPLE IS A ZIONIST MYTH. Well, there goes your Christianity, which says Jesus visited this Jewish temple. Muslims do not question their media of such open lies. It is an absurd Historical FALSEHOOD. 3. ARABS LIVING IN PALESTINE ARE PALESTINIANS. This is an historical impossibility. First because they have no connection with the ancient Philistines, who were non-Semitic invaders from the Aegean sea, and the ancient enemies of the Hebrews - the Philistines battled with Samson and were finally overthrown by King David 3000 years ago from their stronghold in Gaza. How then did the name Palestine re-emerge? The Romans who destroyed Jerusalem 2000 years ago, dubbed this name of the Jews enemies, Palestine (Philistine), on the Jewish homeland out of a chagrin this one small nation refused to convert to Rome's Pagan religion and its brutal dictates. The pre-Islamic Arabs, who at this time were still emersed in Paganism, found favor by glorifying Roman Idols, while Jews were exiled and their homeland destroyed Monotheism was unacceptable with Rome's Ruling Deities. Today, despite the first-hand knowledge of this history, even this name inferred on the Jews and their homeland, Palestinians, is hijacked by the Arabs but without any foundation in reality. And as manifested in the historical 2000 year old Josephus Documents, the Romans recruited Arabs as paid mercenaries in the front-lines to massacre the Palestinians (the Roman name for Jews). If Arabs are Palestinians, it means (sic) that ARABS RECRUITED BY THE ROMANS WERE MURDERING THEIR PALESTINIAN BRETHEREN' But you won't find the Josephus Documents - one of the greatest historical documents in existence - in any Islamic school or University. Why? Because they do not want to or care about knowing such Truths this Document clearly manifests the pre-Islamic Arab hatred of Jews - even the brutal Roman General is aghast at the Arab disrespect of dead Jewish corpses. Other lies manufactured here include the myth of 8000 year old Palestinians and descendents of the original Hebrews who converted to Islam but speak no Hebrew - Jews are thus blue-eyed blonde European crusaders sent to invade Arab lands. Only Jews and specifically not Arabs can be called Palestinians; the territorial name Palestine can only apply to the Jewish, but not an Arab, homeland. If a lie can be useful against Jews it;s a justification in itself. Yet Jews have been called Palestinians for over 1900 years, and Arabs posing as Palestinians the last three decades is a verifiable Geo-Historical FALSEHOOD. 4. HIJACKING THE HEBREW NAME AND SACRED CITY OF JERUSALEM. The name Jerusalem is 100% Jewish and is not found outside or predating the Jewish bible. Jerusalem was the sacred Jewish Capital 1500 years before Islam existed - yet Muslims call it their third holiest city without any mentioning it is first and foremost the 1st holy city of the Jews. Why? If Arabs also find this Jewish city sacred, wherefrom does this entail their sovereignty to this miniscule and only homeland of the Jews? Jerusalem has never been the Capital of any peoples or Nation aside from Jews despite a 2000 year exile, Jews have always maintained their presence here, and no other nation ever assumed or declared sovereignty to this land. Who is the destroyer of peace and making existence impossible for Jews with false beliefs and impossible demands? Would not a G-D fearing people have regard for an entire people's original rights can any nation or peoples withstand the usurpation and negation of the very core of its heritage and essence? Arab-Muslims want to foster the falsehood that Jews are a Western implant, aliens who have invaded and occupied a barren Arab land; but Jews brushed aside alternate offers for a homeland which included some of the choicest lands on Earth including vast expanses in Africa and Australia 100s of times larger and richer than their own barren ancestral homeland. Jerusalem is in fact the oldest and most verifiable Capital city in all recorded history, and the UN Resolution relating to the splitting of this Jewish Capital is based on corruption and Historical Revisionism; never before in History has any peoples or nations been subjected to the splitting of its Capital or the determination the original inhabitants must become the minority. Prior to the UN's formation, the last Muslim Turkish Governor of Palestine declares in his archived letters to Hertzl clearly that Palestine is the Jewish nation's homeland which all the world is aware of, and sees the Jews eventually returning to their land; these predate the UN's Resolutions but they also should transcend them. The UN succumbed to the Arab-Muslim majority to effect Israel-destroying Resolutions which negate its original Motion of Israel's existence the UN's numerous obsessions to equate Zionism with Racism another Israel-destroying premise has thus far been soundly but narrowly foiled! If Jordan was created for Arabs calling themselves Palestinians, and if another new state is sought with a New Capital, why not assign half of Amman instead of Jerusalem? Why seek the creation of yet another state where there was always only small State? The denial of Jerusalem as the 3000 year Capital of the Jewish homeland is an indefensible FALSEHOOD. 5. THE HOLOCAUST WAS A ZIONIST MYTH. This is lies resultant from hatred. Even the Arab-financed Mr. Irvin - a History Revisionist who was involved in a Trial in England last year and lost the case - admitted that 5.2 million Jews (as apposed to 6m) perished under the Nazis. Still Arabic media says this is all lies and just a Zionist plot. Far from rejecting such inhuman perversion the state-sponsored media of Egypt boasts such slogans as THANK YOU HITLER BUT YOU SHOULD HAVE FINISHED THE JOB this from a relatively moderate Arab country which signed a peace treaty after Israel returned vast tracks of land acquired after a multi-state Arab attack. Hatred transcends truth here, but outside the Arab-Muslim world Holocaust Denial is a known perversion and a dehumanizing FALSEHOOD. 6. "OCCUPIED TERRITORY?" There is no Occupied Territory. All of the areas referred to as such are within the borders of the verifiable and documented homeland of the Jews. Israel is accused of Occupying territories of its own miniscule homeland! The Arabs know even better than the Christians what constitutes these Borders - yet they have corrupted the UN by creating a false Revisionist History and Israel-Destroying UN Resolutions now deemed as International Law. Lets make no mistake here: if the Jewish homeland is disputed, no nation or state can ever be safe - because there is no peoples on Earth who can document their homeland as well as the Jews can. Although India and China have ancient, perhaps older ancestral claims, their evidence is not as discernible as Jewish ancestral evidence - there are no books in existence older than the Jewish scriptures (discounting cave markings and stone inscriptions), and the Jewish scriptures describe with accuracy and specificity of times, distances and names of peoples and places the exact Borders of the Jewish ancestral homeland, in what is the world's first alphabetically written books, with cross-reference of other independent nations and scriptures. Why then such confusion in the Arab world? Why did the notion of an Arab-Palestinian State not ever surface before not for 2000 years before 1948, nor when it was occupied by the contrived new State called Jordan - created specifically to house Arabs living in the Jewish homeland? Can one tiny land be divided into four states Jordan, Palestine, Israel and then again 7 million Palestinians to live inside Israel instead of the new fictitious states? And the Jewish Capital grotesquely split asunder? Where then was the Arab-Muslim passion for a Palestinian State before Israel's establishment? Does the situation change because Jews, the only true and rightful owners of their ancestral homeland, and the only true Palestinians, are OCCUPYING territories which are parts of their own homeland? Do we need a history lesson of Gaza, Hebron and Jericho or has this been transcended by Historical Revisionism of the corrupted UN Resolutions borne out of impromptu oil dollars to fix the cursed of Allah? Why have the Arab countries and their religious leaders not admitted what is the truth to its peoples? Why have all Arab-Muslims not questioned themselves openly in their media, mosques and schools alongside other independent historical evidences? Can all historical evidence be regarded a Zionist myth? Why promote the lie that Jews have invaded and robbed a land which everyone knows is the Jewish homeland? There is no Occupation - any confusion of the Boundaries of the Jewish homeland is a deliberated doctrinal FALSEHOOD. 7. JEWS ARE NOT A RACE OR A NATION. Perhaps the worst lie. The first reference to Jews graduating from a tribe to a Nation is recorded in the Jewish bible when they totaled over 3 million when leaving Egypt via the hand of Moses over 3000 years ago. From this point on Jews are not called Children of Israel (Jacob) anymore in the bible, and are henceforth referred to as AAM YISRAEL (NATION OF ISRAEL), constituting the yardstick how a people become a Nation. The notion of questioning this is reflective only of the desire to negate anything Jewish - it is a 'NATION GENOCIDE' and inspired only to cater to another improvised doctrine devised by the Arab-Muslims which states that ONLY A NATION CAN BE ALLOWED A HOMELAND! The denial of AAM YISRAEL is a genocidal-aspired FALSEHOOD. 8. JEWISH SCRIPTURE IS DISTORTED. As if this has anything to do with Muslims or the Jewish boundaries - it sure has, thus the accusation: if Jewish scripture is distorted, then its historically evidenced truth does not have to be regarded! This is clearly false because it assumes that such alleged but unevidenced distortion is aimed at a bias against Muslims - but the Jewish scripture pre-dates Islam (indisputably proven by the 2200 year old DEAD SEA SCROLLS which manifests the Jewish scripture is uniquely undistorted in its narrative sweep; and by the New Testament which predates Islam again). Aside from such indisputable evidence, there is no people's scripture which documents a people's wrong-doings as the Jewish scripture does - if it was distorted, even prior to Islam, why did the Jews not distort these negative segments? How come only Islam says Jewish scripture is distorted - but cannot evidence this with a single contemporary disputation? Was there a writing problem? We have their cuneiform dating much older than the Jewish bible, so where is their evidence here, aside from a unilateral dogmatic accusation? So why don't they tell India its scripture is distorted and that all Hindustan is now sacred Islamic land as is being seen in the quintessential Indian city of Kashmir? Over 2000 years ago, much prior to Islam, several Jewish tribes are believed to have landed as refugees in India, and survived to this day in numerous parts of the Indian sub-continent it is a history worthy of further research by the Indian Government for the potential of its ground-breaking historical unfolding of a pre-Islamic Jewish thread: the Indian Jews have retained their distinct Jewish inheritance, putting PAID to the false notion of 8000 year old Arabs claiming Canaanite, Jewish or Palestinian ancestry. Is there any reason to vilify Jewish scriptures other than to negate Jewish heritage and thereby the Jewish homeland? While accusing the Jewish scriptures of being distorted, it is also claimed, contradictingly, that this distorted heritage of the cursed of Allah is now bestowed to Islam! There is no other source of Arab-Muslim ancestry and their history apart from Jewish scriptures the distortion claims are thus only limited to those items contradicted by later Islamic scriptures. Yet we find that of the 613 Commandments (moral/ethical Laws) contained in the Jewish bible which all the world turns by the new undistorted scripture of Islam has not given the world a single new Commandment not already contained in this distorted Jewish scripture! There is no religious scripture which can be better verified against the accusation of distortion than the Jewish one. Targeting the Jewish scriptures is an unprovoked Islamic FALSEHOOD. 9. JEWS ARE CURSED OF ALLAH AND HAVE NO RIGHTS. Just as now the world is hardening and rejecting claims of Zionism is Racism in the Arab-Muslim farce with the UN, this claim is clear evidence why Jews are targeted by lies everywhere in the Arab-Muslim world. If the Jews are cursed, then a G-D fearing and benevolent people should be very careful not to curse them more or at least to render some forbearance to the wretched and cursed? But we find the extreme reverse here. What's the problem even the cursed need a place to live, and Islam boasts more blessings of human substance and lands than any other peoples? The truth is that Jewish scripture recounts each and every wrong-doing openly and uniquely among all scriptures - what the Muslims fail to acknowledge is that all other peoples also committed wrong-doings, and that the Jews repented or were punished, and then forgiven - this is evidenced after the greatest sin of the Jews concerning the Golden Calf episode at Sinai in Egypt - the Hebrews still entered Canaan! This is well hidden by Muslims - as if Muslims are Angels without wrong-doings or that Jews are incapable of being forgiven. Truth is that G-D forgives, but Islam does not. And the cursed is not limited to Jews: all non-Muslims are infidels one of basis for the 9/11 Terrorism was touted as Americans desecrating sacred Muslim soil in Saudi Arabia why then did they call upon America to defend them against Iraq? The Talibans destroyed ancient Buddhist relics because Images are forbidden why did the Taliban not first destroy the Pyramids the most Pagan edifice in existence: the Pharaohs presented themselves as Divine, hiding behind Monoliths of fire-belching figurines and enslaved millions Buddha made no such false claim and represents peace and enlightenment to millions. To deem the entire nation of Jews cursed without recourse is a racist, egotistical and unG-Dly FALSEHOOD. 10. TERRORISTS ARE FREEDOM FIGHTERS. This false notion prevailed recently and still does in the Arab-Muslim world. Before 9/11, Bin Laden, Hamas and Hizbillah were regarded martyrs and Freedom Fighters, and the murder of children and parents in buses and cafes called Self-defense against Occupation this when over 90% of territories demanded of the Jewish homeland is already occupied by themselves. Arab-Muslim States create, support and foster a host of terrorist groups it encourages as Freedom Fighters and glorifies them in state-owned media, mosques and schools which are restricted from any outside input or opposing views, while nurturing its populations with the most notorious falsehoods and vilification in all recorded history. The falsehoods and hatreds towards Israel, Jews and the US would be surreal even if every accusation was 100% true; it well surpasses the Jewish reaction to the Nazis. Infact, only a few days after the 9/11 Terrorism, Egypt's media explained this as a Zionist Plot to implicate the Arabs - without any rejection or retractment by Arab-Muslims anywhere. Terrorists or if you like, Freedom Fighters licensed to murder children, parents and all civilians - do not evolve from nowhere and from nothing. It is a fact that today, all around the world, Arab Terrorists are not murdering innocent civilians in Israel, America, India and the Philippines to protect or revenge helpless and oppressed Palestinians: Terrorists pose a greater threat to Israel than a combined, multi-state Arab attack because of their covert and cowardly nature. This is evidenced by the 9/11 attack upon the world's greatest Superpower - and the Arab-Muslims are fully aware of this. The notion of Terrorists murdering civilians and being glorified as Freedom Fighters but for 9/11 would have prevailed; prior to this fateful date, Bin Laden's perverse logic: "AMERICANS PAY TAXES, ITS GOVERNMENT USES THIS TAX TO MURDER MUSLIMS, SO ALL AMERICANS, INCLUDING ITS CIVILIANS, ARE LEGITIMATE TARGETS" was reflected in the Arab-Muslim world pervasively as a sacred truth not a perverse FALSEHOOD! The notion of a Palestinian people (false), being oppressed or occupied in the Jewish homeland (false), and defenseless (false) is only to promote the destruction of the Jewish homeland. There is no truth in a single accusation of Arab-Muslims, they know this, they are all guilty of this - and that is why they pursue only those terms and conditions which would destroy Israel. Oppressed people do not demand such terms and conditions: PEACE WITH ISRAEL YES BUT ONLY ON CONDITION OF ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION. How long will the world keep up with this charade of Falsehoods? Arab-Muslims are being tested - they have a world stacked with anti-Semites and Antizionists to prod them along as a provocation - to see how they will turn. Thus far the Verdict is by a mysterious default that all their accusations against Israel are FALSE! And the hatred and demands unwarranted even if all these falsehoods were true. There is every incentive for Arab-Muslims to cease its obsession of targeting! Jews by acknowledging their homeland all of the little it is - and their right to exist as a Nation in a secure homeland - not within terms and conditions no Nation can withstand but by ceasing from its hatreds and embracing of such falsehoods. And there is equally every incentive to do so even if such falsehoods are deemed True. Otherwise the Jews have no where to go, are not a race or a Nation, have no history, no scripture, no heritage, are a Western plant and the cursed of Allah without recourse. And Islam is a religion of peace and G-Dliness? For Jews there is both a credibility and existentialist problem here. The Jews have not in the past or now done anything wrong or taken any lands of Arabs, nor do they have such a history. The Jews are defending their true homeland not Zanzibar. The Arabs are demanding as a sacred right only those conditions which no nation or peoples can live by - namely that Jews must live under the loins of those sworn to their destruction. And the world at large has supported this as if it really is a sacred duty. But in the process Christianity and Islam are pointing a gun at the History and Theology of their own feet as well: they are very selectively choosing desired falsehoods to terrible truths. More than a Jewish Messiah, the world needs a G-D fearing and brave Muslim who will overturn such HATRED, VILIFICATION AND FALSEHOODS, as is declared and foretold in Jewish scriptures: I WILL SHOW ALL YOUR ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL AS FALSE (The Tanach). To Go To Top

ITEMS: GENOCIDE, PARASITES UPON THE JEWS Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 7, 2004.

WHAT DOES SHARON PLAN REJECTION MEAN? The media failed to ask PM Sharon thoughtful questions about his abandonment plan. Likud voters could not tell whether he had thought the plan and its implementation through. Instead of discussing the plan thoroughly, his team called opponents "right wing extremists." The plan's defeat would show that the US cannot dictate to Israel. A defeat would obviate clashes with the US over implementation of vague provisions (IMRA, 4/29). PM SHARON COMMENTS ON PLAN REJECTION Terrorists made a murderous attack on an Israeli mother and her daughters in Gaza. PM Sharon told reporters, "The terrible murder today is their way of rejecting and complicating the plan." (Ravi Nessman, NY Sun 5/3, p.7.) Hundreds were murdered during PM Sharon's tenure. Were those crimes rejections of his future plan to surrender part of the territories to them? He talks nonsense. Israeli leftists usually do, when it comes to terrorist acts. They attribute the acts to opposition to their surrender plans. The Israeli leftist notion of cause and effect is upside down. The surrender plans result from terrorism and, in turn, therefore prompt further terrorism. Besides, the Arabs like murdering. SUDAN DONG WHAT ARAFAT TRIED Under the ceasefire, Sudan was supposed to disarm the genocidal militia. Instead it integrated them into its army. IMRA declares that Egypt presses Sudan to centralize its control, including by such means (IMRA, 4/29 from Jordan Times). "Moderate" Egypt for genocide? The US had urged Arafat to combine his ten or so armed forces. It wanted to call the resulting greater force for terrorism "reform, and then suggest another Israeli agreement with this supposedly reformed regime. Arafat refused to do that but he tried to bring the radical Islamist militias into his regime. They refused. ISRAELI VOTING RECORD ON SUCH PLANS Every time Israeli voters were offered an opportunity to disapprove of an Oslo-like withdrawal, they did. The fallacy in PM Sharon's plan is in withdrawing from a small part of Gaza, before the PLO there honors any commitment to end its war on Israel and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure (Prof. Steven Plaut, 4/30, e-mail). UN ON ROAD MAP The UN asserted that the Road Map still is alive. It encouraged Israel to go ahead with a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. (This was before the referendum rejecting PM Sharon's abandonment plan.) UN envoy Roed-Larson "helpfully" suggested that Israel follow the same procedure as for its withdrawal from Lebanon. The UN, said Secretary-Gen. Annan, helped "the Israelis and the Lebanese government to ensure that the withdrawal was managed and orderly." (IMRA, 4/29.) The Israeli government withdrew its forces so precipitously, that it allowed no time to gather up all its weaponry and its Lebanese allies no time to set up a new defense perimeter or even make a case for their continuing on by themselves, with Israeli logistical support. Instead, the IDF pulled out as if in a headlong flight, and the Lebanese fled to the border, having abandoned many of their possessions. That was not managed or orderly. It was more like treachery. THE ABSURDITY OF AVOIDING VALUE JUDGMENTS The Associated Press reported that a kidnapped and raped Turkish woman hanged herself, to restore the family honor. "'The European Union, which Turkey aspires to join, is pressing the country to take steps to curb a practice it says is a violation of women's rights.'" "It says?" (Joe Taranto, NY Sun, 5/3, p.7.) Certain morality is not relative but absolute. Western avoidance of judging those instances in other cultures' practices is amoral and therefore immoral. Judaism and the West developed a decent moral code, though their people don't always live up to it. We should be held accountable for our lapses, for we should know right from wrong, especially on the basics of "Thou shalt not murder!) We should not suppose that the tortured lives of Muslim women, victims first of violence by strangers, and then blamed and punished for it by suicide or execution is anything but a perversion. The Associated Press' neutral wording about "honor killing" is multiculturalism carried to an absurdity. Rape dishonors rapists, and murder dishonors murderers. I object to multicultural values being imposed upon my country. HUMAN PARASITES PREY ON THE JEWISH PEOPLE For centuries, more fortunate members of the Jewish people created and accumulated some wealth, only to have gentiles confiscate it. Parasitism characterized the Holocaust. One outcome was that Paris Mayor Jacques Chirac gave Jews' apartments to favorites and hung stolen art in his office. Not long after the Holocaust, the Arabs attacked Israel. Unable to seize Israel, they confiscated the factories, farms, stores, houses, furnishings, and savings of their native Jews, and sent them packing, but not packing much. Now, PM Sharon and Pres, Bush are trying to turn over Jewish communities in Yesha to the Arabs, who are unable to capture them by themselves. PM Sharon is part of this perfidy. The meeting of the Quartet on this resembles the Nazi meeting at Wansee over the "final solution." The State Dept. wants the turnover to be orderly. What does it mean, "orderly?" A Jewish army would strip the Jews of their possessions in behalf of Arab terrorists, "legal-like," and the US need not get its hands dirty committing the robbery (Winston Mideast Analysis, 4/27, e-mail). The irony is that the Jews performed a vital economic function in societies that, when they didn't need the Jews anymore, dispossessed, dispersed, and defamed the Jews as the parasites. PM SHARON BACKING OFF FROM HONORING REFERENDUM When PM Sharon offered to hold a referendum in his Likud Party, because many members of the Party denounced his withdrawal plan as contrary to the principles of the Party under which he won its leadership, he promised to abide by the results of the referendum. When polls showed him likely to lose the vote, he repudiated that promise. He then said he would strive for a national referendum, which polls gave him a better chance of winning (IMRA, 5/1). The Left and the West encouraged him to renege. Does that give you an idea about how sincere the West are their dedication to democracy and pledges to Israel? SYRIAN NOTION OF LEGITIMACY Syria's Pres. Assad said that since the resistance to the US-led coalition in Iraq is popular (a dubious claim), it is legitimate (IMRA, 5/1). This "resistance" involves setting off explosions against not only occupation and native troops but also aid workers and residents who happen to be in the way at the time. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, that is not legitimate. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

UPCOMING ACTIVITIES Posted by Women in Green, May 7, 2004.

1)A delegation of Women in Green went on Wednesday to Gush Katif to pay a shiva call to David Hatuel, whose pregnant wife Tali and their 4 daughters were murdered by Arab Nazis. The shiva took place in their beautiful home in katif. Everybody coming in immediately saw how Tali HY"D had invested so much love and devotion to every detail in the house. Mourning with David are Tali's parents, her two sisters and one brother. Tali's mother warmly greeted us and told us to pass on the message that the People of Israel must stand united and strong. Only then do we have a chance against our enemies. Since the brutal murder, she said that hundreds of people keep on calling the family and showing support. Expressions of sympathy for David Hatuel of Katif can be sent to him via his neighbor, Irit Ben-Aryeh, whose email address is abirit@zahav.net.il After visiting the mourners, Women in Green went to the 3 different kindergartens in Katif and handed out toys to the children, telling them how much we love them and care for them. One of the women in charge told us how devastated she was by the murder. As a kindergarten teacher, she had taught 3 out of the 4 Hatuel girls. In Katif we were told to pass on the message that it is important to protest against the Supreme Court judges who denied the army's request, months ago, to raze down empty Arab buildings next to the road where Tali and the girls were murdered. Those empty buildings were used by the Arab Nazis to hide and kill the Hatuels. Women in Green call upon all to join the different activities that will take place against the Supreme Court. First demonstration is organized by Atty Baruch Ben Yossef this coming Sunday at 3:00pm in Jerusalem at the Supreme court. Here is his flyer: The High Court of Justice must be held directly responsible for the brutal murder of Tali Chatual and her four young daughters. As the Chief of Staff of the I.D.F. Yaalon voiced out after the murder that despite security demands that dictated the destruction of houses used constantly for cover by the terrorists, the Aharon Barak legal system prevented the destruction of the houses. The five righteous ones paid with their lives because of the liberal, perverted judges. For years now, the High Court has stood behind terrorism, caring for the rights of terrorists, so by placing the Jewish People in needless danger. Justices who do not place their own lives in danger to protect Jews, have no right to tie the hands of the Israeli Defense Forces in shackles of perverted morality. The only mission of the I.D.F. is to totally eradicate the terror of the Arab enemy. This mission justifies any and all means required to do so. We are totally fed up with the High Court that is completely in support of the enemy. The demonstration will begin at 15:00 in front of the Supreme Court Building to be followed by demonstration for Jonathon Pollard at the Rose Garden across from the Knesset at 17:00. for details call Baruch Ben Yossef 053-285-623 2) FREE NOAM FEDERMAN! Noam Federman is still in jail- in administrative detention- it is now 8 months and nobody knows why! No court- no way of defending himself. Motsaei Shabbat, 8-5-04 at 10:00pm DEMONSTRATION IN FRONT OF THE ASHKELON PRISON Organized by the committee to Free Noam Federman A Lag baOmer bonfire will be organized on the spot 3) FREE JONATHAN POLLARD! Sunday, Lag baOmer, 9-5-04 at 5:00pm in Jerusalem Rose gardens Massive demonstration demanding Jonathan's release with the participation of Rabbis, Mk's and public figures. Organized by the Committee to free Jonathan. Performing: Sinai Tor, Mordechai Fisher and Yaron Oz For details: 054-5684481 www.freepollard.org 4) FIFTH COLUMN WATCH Women in Green's efforts are starting to bear fruit. We have sent hundreds of letters to army people and public figures demanding to stop the activity of the extreme leftist Machsomwatch women. More and more people are aware of the harm those women do. More and more articles are appearing in the Hebrew press telling the public about our activities and explaining the horrendous things those leftists women do. The latest (fair) article appeared on Wednesday May 5th in Hebrew on the famous YNET website. Link to the article: http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/1,7340,2912211,00.html TUESDAY, May 11th we will go to the Aram, Kalandya and Bethlehem IDF checkpoints. Media people will be joining us. Leaving with our cars from Jerusalem the Inbal (Laromme) hotel at 9:30am. Anybody who needs to reserve a seat- please call Nadia 050-5-500-834 or Anita 050-5-777-254 Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

DISENGAGEMENT FROM A GENUINE PEACE Posted by Dafna Yee, May 7, 2004.

This is a quote from "Disengagement from genuine peace." The idea of transferring the Palestinian population makes me shudder in horror. (From Disengagement From Genuine Peace http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1123586/posts) WHY? The idea of transferring all Arabs from Israel, regardless of their stated loyalty or personal actions would be horrible. But, transfering the "Palestinians" means expelling people who have declared their refusal to recognize Israel's sovereignty, their unwillingness to obey Israel's laws (or indeed humanity's laws for civilized behavior), and are openly supporting horrific acts of terrorism against Israeli civilians (polls show between 80 and 90 percent of "Palestinians" support terrorist actions in some degree!) is the only reasonable solution! Every Israeli Arab is not a "Palestinian" and they should not be blamed or punished for the acts of "Palestinians"! But, the stated "Palestinian cause" is nothing less than the total destruction of Israel and the death of all Israelis! If you declare yourself to be a "Palestinian", then you are declaring your loyalty to that goal and its leaders and must take the consequences. Also, the "Palestinians" want their leaders to act exactly as they have done; they don't want a "reformed democratic Palestinian leadership"! If the "Palestinians" want to live under Muslim rule so much that they are willing to follow a known terrorist like Arafat to achieve their goal, then send them to an Arab country! And stop being so "horrified" at the idea of transferring "Palestinians" who have sworn to destroy you that you are willing to "evacuate" Israelis for any reason whatsoever! Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

US REPEATING MISTAKES OF ROMAN EMPIRE Posted by IsrAlert, May 7, 2004.

This was written by Maksim Petrenchuk and was translated by Alex Anderson. It appeared yesterday in Rosbalt (www.rosbaltnews.com/2004/05/06/66549.html ) At the outset of military operations in Iraq, the Americans placed a great deal of hope on ethnic groups unhappy with the rule of Saddam Hussein. Among them, the Shiites and Kurds stood out in the Pentagon's strategic thinking as important allies. But recently, we have been witnessing a diametrically opposed picture emerge. Rather than surrendering insurgents to the Americans, the Shiites have been joining the resistance movement, and are now in fact responsible for the main problems facing coalition forces. The cost of the siege of Fallujah has been the continued deaths of American soldiers, falling approval ratings for Bush, and sagging optimism among US allies regarding military operations. So why did the Shiites turn their backs on the Americans? After all, the democratic regime promised by Bush offered the Shiites a bright political future. When all is said and done, the Americans did get rid of a dictator especially hated by the Shiite population. And it won't do to compare Iraq with Vietnam, or Iraqi insurgents with the Vietcong. In Vietnam the United States came in as an occupier, fighting a popular regime that enjoyed support in both the north and the south of the country. But here, the Americans came ostensibly as liberators. At the very least, this was undeniably true for the Shiites. The Americans were used, and this despite the fact that US policy is considered to be a model of pragmatism and cold calculation. But that policy misfired in Iraq. It was the Americans themselves who brought the Shiites into the political arena. After the toppling of Hussein, Shiite ayatollahs were free to preach without hindrance, and they often did so in anti-American tones. Under Hussein, those propagandizing against the regime were shot without trial. Had it not been for the Americans, the Shiites would to this day have been engaged in an underground struggle. But these days, Shiite organizations operate legally, and besides which receive vast sums from some not very trustworthy sponsors - Iran, for example. Naturally, now that the Shiites have achieved influence in Iraq, they no longer need the Americans. The Roman Empire experienced a similar situation in its time when it tried to conquer Parthia. A 'liberal empire' waged a war against an eastern despotism, counting on the support of separatist princes, but was defeated namely by those same separatist forces. At the end of the 1st century A.D., the economic situation of the Roman Empire experienced a marked downturn. Civil wars led to the ruin of Italy, and money needed to rebuild was lacking. The empire had not conducted wars of aggression since the time of Augustus, at the beginning of the century, maintaining instead a defensive policy. Coming to power in 98 A.D., the emperor Trajan proposed an ambitious solution - to resume a policy of military aggression, to conquer new territory for Rome, and thereby to resuscitate a moribund economy. And that is precisely the way the Bush administration has tried to raise the efficiency of the American economy, by seizing control of Middle Eastern oil. Rome's neighbor, Parthia, was chosen as the target of Trajan's campaign. Parhia was a state located on the territory of contemporary Iran, extending from the Hindu peninsula to Roman Syria. It was considered the second superpower of the ancient world. In addition, Parthia was at that time considerably weakened by internal strife, nomad incursions, as well as the separatism of individual rulers. Judging by everything, the Romans hoped that defeating Parthia would not be too difficult. The justification for war was the conflict between Rome and Parthia in the Roman vassal state of Armenia. A major anti-Parthian campaign was launched in Rome. Memories of Alexander of Macedonia were revived, and of how he had destroyed the ancient power of the Achaemenids. But if Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt had remained under Roman control since then, the Persian lands and the area between the Tigris and Euphrates had quickly been lost. The war then received an ideological rationale - to retake lands once controlled by the Greeks and bring them back into the fold of 'authentic culture.' In precisely the same way, Bush proposed placing Iraq on the 'correct path to democracy' from which Iraq had strayed when the Baathists had taken over. In order to contain disturbances in his own backyard Trajan strengthened the empire's frontiers, and then moved significant military forces to his launch point in Syria. These were professional soldiers, with an advanced command system, and not a disorganized rabble of eastern powers. Parthian soldiers were considerably the inferiors of Roman troops. At first, Trajan's legions were victorious. The Romans quickly occupied Mesopotamia, Armenia and the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Having launched the war in 114 A.D., by 116 A.D. they had already advanced to the Parthian capital, Ctesiphon. Hopes for the separatist princes seemed confirmed as many of them surrendered without a fight, refusing to serve the Parthian king and throwing themselves on the mercy of the Roman emperor. The Romans nearly destroyed Parthia. Soon, Trajan offered the throne to Parfamasatu, the son of the Parthian king, Hozroya, and he agreed to be Rome's de facto vassal. And the emperor had grandiose plans. It was said that while visiting the Persian Gulf, he had proclaimed: 'Oh, if only I were young right now, then like Alexander of Macedonia I would undoubtedly set off for India.' It was with similar enthusiasm that Bush greeted the early victories in Iraq, when the White House administration was already thinking about how to introduce democracy in neighboring Iran. But those selfsame separatists dealt Rome a serious defeat. Soon, a Jewish uprising erupted in Mesopotamia. In Parthia, Jews had been a defeated people, but they had enjoyed certain rights. They did not want to live under Roman rule, as they knew full well how the Romans dealt with the Jews in Syria and Judea. Alarmed by the cruelty and corruption of Roman officials, they gathered together in militias, sparing neither Romans nor Greeks. Trajan's army was widely dispersed, and it could not simultaneously fight the rebels and to march east on Parthia. The situation worsened on other fronts as well - local tribes rose up in Spain, Germany, Britain and Africa. Rome was threatened by widespread disorder. And then Trajan himself died. His successor Hadrian decided to put an end to the war with Parthia, and in the end Trajan's policies not only did not help Rome's situation, but rather hastened the onset of a crisis. Romans were prostrate. Why were the Romans unable to reach agreement with the Jews? Despite the fact that the rebels had previously been under Parthian rule, they did not want to fall under Roman control. First of all, they were afraid of forced Romanization, just as contemporary Shiites do not want the Americanization of Iraqi society - Western values are foreign to them. Secondly, the rebels knew that Roman rule of their lands would not be profitable to them. Taking advantage of Parthian weaknesses, they had secured broad privileges for themselves. And the Shiites, freed from Hussein, have secured for themselves control of Iraq's oil and do not want to share it now with American companies. Weakened by the Roman incursion, the Parthian court gave the Jews the privileges they had requested. Freed from Hussein, the Shiites no longer need an American presence. As Machiavelli wrote, when waging war on a government it is important to rely on people who are unhappy with it. He also wrote that a flawed policy by the occupier could lead to a situation in which those same people become disappointed with the new rulers. Once the common enemy has been defeated, nothing obliges them to remain faithful. They can find themselves new allies and rise up against the old partner. So it is not surprising that Shiite loyalty to America did not last very long. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

SYMBOLIC GENOCIDE Posted by Steven Plaut, May 7, 2004.

This was an article in Makor Rishon on the Campus Capers and was written by Joel Fishman. Professor Lev Grinberg, Director of the Hubert Humphrey Center for Public Affairs at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, published of an article entitled, Symbolic Genocide, in the Belgian daily newspaper, La Libre Belgique of 29 March 2004 in which accused Israel of perpetrating symbolic genocide, against the Palestinian people. After reading some extracts of this article in translation, Education Minister Limor Livnat declared that Ben Gurion University can no longer serve as Lev Grinbergs academic home and communicated her position to the Universitys President, Professor Braverman. In its lead editorial of 25 April 2004, Haaretz, took a position that the Ministers intervention was outrageous, and that if Greenberg had committed the crime of incitement, he should be challenged in court, but basically, this professors academic freedom deserved to be respected. Rather than enter directly into a discussion of the public debate in Israel, our first step will be to give some of the original French text of the article in La Libre Belgique. We shall then place these statements into context and fill in some of the missing the missing steps of the authors reasoning process. The articles first paragraph gives a reasonable idea of Grinbergs views: The murder of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin is part of a general policy carried out by the government of the State of Israel which could be described as symbolic genocide. Incapable of getting beyond the trauma of the Shoah and the insecurity that it caused, the Jewish people, supreme victim of genocide, is currently inflicting a symbolic genocide on the Palestinian people. Because the world will not permit a total elimination, it is a partial annihilation that is going on. As a child of the Jewish people, and as an Israeli citizen, I condemn this abominable act and appeal to the international community to save Israel from itself; specifically, I exhort the European community to intervene in a direct and forceful manner to stop this blood bath. The complex ties between the Jewish people and Europe have not yet been severed, and it is time to act; not because Europe should exorcize its guilt, but indeed because it is also responsible for the future of the world. The above is just the first paragraph, but in this compact statement Grinberg has managed to include quite a few different thoughts: 1. The Government of Israel has a policy of perpetrating symbolic genocide against the Palestinian people; 2. Israel suffers from the collective trauma of the Holocaust and, as a result, is behaving psychotically, which means that, having reached a state of collective insanity, this country is no longer responsible for its actions; 3. Having once been the victim, Israel is perpetrating the same crime against the Palestinians. Todays Israel is behaving in a manner similar to that of Nazi Germany; 4. Israel would carry out a full program of annihilation but is prevented from doing so, because the world will not permit it, which means that Israel's intentions are basically criminal (and that the Jewish State is criminal); 5. Because of its collective psychotic condition that results in irresponsible behavior and criminality, the world and particularly Europe must intervene, for its own good and to save Israel from itself. (Later in the text Grinberg recommends that such intervention be of the U.N. -- but not of the Americans). Despite Grinbergs carefully formulated terminology, the term symbolic genocide, or the real thing does not apply to Israel. The main reason why Ginbergs accusation lacks merit is that the Palestinians target Israeli civilians, while Israel in the exercise of its legitimate right of self-defense does not target Palestinian civilians. One may observe that Grinberg has actually reversed the role of the criminal and the victim, portraying Israeli society as being sick and attributing to it genocidal intent which does not exist, but may be clearly identified on the other side. As Alan Dershowitz wrote, all the casualties of terrorist attacks are victims of murder in the first degree. Nothing that the Israelis have ever done can match the Palestinian targeting of civilians in murderous and even genocidal intent. To make his point, Dershowitz quoted Phyllis Chesler who wrote: Israeli female fatalities far outnumbered Palestinian female fatalities by either 3 to 1 or 4 to 1. Israeli women and girls constituted almost 40 percent of the Israeli noncombatants killed by Palestinians. Of the Palestinian deaths over 95 percent were male. In other words, Palestinians purposefully went after women, children, and other unarmed civilians and Israelis fought against armed male soldiers who were attacking them. When one considers the Palestinian culture of suicide and death that makes human bombs out of young people, one is confronted with a real example of collective insanity. There is no comparison between Israel and the Jewish people with this society, and it is a disservice to give the other side equal moral status by resorting to a discussion of the cycle of violence and the use of such terminology as tribal vengeance. Further, Israel has preserved its justice system in time of war, while the Palestinians have totally failed in this respect. Grinberg negates and trivializes the unique experience of the Holocaust which is part of the collective Jewish heritage. And by implication, he compares the Israelis with the Nazis. Although Grinberg began with a discussion of symbolic genocide, he has explicitly and without qualification made the accusation of criminal intent: that is, that given the opportunity, Israel would commit real genocide against the Palestinians. This means, that regardless of scale, symbolic or not, the full weight of the accusation is there. Actually, this accusation seems to be rather popular. Alan Dershowitz reported that Jose Saramago in March 2002 characterized Israeli efforts to defend its citizens against terrorism as a crime comparable to Auschwitz. When Saramago was pressed about where the gas chambers are, he responded, "Not here yet." Similarly, the Telegraph (UK) of 28 April 2002 reported Prof. Martin van Creveld had predicted that, with the outbreak of war in Iraq, Israel would seize the opportunity to expel two million Palestinians. (The charge in this case is not genocide but ethnic cleansing.) In both cases, criminal intent is assumed. The accusation of the reversal of roles: of the victim becoming the aggressor is also not original. It has appeared before in Belgium. In his article, Anti-Semitic motives in Belgian anti-Israel Propaganda, Joel Kotek wrote, It is worthwhile noting the words of Simon-Pierre Nothombin the daily Brussels-based Le Soir of 18 December 2001: How can such a talented and perceptive people as the Jews, who experienced so many atrocities and pain in flesh, blood, and spirit, accept today that its government and army inflict upon others who are not guilty of anything, precisely what they suffered themselves? Grinberg seems to have quite a bit of company who appear to follow the same line. One might have expected something just a bit more original from a person who has declared himself a child of the Jewish people and committed himself to the pursuit of justice in this noisy and public act. The next issue that must be addressed is the intent of such statements in the light of the current conflict. Our enemy is waging a guerilla war against the State, with the objective of bringing about its collapse by isolating it internationally, fomenting internal divisions, destroying its morale, and sabotaging the economy. In this form of conflict, which is fought primarily on the political level, a central objective is to destroy Israel's legitimacy and reattribute it to the Palestinians. To achieve this goal one must undermine any justification for the continued existence of the Jewish State. In this context, this article, written by a high level civil servant and published abroad, represents a particularly valuable asset for the other side in the propaganda war against Israel, because this political act undermines the consensus of support for Israel. (Further, a quick look at the web would reveals a strange coincidence: that the Palestinian Authority would very much welcome outside intervention, particularly of the UN.) Haaretz has viewed the situation from a narrowly defined legal position, as to whether or not Grinbergs words consist of incitement. They may or they may not. There is more at stake here then freedom of speech, because Grinberg has in effect committed a political act of some consequence. He wrote, Because the world will not permit a total elimination, it is a partial annihilation which is going on. The important issue here is the basic and fundamental assault on the legitimacy of the State which this accusation contains, because, if the State is criminal, its authority cannot be legitimate, and it then becomes a moral duty to oppose that illegitimate authority. This is the dangerous and harmful message that Professor Grinberg has propagated. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

PLANS TO BETRAY THE JEWS - AGAIN! Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 7, 2004.

This article appears in the Jewish Press. It is a revision of an article that was first publish in Novemb How many meetings or conferences on what's to be done to the Jews must the Jews endure before the world will let us live in peace? Presently, an infamous group, called the "Quartet" is meeting to decide the fate of the Jews in Israel. Look closely at this Quartet and recall how each was a hostile antagonist against Jews in their own countries for years - even centuries. The U.N., driven by the Arab oil block and general anti-Semitism, has voted over 400 condemnations against the Jewish State of Israel while never condemning Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran or even Iraq for the simple human rights violations for murdering their own people before the Iraq War. [PLEASE NOTE! MAY 7. UN General Assembly approved a resolution Thursday, May 6, affirming the Palestinians right to sovereignty over the West Bank of the Jordan River & Gaza Strip. The vote was 140-6 with 11 abstentions. The resolution is a reflection of international opinion BUT NOT LEGALLY BINDING: from Islamic Association for Palestine in Bridgeview, IL.]] This is the cabal of scum who worked a kick-back scheme to benefit U.N. (United Nations) members with the Iraqi oil-for-food Program. Kofi Annan, Head of the U.N., has been point man in this affair as well as a vicious protagonist against Israel. Then there is the E.U. (European Union). These are the Europeans who, for centuries, persecuted and murdered their Jews at the behest and encouragement of their Church-taught bias. Recall that it was all of the European nations who cooperated with Hitler in rounding up their Jews and plundering their assets. Here we find the Germans and the French - always prominent in nasty anti-Jewish work. Check out the Russians in the Quartet - always an anti-Semitic nation and remains so. Their pogroms against their Jews line the books of history. Enter the Arabist State Department (supposedly) representing America - or so they say. While the American people have always been pro-Israel, the Arabist State Department has been an anti-Jewish, anti-Israel organization since its earliest days. President Truman had the Americans vote to create the State of Israel when the British gave up their Palestinian Mandate. But, the State Department was against it and instituted a boycott against any arms to be given to the new Jewish State which was threatened and attacked by 7 well-armed Arab countries. This then is the Quartet. This is as fine gang of anti-Semitic, anti-Israel so-called diplomats as has ever assembled since the Wannsee Conference by Hitler, Heydrich and Eichmann - or the hundreds of years of Inquisition by the Church. This is the assemblage which has authorized themselves to decide the fate of the Jews as filtered through their financial interests with the primitive Arab countries - all because of Arab oil. Let's talk about the Wannsee Conference for perspective. This was a meeting in January 20, 1942 in Berlin by Lake Wannsee. This Conference, called to decide the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", was headed by Reinhard Heydrich. Chief of the German State Police and of the SD (Security Service of the SS). "Final Solution" was the Nazis code word for the deliberate, carefully planned destruction called "Genocide" of all European Jews. Fifteen high-ranking Nazi Party members and German government leaders gathered to decide how to do it - how to transport Jews from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland. Not one man present at Wannsee meeting objected to the announced policy. Never before has a modern state committed itself to the murder of an entire people. SS Obersturmbannfuhrer Adolph Eichmann recorded the session - very efficiently - as was his usual style. 11 million Jews were to be deported to death camps, including from countries NOT in a state of war against the German Reich, countries such as Sweden, Spain and Switzerland. "Half Jews" would be equated with Jews and subjected to the "Final Solution" - or sterilized. The Wannsee Conference and subsequent German actions murdered a whole people, a 1/3 rd of world Jewry, 6 million people, including 1.5 million children who will never have children! This was an important meeting for the Jews - for the Germans - for the Church - for the Europeans - all of whom invoked centuries of Church doctrine to justify and rationalize the killing of Jews with impunity. Now these same savages have gathered again to judge the Jews, claiming they will guide all to peace. These are same animals whose ancestors have gorged on the flesh and blood of the Jews during all their generations. There were centuries of meetings of the clergy to decide the best methods to force conversion on the Jews. There were the meetings of the Catholic Inquisition who blessed torture and murder with the stamp of the Church. No apology could make up for the torture, the dead, the children who will never be born. Only the dead can forgive but, of course, they are dead. I suppose we could go back to the Seven Christian Crusades where each was launched with a meeting to decide the fate of the Holy Land and, thus the fate of the Jews on the way and in the Land of Israel. These "honorable" Christians rampaged and butchered the Jewish and Muslim populations while confiscating the land in the name of a Jew whose practices and way of life as a Torah Jew have never been adopted by the Church. How quickly the Church fathers fell to killing off the Jews of his people, besmirching the name of a Torah Jew, setting in motion thousands of years of hate and slaughter which continue today with no end in sight. Let's move forward: When Israel agreed to be partitioned by the U.N. vote in November 1947, the Arabs had their infamous meetings to decide the fate of the Jews in Eretz Yisrael. They concluded that they, the Arabs Muslims, would occupy the partitioned land for themselves and kill all the Jews. This was proclaimed publicly by every Arab leader. These Arab nations, themselves the result of re-partition out the defeated Turkish Ottoman Empire, decided that the Jews had no rights, despite the Jewish history in their ancient homeland for more than 3000 years, despite the promises by G-d of the Land to the Jews who preceded the Arab Muslims in Israel by several thousand years. There were meetings, by the Arab League, replete with documented plans, to decide the fate of the Jews. This was followed by 6 war of promised extermination (7 including the 1991 Gulf War of 39 SCUDs from Saddam's Iraq). The Arab Muslims lost each war and lost land they gambled away in anticipation of confiscating the land of the Jews and all they built. How they thrilled and celebrated the coming bloodletting of the Jew and the looting afterwards. There was the infamous meeting of Arafat's Terrorists where they evolved the Palestinian Covenant in 1964 which, like the Wannsee Conference planned the extermination of all the Jews in Israel. Think of the effort that went into deciding the fate of the Jews. Let's move on! Add the 80s plan of Rabin/Peres to negotiate illegally with the Terrorist PLO to drive the Jews out of Judea and Samaria. Add the 1993 secret Oslo meetings to give away Gaza and Jericho first as an experiment to peace. Add the second Oslo to give away more of Judea and Samaria after the first failure. Add the Wye agreement to surrender Hebron which turned deadly when Terrorists flooded Hebron.. Add Barak's craven ignominious retreat from Lebanon quickly filled by Hebz'Allah and 10,000 missiles (possibly with chemical warheads supplied by Syria and/or Iran). All of the above were meetings to decide the fate of Jews by "non-Jewish" Jews. We Jews had those of our own with twisted minds who thought they could plead and bribe the Arabs to be civil, fair, peaceful. So, aberrant "non-Jewish" Jews plotted with the same Europeans who treated the Jews so well during WWII and who plotted with the Arabs who swore to their Allah to kill all the Jews that Hitler missed. These were the "non-Jewish" Jews who gave us Oslo I, Oslo II, Hebron, Wye - then came Sharm el Sheik, followed by Barak's genuflecting to Arafat, promising all Judea and Samaria and to divide Jerusalem. Now we have Sharon who is once again deciding the fate of the Jews in concert with the same Euro-trash who killed us in the millions. We Jews, indeed, carry with us the genetic trash that were ejected from Egypt's prisons and who followed the Exodus of the Jews with Moses' mistaken permission. These were called the "Erev Rav" who demanded the Jews worship the Golden Calf and this trash is still with us. You might find it reminiscent of the first Mariel boat lift which carried Castro's ejected murderers, insane and the trash of Cuba when our peanut farmer President Carter demanded freedom for Cuba's downtrodden. The Marielites are still with us in America as criminals and the insane - just as we Jews have our "Erev Rav". So, too, we Jews carry with us the aberrant trash of "non-Jewish" Jews who plead and beg the enemy to forgive us for being alive and living in our ancient homeland, promised to us by G-d. This is the aberrant Left who hate their having to carry the title of Jew and they hate real, observant Jews even more. If ever the concept of being between a rock and a hard place has meaning, it is now. On one side we have the hateful Europeans, Arabs and corrupt politicians who have abandoned their souls, if they ever had one. On the side, we have corrupt "Non-Jewish" Jews who hate us enough to make common cause with our most dedicated enemies. We Jews are again in the middle of that Rock and a Hard Place. WE have one thing going for us which the corrupted do not have. We have HaShem, the One G-d, and we are indeed hated for bringing Him into focus. The World still doesn't want the one G-d and the people of His Covenant so, they design new gods and demand that the Jews confirm their new gods as acceptable replacements. So, my dear fellow Jews, hang tough and don't let the bastards get you down. We will win. G-d said. We believe. P.S. More meetings are scheduled to decide the fate of the Jews in Israel. This Sunday, Arik Sharon will convene a meeting of his cabinet to threaten them with ejection from his government if they do not vote a symbolic approval of his perfidious surrender plan. Then he will attend a meeting in Washington in the following week where he will beg forgiveness like an evil priest asking a higher authority for approval and money. There seems to be a re-occurring Wannsee in every generation to decide the fate of the Jews. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel and Gamla He is a member of the Board of Directors and a research associate of the Freeman Center For Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm). To Go To Top

UN APPROVE PALESTINIAN SOVEREIGNTY Posted by Leo Rennert, May 7, 2004.

This was written by Melissa Radler and appeared today in the Jerusalem Post news section. By a margin of 140 to 6, the UN General Assembly adopted a watered-down, non-binding resolution granting the Palestinians self-determination and sovereignty over the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and eastern Jerusalem. The resolution, which was cosponsored by 27 Arab, Muslim, and non-aligned nations, states that the Palestinians "have the right to self-determination and to sovereignty over their territory, and that Israel, the occupying power, has only the duties and obligations of an occupying power" under the Geneva and Hague conventions. The vast majority of the UN's 191 member states, including the 25-member European Union, supported the text; those opposing the resolution included Israel, the US, Palau, the Marshall Islands, and Micronesia, and 11 nations abstained from the vote. The resolution also notes the General Assembly's "determination to contribute to the achievement of the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people and the attainment of a just and comprehensive negotiated peace settlement in the Middle East" resulting in the establishment two states. The text was revised, and language was toned down Thursday morning in order to secure European support; a statement that Israel "has no sovereignty over any part of this territory," namely the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and eastern Jerusalem, was deleted from the text, and references to a Palestinian state "based on the armistice line of 1949" was removed. "This resolution doesn't really mean anything; that's why at the end of the day they [European nations] are voting for it," said Israel's ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman. The resolution was adopted six months after the PLO observer mission to the UN led an effort to symbolically revoke Israeli authority over the territories through the UN credentials committee. The European Union, then led by Italy, blocked the effort. Addressing the assembly before the vote, Gillerman said that the resolution contradicts statements made Tuesday at UN headquarters by members of the quartet, which called on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from taking "unilateral actions that seek to predetermine issues that can only be resolved through negotiation and agreement." "This draft resolution flies in the face of that statement," said deputy US ambassador, James Cunningham. The resolution, said Gillerman, is "ill-timed, counterproductive, and sends precisely the wrong message. It offers the Palestinian side an incentive to avoid negotiations... After all, why bother with these difficult responsibilities, why fight terrorism when the General Assembly is offering... to circumvent the negotiations," he said. To Go To Top

WHAT ARE JEWISH SUICIDE BOMBERS? Posted by IamJoseph, May 7, 2004.

Q: What are Jewish suicide bombers? A: Those who condone and emulate Israel's enemies by calling a '3-STATE' as a '2-STATE' solution. Whenever a Jew performs this mad-cow mimicry of her worst enemies - forgetting when, how and why Jordon became the first '2-STATE' Solution carved out of 80% of the Mandated Jewish homeland - it is akin to Jews blowing up parts of Eretz same as the Arabs and their European supporters. The latest victim was one Jewish pregnant mother and her four siblings. "YOURS IS NOT TO FINISH THE WORKS - BUT NEITHER ARE YOU FREE TO PARTAKE THEREOF" (A twisted version of the Tanach saying - applicable to a Nation which has twisted themselves). To Go To Top

SOME POWERFUL THOUGHTS Posted by Israel BenAmi, May 7, 2004.

These are some powerful thoughts to reflect and to ponder over. This was written by Ed Evans, MGySgt., USMC (Ret.), who writes of himself, "Not as lean, Not as mean, But still a Marine." This marine really has a handle on our "AMERICA." Keep this posting going until every living American has read it and memorized it so we don't make the same mistake again. I sat in a movie theater watching "Schindler's List," asked myself, "Why didn't the Jews fight back?" Now I know why. I sat in a movie theater, watching "Pearl Harbor" and asked myself, "Why weren't we prepared?" Now I know why. Civilized people cannot fathom, much less predict, the actions of evil people. On September 11, dozens of capable airplane passengers allowed themselves to be overpowered by a handful of poorly armed terrorists because they did not comprehend the depth of hatred that motivated their captors. On September 11, thousands of innocent people were murdered because too many Americans naively reject the reality that some nations are dedicated to the dominance of others. Many political pundits, pacifists and media personnel want us to forget the carnage. They say we must focus on the bravery of the rescuers and ignore the cowardice of the killers. They implore us to understand the motivation of the perpetrators. Major television stations have announced they will assist the healing process by not replaying devastating footage of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers. I will not be manipulated. I will not pretend to understand. I will not forget. I will not forget the liberal media who abused freedom of the press to kick our country when it was vulnerable and hurting. I will not forget that CBS anchor Dan Rather preceded President Bush's address to the nation with the snide remark, "No matter how you feel about him, he is still our president." I will not forget that ABC TV anchor Peter Jennings questioned President Bush's motives for not returning immediately to Washington, DC and commented, "We're all pretty skeptical and cynical about Washington." And I will not forget that ABC's Mark Halperin warned if reporters weren't informed of every little detail of this war, they aren't "likely -- nor should they be expected -- to show deference." I will not isolate myself from my fellow Americans by pretending an attack on the USS Cole in Yemen was not an attack on the United States of America. I will not forget the Clinton administration equipped Islamic terrorists and their supporters with the world's most sophisticated telecommunications equipment and encryption technology, thereby compromising America's ability to trace terrorist radio, cell phone, land lines, faxes and modem communications. I will not be appeased with pointless, quick retaliatory strikes like those perfected by the previous administration. I will not be comforted by "feel-good, do nothing" regulations like the silly, "Have your bags been under your control?" question at the airport. I will not be influenced by so called,"antiwar demonstrators" who exploit the right of expression to chant anti-American obscenities. I will not forget the moral victory handed the North Vietnamese by American war protesters who reviled and spat upon the returning soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines. I will not be softened by the wishful thinking of pacifists who chose reassurance over reality. I will embrace the wise words of Prime Minister Tony Blair who told the Labor Party conference, "They have no moral inhibition on the slaughter of the innocent. If they could have murdered not 7,000 but 70,000, does anyone doubt they would have done so and rejoiced in it? There is no compromise possible with such people, no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: defeat it or be defeated by it. And defeat it we must!" I will force myself to: -hear the weeping -feel the helplessness -imagine the terror -sense the panic -smell the burning flesh - experience the loss - remember the hatred. I sat in a movie theater, watching "Private Ryan" and asked myself, "Where did they find the courage?" Now I know. We have no choice. Living without liberty is not living. To Go To Top

HOW TO RELATE TO ARABS Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 7, 2004.

It is the unfortunate reality of Arab culture that there are only two possible roles for men; master or slave and only one for women; slave. The master is identified as the one who inflicts pain and abuse and the slave is the one who humbly accepts. This social structure is enshrined in Islam and is expressed in the phrase "Inshe Allah" which means in a general way "the will of Allah." What it really means to an Arab is that Allah has the right to dump on them whenever he wants. He is the ultimate master and can humiliate whomever he wants. Before anyone begins to jump all over me and demands to know what are my credentials to make such statements, let me clearly state I have none. This analysis does not originate with me but is the consistent expression of dozens of Arabs I have spoken to over the years. (Though it was actually a conversation I had with a Turk in Jerusalem that put it all together for me.) Force and humiliation are integral components of the "language" Arabs use to communicate with each other. Just as one must use the appropriate gender when speaking, one must project the appropriate attitude as well. When interacting with someone you are either the master of the slave. There is no other "gender." Like anyone confronted with a foreign language and especially someone who is hearing a foreign language the first time in his life, an Arab confronted by compassion, fairness or elementary justice is startled and confused. He attempts to comprehend this new and strange phenomena within the boundaries of his life experience and quickly come to the conclusion that those relating to him as a human being deserving dignified treatment are afraid of him! All his life he has been taught that the KOFER, infidel, is an inferior creature and not much better than a woman. True, on occasion they do seem to get the upper hand but that is only Allah dumping on them because they have slacken off in their JIHAD against the infidels. As a result when an Iraqi prisoner of war is treated like a human being, given his Geneva Convention rights and not beaten or humiliated, he sees this as a clear sign that the KOFER fears him. Once upon a time we knew all this in Israel and the Arabs behaved themselves and we had relative peace. The psycho-left came and insisted that everyone in the world must be treated equally and with feel-good empathy and we forgot how to "talk" to the Arabs. The thousands of dead and tens of thousands maimed we have suffered over the Oslo disaster are the result. If the Euro-Americans do not want to follow the psycho-left's path to death and destruction, they had better learn the correct "language" to speak to the Arabs. This is a Reuter's news item that appeared yesterday on the Express India (Bombay) website and is archived at www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=31113 San Francisco, May 6: A former US military commander in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison described on Wednesday a chaotic atmosphere of disdain for Iraqi prisoners in which US guards killed at least four during two riots. Army National Guard Lt. Michael Drayton commanded the 124-person 870th Military Police Company from November to March at the prison, which is the subject of intense focus after pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused appeared last week. "You got to understand, although it seems harsh, the Iraqis they only understand force," he told Reuters in an interview. "If you try to talk to them one on one as a normal person, they won't respect you, they won't do what you want, prisoner or just normal person on the street." "So you've got to be forceful with them in some ways." "There is a frustration factor dealing with the Iraqis. Everybody wants to choke them. I don't care who you are, (if) you spend enough time around Iraqis." "But you knew what the lines were, you knew you couldn't do it," he said. A veteran of the first Gulf War as a Marine, Drayton described a constant stream of troubling reports such as of prisoners raping boys at the facility. He also told of two riots which resulted in members of his military police company killing Iraqi prisoners. "These prisoners were throwing bricks and hitting soldiers and causing bodily harm, so the guys did have the right to take them down and they did take prisoners down," he said. "In one riot I think it was two or three (killed)." He said two instigators of a second riot were also killed. Following revelations last week that US soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at the prison, the US Army revealed on Wednesday that 25 prisoners had died in Iraq and Afghanistan in US custody. They included two Iraqis murdered by Americans, one death described as justifiable homicide, and 12 deaths by natural or undetermined causes. Ten were still being investigated. HUMILIATION POSITIONS Drayton, a Sacramento, California insurance adjuster in civilian life, condemned the actions of the men and women, from a different unit, who photographed Iraqi criminals at Abu Ghraib in humiliating positions. "They put these pictures on (a) disk and they were pretty proud of it, although it was very sick what they did," he said. "What they did was extremely wrong." An "overwhelming" inflow of prisoners created a chaotic atmosphere in the prison that was notorious as a center of torture under Saddam Hussein's rule, Drayton said. He said most of the prisoners there were "security detainees" who had not been convicted of wrongdoing, although several hundred had been found guilty by Iraqi courts of crimes. US military police worked 12- 18-hour shifts guarding the prison. "At any time we may have had 250 -- the most -- MPs, and you had over 7,000 security detainees and 400 to 500 actual prisoners." "You had to make up things as you go." "You get the feeling of being overwhelmed, because you were overworked and it was pretty frustrating," he said. Military intelligence officials often interviewed prisoners but did not help administer the facility, he said. It was in the violent atmosphere of the prison riots that six soldiers took the infamous photos of abuse that led to their court martial. He said the prisoners involved were criminals who would be unlikely to provide useful information rather than security detainees. One of the Iraqis shown in the pictures, Hayder Saddar Abd, was quoted in the New York Times on Wednesday as saying he was never interrogated nor charged with a crime. Drayton said the abuse was carried out by "just a few individuals who felt that they were dealing with prisoners in their way." "The company itself that was involved with it, they were a pretty good group. It was just a few bad seeds." He described them as otherwise unremarkable young soldiers from West Virginia and Maryland. "You have to understand that a majority of Iraqis have no education at all and plus for the last 30 plus years, all they understand is terror and force and abuse," Drayton said. "You tell an Iraqi to do something and he wouldn't do it...you can only yell at them until you are blue in the face." Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

EVERYBODY'S CRYING, WHY AREN'T YOU? Posted by Evelyn Hayes, May 6, 2004.

There's no more Tali. No more mommy. No more kids. No more about to be born. Six dead. One whole family exterminated. Shot close range. Again. Again. Dead. Just a mourning father. A mourning nation. A beautiful mommy and beautiful kids, gone. Toddler gone. Can you shoot a pregnant mother? A girl in her seat belt. Sisters. Toddler. Can you shoot them dead! Dead! Dead! Can you execute them because they are Jews? It happened before. Everyone's crying. Why aren't you? There's no more Tali. A beauty wiped out. Love blasted away. Blame it on Arafat al Husseini the Egyptian who learned everything on the Mufti's knee. the same mufti Haj al-Husseini that attacked the Jews before Hitler, before the state, before, when he was made a statesman by a liberal to stop his attacks, and all Balfour Mandate for the Jewish State in Palestine got was pogroms 1929, 1936 with a lot of help from Egypt and Syria in-migrants, those who took the places of the Jews to kill them in Israel before Hitler killed them in his human incinerators. and then the mufti went to Germany to incite Hitler to kill more Jews in a mass dissolution,. There are no more 6 million: 1 million kids, laughter, learning, love all lost, tossed into ovens, burnt, ashes, with a lot of help from the mufti, the mentor of Arafat al Husseini the Egyptian, also known as Abdul Rauf elCodbi alHusseini, student rebel rouser in Egypt, exiled terrorist from Lebanon, murderer, mega-crook, mega miser, mega weapons acquirer, collaborator killer who seduces his kids like Hitler's kids to do what their parents cannot do - kill by killing themselves, with a lot of help from those who refused to cry. There is no more Tali, mother, children, no living legacy of such great love. Will she be another statistic that doesn't count as those who don't cry deify the killer's fierce anger and bolster his spoon fed haters by starvation, deprivation, kampfdom, while the Jewish refugee from Eurasia, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya (where Ghadaffi apologized and called them back), is living with his extended families, is getting on with his renewed life, his legacy, his work without the estate he created creating another estate and a new family, never forgetting, building on what he had, keeping so much alive. There is no more Tali, Jewess, wife, mother, neighbor, friend, social worker, concerned, caring, fighting for Jewish rights where Jews were wronged, refugeed and where those not crying would refugee again the Jew who keeps on coming back to Jewish Gaza after the Romans named Israel Palestine, after the Moslems scattered out, after Napoleon lost, after the British Mandate allowed the Jews to return, after Egypt was defeated and it was 1967. Yes, the Jews were in Gaza before the Arab invasions in 1948 from the North, the South, the East and their old Arab neighbors welcomed them back and saw the miracle, the desert turned fertile again. Everybody's crying. Why aren't you? Are you crying for Yassin and Rantisi and Arafat? for Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein's depraved sadists? Are you crying for those dancing with human organs disemboweled, still warm, those wiping young Cobi Mandell's blood on cave walls just like in the time of Mohammed 1400 hundred years ago? Are you crying because its "illiberal" to be moral to the moral because they weren't good enough? Are you crying because wrong's right and right keeps on fighting and will outlive all the depraved, depriving, thriving on denying and driving mass hate into road wraps that are designing to drive all dhimmis off their maps.. Six million gone. One thousand gone. It's not just the Jews. It's Twin Buddhas. Twin Towers. Twin Attacks. Enslavement of Coptic Christians, murder in Lebanon, Afghanistan by Taliban, so many mass graves across Iraq? What's going on in Africa? Are Africans Jews to suffer such enslavement, silent exterminations again and again? Are you sure the Wahhabi like you? Everybody's crying. Why aren't you? If you don't cry with every dhimmi including Jews, Americans, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Africans you might be crying all alone. Take a deep breath. It's easy to cry. I cried for Lapid. I cried for Gavriel. I cried for Sara. I cried for Hillel. I cried for the Shabo family, the Appelbaums. I keep crying for everyone, names I remember and names I forget. All innocent. All loving in the midst of hate. I cry for orphan Chaya, so wise at eight. Shabbos! SHARON, one Shabbos wasn't enough. Shaking hands with those ignoring G-d's laws is wilding the west bank and western civilization, the Orient, Africa, Serbia, the globe. BUSH, stop spending more time defending than mending the broken hearts and lives by concentrating on putting an end to those engaged in war, not because of the fourteen million Jews, so many old, maimed, so many confused, so many democrats like you. It's all because Mein Kampf is a number one bestseller in Arafatistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria. It's all because the Big Lie makes a Bigger Pie that Monster Warlords keep for themselves with just a little to tease the tastes of lesser men who compromise themselves and their nations and their morality even when there is microfilm and archaeology still. You still aren't crying? I wipe my tears. I'll live for loved ones lost and love the survivors left behind. Everybody's crying. Let our tears clear our vision to see the path of Avraham who chose G-d. They were screaming in Sodom, the Third Reich, Durban hatefest, remember. Kofi Annan's son was involved in Saddam's Iraq. Peres Peace company is funded by EU with a lot of help from Arafat, Jihad and company. Sharon's son was involved in the Greek Island affair. Can you see through gold? I don't look at gold as I'm the Jew they still hate, the dead Jew whose golden teeth they kept, whose Golden Jerusalem they covered and then excavated to erase all remnants of the holy Lord and the Eternal Jew who will survive and will surely reclaim that which he was chosen to acclaim as Eternal Flame and light for all nations. Blame the Jew because your support might make you a Wahhabi even if you don't want to. Blame America befriending friends and fighting for freedom for America and all victims of jihad. No excuses. Israel is fighting to survive. No more land for peace. It landed war, global jihad, death and gore. Appeasement has become an easement of evil in the land of the good and even oceans are no barrier, even Juddenrein will not save those who failed to save themselves while excusing the slayers of the Jews and other dhimmis Everybody's crying. Why aren't you? If you don't cry for the innocent, no one will cry for collaborators with the guilty, guilty of killing pregnant mothers without guns, sisters with their seatbelts on, toddler in her car seat, about to-be-born protected in the womb, the womb of its murdered mother, dead. Is she guilty because she loves, plants, flowers, is a social worker? Are you accusing the Jew even while he's crying, trying to stay alive in 22% of the Jewish mandate voted by the League of Nations before there was Iraq, Syria. Lebanon, 78% less because the Arabs of Palestine got a new nation who chose to be called Jordan, not Palestine. Everybody's crying. If you can cry the world will see the light. Maybe your laughter will be of joy and not the laughter of the sadist glorying with the goring and being killed because his killers were never on his side even though he wasn't a Jew, blamed the Jews, defamed the Jews, ignored history, victory, actuality, good deeds and the miracles that could have been his miracles, too. Don't worry, even if you don't cry, we will never be destroyed. We will survive this evil pan-jihad fascism, too. I see a rainbow in my tears. Evelyn Hayes is author of The Plague Series: "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, because their hearts are softened to accept the unacceptable" and "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." and "Thirteen, REDEMPTION, because" To Go To Top

FAITH AND HOPE Posted by Yocheved Golani, May 6, 2004.

A charming green and orange picture drawn by children circles the bottom of the tree on the family's front lawn. "What a wonderful Day?" the visible half announces to people passing by. Windowsills are filled with toys and childish keepsakes. The family name is carved into the wooden sign near the ample gazebo overlooking the street. Tables bear colorful soft drinks, cakes and bottles of chilled water. Clearly a lot of people are expected. Except for the refreshments, the scene is just as it was before the mother of the family took her children for an outing. A large blue tent billows in the soft breeze a few footsteps from the front door, just past the tree and its merry sign. Its rounded top and generous sides shielding visitors from the overhead sun, the temporary shelter rests on a neatly manicured lawn. All the lawns in the neighborhood look as lush as this one, every home as beautiful a villa as the one over here. A faint scent of ocean air floats among the warm perfume of the blossoming flowers filling every neighborhood yard. Children scamper over sand dunes in the distance. One little boy shyly saunters by the crowd, listlessly holding a bunch of colorful balloons. None of the youngsters is audible. There are no outdoor sounds competing with the faint bird songs here and there, only the soft conversational mumbling inside the tent. The children and the birds, life's gentlest creatures, see the emphatic presence of IDF tanks on the roads and the silent soldiers perched on them. At the community synagogue the doorways are decorated with glass mezuzot cases trimmed in vivid, jewel-colored embellishments. Appointed with softly colored wooden trim and beams, smooth stucco walls accented with cream-colored tiles and beige ceramic floors, the synagogue is large, antiseptically clean and airily inviting. Its large wooden front door is open. The door touches a hand-made poster on the outside wall. "The Eternal People is Not Afraid," childish writing proclaims. The men inside are discussing the imminent arrival of a donated Torah scroll. Everything here looks fresh and alive, but something important is amiss. The men in the synagogue are finalizing plans to use the soon-to-arrive Torah, a Tree of Life for Those Who Keep Its Laws, as a memorial. They keep glancing and sighing toward the blue tent and replenished reception tables before the only house in the area with cars densely parked around it. Sad-eyed soldiers mill about there as relatives and friends arrive to share their grief. The wooden sign with the family name flips in a gust of wind. Hatuel. Tali Hatuel's mother Shoshana is holding my hands as she sits upon an overturned mattress on the ground inside the blue tent, gently explaining to me that the Jewish People only needs to live with its Emunah and Tikva, faith and hope, as we have always done. "And when a Jew sees a Jew that is not exactly like him, not dressed the same, religious or not religious, we must say Shalom and be friendly. We are all one family." Tali's two sisters listen as they gaze alternatively at their mother and at the crowd before them. Their clothes are ripped at the neckline, above their hearts. David Hatuel is mourning his wife and children H?YD with his father-in-law on another mattress nearby, grasping the hands of men embracing and kissing them. When visitors are not leaning down to pay their respects, David's handsome face is strong, his gaze steady. He holds the eyes of his companions as they speak. His straight back and set mouth bespeak the strength of his will. His twelve-year residence in Gush Katif, his very life before and after the loss of his family, is a message to one and all. Its essence is captured on a sign near the community center, where black Hebrew letters spell out "The Jews will live forever in Israel in every generation..." They are interrupted by the bold red words, "And I [G-D] will avenge their blood." Part of the Av Harachamim prayer from the Shabbat service, the poster completes the phrase in black letters, "And I [G-D] will dwell in Zion." A cell phone chirrups near Tali's bereaved mother, who answers most calls. "They are from Hong Kong, the USA, everywhere," she tells me. "People are so sad, so sorry. I don't know them. Yet they call." The details of the Torah donation under the auspices of The Sefer Torah Recycling Network have been finalized. The holy scroll with its Sfardi script will soon grace the Hatuel's community. With an eternal message abut what constitutes moral behavior and a Divine guarantee about the destiny of the Jewish People, it's a fitting tribute to the woman and children it will memorialize. "Tali was so sad that there was no Torah here when she first arrived," her mother explains to me. "She came with her mezuzot and mattresses. There wasn't much." At the Kissufim junction a few kilometers from the house, spinning off the winding asphalt ribbon that is the Gush Katif Highway is an area of sand gutted with frantic tire treads crazily pointing in various directions and well below the surface. It is here that bloodlust prompted the murders of Tali and her defenseless children H?YD, one by shrieking one. Visitors have the option of arriving to this spot in an armored vehicle, shielded from bullets and intruders. Tali and her children didn't have that privilege when they ventured out to convince fellow Israelis to vote for the preservation of Gush Katif. As I look on the scene, a radio nearby broadcasts jarring updates about Iraqi prisoners of war. Those Coalition prisoners, who would have continued to cause chaos and mayhem had they not been stopped, garner more media attention than do these defenseless innocents. There is no mention on the airwaves of the obscenity that happened here. "I used to be against the Gush, a real Likudnik all the way to the right" my cab driver Moshe Chafetz announced on our way here. "Then I met the people and I changed my mind." He later points out the parallel Arab road bobbing up and down among the sand dunes as we drive from the shiva house. "They can drive totally unafraid, and the Jews are close by." We happen to be a few arms' lengths from the other side. Moshe jabs a finger at the dilapidated housing below eye level that he says is occupied by Bedouin "who moved in after the other Arabs fled. They deserted their homes." Moshe laughs at the sight of the Palestinian Flour Mills [Editor notes: long suspected as a Arab storage area for armements]. "Nobody produces, nobody buys," he scoffs. "It's a facade." He sighs for the lovely palm trees removed from the roads by the IDF. "They were cover for Arab sniper fire. Oy." As Moshe and our companions head toward Jerusalem, other visitors leave the large blue tent and walk on the other side of the tree in the Hatuel's front yard. They must surely see the rest of the ironic sign ringing the front-yard tree, as we did. "What a Wonderful Day... in Gush Katif." Yocheved Golani can be reached at www.yochevedgolani.com. To Go To Top

BENNY BEGIN - MY KIND OF GUY Posted by Moshe Brodetzky, May 6, 2004.

This was written by Yossi Sarid and published in Ha'aretz today. It is archived at www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/424697.html Benny Begin was spared no form of insult after he popped out of the Geological Institute for a moment in order to slam the bizarre disengagement plan and to strengthen the hand of its opponents. He was described as a dinosaur who suddenly returned to life and will soon be extinct again, and as a fossil in which only geologists (like him) have any interest. It hardly needs saying that it would be difficult to find anyone in the political arena who is farther from me than Benny Begin. If he is for the Whole Land of Israel, I am for the whole of Israel within the 1967 borders; if he is for all the settlements, I am for their evacuation. But in this case it's not Benny Begin who deserves contempt, but precisely those who are contemptuous of him. Benny Begin deserves high regard - even if one disagrees with him on every issue, as I do. I confess: Begin is definitely my kind of guy. He can't be bought and he can't be sold. If the country and the Knesset were filled only with Begins, there could be a problem. And with only Sharons, Olmerts and Bibis, we don't have a problem? And how we have a problem. I am sympathetic toward people like Begin, because without them we would forget where we came from, where we are going, and for what we have to give an accounting - to ourselves and to others. I certainly prefer him to two other species of politicians. One species is that of the apostates, whether for spite or for convenience. It's very desirable and perfectly permissible, of course, for Sharon and Olmert to change their minds totally overnight, but let them at least give us some sort of explanation: How is it that only half a year ago Netzarim, the isolated Gaza settlement, was as important to them as Tel Aviv, and suddenly, from one day to the next, it's the most serious threat to the state's security. Their plan had everything, but it lacked one thing: an explanation, however feeble. And the enthusiasm - what can I tell you? When I saw Olmert, all worked up, gesticulating wildly on every platform, I thought to myself that maybe less enthusiasm and more admission of guilt would be more persuasive. For 40 years they created a golem and now they expect it to do an instant flip-flop. Things have gone topsy-turvy: the golem has become the creator, the creator the golem. But the second species of politician is even worse than the passionate apostates. These are the bisexuals, who have both masculine and feminine organs. They are both for and against, both supporting disengagement and objecting to it, accepting it with one condition: that it will be eradicated from the world. Examples of this species are Benjamin Netanyahu, Limor Livnat and maybe also Silvan Shalom. There is no species I abhor more, and one Benny Begin is worth all of those others put together. I know that a large part of the public, and especially among the observers and commentators, will actually prefer the disruptive, zigzagging politicos. They consider them realists, people you can cut a deal with, and say that they, with their zigzagging and maneuvering, will extricate us from the mess we are mired in. There is some truth to that: We won't get far with people like Benny Begin, and if we have only them, we will live perpetually by the sword. But with people like him we will at least know which way the wind is blowing and not feel as though we're just blowing in the wind. Things would be impossible solely with people like Begin, but is it possible to exist without them? If so, alas and alack for us. People who lead us up the garden path are dangerous, and the garden is usually full of thorns, too. Benny Begin is definitely not one to deceive us like that. So it's worthwhile and important to argue with him bitterly, but there is no justification to despise or disparage him. Moreover, in the battle of forces - and our commentators mainly like politics of force - Begin this time wiped the floor with Sharon and Olmert. The power of ideology has not yet vanished completely, and that's probably the only positive thing in the whole fiasco of the referendum and its results. In this connection, people in these parts like to quote Moshe Dayan, who is said to have uttered the famous remark that "only mules don't change their mind." In our political menagerie, there are a lot of wolves and hyenas and foxes, and various other creatures from the reptile and invertebrate families, but what we really lack are a few more mules like Benny Begin. Moshe Brodetzky is a longtime activist, mobilizing the Washington Jewish community to help free Soviet Jews. To Go To Top

SPARE US THE ORCHESTRATED OUTRAGE Posted by JINSA, May 6, 2004.

This is the JINSA Report #410. Puh-leeze Spare us the orchestrated outrage over the alleged abuses by a small number of American soldiers against Iraqi prisoners. Whatever happened a) was reported by honorable soldiers to their superiors and b) was investigated. We are certain that c) the incident will be adjudicated and d) the perpetrators punished severely, we hope. Guilt will fall on those who are judged guilty of crimes. That's the way we do it. We have different grounds for outrage: CBS, and then the American press ran those pictures generally with carefully scripted and reasonably balanced text. Americans got the idea that whatever it was, it a) wasn't government policy, b) upset a lot of government officials and c) would be punished. Now, maybe it is possible that the American media thought the same careful attention to allegations as allegations would mark Arab press coverage. But we don't think so. As could have been and probably was anticipated, the same images are being replayed ad nauseum in the Arab/Moslem world with a different script. Millions of people, many illiterate and receiving only the censored views of dictatorial governments are being told that these photographs represent only a few of the regular abuses heaped upon pure and innocent Arabs by the brutal hordes of American soldiers. The stories are filled with the blood of martyrs created by maniacal GIs and the need for revenge. The incitement ginned up by these photographs may, in fact, create the rise of an Arab street that has been remarkably quiet thus far. Hmmmmmmmm... A quick flash of 9-11 in a campaign ad was enough to cause orchestrated outrage over the abuse of images. In fact, there are almost NO images of 9-11 ever seen in the American media. Nor are there images of mass graves found in Iraq. American forensic specialists estimate more than 400,000 bodies, including women and children, are in those graves. Nor are there images of the tortured victims of Saddam. Those images that might incite AMERICAN anger and make AMERICANS understand the nature of the regimes we fight simply are not there. And the one that made it--the desecration of American bodies in Falluja--was followed by assorted mea culpas by editors who were told that they had offended Arab sensibilities by suggesting that Arabs went in for that sort of thing. But images of Iraqis allegedly abused by American soldiers--no delicacy required. No respect for the right to privacy of those Iraqis. No mea culpas. Photos that incite our anger are self-censored; photos that incite anger against American soldiers in the field and American civilians abroad are widely published. Hmmmmmmmmm... We don't think government censorship is appropriate in this, or in most other cases. But America is at war and propaganda is part of the battle. In this case, the media probably knowingly allowed itself to be used by enemies of our country--their country. The highest journalistic ethic is objectivity, not neutrality. To knowingly incite the mob is not objective, nor even neutral. It is participation in the war on the wrong side. The JINSA Reports are published by the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (http://www.jinsa.org). To subscribe, email jinsareports-www@lists.jinsa.org To Go To Top

RETHINKING A 'PALESTINIAN' STATE Posted by Beth Goodtree, May 6, 2004.

Why does everyone seem to think that the murderous and genocide-bent Arabs now occupying Israeli land (1) deserve their own country? Are the world -- and especially our leaders -- suffering from collective Alzheimer's and can't remember even recent history? Or are they just ignorant of the facts and believe anything the Arabs say? Let's go back to the early 1960s, before Israel was besieged, yet again, by the surrounding Arab countries and fought for her very existence. At that time, Egypt ruled Gaza and Jordan controlled Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). If there was such a thing as "Palestinians," (aside from the Jews who have always been known as Palestinians for the past 2000 years), how come none of them were screaming for their own country then? How come none of them demanded that Egypt and Jordan cut out pieces of themselves and give it to these other Arabs on a platinum platter? How come they were not bellowing about 'occupation' and 'humiliation'? Want an answer? I'll let one of the so-called "Palestinian" Arab leaders tell you in his own words: "The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism." (2) Even the "Palestinian" Arab's own leaders admit they are a fraud. And instead of being outraged at all the taxpayer money the world has poured into them to sustain this fraud, as well as to aid and abet terror and genocide, the world seeks to demonize their victims, the Jews living in their aboriginal homeland of Israel. Now let's talk genocide. International law forbids it. And in case anyone reading this is unsure about what constitutes genocide, here is the abbreviated version: Murdering a person or a group of people based upon their nationality, race, religion or ethnic origin is genocide. The Arab "Palestinians" clearly, to this day, advocate and practice genocide upon the Jewish/Israeli people on a daily basis. Nor is this just the leaders or a few "terrorist" factions. Their own polls (3) show that a majority like the idea of murdering Jewish babies, women --especially pregnant ones (4) -- men, and elderly. Hateful words are also a war crime. In 1966 The UN drafted the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It states: "Any advocacy of national racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence shall be prohibited by law." This law was ratified by 151 nations including America (5). Not a day goes by when this war crime is not willfully committed by these Arabs. They call the Jews "descendents of apes and pigs." They say that Jews make matzoh out of the blood of children, and much worse. And this is broadcast on their national television 24/7/365 -- using money paid to them by America and the EU. Taking all the facts, the Arabs who erroneously call themselves "Palestinians" do not merit their own country for the following reasons: 1.) They are not a separate or different people - their own leaders admit it. 2.) They have, as part of their official documents, the aim to commit genocide (6). 3.) They are in the process of trying to perpetrate terror and genocide on a daily basis. 4.) The government as well as the populace are continually and unendingly guilty of war crimes. However, there is one reason alone that this travesty of creating a terrorist country has been going forward: OIL. These particular Arabs don't have it, but their friends and allies do. Are you, the non-Jewish world, willing to sacrifice an entire people for the sake of oil that can be gotten elsewhere? What would Jesus say if He knew that you would allow His own people to be murdered and once again exiled from their homeland so you could live in luxury and drive your SUV? It is time to make a moral decision here. It is not too late to change your mind. Are you listening, Christendom of Europe -- you who are being overrun with Islamists who say "first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people?" Are you listening, President Bush and candidate Kerry? Where do your morals reside, with oil and lies or truth and justice? 1) Israel won that land fairly within the international laws regarding the articles and conventions of war since she was attacked by surrounding countries. (2) Zahir Muhsein, PLO executive committee member, in an interview with the Dutch newspaper "Trouw" March 31, 1977 and http://www.paktoday.com/expert.htm (3) http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/9/22/105509.shtml (4) PA Radio Praises Murder of Pregnant Woman and Her 4 Children: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=61855 (5) http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20031203-113817-3449r.htm (6) PLO: Charter denies Israel's right to exist; http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=38172. And, http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35632. And, http://www.iris.org.il/quotes/quote50.htm. And, http://mathaba.net/x.htm?http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=37427 Right after my article came out, the UN drafted and passed a resolution which seems to be a direct reponse to that piece. Here is the coverage of that resolution: "UN approves resolution saying Palestinians have 'right to sovereignty'" By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent. The full article is at www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/424641.html NEW YORK - The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday voted 140-6 to approve a resolution that says the Palestinians "have the right to self-determination and to sovereignty over their territory." The vote was supposed to take place earlier in the day, but it was postponed to allow changes demanded by European countries to an earlier draft proposed by the PLO. Israel, the United States and four Pacific islands were among the nations that voted against the resolution, while the 11 abstentions included Australia, Peru, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic. According to the draft, "the status of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, reminds one of military occupation, and affirm, in accordance with the rules and principles of international law and relevant resolutiuons of the United Nations, including Security Council resolutions, that the Palestinian people have the right to self-determination and to sovereignty over their territory, and that Israel, the occupying power, has only the duties and obligations of an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention." Beth Goodtree is an award-winning writer, with a background in advertising. She writes political commentary and the occasional humor and science articles. To Go To Top

VIRULENT SAUDI ANTI-SEMITISM STARTS AT THE TOP Posted by Leo Rennert, May 6, 2004.

This is a MEMRI article that appeared today. It is entitled " "Saudi Princess Responds to Charges of Antisemitism in Saudi Royal Family." It is a MEMRI Special Dispatch - Saudi Arabia/Arab Antisemitism Documentation Project. To view this Special Dispatch in HTML format, please visit: http://www.memri.org/bin/opener_latest.cgi?ID=SD70804 Following the terrorist attack in Yunbu, Saudi Arabia on May 1, 2004, Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah said in a meeting with dignitaries broadcast on Saudi TV that "Zionism is behind terrorist actions in the Kingdom... I am 95% sure of that."(1) Several days later, during an interview in which he was asked for a clarification, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said, "It is not hidden from anyone that extremist Zionist elements are engaging in a vulgar campaign against the kingdom by espousing and disseminating lies and incitement against the Saudi government... The terror operations taking place today serve the interests of the extremist Zionist elements, and this means that they [the perpetrators of the operations and the Zionist elements] share common interests."(2) The Saudi Embassy in Washington, DC also posted the Saudi foreign minister's remarks that Zionists are behind terrorism in Saudi Arabia.(3) According to media reports, Bush administration officials were "stunned" by Crown Prince Abdallah's comments. On May 5, U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James Oberwetter met with Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal regarding the comments; an American official reports that "it wasn't a particularly productive exchange."(4) In addition, Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA), who is the Ranking Member of the House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations, replied on the floor of the House of Representatives: "... What an outrage. What blatant hypocrisy... two and a half years after the September 11 attacks, Saudi Arabia still cannot look in the mirror and face the truth. Its own extremist ideology is corroding Saudi society and exporting the damage to countless others. How ironic that Abdallah accuses Zionism, whatever he intends that word to mean, while the Saudi kingdom inculcates its young with hatred of Christians, Jews, and Western Civilization... I urge Prince Abdallah to retract his sickening and absurd statements, and I call on him to apologize..." Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, also condemned what he referred to as the "outrageous antisemitic comments." In an article in today's Saudi English language daily Arab News, Saudi Princess Fahda bint Saud responded to an article by MEMRI's Executive Director Steven Stalinsky published on April 21, 2004. The following is Princess Fahda's article, and the article that prompted it:(5) Saudi Princess Fahda: 'Anti-Saudi Campaign: Enough is Enough' "Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute, has published an article under the title 'The Royal Treatment, Anti-Semitism, that is.' "He starts his piece with this statement: The Saudi royal family has been on the forefront in espousing an extreme position of hatred toward Jews ... which influences the Kingdom's educational system and media and subsequently its foreign policy. "He proceeds by citing examples of statements and policies of the leaders of this country since its inception which are against Jews and hence anti-Semitic. To be more clear about this issue, certain facts need to be stated. First, the writer of this article must have been in great hurry to publish it, as his references are a collection of pieces of articles taken out of their contexts. "Secondly, he missed stating that the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia made the issue of Palestine a personal commitment. This was an issue which shaped the Kingdom's foreign policy and was raised in the first historical meeting between King Abdul Aziz and U.S. President Roosevelt in 1945, whereby the latter promised to halt emigration of Jews to Palestine and not to endanger the position of Palestinians, a promise which has been broken by all American presidents who followed, but was kept alive by all Saudi kings who came to power after their legendary father. Another promise was taken up by Saudi Arabia in 1946 at the formation of the Arab League in Egypt, whereby Arab states declared that from that day onward the Palestinian question concerned not merely Palestinians but the Arabs as a whole. "Saudi Arabia has paid a huge price for keeping up this promise internally and externally and the result we are witnessing now: A smear campaign abroad to pressure this country into abandoning its commitment toward the Palestinians. "A more valid statement is that the people of Saudi Arabia represented by its leaders are indeed anti-Zionists but not antisemites. Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, who met King Saud in Riyadh in 1955 (www.alfredlilienthal.com/kingandi.htm), indicated in his article published by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs that anti-Zionism should not be equated with antisemitism, the racist ideology directed against Jews as Jews. Nor should Zionism, the political movement established to reconstitute Jews as a nation, be equated with Judaism. Dr. Lilienthal, who was the second Jew to meet a Saudi king, proceeds by saying: The words 'antisemitism' and 'antisemitic' are, in fact, misnomers. Jews constitute no more than 10 percent of the world Semites. The overwhelming majority of Semites are Arabs. Furthermore, most Jews today could not trace their ancestry back to the holy land and, therefore, are not true Semites at all. Ninety percent of the world's Jews are descended from converts to Judaism, mostly the Khazars in what once was southern USSR. I think Steven Stalinsky is one of them. In fact, it is the Zionists who have been antisemites starting from the holy land of Palestine and ending with a worldwide movement against Muslims and Arabs who form 90 percent of the Semites. The proof of which is his article. "Besides, Israel and Saudi Arabia do not recognize each other and do not have diplomatic relations. Then how is either state expected to treat the other's citizens? "At the same time, Jews who happen to be citizens of other countries like the U.S. and work for their governments have always been welcomed by Saudi Arabia, keeping with diplomatic norms. "As for Interior Minister Prince Naif's statements which Stalinsky quotes in his article, there is no denying that the September 11 attacks have served the interests of the Zionists more than they have any other group's. Can anyone dare deny this fact? "Concerning Prince Sultan's accusing the Jewish congressmen of being at the forefront of lobbying in the interest of Israel and its perceived enemies, could this assertion be denied? If the pro-Israeli lobby did not influence the U.S. media, then the U.S. could hardly prefer the interests and friendship of a small country like Israel to that of 1.5 billion Muslims. Neither would Israel receive more aid than the rest of the world put together (almost). "Moreover, Saudi kings can hardly be accused of being antisemites. They can't be against themselves and their people. "Saudi kings were raised by their father King Abdul Aziz to be experienced regional politicians and to fight injustice wherever it may be. And they are paying a price for this. The stability of this country is being undermined by inimical forces as confirmed by Crown Prince Abdullah after the Yanbu bombings."(6) 'The Saudi Royal Family and the Jews' On April 21, 2004, Steven Stalinsky wrote the following article about the Saudi royal family and antisemitism: "Leading members of the Saudi royal family have been on the forefront of espousing an extreme position of hatred toward Jews, influencing the Kingdom's educational system, press, mosques, and its foreign and domestic policy. "In its first attempt to attract tourists to the country, Saudi Arabia's tourist commission, under the control of Prince Sultan bin Abd Al-Aziz, launched its website in March 2004, which listed those not allowed into the kingdom: 'Israeli passport holders or those whose passport has an Israeli arrival/departure stamp; those who do not abide by the Saudi traditions concerning appearance and behavior; those under the influence [of alcohol]; and Jewish people.' "The Saudi embassy's Washington spokesman, Nail Al-Jubeir, said that he was 'stunned' when he saw the website, while Saudi Ambassador to America Prince Bandar bin Sultan explained that he was 'embarrassed.' According to a press release by the Saudi Embassy, 'The information on the website was not correct and as a consequence the erroneous material was removed.' "The ambassador's father, Prince Sultan, who serves as secretary general of the Tourism Commission, said in a statement that the controversy was 'blown out of all proportions' by American press seeking to portray the Kingdom as antisemitic. He added: '... It is all part of a smear campaign meant to tarnish Saudi Arabia's image.' "Prince Sultan, who is also the second deputy prime minister, defense and aviation minister, and inspector general of Saudi Arabia, has been making statements against Jews for years. Following a ceremony at the Saudi Public Institution for Military Industries in June 2002, when asked about American criticism of Saudi Arabia, Prince Sultan replied to the Saudi daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, 'It is enough to see a number of congressmen wearing Jewish yarmulkes to explain the allegations against us.' According to Al-Hayat, which also reported the incident, the minister cut off a journalist, saying: 'Say 'Jewish congressmen.' It is enough that in the pictures you see some congressmen wearing Jewish yarmulkes. That is sufficient.' More recently, the Saudi royal family Web site, Ain-Al-Yaqeen, quoted Prince Sultan discussing American reform initiatives in its March 26 to April 3 issue, explaining that the American press, which is 'under the Jewish influence,' is using the initiative to widen the gap between Arab countries and America. "Prince Sultan's brother, the Saudi minister of interior, Prince Naif bin Abd Al-Aziz, has also made accusations against the Jews. In what has since become an infamous interview reported in Ain-Al-Yaqeen a year after the September 11 attacks, Prince Naif explained that Arabs were not involved in the attacks, saying, 'We put big question marks and ask who committed the events of September 11 and who benefited from them. Who benefited from events of 9/11? I think they [the Zionists] are behind these events.' "Saudi kings have also been known to espouse extreme antisemitic opinions. Saudi Princess Fahda bin Saud ibn Abd Al-Aziz, who has been described as 'the daughter of King Saud and the historian of her father's reign,' writes occasionally in the Saudi press on conspiracy theories against the Jews and America. She has written that her father's views on the Jews and the Jewish state still serve as inspiration for the Arab and Muslim world. In one article she authored, she explained that King Saud called the Jewish state a deadly disease which would never be accepted by Arabs: '... King Saud made the right diagnosis: 'The Zionist threat is like cancer - in dealing with it neither medicine nor surgery will do any good.' This royal statement was meant to emphasize that the Arabs do not, and will not, accept an Israeli state amidst them.' The article added that under the leadership of King Saud, the Saudi representative to the United Nations called for the U.N. to establish an agency 'to help resettle Jews [now in Israel] in their former European homes.' "The late King Faisal was also notorious for making anti-Semitic statements. He told the Egyptian magazine Al-Musawwar in 1972, 'While I was in Paris on a visit, the police discovered five murdered children. Their blood had been drained, and it turned out that some Jews had murdered them in order to take their blood and mix it with the bread they eat on that day.' "The Saudi royal family's hatred of the Jews is now influencing its next generation. Saudi Prince Amr Muhammad Al-Faisal writes often in the Saudi press articles warning Jews in America that eventually Americans will turn against them. In one article he declared: 'Dear cousins, if you hear a snap in two or three years, it will probably be the sound of the trap shutting on your collective necks. You have been warned.' "Given that the Saudi royal family controls its country's press, mosques, and textbooks, they are clearly responsible for the hatred of Jews which has become closely associated with the Kingdom." Endnotes: (1) Saudi 1 Television, May 2, 2004. (2) Al-Watan (Saudi Arabia), May 5, 2004. (3) Saudi Embassy website, http://www.saudiembassy.net/2004News/News/NewsDetail.asp?cIndex=3569 (4) Newsweek, May 5, 2004. (5) New York Sun, April 21, 2004; National Review Online, April 28, 2004. (6) Arab News (Saudi Arabia), May 6, 2004. The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request. Contact them by e-Mail at memri@memri.org or go to their website: www.memri.org To Go To Top

ABANDONING GAZA WON'T END TERROR Posted by Anita Tucker, May 6, 2004.

I wrote this letter to Jeff Jacoby about his article that I post below. It is entitled "Abandoning Gaza Won't End Terror" and it appeared today in the Boston Globe. Mr. Jacoby can be reached by email at jacoby@globe.com I'm overwhelmed with respect for you! Finally I have found a U.S. newspaper reporter who is willing to finally tell the true story of this area as it is. I have been interviewed by many reporters these 30 years that I live here in Gush Katif. Few are willing to listen with there ears open, look with their eyes open and then report what they really see. Most come with their opinions set and use my name and picture to express their own preset opinion. The inhumanity of these killers and those that incite them and send them must finally shock the world! This cruel terror is becoming the worlds problem as every place in the world has become a possible target of these bloodthirsty subhumans. We hope the world is beginning to appreciate the bravery of the peaceful productive inhabitants of Gush Katif who are among the few in the world who are standing up to this intolerable terror by going on with their productive lives. With great respect, Sincerely Anita Tucker, Netzer Hazani,Gush Katif,Israel MEIRAV, the 2-year-old, had been strapped into a car seat for safety. But car seats are no protection against bullets, and by the time rescue workers reached the Citroen station wagon, Meirav was dead of multiple gunshot wounds to the head. So was her 7-year-old sister, Roni. And Hadar, the 9-year-old. And Hila, 11. One by one, each had been shot at point-blank range. In the driver's seat, their mother was dead, too. Tali Hatuel, 34, was a social worker who was often called upon to comfort and assist victims of terrorism. Eight months pregnant with her first boy, she had been driving to Ashkelon on Sunday for an ultrasound exam. Then she and the girls had planned to join her husband, David, at an election precinct to urge voters to oppose the controversial Israeli referendum on unilaterally "disengaging" from the Gaza Strip. But David never saw his wife and daughters alive again. He buried them Sunday evening, sobbing with grief and surrounded by thousands of mourners in Ashkelon's new cemetery. "You were my flowers," he wept. "I am all alone and there is no one left." Not long after the slaughter of the Hatuel family, two terror groups -- Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committee -- proudly claimed responsibility in a call to the Associated Press. The Voice of Palestine radio praised the quintuple murder as a "heroic" operation against "five settlers," not bothering to mention that the victims were an unarmed pregnant woman and four children or that their bodies had been riddled with bullets fired at close range. The savagery of the attack was similarly downplayed by National Public Radio in its broadcast the next morning. Actually, reporter Julie McCarthy did more than minimize the horror of the massacre. She blamed the victims for "provoking" their own murder -- not by anything they did but by their mere "presence" in the disputed territory. The settlers were rallying to defeat the Gaza pullout referendum, McCarthy reported, "saying Israel was withdrawing under fire. But there was ample evidence yesterday to show that their continued presence in Gaza is provoking bloodshed. Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian gunmen after the men ambushed a mother and her four small daughters outside the Gaza settlement of Gush Katif. The family was shot and killed on their way to the Israeli city of Ashkelon." In NPR's warped moral calculus, Tali Hatuel and her children are in early graves not because Palestinian culture celebrates the mass murder of Jews but because Jews have no business living among Arabs. If McCarthy had been reporting from Birmingham in September 1963, would she have blamed the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church on the provocative "presence" of the four black girls who died in the explosion? The Hatuels opposed Ariel Sharon's proposed Gaza pullout because they understood that unilaterally surrendering land to Hamas and the PLO could only result in more terror and bloodshed, not less. If the past decade -- the era of the "land for peace" delusion -- has made anything clear, it is that the more Israel concedes to the Palestinians, the worse Palestinian terror becomes. Abandoning Gaza will not make the Arabs more peaceful. It will simply strengthen their conviction that Israelis can be defeated through terrorism and make Gaza a more effective staging-area for attacks on Jews. Notwithstanding the defeat of Sunday's referendum, Sharon says he still intends to go forward with his "disengagement" from Gaza. That presumably will mean the uprooting of some 8,000 Gazan Jews from the homes, farms, and schools they have built over the past quarter-century. The State Department and the UN will cheer the sight of Gaza being ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population -- being rendered "Judenrein," as the Nazis used to say. But having approved Sharon's expulsion of Jews from territory largely occupied by Arabs, what will they say if he then proposes to expel Arabs from places whose majority is Jewish? Arab-Israeli peace will not be won by dragging people kicking and screaming from their homes. Nor will it be won by giving land and statehood to the gangsters who run Hamas and Fatah. The only workable recipe for lasting Middle East peace is the difficult one of remaking Palestinian society from the bottom up. Of destroying its poisonous culture of violence, death-worship, and Jew-hatred. Of educating its people for democracy and tolerance. Of replacing its cruel and corrupt rulers with leaders genuinely committed to moderation. Only when -- only if -- such a transformation takes place will the Palestinians be ready for statehood. To confer sovereignty on them now would be disastrous, a guarantee of violence for years to come. If there is one thing a regime that can call the execution of a mother and her four daughters "heroic" doesn't need, it is a reward. Anita Tucker lives in Netzer Hazani, Gush Katif, Israel. To Go To Top

WHERE WAS THE OUTRAGE? Posted by Marion D.S. Dreyfus, May 6, 2004.

Where was the outrage over the atrocities of Saddam? Where were the protests over the burnt and charred bodies of food distributors being savaged and hung on a bridge for trying to feed the Iraqis? Where is the outrage and protest over the brutalities routinely processed as routine by the 'insurgents' of all these 'protesting' nationals in the Middle East that is revoltingly full of heinousness, yet notably scarce in humanity or apology for any act, of any sort, to any sorts except their very small own amour-propre? Why is it that soldiers being targeted and obscenely murdered for months after liberating the wretched country from a vicious psychopath are now the whole story for their unacceptable 'incivility' and incredibly stupid behavior and ill-treatment of those under their care-- and not perhaps letting off (admittedly nasty and unacceptable) steam to get their own back? Many of the hirelings are apparently not vetted and are not sensitized to the staggering sociological nuances. I spoke with a group of Viet Nam vets in Hanoi yesterday, and a major who spent quite a lot of time discussing these events and developments with me as the mopeds roared outside our scrambled eggs and dragon fruit breakfast in early morning Hanoi, and they and Maj. Lytle felt that there are loose cannons, yes, and that the ranks and sqyadrons and deployments are not being handled as tightly as should be the case--but what are these soldiers up against every single day? Much much worse than forced erptic postures. The denizens of these countries brutalize their young boys and girls--a new book from inside the compound says, very sadly--without admitting it, and the girls and women are murdered if they are sodomized or raped by male relatives, 'friends' of the family or strangers--these 'honor killings' get no comment. Internal affairs, buddy. Not the business of the West. Elicit no condemnation from inside the wire. While I emphatically do not endorse the stupidity and cruel inclemencies of these less-than-sterling guys in the prison, I am adamantly disbelieving that we can take seriously the continued high voltage outrage of people who have two emotions--flaming visceral hatred for all things Western... and --surprise!-- maximal outrage. I am unmoved by the fact that arrested detainees who are presumably not innocents in any sense are being given a jolting taste of the anger of the other side they have ripely excoriated in mosque and minaret for decades if not centuries. I know it is terrible PR, dismaying and gratingly so, but I just can't get it up to bemoan porny postures and humilating treatment as compared with the really dreadful assignments visited upon civilians, Israelis, American military and adventitious visitors to those regions, all with a pinky-lifted pass by Reuters, CNN at al. After visiting the 'Hanoi Hilton,' so-called, the torture chamber for 6, 7 and 8 years of our military during the war in VN, including a not-shy-to-speak Sen. McCain, and seeing them post only info and pictures of the Indonesian French campaign until 1954, except where they published astonishing BS about how well they treated our flyboys during the Vietnamese unpleasantness--I saw that each side chooses to note those things convenient to itself. There was a woman I spoke with as we wandered in a daze of disbelief through the fly-specked exhibits of this city-center gruesome torture chamber, and she and I were together furious that not a thing was acknowledged of the fastidious inhumanity lavished hourly and daily on our captured men, where only pics of them 'accepting gifts' or 'recreating with ping pong' or 'attending church' were shown on the yellowed and decaying walls. Nothing is left of their blood, but the stockades and leg irons of the cruelties of the Indonesian French-era hi-jinks are there in abundance, along with fulsome encomia of the bravery of the resistance to the French et al and so forth. There are lies, damn lies, statistics... and governmental spin. Besides, I distrust utterly whatever Amnesty or the Red Cross say. They are agenda churners like many, and their misrepresentations and bias are too well-documented and abundant for me to think they have anything neutral to add to the situation. They are tainted beyond trustworthiness. Have I lost my humanity? Or is my anger showing, perhaps? Marion Dreyfus is teaching at the University in Wuchan, China. Many of her letters home have been published on Think-Israel. To Go To Top

MA'ARAT HAPACHPELA ATTACK; HEBRON RESIDENT HARASSED Posted by the Hebron Community, May 6, 2004.

1. Terrorist killed at Ma'arat HaMachpela At five o'clock this morning an Arab terrorist attacked a border policeman inside Ma'arat HaMachpela, on the "Moslem side" of the building. He began choking him and attempted to steal his rifle. A second border policeman, seeing the struggle, shot and killed the terrorist. 2. Noam Federman Demonstration A protest demonstration will take place on Saturday night, May 8, outside the Ashkelon prison. Federman has been incarcerated for almost eight months by administrative decree. He has not been indicted, tried, or convicted. He has not been informed of the charges against him. The present, second six-month administrative order will expire only after Rosh HaShana. Buses will leave Kiryat Arba and Hebron at about 9:00, after the conclusion of Shabbat, and arrive at the prison at about 10:00. The demonstration will include several short speeches, a Lag b"Omer campfire, and a torch-lit parade. For more information, call: 058-693871 or 056-877882 3. IDF 'black list" The following letter was today sent to the IDF Chief of Staff, Lt.-Gen. Moshe "Bugi" Ya'alon, other senior officers MKs and other public figures: Dear sirs, Last night my husband, 29 year-old Elad Gadot, was arrested and is presently being held in jail. The reason for his arrest was his violation of an IDF order forbidding Israelis to enter the "Area A" territory, between the Aduraim community in the south Hebron Hills, and our home in the Negahot community, a few miles away. I would like to explain the circumstances surrounding his arrest: During the past month, there has been an intentional harassment of several Negahot residents, centering around army escorts to and from the community. The main road, leading to Negahot from the other south Hebron Hills communities was transferred to PA control several years ago. Due to attacks during the Oslo war, we were forced to travel on this road in bulletproof vehicles only, with an IDF escort. Lately, the escorts are consistently tardy. At times people are forced to wait over an hour for an escort, all for a fifteen minute drive. Several times the escort never arrived. For this reason, several people, who could not wait for an available escort, traveled alone. One of these women who traveled alone, a teacher at our community, was informed that IDF escorts would refuse to escort her, and she was placed on a 'black list.' My husband traveled last week without an escort in protest of IDF refusals to escort several people from our community. As a result, he was also placed on a "black list," and the IDF refuses to allow him to travel in an escorted vehicle. Should he be in such car, the other passengers are told that he must get out, or the vehicle will not be escorted and they will be forbidden from traveling alone. Last night, on his way back home, after being told that he must vacate an escorted vehicle, he began walking, by himself, in order to get home. For this reason he was arrested. I vehemently protest this intentional harassment by the Israel Defense Forces. Had the army been willing to escort my husband, he would not have attempted to walk. He would have traveled with the escort, as he does daily. This road is the only direct road from Negahot to the other Hebron Hills communities. The intentional harassment of our residents is nothing less than a political badgering, in an attempt to 'dry' us up. As you well know, humanitarians do not kill fish; rather they just take them out of the water. I expect you to immediately see to this matter and put a stop to it, at once. Shlomit Gadot Mother of four Resident of Negahot You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com To Go To Top

UN TO SUPPORT PALESTINIAN SOVEREIGNTY OVER E. JERUSALEM Posted by Bryna Berch, May 6, 2004.

This was written by Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent and appeared in Haaretz today. So Sharon didn't say his lines right. So the other players in Kill OFF Israel are moving right along. The United Nations General Assembly is expected on Thursday to approve a resolution put forth by Nasser Al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer to the UN, according to which the Palestinian nation has the right to self-determination and sole sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including East Jerusalem. The resolution notes that Israel, as "the occupying power," has no sovereignty over any part of the aforementioned areas. Al-Kidwa submitted the resolution to the UN so as to receive from the General Assembly a political declaration that will serve as a counterbalance to the letter of understanding given to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon by President George W. Bush last month, regarding the prime minister's plans to remove settlements from the Gaza Strip. Bush said Wednesday that he continues to support Sharon's disengagement plan. He regarded the plan as step towards peace in the Middle East. Bush ruled out the claim that his support for the plan prior to the Likud referendum on Sunday was a mistake, and said that the U.S. should take steps towards peace. It was reported Monday that Bush has no plans to present a letter to Jordan's King Abdullah that would balance the commitments given to Sharon. Sources in the U.S. administration said that the possibility of transferring a "balancing letter" to King Abdullah was no longer an option. Had it been presented, the letter would have stressed U.S. commitment to the road map. To Go To Top

MOSHE SAPERSTEIN'S RANT Posted by Dafna Yee, May 5, 2004.

This was written by Moshe Saperstein, a long-time resident of the Gush Katif communities. He gave me his permission to forward it and I'm hoping that you will all take this opportunity to read his excellent "rant". [...Today's New York Post had a piece that so infuriated me I had to answer. So, in lieu of a letter, here is my rant.] As a former New Yorker living in Israel for the past thirty-seven years I am delighted that the internet allows me to read my favorite hometown paper every day. Permit me, then, to express my disappointment at "Sharon;s Setback" by Eric Fettmann, a columnist I usually admire. I live in Neve Dekalim, the largest of the 21 communities that make up the Gush Katif bloc of Jewish habitation in the Gaza Strip. Not one inch of the land on which our homes, farms and factories are built was taken from Arab residents. They were built on sand dunes which we, as foretold in the Bible, have transformed from desert into a small paradise. It would be bitter enough if our reward for steadfastness in the face of three and one-half years of unceasing and unrelenting Arab warfare would be expulsion for some greater benefit to the people and State of Israel. With heavy hearts we would accept the need for our sacrifice. But to be expelled in exchange for... nothing? That is unbearable. Not one single benefit claimed by Mr. Sharon and his supporters stands up to examination. The plan is called a Disengagement Plan. Disengagement means separation. But according to the plan Israel continues to provide Gazan Arabs with food, water, electricity and fuel, and Gazan Arabs can continue to work within the Green Line and to ship their products for sale in Israel or transshipment abroad through Israeli ports. Clearly the only thing being separated are Jews from their land. Mr. Sharon claims that leaving Gaza will increase Israel's security. The late Yitzhak Rabin, no friend of "settlers", stated that "If Gush Katif didn't exist we would have to invent it." He explained that the existence of Jewish communities in Gaza provided the reason for an Israel Defense Forces presence in the area, a presence that would keep Gazan Arabs from organizing large scale attacks on Jews within the Green Line. If the Israel Navy radar base opposite my home is dismantled how will we know of arms smuggling by small ships? Unless we have developed a method of examining planes in flight, how will we prevent arms being flown in to the Dahaniya airport in Gaza? As to troops in the so-called Philadelphia Corridor separating Gaza and Egyptian Sinai, Mr. Sharon has already agreed to American requests that the IDF stay be of limited duration. Mr. Sharon has stated that chaos will reign in Gaza, and that various Arab factions will be busy killing each other. Even if this doubtful proposition is accurate, for how long will such a situation continue? Two days, two weeks, two months? Following which they will return to their favorite activity of killing Jews. Is our expulsion worth a short period of relative quiet? Mr. Sharon states that the absence of Jews in Gaza will deprive Arabs of an excuse to attack. Since when have Arabs needed an excuse to attack Jews? Excuses aplenty are provided to the Western media hungry to justify Arab atrocities. But in the Arab media it is clear that the simple existence of Jews is justification for their extermination. Perhaps Mr. Sharon's greatest success has been in convincing people that he has won President Bush's approval for his plan that will strengthen Israel's hold over settlement blocs in Judea and Samaria. Certainly his supplicants were arriving in Washington with greater frequency than the F train arrives at the East Broadway station. [When I lived there it was the D train.] But even a cursory examination of the Bush letter indicates that other than a photo-op Mr. Sharon received nothing. The much-touted comment about no going back to the 1967 borders because of demographic facts on the ground covers the Jerusalem neighborhoods built since the Six-Day War. And nothing else. As Secretary of State Powell stated the day after publication of President Bush's letter, "America's Middle East policy has not changed." As to the so-called "security wall that Sharon is building", the wall may be solid but the security is a mirage. Though politicians view it as the Holy Grail, military people who haven't metamorphosed into politicians view it as the Maginot Line. The large wall separating Gush Katif from Khan Yunis hasn't prevented over 4000 mortars, missiles and rockets from being fired at us since Rosh Hashanah 2000. And just yesterday tunnels were discovered under the wall leading in to our community. "Yet the plan," Mr. Fettmann writes, "... surely has the support of a large majority of Israelis." Might I remind him that a week before the Likud referendum polls gave Mr. Sharon a double-digit majority, yet he lost by 60%-40%. Israelis bought the Brooklyn Bridge when we agreed to the Oslo Accords. We're not going to be suckered again. The average Israeli has twice the common sense of the politicians that lead us, and four times the common sense of our intellectual elite. One last example of the absurdity of Mr. Sharon's plan. Clause Five mandates that Israel will once again provide military training and arms for the "Palestinian Security Services" at a time when Sharon declares that there is no reliable Palestinian peace partner. Don't Mr. Fettmann and his colleagues see the logical disconnect? It is unfortunate that Mr. Fettmann and his colleagues have suspended their critical faculties and put their trust in Mr. Sharon. We prefer to put our trust in the Almighty. Mr. Sharon's so-called disengagement plan represents Jewish despair. The Israeli citizens of Judea, Samaria and Gaza represent Jewish optimism. And in Israel it is the dreamers, not the pragmatists, who are the realists. Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net {See www.Think-Israel.org/saperstein.reporters.html for another of Mr. Saperstein's essays.] To Go To Top

DEGREE OF DISHONOUR AT MCGILL: GIVING AN HONOURARY DOCTORATE TO MARY ROBINSON Posted by IsrAlert, May 5, 2004.

This was written by Gil Troy, who teaches history at McGill University. It appeared in the Montreal Gazette, and was reported in http://www.mideasttruth.com, May 2, 2004 When McGill University announced it will grant an honourary doctorate to Mary Robinson, a "human rights leader," my first instinct was to be silent. I have no wish to politicize commencement, when we honour our students' achievements. But in a world of ever-coarsening anti-Semitism and despicable rationalizations for suicide bombings, in a city which just endured the burning of a Jewish children's school library, at a university in which vandals scratched "Heil Hitler" into the bathroom of the Bronfman Building and defaced the exterior of the Hillel Jewish Student Centre, honouring Mary Robinson sends a terrible message. As the UN's High Commissioner for Human Rights, Robinson presided over the infamous World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001. In her closing remarks, Robinson declared "we ... succeeded," a shocking statement considering that anti-Zionists hijacked the conference, demonizing Israel, bullying Jewish participants, and distributing crude anti-Semitic images of hooked-nose Jews. In fighting modern anti-Semitism, the moral neutrality of the politically correct -- which often masks moral sloppiness or even outright bias -- is a particularly insidious problem. We need Winston Churchills, and Mary Robinson is a Neville Chamberlain. We need to hunt down hatred, yet McGill will lionize a lamb in the face of ugly verbal assaults that have come to epitomize the new anti-Semitism. I hate talking about anti-Semitism. Despite the stereotype that Jews are hypersensitive, my generation was raised to consider Jew-hatred an outdated, European disease. Born into North America's post-Auschwitz meritocracy, we believed that anti-Semitism had been cured along with whooping cough and polio. We were Daniel Pearl Jews, raised, as the murdered Wall Street Journal reporter was, to be citizens of the world. Growing up in the 1970s, we believed our identities were malleable - and infinitely elastic. We believed Marlo Thomas that we were Free to Be You and Me. We learned that if we jumped through the right hoops, we could go as far as anyone else in society. We felt protected by our American or Canadian passports. Climbing the ladder of achievement, we internalized varying amounts of good liberal guilt about our good fortune. Our relationship to oppression was as fellow crusaders fighting for justice, not potential victims. We were empathetic not paranoid, guarding against injuring others rather than worrying about protecting ourselves. We had zero-tolerance for racism, sexism, homophobia and any kind of religious intolerance. We learned to avoid creating hostile working environments, even unintentionally, and saw that the burden of proof is always on the potential oppressors to establish their innocence not on their victims. Many of us pooh-poohed older relatives and Jewish leaders who seemed obsessed with anti-Semitism. They were stuck on yesterday's news - and history's burdens - rather than liberated by the miracle of North America. Yasser Arafat's war of terrorism and propaganda against the Oslo Peace Process changed the equation - especially when the world applauded him and his tactics. Soft, spoiled, naive and terrible soothsayers, we never imagined that we would be living in a society where a children's elementary school library would be firebombed, and the crime could trigger debate about its underlying rationale. I appreciate the outpouring of outrage from political leaders, from editorialists and from people on the street. I honour the Herculean efforts of the Montreal police - and private security guards - to protect my children and neighbours even as I resent the need for special protection. But how to assess those noble reactions against the slurs directed at Liberal MP Jacques Saada for the sole "crime" of being Jewish? How should one perceive the attempt to "contextualize" this attack on Canadian children and democratic values by condemning Israel? What does one say about the decision by editors of La Presse to "balance" the expressions of indignation in the Letters to the Editor section with "different sentiment[s]," one dismissing the burning of "a little library" and the second sneering: "If our friends in the Jewish community were ... not so almost unanimously supportive of the hateful and intransigent policies of Israel, we would obviously be more scandalized by these unfortunate acts." Moreover, how do we understand the intellectual dishonesty festering at Concordia University, where a Swastika scribbled on an Israeli flag is justified by the lie that the hated Nazi symbol functioned as a neutral Hindu emblem? What do we make of the insanity at my home institution whereby an idealistic student in my History of Presidential Campaigning conference was publicly libeled as a racist because - unlike Mary Robinson and the hypocritical, myopic UN human-rights establishment - she dared to raise the moral issue of deploying children as suicide bombers? Again and again, I note the noxious nexus, the way criticisms of Israel and anti-Zionism camouflage the new anti-Semitism, at Durban and in Montreal, how little hurts grow into big traumas. There is a link, and the firebombers made it, between the violence against Jews in Israel, Istanbul, Montreal and Mombasa, the ugly Jew-baiting rhetoric festering in so many mosques and madrassas, and the genteel but unfair, obsessive and disproportionate expressions of exasperation or indifference toward Jews and the Jewish state in so many seminar rooms and parlours. When Jews note the obvious connection these days between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, they are accused of being thin-skinned, intolerant, even McCarthyite; yet when anti-Semites justify attacks against Jews by pointing to Israeli actions as the United Talmud Torah vandals did, there are supposedly reputable people around who deem the connection reasonable, contextualized and thus, implicitly justified. Jews deserve equal treatment not special treatment. If vandals firebombed an Italian church, would La Presse publish letters minimizing the "little fire" or suggesting any community behaviours that justified the crime? Are there any geniuses at Concordia University ready to rationalize cross burnings on African-Americans' lawns given the cross's many positive meanings? Would Mary Robinson have declared her anti-racism conference a success had it degenerated into Muslim-bashing? Jews should not be burdened with proving that anti-Zionists are merely critics of Israel and not anti-Semites. Given the thousands of incidents targeting Jews in the last few years, harsh critics of Israel and of Zionism must work harder to dissociate themselves from the noxious nexus, from the rivers of ugly rhetoric feeding and blurring together hatred of the Jew, Jewish nationalism and the Jewish state. And leaders like Mary Robinson - and my McGill colleagues who distribute honourary doctorates - should be extra vigilant to weed out this hatred, rather than standing silently by and watching it grow. Anti-Semitic acts, be they "minor" or "major," rhetorical or physical, violate the fundamental covenant we all share as citizens of a democracy. Democracy is more than one person, one vote; it begins with values of equality, mutuality and civility, rooted in our common humanity. "Zero-tolerance" means we all must combat all forms of bigotry, be it in bathroom stalls or on editorial pages, in the halls of the UN or in the context of difficult political strife. Last week, McGill principal Heather Munroe-Blum sent a letter to the McGill community condemning the incidents of vandalism - and linking them to the torching of United Talmud Torah's library. Note the contrast between the McGill honouree's moral tone-deafness amid the blood libels of Durban and the McGill principal's honourable refusal to ignore bathroom graffiti - understanding the ''broken windows'' theory of policing, that little incidents of incivility fester. Perhaps, rather than granting an honourary doctorate, Heather Munroe-Blum should sit Mary Robinson down for some lessons on exhibiting moral courage and fostering a true, consistent, aggressive commitment to human rights for all. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

A PETITION AGAINST THE DOUBLE STANDARD AGAINST ISRAEL Posted by Jack De Lowe, May 5, 2004.

This petition is a protest against the double standard that discriminates against Israel. It was in part drafted by me and is directed to the UN, EU, and international press. You can check it out by CLICKING HERE. Please sign. Please share this message with those on your list. Thanks, Jack To Go To Top

NEVILLE AGAIN Posted by IsrAlert, May 5, 2004.

The slogan "Never again," formulated after the Holocaust, has mutated into its opposite: "Neville again," a reprise of Neville Chamberlain at Munich. What we see across Europe now is an orgy of capitulation..... Hussein Massawi, a former Hezbollah leader, put it with admirable clarity: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." "Neville again" "History shows that only two strategies have any real effect in dealing with terrorists: negotiation and extirpation" The despicable bombings by the Muslim jihadists in Madrid on March 11 claimed 200 lives (and wounded another 1400); they also formed a prelude to the most important event in international politics since September 11, 2001. For, horrible though that cold-blooded murder of innocent people was, its significance was dwarfed by what happened in Spain a few days later. Timed to coincide with the Spanish national election, the terrorist attack by al Qaeda achieved its desired effect, which was only incidentally the slaughter of a couple hundred infidels. The deeper aim was to interfere in the course of the electoral process of a Western democratic country, and that - thanks to the cravenness of the Spanish electorate-the Muslim fundamentalists did decisively. On March 10, the center-right candidate Jose Maria Aznar was universally favored to win. Come March 15, the Socialist candidate Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero swept into office on a platform of anti-Americanism and hostility to George W. Bush, Tony Blair, and the war in Iraq. The Spanish people were duly rewarded for their compliance. As Andrew Sullivan noted, one radical Muslim group announced that it would cease operations in Spain to reward Spanish voters for striking a blow against "the axis of Crusader evil." There's a catch, of course. Here's part of the statement: "Because of this [electoral] decision, the leadership has decided to stop all operations within the Spanish territories ... until we know the intentions of the new government that has promised to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq. And we repeat this to all the brigades present in European lands: stop all operations." They've learned something, haven't they? Indeed, they learned the same thing that Hitler learned when he remilitarized the Rhineland, absorbed Austria, and gobbled up Czechoslovakia. Push and they will capitulate. Bottom line: the Spanish rejection of Aznar was not merely a shameful capitulation to terrorism. It was also a death warrant for-how many do you suppose? - hundreds? thousands? of other Europeans who will surely be targeted by al Qaeda in an effort to blackmail Western countries. In a characteristically astute observation on the Spanish debacle, Mark Steyn noted that the slogan "Never again," formulated after the Holocaust, has mutated into its opposite: "Neville again," a reprise of Neville Chamberlain at Munich. What we see across Europe now is an orgy of capitulation. In a letter in the London Times, one Peter Goodchild wrote that "History shows that only two strategies have any real effect in dealing with terrorists: negotiation and extirpation." Since Western democracies are "squeamish about the ruthless measures" needed to pursue the second option, they inevitably drift toward the first without really embracing it. Mr. Goodchild seemed to advocate a whole-hearted pursuit of negotiation. But negotiating with terrorists-at least with what Ralph Peters calls "apocalyptic terrorists" like al Qaeda-is tantamount to calling your funeral director and asking for an immediate pick up. Hussein Massawi, a former Hezbollah leader, put it with admirable clarity: "We are not fighting so that you will offer us something. We are fighting to eliminate you." Worth bearing in mind, isn't it? IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

U.S. SHOULD GET OUT OF THE U.N. Posted by David Holcberg, May 5, 2004.

The re-election of Sudan to the U.N. Human Rights Commission--chaired by terrorist-sponsoring Libya in 2003--demonstrates once again the total moral bankruptcy of the United Nations. The list of atrocities and violations of human rights in Sudan is endless. As Human Rights Watch reported this week, "The Sudanese government is complicit in crimes against humanity," including the "killing, raping and looting of African civilians." More evidence on the nature of Sudan's government is that children "as young as 9 years old" are "forcibly recruited" to fight a civil war that has "resulted in the death of 2 million persons." According to the U.S. Department of State, "female genital mutilation," usually "performed on girls between the ages of 4 and 7," is "widespread" in Sudan. To this day in Sudan, "slavery persists, particularly affecting women and children." Outraged at Sudan's election to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, the U.S. delegation walked out of the meeting--just as it did a year ago after the election of totalitarian Cuba to the same commission. America's continuing participation in the United Nations, an organization that protects and serves as a forum for the bloodiest dictatorships and terrorist regimes in the world, is a sanction of evil that runs contrary to America's self-interest. If the United States has any respect left for human rights, it should follow the example of its delegation and walk out of the United Nations. David Holcberg is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) of Irvine, California (http://www.aynrand.org). To Go To Top

THE SITUATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST - COMPARED TO WHAT? Posted by Morris J. Amitay, May 5, 2004.

In order to even try to make sense of the Middle East there is one guiding principle which should always be kept in mind. This is the non-Einsteinian theory of relativity. Based on the old joke - "How is your wife"? "with the rejoinder - ?compared to whom?" It states - "everything and everyone should be compared to something or someone else." A corollary to this principle is that when applying it you must never lose sight of the big picture. The application of this principle can serve as a modern "guide to the perplexed". The theory is especially useful in making judgments about the various Middle East groups and personalities. Starting with the lowest rung on the ladder there is Osama Bin Laden who wants all non-believers in his brand of Islam, dead. But the (surviving) Hamas leadership apparently only wants all Jews dead. Compared to Hamas, there is Arafat and his PLO, who say they only want Israel to go back to the pre-67 "borders" (for a start), while encouraging terrorism to achieve his demands. Compared to Arafat, there are some Palestinian "moderates", who say they want two states living side by side in peace and oppose terrorist acts. So assuming you can take the so-called "moderates" at their word, they are relatively not so bad. The same yardstick applies in evaluating the Israeli leadership. Starting at the top there are those on his political right who feel that Arik Sharon is going soft by proposing unilateral disengagement from Gaza. But comparing the old warrior to two of his predecessors - Barak, who was better than Peres - maybe Arik is not such a patsy after all. Those seeking perfection and ideological purity from their leaders will, and should, be disappointed. It is always a matter of degree. Here at home, there are those who criticize President George Bush for not being sufficiently pro-Israel. But historically how does he compare to Bill Clinton with his courtship of Yasser Arafat, or worse still, Jimmy Carter, who has turned into an ardent Israel-basher. And those who castigate Colin Powell for following the State Department Arabist line, would have to admit Powell still looks good compared to Jim Baker, while both pale in comparison to George Shultze. Among the Arab leaders, the most acceptable is King Abdullah of Jordan, who, having to acknowledge reality, (i.e. his Palestinian majority, Syrian enmity, and internal Islamic fanatics), compares favorably to Hosni Mubarak, Egypt's President for Life. But give Hosni credit. Despite rampant anti-Americanism in Egypt he has managed to keep $2 billion in U.S. aid coming annually. Egypt is still a better bet than the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, the wellspring of militant Islam. The Saudis are truly princes when compared to Assad's Syria which harbors terrorists and sends them on their way into Iraq to kill Americans. But Khomeinei's Iran which openly calls for Israel's destruction and is developing nuclear weapons, is definitely the worst. Applying the theory of relativity to our foreign policies it makes it possible to support $400 million in foreign aid for Jordan this year in order to have Abdullah continue his quiet cooperation with us. But it would also be sensible to more closely monitor what kind of military aid we are sending to Egypt and perhaps convert some, or all of it to economic assistance. It is prudent for the time being to help keep the Saudi monarchy sitting on all that oil, from collapse, while inducing it to cut off funding to terrorists, and encouraging it to shut down madrasses worldwide. Since invading Syria is not a viable option, it is good policy to sanction Syria for its active support of terrorist groups and actively seek Lebanese independence from Syria. But at the far end of the scale, there is Iran. It is time for the U.S. to develop a plan for bringing about regime change in Iran before it acquires nuclear weapons. This might involve giving our Israeli friends the green light to take "corrective action". In all cases, actions and policies should be related to the relative nature of the threat which always means assigning priorities. For the time being Iraq is being treated as the highest priority. There at the high end of the scale we have the Kurds who have earned and deserve our strong support for greater autonomy. We should work with those Shiites who despised Saddam, and who are not followers of al-Sadr, and with those Sunnis who just want to make a living and are not trying to kill coalition forces. And finally, in Iraq there are the insurgents and terrorists who are waging open war against us. Here is where the big picture corollary must be applied to our theory of relativity. Looking at the big picture you have to eschew relativism for a dose of absolutism. The insurgents and outsiders who are attacking convoys, mining the roads and kidnapping and killing aid workers have to be eliminated as quickly and decisively as possible. This means no useless negotiations, no phony truces, and no resurrecting Baathist thugs who will never do the job for us anyway. Again, keeping the big picture in mind, this same solution should be applied to all those dedicated to the destruction of our civilization. There are simple rules to follow. You don't negotiate with terrorists - you kill them. You don't look for root causes, you root out and destroy those who want you dead and are actively seeking to accomplish this goal. But nowadays there are constraints on the exercise of military power. The realities of the 21st century make it difficult to use force to defeat our enemies, even those who are truly evil. Sixty years ago we could nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki (not to mention the fire-bombing of Dresden) killing thousands of non-combatants. But in today's world, with 24-hour television coverage (mostly by unsympathetic media) and instantaneous communications, there are inhibitions. For example, no using 2,000 lb. bombs on targets in Fallujah. Israel has had to refine its already surgical strikes to such a degree that wanted killers have been spared if any innocent civilians were in the vicinity. The application of force must be proportionate and measured - with a minimum of collateral damage. While it is our self-imposed limitations which make the U.S. morally superior to our adversaries, American and Israeli restraint is seen as weakness, and its costs are measured in the lives of American and Israeli soldiers. Given the nature of the threat of militant Islam, we have to consider whether and when we should overcome our qualms in order to punish a ruthless enemy. As Tevya the milkman in "Fiddler" reluctantly concluded, "on one hand, there is no other hand". In dealing with terrorists and their masters there are times when alternatives to the use of overwhelming force may not suffice and you have to bite the bullet. And compared to the nature of our enemies today, we will still hold the high ground after they are eliminated. It is all relative. Morrie Amitay is a former Executive Director of AIPAC and founder of the pro-Israel Washington PAC (www.washingtonpac.com). To Go To Top

ITEMS: JIHAD IN SUDAN, ISRAEL AND USA Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 5, 2004.

FEATURES OF GENOCIDAL JIHAD IN SUDAN The Islamic government of Sudan sponsors Arab militias. These militias are killing and displacing western Sudanese civilians, who are of the same black ethnic groups as rebel forces. Together with government troops, the militias raid and burn villages, rape the women, execute numerous civilians who had not fled. The raids go on during supposed ceasefires. Arab raiders victimize black Muslims, not only black non-Muslims. The UN Human Rights Commission ignores the problem. "The world's worst rights abusers wrangle seats on the Commission in order to avoid censure, precisely as Sudan has done." EU governments helped quash a move to censure. African governments jointly oppose scrutiny of human rights abuses in Africa. One government tries to condemn these unconscionable acts. That government is the US (Minky Worden, NY Sun, 4/28, p.9), the despised US. US Muslims assure Americans that Jihad means peaceful struggle. Sometimes it does. The Arab and Turkish spread of Islam was by the bellicose variety. In Sudan, it means genocide and enormous suffering. Notice the racist nature of the Arabs in this. Note the Arab treachery in fighting during ceasefires. The Arabs call for ceasefires when they are losing, but do not sincerely seek peace. Arafat repeatedly did the same with Israel. That opportunistic view of ceasefires is embedded in Arab culture. Mark, too, the almost utter travesty that the UN is and the essential decency of the US. Let us hear no more of turning problems that the US might manage over to the UN that cannot. SHARON AND THE SINAI WITHDRAWAL When Israelis pulled out of the Sinai, a few decades ago, they abandoned a $17 billion investment without compensation. Egypt, however, which received the Sinai oil wells that Israel had developed, came to receive $60 billion in US arms and other aid, and is radicalizing. (As the aggressor that deserved punishment rather than reward). The Sinai withdrawal was urged by Ariel Sharon. Now he is inviting the Egyptian army back toward Gaza, although Egypt has been facilitating arms smuggling into it. (Egypt has been arming for a war whose military doctrine posits Israel as the enemy. Egyptian diplomacy Seeks to delegitimize Israel and to get the P.A. to hold out for maximum Israeli concessions.) The appeasement-minded people promoting the new withdrawal plan expect applause for their effort and gratitude from the beneficiaries. Instead the Arabs sneer and demand more, the usual result of appeasement. Sharon's withdrawal plan amounts to "land for death," for terrorists will flock into Gaza, to get at Israel. The price of Sharon's plan is billions of dollars and thousands of lives (Winston MidEast Analysis, 4/28, e-mail). TERRORIST TARGET PATTERN Terrorists have mounted a series of attacks on oil shipping lanes and refineries, including those in Iraq. If they succeed in reducing supplies, already tight, they would thrust an economic crisis upon the West. The US, for its part, should develop non-oil, domestic sources of energy (Gal Luft, NY Sun, 4/30, p.11). Had our governments since 1973 been patriotic, that and conservation measures would have been instituted. It should have been done, anyway, if for nothing else than to boost our own economy (and save medical expenses) and reduce that of the Arab and Iranian aggressors. The proposal is insufficient. We need to eradicate terrorist havens and terrorists before they penetrate our weak defenses. THE LOGIC OF SHARON'S ARGUMENT PM Sharon claims his abandonment plan's rejection would be a victory for Arafat. Why? Because Arafat opposes the plan. What do Arab Members of Knesset say about it? They like it. It would uproot Jews and turn their communities over to the Arabs, whole (perhaps $7 billion worth). MK Landau reports that Hamas takes credit for extorting the plan by terrorism. Hamas predicts that its methods will do the same for Judea-Samaria (Arutz-7, 4/29). Hamas is right. Terrorism in lieu of negotiating has brought the plan about. Hamas and PLO and P.A. terrorism has done the same for Judea-Samaria, some of which Sharon would abandon promptly, and much more later, using the original plan a precedent. TERRORISTS' MANEUVERABILITY INCREASES Spanish authorities knew about the al Qaeda cells that later attacked Madrid, but did not think those cells were for committing terrorism. The terrorists, however, are more flexible than believed. They may be raising money, but when called upon, readily transform into gunmen. Hizbullah can bring operatives into the US from S. America. They send agents in among the aliens smuggled into the US for migrant farm work (Eli Lake, NY Sun, 4/29, p.7). Western counter-terrorism authorities do not know enough about the terrorists -- they keep under-estimating them. RUSSIA STILL ARMING MIDEAST Russia has developed a missile interceptor for its Mideastern clients (IMRA, 4/28). HOW MUCH ASSASSINATION BY ISRAEL? Only about 20 P.A. terrorists have been targeted for individual liquidation (IMRA, 4/28). It would seem like thousands, for all the furor the practice has caused. Thousands are the number of innocent lives saved by the practice. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

THE MEMBERSHIP OF LIKUD HAS DECIDED: ISRAEL IS THE PROMISED LAND! Posted by Ruth and Nadia Matar, May 5, 2004.

The Membership of Likud has Decided: Israel is the Promised Land! The aftermath of the results of the landslide vote of Likud members against the Sharon disengagement plan is still not fully known. The U.S. presidential spokesperson states that the U.S., despite the Likud vote, intends to go forward with the Plan. That was to be expected, but the statement should not be taken seriously. Certainly the democratic vote taken by the members of the ruling party in Israel, has to be considered significant and meaningful by a democracy, which the U.S. purports to be. Although consistently inconsistent as to its terror policy with regard to Israel, its claim to be a shining example of Democracy would be tarnished by ignoring the democratic vote of the members of the Likud Party. The overwhelming vote of the Likud members against the Sharon Plan, must have a great deal of significance for Sharon as well. Even his Defense Minister Mofaz has pointed out that this vote by Likud members, has to be taken into account with regard to any future policy of Israel towards the Arabs. One thing is certain. A new awareness of the effective measures that can be taken has been learned by everyone concerned in Israel. Personal visits to people's homes has proven to be an important tool to be employed in the future, with regard to issues of national significance. Moreover, when properly motivated, one need not belong to any particular Party, to present facts that are of great concern to all the People of Israel. This message from the successful campaign which preceded the vote in question, is something the extra-parliamentary groups must learn. One thing is clear, the fact is that the Arabs are practicing ethnic cleansing in their own countries as far as Jews are concerned. They would also do so in Gaza and any other areas abandoned by Israel. This Arab practice cannot be tolerated by the Jewish People or any Government of Israel in the Promised Land. Ethnic cleansing is undemocratic and would create an uproar, if executed against any minority in the world. Gaza is part and parcel of the Land Promised in the Bible to the Jewish People, by the L-rd Himself. (Genesis 15:18, Joshua 15:47, Judges 1:18). The Jewish People should not permit any Israel Government to allow the Arabs to practice ethnic cleansing in any part of its Land. Despite the Likud members vote, it will take many months before the U.S., the EU, the UN and Russia can properly react thereto. They met recently in New York and endorsed the Disengagement Plan. In light of the democratic vote of the members of the ruling party in Israel, it would be astonishing if such vote is ignored by those pushing the unrealistic "Road Map" Plan. Israel is an independent nation. The right of Israel's People to be free from terror cannot be ignored, neither by the Israeli Government nor by anyone else. Of course, the kind of leadership needed is one which speaks in moral terms, as did the Prophets of old. Up to now, no such leader has appeared on the horizon in Israel. May he come soon and in our day! Ruth and Nadia Matar established Women For Israel's Tomorrow (Women in Green), an activist group of women based in Jerusalem. Their website address is http://www.womeningreen.org To Go To Top

ITEMS: HAARETZ DISCOVERS MAJORITY RULE. DIPLOMATS FOR TERRORISM Posted by Steven Plaut, May 5, 2004.

Haaretz", the far-leftist Israeli daily now suing Ehud Olmert because he says they have political agendas like that of the Hamas, ran an editorial today denouncing the pathetic minority dictating national policy to Israel. It included: "Once again (in the referendum this week) it became evident that the settlers set the agenda for the State of Israel. While they are a small minority, they are highly motivated, well organized with a firm ideology and enormous financial resources - some directly from government ministries - and driven with a messianic passion and readiness for sacrifice, including life. Nothing stands up against them. There is no parliament or extra-parliamentary movement that forms a counter-balance to the settlers. ... And all this happened when a majority of the public actually favors a withdrawal from Gaza and supports reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians, even if it means far-reaching concessions." SO to help you along, we have prepared a lexicon of terminology to be used by all those trying to read Haaretz: Term Translation Pathetic insignificant minority Those with a 60% to 39% majority in a poll Majority The 15% of Israeli Jews who still support Beilin-style "peace plans" Messianic delusions Those who do not agree with Haaretz Clear Majority Haaretz readers, who form a 6% market share of Israeli newspaper readers. Free Speech and Pluralism Running a newspaper in which only leftists are allowed to express themselves. Balanced journalism One "Right-wing" or anti-Left Op-Ed for each 150 leftist articles and columns. Free speech Filing a malicious harassment SLAPP suit against Ehud Olmert for his denouncing the extremist ideological agenda of Haaretz publishers. Rule of Law when they feel like it. The right of leftists to disobey laws Proper Democracy Leftists organizing insurrection and mutiny among Israeli soldiers as long as the government does not adopt those policies advocated by the communist party. Moderates: Members of the Stalinist Hadash Party. 2. "Diplomats for Terrorism: The Arabists and the Anti-'Zionist'" By Joel Mowbray, FrontPageMagazine.com, May 5, 2004. Reflecting the perverse logic that has guided the U.S. State Department for decades, sixty former diplomats have written an open letter to President Bush denouncing the currentadministrations unabashed support for the sole democracy in the Middle East: Israel. The hyperbolic screed, released this week, is chock-full of gross overstatements and pure myth. Yet far more important and what the media will almost surely overlook is the stench of bias emanating from almost all of the signers, particularly from the man who organized the effort, former Ambassador Andrew Killgore, who served in Qatar from 1977-1980. The two-page letter follows the same basic script that has been used by the U.S. Foreign Service more or less since Israel achieved its independence in 1948: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the core of the problems in the Middle East. Blame for the trouble in the entire region of which Israel holds less than one percent of the territory and less than two percent of the population is pinned on Sharons extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, (and) its harsh military measures in occupied territories. Never mind that the extra-judicial assassinations are of terrorist masterminds responsible for the mass slaughter of both innocent Israelis and brainwashed young Palestinians. Or that Israel's security fence is the furthest thing from a Berlin Wall-like barrier. The letter also dabbles in fiction, stating, By closing the door to negotiations with Palestinians and the possibility of a Palestinian state, you have proved that the U.S. is not an evenhanded peace partner. George W. Bush was the first U.S. president to endorse formally the goal of a Palestinian state, albeit one with leaders free from terrorist ties. Standing firm with Sharons plan to combat terrorist leaders in no way conflicts with his explicit desire for a Palestinian state. Israel is obviously imperfect and hardly beyond reproach, but the moral compass of these statesmen is seriously skewed. Almost none has ever given more than lip service to the idea of condemning suicide bombings, and many of them have made their golden years truly golden indeed, courtesy of the deep pockets of the Arab nations in which they formerly were stationed. As noxious as the track records of many of the former diplomats may be, perhaps none is as toxic as that of the man who spearheaded the whole effort, former Ambassador Andrew Killgore. A quick inspection of his history shows that he should be the last person giving lessons on evenhandedness. Killgore may or may not be an anti-Semite, but he certainly could be mistaken for one. That is a strong statement, to be sure, but it seems a fair assessment after spending some time at the website for the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, of which he is the co-founder and publisher. The sites front page keeps a counter only of foreign aid money given to Israel. It calls for ending all military aid to Israel, though there is no similar call for ending the exact same level of aid given each year to Egypt for the same purpose, an arrangement that has existed since the Camp David Accords in 1978. Killgore's website also has a Neocon Corner, where he and others castigate one Jew or another for their sinister loyalties to Israel. (One execption was a hit piece on Dick Cheney.) Typical is a recent column on Richard Perle, former head of the Defense Policy Board. In the course of 800 words, Killgore refers to Perle as: a fervent Zionist, a dyed-in-the-wool Israel-Firster, part of the Zionist lobby, always active in Zionist organizations, the Prince of Darkness, and a Zionist ideologue. On its webpage listing 27 charitable organizations are several with which no reasonable group would affiliate. Many are well-known for their radical Islamist agendas, and two in particular should have raised red flags: the United Palestinian Appeal and the Kinder USA, both charitable organizations who share leadership with the Holy Land Foundation, which Given Killgore's clear biases, it is tempting to use the old line about the kettle and the pot. More apt, however, would be the analogy, Said the desert to the grain of sand. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

TRUSTING IN PRINCES Posted by A Time To Speak, May 5, 2004.

A Time to Speak is a message from Israel that appears once a month. Each message is on a theme that relates to Israel and the Middle East past and present. The contents include history, background, current events, analysis and comment, and excerpts from published writings. It is designed to go beyond standard news media reporting, that is necessarily brief and at times unnecessarily incompetent. Readers of these messages may re-circulate issues. They may also use material or excerpts for websites, synagogue or church bulletins, school reports, letters to government officials or newspapers or broadcasting stations. If so, please do not make changes in the wording. Complimentary subscriptions are available by request to speak@actcom.co.il This is Vol. IV:4 (No. 40), April 2004 - Nissan-Iyar 5764 Trust not in princes... Psalm 146:3 See, you are relying on illusions that are of no avail -- Jeremiah 7:8 Prince -- from Latin princeps: a principal person, a foremost one, a chief or leader In colloquial usage: an eminent personage who exercises power, a status by extrapolation applied collectively to governments. Today, Israel must evaluate the trustworthiness of the "princes" in its own government and in other governments. My princes shall no more defraud My people... Enough Princes of Israel ... do judgment and righteousness... stop your evictions of My people --Ezekiel 45:8-9 In the Israeli electoral system, citizens vote not for individual candidates but for party-lists. The number of votes a party wins decides how many seats it will hold in the 120-member Knesset (Parliament). A member of the Knesset who can then win the approval of at least 61 members becomes Prime Minister [in Hebrew, Head of Government]. No single party has ever won 61 seats, so the leader of the largest party has to form a coalition with other parties to form a cabinet, with posts distributed among the member parties. (The nation would well benefit from reform of this cumbersome system, but that is another topic.) Cabinet ministers carry the title of sar or sara, words that in biblical usage can be rendered "prince" and "princess". For more than a decade now, Israel has been ill-served by its prime ministers and more than a few of its princes and princesses. Some of them at least present their real views and intentions openly to the voting public. Others profess one program of principles and actions and when in power switch to opposite ones, thereby deceiving the public and betraying whatever trust was placed in them. 1] In 1992, Yitzhak Rabin, campaigning as titular head of his party, promised that if he became Prime Minister he would never deal with the PLO. Yet at the same time, his prospective Foreign Minister Shimon Peres was already holding secret dealings with the PLO that were still illegal under Israeli law. Those secret dealings culminated in the lethal Oslo Accords, foisted on the nation in September 1993. Yossi Beilin, Peres's protege and associate, explained the need for the secrecy: If a government wants to do something that it knows the public will reject, it must act in secret and then present the public with a fait accompli that it has to swallow willy-nilly. The required Knesset approval for Oslo was attained with exactly the minimal requirement of 61 votes, a tally that included five Arab members who were openly hostile to the very existence of the nation in whose parliament they sat. Thus was the future of Israel and the Israeli people to be decided. The Osloids felt some need to justify giving up parts of the Land of Israel into the power of the terrorist PLO whose charter defined its purpose as achieving the total destruction of Israel. To get around this annoying detail, a PLO convention was staged in Gaza, with US President Bill Clinton as Guest of Honor. There some words were said about the Charter ingeniously designed to have no real meaning. Shimon Peres then announced that Destroy Israel had been excised from the PLO charter. In fact, it was still there uncut and unchanged. In April 2004, Farouk Khaddoumi, who calls himself foreign minister of the PLO, proclaimed very explicitly that the charter was never changed and Destroy Israel is still its working clause. The PLO never even pretended that it would carry out a single one of the commitments it made in the Oslo Accords. In fact, within days of signing them on the White House lawn, Arafat made a speech assuring his admirers that the Accords were first step toward the destruction of Israel [see Issue 5]. Oslo did not interrupt the terrorist attacks and the mass murders. The terrosim and the mass murders did not interrupt the Rabin-Peres surrender the historic heartland of Israel to the PLO, along with large sums of money and vital services. Peres explained the reason for this indulgence of treachery: If Israel required the PLO to act according to its pledged obligations, then the Oslo Peace Process could not have gone forward. Meaning: If Israel demanded anything in return for unilateral capitulation, it might not have been able to go on capitulating. 2] The voters replaced Shimon Peres with Binyamin Netanyahu, who had been the leader of the opposition against the Oslo Accords, and was elected for his anti-Oslo convictions. But as Prime Minister he did not annul or even suspend the Accords. He often said that Israel's part in them was dependent on Arab "reciprocity", but there was never any reciprocity and he lead Israel on to more concessions and withdrawals. 3] In the next election, Netanyahu lost to Ehud Barak, whose brief tenure was aptly described by American columnist George Will as "the most disastrous in the history of any democracy". An electorate reluctant to follow this lemming-prince over the cliff, turned to the only available alternative candidate, Ariel Sharon. 4] Up to the time of his elevation to office, Sharon had expressed very strong views -- against the Oslo Accords -- against Israeli officials collaborating with the PLO -- in favor of the right of the Children of Israel to dwell in the Land of Israel -- against the very thought of the Israel Defense Forces being ordered to drag Israeli families out of the homes and communities they created Once he was installed as Prime Minister, he acted or proposed to act in contradiction to every one of those proclaimed views. He went beyond any previous breakdown of national resolve by accepting and approving a Road Map concocted by a foreign Quartet that includes the viciously inimical United Nations, European Union and Russia. This pernicious document demands -- expulsion of Jews from the historic heartland of Israel -- the invention of a PLO state there -- transfer of Israel's sovereign right of self-defense to the Quartet Sharon, having rammed approval through a reluctant cabinet, now endlessly re-pledges loyalty to it. If ever carried out, a remnant of a demoralized Israel will be reduced to impotent vassal of the Quartet, literally surrounded by barbed-wire. A Prime Minister of Israel will have created the ultimate ghetto. In advance of that happy day, Sharon is now splitting his party, his government and the country to enforce a Unilateral Disengagement". Meaning: Run away from disputed parts of the Land of Israel, leave PLO-Hamas terrorists to operate there unhindered, and not even ask anything in return. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis who had built homes and flourishing communities in abandoned wasteland, with the encouragement of previous governments and of Sharon himself, would be dragged from them by force. The parts of the Land of Israel that they had toiled and sometimes died to redeem, and the Ancient Promise at last fulfilled would be thrown away. The blatant refusal of the PLO to honor any of its commitments, and its eventual unleashing of the Oslo War of Terror, inflicting casualties in the thousands, are more than enough grounds to abrogate the Oslo Accords. Indeed, Israel's commitments under those Accords were always conditional and not absolute. The promoters of the experiment promised that if it failed, it could be undone. It is too late to undo the deaths, injuries and bereavements the Osloids have inflicted, but it is not too late to turn back from this disastrous and self-destructive blunder. The terror-chiefs can be removed from power, their terrorist forces disbanded, their fiefdoms dismantled. Then, perhaps, when the Palestinian-Arabs are no longer under the rule of fanatics who indoctrinate them in death-lust and the cult of suicide-murder, there may be a change for co-existence. No government of Israel has yet had the resolve to take this course. One government created the monster. Each successive government has tried in one way or another to tame it or appease it. Each tries to persuade it to accept more concessions and surrenders from Israel, and fails even in that. A very small country, under attack and siege, is more affected than most by the stance of other nations, and the princes who rule them. 1] It was another nation that created the present plight of Israel. The nation that invented parliamentary democracy, and preens itself on its Doctrine of Fair Play, ignored the words of its own greatest genius: It was not onto its own self true. From "A Time To Speak" Issue 7 (July 2001) "1917 The Balfour Declaration, issued by the government of Great Britain, pronounced that: His Majesty's Government looks with favor on the establishment of a Jewish National Home in Palestine, to be open to close Jewish Settlement. "1922 The League of Nations approves the terms of the Balfour Declaration and bestows on Great Britain a Mandate for temporary administration of Palestine, in which it is to carry out the terms of the Declaration and the Mandate. "In 1922, the Emir Abdullah, a protege of the British Government, is driven out of the Hejaz in Arabia. To provide for him, Great Britain takes all of Mandate Palestine east of the Jordan River and gives it to him as the Emirate of Trans-Jordan later to be the Kingdom of Jordan. It thereby cuts away a full 76 percent of the land of the promised Jewish National Home, and Jews are banned there. "Thereafter, the British Mandatory Government progressively bans Jews from more and more of the remaining territory of Mandate Palestine. Jews are forbidden to live in areas that were designated for close Jewish settlement. Immigration of Jews into the Jewish National Home is progressively cut down, and after 1939 it is virtually halted. The Jews are abandoned to the Nazi Europe, while Arabs from other countries are permitted to enter Palestine illegally and settle the lands first promised to and then forbidden to the Jews." [Comment: The Declaration protected the personal and property rights of the Arabs of Palestine, then few in number. It bestowed no national rights, for they had never been a nation.] The demographic proportions west of the Jordan River were created by the British policy: Keeping Jews out by force -- and thereby condemn them to the hellfires of Europe -- and import masses of foreign Arabs with no historical roots there. After Israel proclaimed statehood in a remnant of the remnant of Mandate Palestine, the British encouraged the Arab states to attack it and actually commanded the Jordan Legion in the war to destroy Israel. This betrayal of its bounden duty under the Mandate created the "Palestine Problem" and all the trouble and bloodshed that it engenders. The betrayal was not required for any national need or purpose, but was inspired by "princes" with an avowed personal taste for Arabs over Jews. It is still a personal taste rather than a national interest that prevails in the British Foreign Office whose ministers still proclaim it is "illegal" for those Jews not to bind themselves to the genuinely illegal constrictions of a long defunct Mandate. 2] There is one nation with which Israel has a unique bond, for it is a nation itself rooted in the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition and its own affinity for liberty. Fortunately, it is also a nation with unique strength and unique inclination to do good with it. Nevertheless, the foreign policy of the United States is tilted by the special interests, personal preferences, and financial prospects of a policymaking establishment. This is a clique in the State Department, intertangled with corporate executives and university academics, largely cut off from if not disdainful of the views of the most of the US population and its elected representatives in Congress. For example: The harsh treatment of a struggling Israel in 1956-57 was dictated by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles who came to his office after a long and lucrative career as U.S. lawyer for Nazi-German interests. Whether through the pressures of this clique, or through absent-mindedness, promises once made may fade away: a] In 1957, President Eisenhower acquiesced in the Dulles demands against Israel, but at the same time publicly guaranteed that the United States would not permit Egypt to re-impose its illegal anti-Israel blockades of international waterways. But Egypt immediately re-blockaded the Suez Canal, and Eisenhower's reaction was to say "I cannot think of anything we can do about it". The United States had also guaranteed that Egypt would not be allowed to re-blockade the Straits of Tiran, When Egypt imposed the blockade in 1967, the U.S. government literally could not remember where its written pledge was filed. b] In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union installed missile bases for Egypt along the Suez Canal. These were so lethal a threat, that each time they were installed Israel destroyed them. The U.S. Department of State simultaneously promised Israel that no more missiles would be installed and ordered Israel not to touch them if they were. The installation of the missiles continued without a pause of a single day, but the State Department would not lift its ban on Israel acting against them. Without those Soviet missiles, protected from Foggy Bottom, Egypt could not have launched the Yom Kippur War that cost thousands of lives. c] During the 1980s, the US administration was determined to sell the very dangerous AWACs warplanes to Saudi Arabia -- even though that kingdom was still loudly committed to the destruction of Israel. The US Congress was very reluctant to approve this risky deal, and was persuaded to permit it only on the promise that the United States would supervise their use in Saudi Arabia. The AWACs planes, now upgraded with new and advanced components, are now under exclusive Saudi control, with no supervision or restriction. d] During Gulf War I, Saddam Hussein fired scores of Scud Missiles at Israel. Then President George H.W. Bush used a combination of blackmail and promises to prevent then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir from taking action. For a country in Israel's situation, this was an extraordinary sacrifice to make to oblige a friendly state. It was also a pernicious sacrifice that encouraged the Arab world to see this passive Israel as easy future prey. The thanks for Israel's sacrifice came in a public complaint by President Bush that Israel was not grateful enough for the protection he gave it. e] The fiction of an Arab-Palestine Nation was invented in the aftermath of the Six-Day War. The notion that the United States would support the invention of a 23rd Arab State in the heartland of Israel was rejected by one president after another -- including Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Nevertheless the incumbent George W. Bush calls just such an invention a "long-standing vision" of US policy, when it is actually a reversal of long-standing commitment. This newly-invented long-standing vision became the cornerstone and touchstone of a Middle East policy that evaluates every event by whether or not it facilitates the establishment of a PLO State in the Land of Israel. To this end, the United States keeps bad company in a Quartet in which the other three members are driven by hatred of Israel and Jews. To this end, the standard response to Arab terrorist atrocities against Israelis is to complain that such nasty doings do not advance the cause of PLO Statehood. To this end an Assistant Secretary of State promises the Palestinian-Arabs that when Israel retreats, Arabs can "just walk in" to Jewish communities and take over Jewish homes. In any instance where Israel's vital interests are concerned, it cannot be predicted how the balance will tilt between a friendly Congress and public on one side, and an unfriendly policy establishment on the other. This makes it foolish as well as demeaning for a Prime Minister of Israel to run to a President of the United States like a vassal to his overlord, begging for approval of this or that. It is dishonest of a Prime Minister to misrepresent carefully non-committal remarks of a US President as a magnificent achievement in diplomacy. It is base for him to try to whip Israeli opinion in line with false threats of incurring presidential wrath. For all of its modern lifetime, Israel has been staunchly independent, maintaining a democratic and humane society even while having to fight for its life. Tiny in size and population, it is distinguished in character, courage, tenacity and intellect. Its achievements have inspired hate and envy in some quarters, respect in others. It must not now surrender to the hate and thereby forfeit the respect. For 56 years, Israel stood alone against fanatical terrorism. Now, when at last some other nations are ready to stand up to it, Israel must not lapse into appeasement. It must stand firm on its own rights, and prove itself a worthy friend and dependable associate.. The most common meaning of "prince" is a male member of a royal dynasty. Of that variety, Saudi Arabia is blessed with some 7000-8000 of them. Pre-eminent among them is Crown Prince Abdullah, heir to the throne and virtual regent for his ailing brother King Fahd. Recent deadly terror attacks in Saudi Arabia are attributed by the uninformed to Al-Qaeda. But Abdullah, a Real Prince of a Fellow, knows better: "It became clear to us now that Zionism is behind terrorist actions in the Kingdom [Saudi Arabia]. I can say that I am 95 percent sure of that." To Go To Top

CONDOLEEZZA RICE FUNDRAISES FOR THE PA Posted by Michael Freund, May 5, 2004.

This is an article of mine from today's Jerusalem Post about US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's latest efforts to raise money for Yasser Arafat and his terrorist cronies. (http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/ JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083647030871&p=1006953079865 Letters to the editor of the Post may be sent to: letters@jpost.com Congratulations would appear to be in order for US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. In addition to her already weighty responsibilities as President George W. Bush's chief adviser and confidante, Rice has now added a new task to her resume: chief fund-raiser for Yasser Arafat. According to a May 3 article in The Washington Post, the Bush administration has launched a "diplomatic offensive" aimed at allaying Arab concerns regarding the president's recent embrace of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan. Among other things, the paper notes, "the administration in recent days has tried to emphasize its concern for the Palestinians." This has included an effort to drum up financial support for the PA. "As part of the diplomatic offensive," the report says, "national security adviser Condoleezza Rice last week called some Arab countries that were behind in making payments to shore up the Palestinian Authority." Isn't that thoughtful of her. With American casualties mounting daily in Iraq, Osama Bin-Laden still on the run, and North Korea threatening to develop more nuclear weapons, doesn't Rice have better things to do than making sure Arafat can balance his checkbook? Indeed, Rice's telethon on behalf of the PA is particularly astonishing in light of some of the Palestinians' recent actions. Just this past weekend the PA transferred funds to Hamas-affiliated organizations in Gaza, claiming that economic conditions in the territories were the reason for the move. But if the PA itself is truly in such need of funds that the US national security adviser must intervene, why is it showering money on Hamas terrorists? Moreover, it is difficult to comprehend why Rice is seeking to keep the PA afloat despite all the evidence indicating that it is actively engaged in terror against Israel. In the past three years, and particularly during Operation Defensive Shield, Israel has uncovered thousands of official PA documents - including many with Arafat's handwritten approval - proving direct PA financing of terrorist attacks and other acts of violence. Even the State Department, in its annual report released last month on "Global Patterns of Terrorism," linked the PA with terror. "The PA's efforts to thwart terrorist operations were minimal in 2003," the report said, and "some personnel in the security services, including several senior officers, have continued to assist terrorist operations." Doesn't Rice read her own government's reports? If not, then she is probably also unaware that PA incitement against both Israel and the US has continued unabated in recent months. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), an official arm of the US government, monitors electronic and print media worldwide and publishes a daily digest of translations. According to the FBIS, PA television broadcast a Friday prayer sermon from the Zayid bin-Sultan mosque in Gaza on March 26, in which the preacher called upon Allah to "shake the land under the Zionists and the United States and its allies. O Allah, show us a black day for the Jews, the Americans, and their supporters. O Allah, avenge the blood of our martyrs." Just two weeks earlier, the FBIS reported, a sermon broadcast on PA television on March 14 had this to say: "Here are the Jews today taking revenge for their grandfathers and ancestors, the sons of apes and pigs This is the extremist tendency of Jews. They are extremists and terrorists who deserve death, while we deserve life, since we have a just cause." More recently, on April 30, a Palestinian preacher again prayed for the downfall of America, telling his audience on PA television, "O Allah, support our kinfolk in Iraq. O Allah, direct the shots of the holy warriors for your sake. O Allah, shake the land under the pillars of the United States and its allies." This too was documented in a FBIS digest, yet that does not appear to have prevented Rice from seeking to bail the PA out of financial trouble. IT HAS been nearly seven months now since three Americans were killed by Palestinian terrorists in an attack on a US diplomatic convoy in Gaza on October 15. Under US pressure the Palestinians eventually arrested several suspects, who then "escaped" from a Palestinian prison last month under extremely suspicious circumstances. Last month it was reported that the US now has evidence indicating that PA Chairman Arafat personally authorized the attack in order to "convey a message" to Washington (Ma'ariv, April 14). Based on Rice's recent telephone activity, it would seem fair to say that the message has gotten through loud and clear; for instead of shutting down all financial support to the PA, Washington is inexplicably trying to keep Arafat's lines of credit open. In so doing, the Bush administration is not only undermining the moral clarity of its own war on terror, it is also indirectly facilitating the funding of anti-Israel terrorist attacks. If Rice insists on continuing to serve as a fundraiser, she would do well to consider adopting a better cause to promote. Rather than collecting money for Yasser Arafat and his hired hands of terror, she might wish to lend a hand to their many victims. They are, I would think, far more deserving of her time and assistance. The writer served as deputy director of communications & policy planning under former premier Binyamin Netanyahu. To Go To Top

SHARON'S NEXT PLAN OF RETREAT Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 5, 2004.

In my last article: "Take (Only) A Moment's Rest" (May 3rd), I guessed at what tack Sharon and the State Department and the Oslo/European gang might take. I mentioned that they planned to build up an anger against the Gaza Jews to be followed by denigrating the YESHA Jews. This was one of the ugly and despicable tactics of Rabin, Peres and Beilin. Well, the stink of that Plan is once again permeating the air. Sharon, from his office, and the State Department from "Foggy Bottom" in Washington have already started the talk that the greater population of Israel would reverse the referendum by a wide margin. No doubt, that can happen if the "corrupters" begin a hate-the-settlers campaign, covered over with the theme of "peace in our time". Sharon was wiling to accept a "positive" vote on the referendum he invented and to act on it as binding. When he saw it going against him, he then proclaimed that it was "non-binding". Sharon's Word is not trustworthy. Period! The greater public, ever the most dedicated Leftist, knows that nothing Israel will give up will make the Arab Muslim Palestinians cease terror, cease calling for the Muslims "right of return" and cease their efforts to erase the "non-Muslim" Jewish State of Israel. The Oslo Accords give-aways proved that nothing will change the Palestinian killing charter (over the bodies of the 1500 plus dead Israelis, with tens of thousands wounded some maimed for life). But, if Sharon, Peres and Beilin linked to the State Department and E.U. dollars or Euros mount a slash-and-burn campaign to blame the Jews of the pioneering villages called "settlements" pejoratively, many will go along. Note! Sharon and his gang just announced he'll come to the U.S. next week to consult with Bush and the State Department on how to push through his retreat plans. On May 4th we heard Secretary of State Colin Powell say that "the settlements must go". What gives him the right?! The Plan would be to "cherry-pick" from the prior plans of appeasement that promised everything but, secured nothing. Like Oslo, the promises are supposed to sound great to the Israeli people who are desperate for peace. Like Oslo, Sharon is prepared to slyly cook up a secret agreement with the State Department, ignoring any input by experts in any military or security field who have already expressed their negative opinion of Sharon's evacuation plan. Many of the top military and intelligence minds in Israel and abroad have said that such a retreat will only bring more terrorism with bigger weapons over a greater area of Israel. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said in Ma'ariv May 5th that: "We must listen to Likud voters." But, Peres claims that a majority of the Israeli people favor the "peace process" (his code-words for destroying the settlements). (1) So, Sharon plans to bring his Plan to his Cabinet and if they vote against it, he will evict them, invite in the Leftists and proceed to demolish to the Jewish State. Sounds like any typical Arab dictator in the region to me. When one really reads the Oslo language, it is blatantly clear that its drafters never thought Arafat and the Palestinians would keep any of the agreements, including especially the cessation of their terror attacks. Sharon's plan adopts the same Oslo criteria of non-performance by the Arab Muslim Palestinians. Arafat and his terrorists, also including the normally peaceful Arab Muslim Palestinian people, broke every line of the Oslo Accords and killed Israeli men, women and children without limit. The Arab Muslim Palestinian people cheered, danced and threw candy at every successful massacre. There is every indication and proclamation by the Arab Muslim Palestinians, Hamas, and all the other Terrorist groups they will continue to terrorize Israel - to send their own children and women to kill Jewish women and children. Sharon and the State Department will make every effort to avoid reminding the Israeli people that the Arab Muslim Palestinians are an untrustworthy mix of Arab Muslims who hate the Jewish people with such rage that they will never cease trying to kill Jews and to ultimately destroy the Jewish nation. I recall a comment made by an historian about some of our government's more ruthless politicians, namely: "We are known for buying our enemies and selling our friends." The coming propaganda campaign waged by Sharon on advise by the U.S. State Department and the CIA whose expertise in building or destroying foreign governments is legend. Every dirty trick will be used to cast the settler-pioneers in a bad light. Recall Yitzhak Rabin's employment of Avishai Raviv as an "agent provocateur" designed to look like those of the Right were the culprits. Suspicious attacks against Arabs were blamed on the Right (during the Oslo fiasco) when it seemed clear that the attacks were controlled by selected political Leftists put in charge of Israel's Intelligence Services. (Note! The Mossad and Shabak did not deserve to have their reputations of service besmirched by politicians who manipulated their leadership through special appointments.) Hopefully, Sharon won't follow the Rabin/Peres use of Police, Military and Intelligence to create false impressions of the political Right. SOLUTIONS: In anticipation of a propaganda campaign to cast those Jews who live inside the pioneering side of the "Green Line" as "spoilers" - a counter campaign should be initiated, immediately! Sharon's alternate plan already being drafted in deference to the Bush election in November, will be made appealing - but a lie, nonetheless. The Lies will come fast and furious, all packaged to promise peace, cessation of terror, acceptance by the rest of the world and cooperation by the Arab Muslims. The words for the Arab Muslim Palestinians will be first drafted by the U.S. State Department and then revised by Sharon's gang and Arafat's gang to strike the right note with the Israeli public. Promises are easy to make, particularly when you have no intention to keep them. Sharon, in his desperate grab for a decent place in history has drawn the noose prepared by the Arab Muslims tighter and tighter. Should all of Israel be finally emptied of Jews and packed into Tel Aviv, be assured that the Arabs would want more. It's on their maps. "Palestine" covers the entire area from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. Before Sharon and the State Department set the stage where Israelis, along the sea coast are propagandized to hate the Jews inside the heartland of Israel, make the case that ALL JEWS FACE THE SAME ENEMY(IES). As the people of Gush Katif went door to door to convince the Likud Party members to vote sensibly, all Jews who believe in the State must go into Tel Aviv and Haifa to do the same thing. Show the Jews on the Coast and Center of the country that you care as much for them as you do about yourselves. Show them how you protect them by being on the borders and standing up to the attacking Arab Muslims from within and from the surrounding Arab countries. Beat Sharon to the punch. He is on an accelerated schedule, pushed by the U.S. State Department and the Bush election campaign. Don't let Sharon set Jew against Jew so he can push though his own self-serving agenda and that of the Arabist State Department. Don't allow them to manipulate the Jews of Israel - or those still in the Diaspora. Serving "their" agenda will not help any Jews only "their" interests. The "Their" I'm referring to are the politicians who wish to curry favor with Saudi Royalty, the U.N., the E.U., Russia and the Arabist State Department. I suppose there is no need to point out that the Quartet met today, May 4th to bless Sharon's retreat plan and damn the landslide, democratic vote against evacuation, eviction and uprooting of the pioneering "settlers". All of these outsiders have a history of either hating Jews, killing Jews or both. So, take note that Israel's dedicated enemies are solidly behind Sharon's plans to clean Gaza, Judea and Samaria of Jews. You may include the "non-Jewish" Jews led by Peres, Beilin, Lapid, as embodied in the Labor Left, including Meretz, Shinui and Beilin's newly invented party Yahad. They want to prove that Oslo and all the other appeasement agreements were and are the correct thing to do - despite the trail of bloody bodies they left behind. They have the mark of Cain on them for enabling the killing of their brother and sister Jews. In closing, remember this: Bush can pull American troops out of the Iraqi quagmire but the Jews of Israel have no where else to go. If the people of Israel allow the Arabs to close in from Gaza in the South, from Lebanon in the North, from Syria in the Northeast, from across Jordan due east and from within the planned neo-State of Palestine in the heartland of Israel, then the Jews will, indeed, be forced into the sea. Don't let the bastards do it! Let the Knesset and Sharon's Cabinet know that they are on their way out - with the mark of Cain on them - if they submit to Sharon's threats to betray their responsibility to all the Jewish people, within the State and those still outside. ### 1, "Mofaz: We must listen to Likud voters" MA'ARIV INTL May 5, 2004 Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

SHARON MANIPULATED OPPONENTS TO INVEST ENERGY IN A NON-BINDING LIKUD REFERENDUM Posted by David Bedein, May 5, 2004.

Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon arranged things brilliantly. Sharon arranged it so that all energies would be spent by his opposition on an intense lobby of Likud members, by suggesting a referendum with no legal status that would have no say whatsover on policy. With Sharon's opposition distracted in the lobby of Likud members, who have no legal say in policy, Sharon invested all of his time and effort on a lobby of wavering government ministers, all of whom have a legal say in policy. Sharon did not want to be under the pressure that PM Rabin faced into in October 1995, when hundreds of thousands of people descended on the Knesset and overwhelmed the Israeli government with seemingly insurmountable pressure. Sharon's opposition fell into the trap that Sharon had set for them. Sharon's opposition invested all of its energies into a victory for a NON-BINDING referendum. Sharon has set a crucial Israel government meeting this coming Sunday, May 9th to ratify the Sharon Retreat Plan, assuming that activists who exhausted themselves in the referendum campaign will not have time to reorganize to influence gov't ministers Sharon counts on the assumption that most people, even in Sharon's most passionate opposition have not bothered to read the Sharon Retreat Plan, which was distributed in small print, and which appears on the website of the prime minister, www.pmo.gov.il The time has come to mobilize thousands of people to call wavering ministers of the Israeli government, to express alarm about the content of the Sharon Retreat Plan to the appropriate government ministers Ads should be placed in Friday papers in Israel to list direct telephone numbers and faxes of each wavering government ministers, with talking points that refer to appropriate sections of the Sharon Plan Ads would be modelled as such: Wavering Israeli government gov't ministers, with direct telephone and fax numbers: 1. Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom. Direct tel: 02 5303565 Direct fax: 02 5303728 2. Finance Minister Benyamin Netanyau " tel. 02 5317200 Direct fax: 02 5637891 3. Health Minister Danny Naveh " tel. 02 6787662 Direct fax: 02 6786461 4. Education Minister Limor Livnat " tel. 02 560 2330 Direct fax 02 5602246 5. Science Minister Modi Zandburg " tel. 02 5411105 Direct fax 02 5811613 6. Public Affairs Minister Tzachi HaNegbi " tel. 02 5308004 Direct fax 02 5847872 These six government ministers need to receive thousands of calls from concerned citizens of Israel, to influence the Sunday policy decision of the Israeli government. CALL WAVERING ISRAEL GOVERNMENT MINISTERS TO... *STOP FORCIBLE TRANSFER OF JEWS *STOP ERADICATION OF PRODUCTIVE ISRAELI BUSINESSES *STOP SURRENDER OF PRIVATE PROPERTY TO THE PLO *STOP RESUMED ISRAEL MILITARY TRAINING OF THE PLO *STOP HANDOVER OF ISRAEL MILITARY BASES TO THE PLO *STOP FOREIGN "SUPERVISION" OF ISRAELI SETTLEMENT EXPANSION *STOP AN ACCORD WHICH DOES NOT ALLOW FOR PURSUIT OF TERRORISTS *STOP AN ACCORD WHICH DOES NOT PREVENT THE PLO FROM JEW HATRED IN THEIR SCHOOLS AND THEIR MEDIA EACH TALKING POINT WOULD BE BACKED BY APPROPRIATE CLAUSE IN THE SHARON RETREAT PLAN (see:april 16th issue of www.israelbehindthernews.com) David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem and a Fellow, Center for Near East Policy Research, Wellesley, Mass. To Go To Top

A BETTER DISENGAGEMENT PLAN Posted by Benjamin Svetitsky, May 5, 2004.

Professors for a Strong Israel (PSI) condemns the idea, rumored to come from the Prime Minister's office, of continuing with the original "disengagement" plan in spite of its sound rejection by the Likud membership. We offer instead an improved plan, one that is sure to command wide support in the country because it works to Israel's advantage, not the enemy's. The plan's components: 1. Annex immediately the areas that are needed for Israel's security 2. Disengage from the terrorists by building fences around their cities 3. Destroy the Palestinian Terror Authority and the PLO/Hamas terrorist army This plan fulfills the Prime Minister's intention of taking unilateral action to enhance Israel's security in the absence of a negotiating partner. If all Mr. Sharon has to offer is another plan for desertion in the face of terrorism, he should resign to make way for a new leadership, untainted by defeatism. Dr. Ron Breiman, Chairman of PSI, Tel 050-518.940 Professors For a Strong Israel is a group of educators, researchers and scientists from all major academic disciplines who promote a rational response to Arab hostility. To join, contact http://professors.org.il for more information. Or email prof@netvision.net.il Include your mailing address and institutional affiliation. PSI's "ranks are open to all who hold a doctoral degree, whether in sciences or humanities, whether they work in the public or the private sector." To Go To Top

A RESPONSE TO OLMERT'S "WISE ANSWER" Posted by Dafna Yee, May 5, 2004.

A member of Crisis-in-Israel@yahoogroups.com wrote: "Sharon said he was disappointed with the outcome, but he vowed not to resign. His aides said he would press ahead with the Gaza plan. "There is no doubt disengagement is inevitable and unstoppable," Vice Premier Ehud Olmert told Israel Radio. "In the end it will happen because the alternative is more murder, terrorism and attacks without us having any wise answer for what 7,500 Jews are doing among 1.2 million Palestinians [in Gaza]." That certainly doesn't sound like the political platform that got Likud -- and Sharon -- elected! With THAT philosophy, there is no "wise answer" for what tiny Israel, with a total population of 5,938,093 (and not all of them Jews), is doing among 292,400,267 Arabs in the entire Middle East!!! (population figures from: http://www.science.co.il/Arab-Israeli-conflict.asp) Since Olmert doesn't seem to have an answer for keeping Jews on Israeli land despite the numerical superiority of surrounding Arabs, I'll give him several and he can choose: - Because Israel -- including Gaza, Judea and Samaria -- is their home! - Because all of Israel was a barren wasteland until the Jews came and reclaimed the land and built it! - Because no one should EVER reward terrorists with anything but a bullet! - Because another sovereign Muslim state is a far greater threat to Israel's security than gangs of terrorists! - Because the terrorists will have a much easier time striking at Israelis in the new "border towns" which would include Ashkelon, Ashdod, and Jerusalem, if a "Palestine" is created with "Road Map" boundaries! - Because Israel will truly end up fighting the world since the UN will undoubtably send troops to "Palestine" in order to "keep the peace"! - Because Israel should NEVER negotiate with terrorists or their leaders which leaves no one to negotiate such a transfer with! - Because it would be a gross obscenity to even think of giving the products of Jewish labor to Israel's enemies! - Because it is yet another example of that utterly stupid philosophy of "land for peace"! It took me less than five minutes to come up with these answers. I'm sure most people could come up with many more without much trouble. Since none of them occurred to Olmert or Sharon, in place of their "wise answer" of disengagement, what the hell are they doing in office? Since their true feelings about Israel have now been revealed, Israelis can no longer afford the luxury of waiting to see what other "wise answers" they have in mind. Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

THE ARABIST LETTER Posted by Leo Rennert, May 5, 2004.

US Diplomats pro-Arab, anti-Israel agenda mirrors their british cousins.' This is an opinion piece from the Jerusalem Post OnLine (http://www.jpost.com). Back when George Shultz was US secretary of state, he made a practice of asking every newly appointed ambassador to locate his country on a globe. When the unsuspecting emissary put his finger on, say, Thailand, Shultz would correct him: "Your country is here," his finger on the United States. The story comes to mind on news that some 50 former American diplomats, taking their cue from their British counterparts, have put their names to a letter denouncing President George W. Bush's policies vis-a-vis Israel and the Palestinians. "By closing the door to negotiations with Palestinians and the possibility of a Palestinian state, you have proved that the United States is not an even-handed peace partner," say the diplomats. "Your unqualified support of Sharon's extra-judicial assassinations, Israel's Berlin Wall-like barrier, its harsh military measures in the occupied territories, and now your endorsement of Sharon's unilateral plan are costing our country its credibility, prestige, and friends." This sounds like a serious critique, by serious people, of administration policy. The letter was published under the auspices of a Washington-based nonprofit, the American Educational Trust, which publishes a magazine called the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. WRMEA claims to promote "Middle East solutions which it judges to be consistent with the charter of the United Nations and traditional American support for human rights, self-determination and fair play." The magazine's publisher, former US ambassador to Qatar Andrew Killgore, is the letter's principal signatory. It's worth taking a look at the magazine's Web site, www.wrmea.com. Its April cover story is titled "Gaza: The IDF's shooting range." (The article, by Gideon Levy, is reprinted from Haaretz.) There is an article on the "USS 'Liberty' cover-up." The site prominently features an electronic ticker on "Your tax dollars sent to Israel," which as of this writing are said to exceed $90 billion over the years. (That, however, is considerably less than the $112 billion the US has spent in one year in its war in Iraq, for which WRMEA also has a ticker going.) Aside from its editorial content, WRMEA is sponsoring an ad campaign which calls for "the Palestinian refugees' right to return." And there is this appeal for individual donations: "Journals of opinion do not bring in the same advertising revenue as mainstream magazines. Big corporations and the Zionist lobby want to control the editorial content around which their ads will be placed." Killgore has received awards from the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee in 1992 and the Islamic Association for Palestine in 1994. As it happens, 1994 was the year in which the two groups jointly sponsored a fund-raiser in Annandale, Virginia, in which featured speaker Muhammad Siam, a Hamas leader, appealed for funds for jihad against Israel. This isn't to suggest that Killgore shares their agenda. But it does give some indication of the circles in which he and his fellow signatories travel, and the views to which they subscribe. It also gives the lie to WRMEA's claim that it offers mainstream views of the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is an anti-Israel, pro-Arab organ and ought to be honest enough to present itself as such. Which brings us back to the Shultz story. Suffusing WRMEA's pages is the conceit that they represent truly "American" views, untarnished by the Zionist lobby and independent of the presumably Zionist-controlled media. Of course this is a crackpot claim, given that in survey after survey Americans overwhelmingly identify with Israel against the Palestinians. On the other hand, Killgore's views are not that far from those of many State Department officials, as attested by the fact that he was awarded the 1997 "Foreign Service Cup," by the Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired (DACOR) group, which cited the "courage" of his Mideast advocacy. Right now, America desperately needs a diplomatic corps to serve as its instrument in reshaping the Middle East. To judge by the Killgore letter, what Americans are getting instead is an Arab lobby within and alongside its State Department, representing views far outside the US mainstream. This week's letter should serve as a wake-up call to Bush that he needs to ensure that his Mideast ambassadors and foreign service officers are with him, not against him. He is, after all, their boss. To Go To Top

DELENDA EST FALLUJAH Posted by National Unity Coalition, May 5, 2004.

This was written by Mackubin Thomas Owens and appeared on the National Review Online (NRO), April 30, 2004. Mackubin Owens is an NRO contributing editor and a professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. He led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969. From my perspective, the decision to lift the siege of Fallujah was a grave mistake. The negotiations are being sold as a way of achieving peace while sparing the lives of innocent civilians in the city; but it sends the wrong message to both our enemies and our friends. It teaches them that the United States rewards violence and terrorism and confirms the Arab belief that the Americans are soft. I hope I am wrong, but I'm afraid the decision to pull back from the city will not end well for the United States or our Iraqi allies. The reason is simple: The fighters in Fallujah do not seek peace. They want to drive the Americans out of Iraq. They are like venomous snakes: They will kill us or our Iraqi allies if we do not kill them first. There is no negotiating with them. They see such negotiations as a sign of weakness; indeed, the fact that the powerful United States is negotiating with them permits the insurgents to claim that they have prevailed over the most powerful military in the world. In retrospect, the refusal of the Turks to permit the 4th Infantry Division to launch a "northern front" may turn out to be one of the most momentous decisions of the war - not because the unit was necessary to topple Saddam, but because an armor unit smashing through the Sunni Triangle while the conventional war was still underway would likely have convinced the population of the region that they had been defeated. But beyond the vagaries of war that prevented an attack from Turkey by the 4th ID, the new "American way of war" that was on display in Iraq has created significant unintended consequences that require us to re-evaluate its effectiveness. A "humane" approach to war - one that stresses precision and minimizing collateral damage - may lead a population spared the horrors of war to believe that they haven't been defeated. And the fact is that a war ends when the defeated say it is over, not when the victors do. This is a real dilemma for U.S. war planners. On one hand, we are justly proud of the fact that we have gone out of our way to wage war in a way designed to avoid the deaths of civilians. On the other, those same civilians may conclude that the cost of continued resistance is low. I believe that this is the case with the people of Fallujah. Unlike the Germans and Japanese in 1945, they may not believe that they were defeated. "If we can just hold on," they may be thinking, "the Americans will go away and we can return to Sunni business as usual." The Fallujah rats' nest should have been cleared out much earlier. It must be, eventually, if there is to be any hope of long-term Coalition success in Iraq. By not doing it now, we are likely to increase the cost - not only to the Marines who will have to retake real estate they were forced to give up, but also to the very civilians the negotiations seek to spare. Urban warfare is difficult under any circumstances. It becomes more deadly when the defenders are permitted the time and leisure to prepare. The initial Marine offensive was successful in knocking the insurgents off balance and keeping them on the run. The cease-fire agreement, which now has been extended, gives the insurgents breathing space. The distinction between combatant and noncombatant is important if war is to be waged in a humane manner. But what happens when our adversaries take advantage of our respect for this distinction? Military necessity and the law of war permit attacks on populated areas if they are used for military purposes. We should, of course, give the civilian population the opportunity to leave; if they choose to stay, they become, in effect, combatants. If the insurgents do not permit them to leave, those insurgents bear the moral responsibility for non-combatant deaths. In any event, the longer we wait, the higher the cost is bound to be. If the Americans do not handle Fallujah, the impact will extend beyond the Sunni Triangle. It will send a message to the Shia that Sunni intransigence is being rewarded, and will strengthen the position of the troublemaker Moqtada al-Sadr, who may conclude that he and his Mahdi army have nothing to fear from the American "paper tigers." The war in Iraq is not yet won. It may still be lost, and, indeed, will be if Fallujah is not purged of insurgents. I hope I'm wrong, but this may be the decisive moment in our Iraq enterprise. During the Punic Wars between Carthage and the Roman Republic, Cato the Elder used to end his orations in the Senate with "delenda est Carthago" (Carthage must be destroyed). It may seem hard-hearted, but the same sentiment applies to Fallujah. The National Unity Coalition is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" To Go To Top

EHUD OLMERT GETS SLAPP'ED IN THE LATEST MALICIOUS LIBEL SUIT BY ANTI-DEMOCRATIC LEFTISTS Posted by Steven Plaut, May 4, 2004.

In the past year or two, there has been a rash in Israel of malicious and frivolous SLAPP suits filed against critics of leftists by the radical Leftists. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation and a SLAPP suit is an anti-democratic harassment "libel suit" designed to suppress the freedom of speech of one's critics. In many parts of the US there are severe penalties against people who file them. In Israel they are a growing guerilla tactic of leftist extremists opposed to freedom of speech. In the past year or so, several SLAPP suits were dismissed by Israeli courts and the general case trend seems to be towards better protected free speech. In a recent one, a far-leftist anti-Zionist professor who filed a suit against a newspaper reporter at Haaretz for comments on himself he did like, and against Haaretz itself, when it printed an article saying that this professor, Moshe Zimmerman of the Hebrew University, regularly compares Israel to Nazi Germany at the same time that the German government has been financing his own research. Zimmerman lost and was ordered to pay 75,000 NIS in damages. Another professor also had his colleagues with a SLAPP suit but it was tossed out of court and he was hit for damages. Currently Judy Balint Lash, a non-leftist Israeli columnist (originally American) is being harassed by some members of Rachel Corrie's International Solidarity Movement of pro-terrorists because they do not like being criticized by her. And of course I myself am being harassed in a malicious SLAPP suit by Neve Gordon from Ben Gurion University because I dared criticize his political writings and public political activities, criticism that is free speech under any democracy. (Incidently, since some people asked: Gordon maliciously filed his SLAPP suit in Nazareth district court because he wanted an Arab judge to hear the case. Gordon evidently feared that any Jewish judge would read Gordon's own libelous and extremist writings, in which he declares Israel is a fascist, terrorist, apartheid state and in which he praises Norman Finkelstein (widely seen as a Holocaust Denier and neonazi) as the ethical equivalent of Biblical Prophets, and feared such a Jewish judge would toss out his suit and maybe indict him for other things besides. My own lawyer filed a motion last year with the Israeli Supreme Court to move the trial to a different court. The motion was rejected by the Chief Justice. If you know anything about who the Israeli Chief Justice is, this might not surprise you.) But one of the most interesting twists to leftist SLAPP guerilla harassment has to do with the new suit filed against Ehud Olmert. Olmert used to be the Mayor of Jerusalem and is an old-time Likud honcho. He used to be militant and anti-Oslo, but this past year has postured to the Left, and was pushing unilateral Israeli appeasements of the PLO long before Sharon proposed his own "disengagement" plan. Olmert is just the latest in a long line of Likud leaders who think that if they shift Left they can get the Left and its captive media to like them. It never works. Olmert enraged the Left's main organ of communication, Haaretz, and its publishers, the Schocken family. Actually the Schockens own not only far-Leftist Haaretz, with its pathetic 6% Israeli market share, but also a string of local weeklies, including Jerusalem's "Kol Hair", the main Jerusalem weekly. Seems that two years back, Olmert dared criticize the political positions of Kol Hair and of Haaretz. Actually what he said was that the local newspaper was promoting the political position of the Hamas and was anti-Israel and identifies with the Hamas, and also with the "tanzim" (PLO militia). Olmert made the remarks in front of a Knesset parliamentary committee, evidently in the Knesset building. Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem at the time. The Schockens were not amused. The Schocken publishing house, together with the ex-editor of the local newspaper, have filed suit against Olmert for "defaming" their newspaper, claiming it was causing them serious financial damages (I, for one, would love to see them try to prove it.) Olmert and the Schockens have had other battles, with each side in the past suing the other for libel. All this involving anewspaper that regular protests its devotion to free speech. Not sure what became of those suits but I suspect they were tossed. This time the Schockens are demanding 500,000 NIS. My prediction is that the Schocken SLAPP suit against Olmert will go the way of others and will be defeated, with serious embarassment for the newspaper pretending to be that of the "thinking Israeli". Haaretz' idea of pluralism is to run one anti-leftist opinion column for every 150 columns and articles promoting the leftist agenda. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

DIPLOMATS FAILED TO DISCLOSE THEIR OWN ARAB LINKS Posted by Leo Rennert, May 4, 2004.

This was written by Chris Hastings, David Bamber and Roya Nikkhah and appeared in the Telegraph. It is archived at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml? xml=/news/2004/05/02/ndips02.xml Some of the most prominent former diplomats who condemned Tony Blair's policies in the Middle East have business links with Arab governments, The Telegraph can reveal. In a letter published last week, 52 former British diplomats condemned the invasion of Iraq and the Government's support for Israel. The letter failed to disclose, however, that several of the key signatories, including Oliver Miles, the former British ambassador to Libya who instigated the letter, are paid by pro-Arab organisations. Some of the others hold positions in companies seeking lucrative Middle East contracts, while others have unpaid positions with pro-Arab organisations. The disclosure last night prompted allegations - denied by the diplomats - that they were merely promoting the interests of their clients. Andrew Dismore, the Labour MP for Hendon, said: "If an MP had made statements like these without declaring an interest in the subject they would have been before the standards and privileges committee we would have had their guts for garters. "This casts a very different light on what the former diplomats have said." The letter attacked new peace proposals announced by President Bush and Ariel Sharon as "one-sided and illegal". It warned that the measures would cost "yet more Israeli and Palestinian blood". The signatories said they had watched with "deepening concern the policies which you have followed on the Arab-Israeli problem and Iraq, in close co-operation with the United States. There is no case for supporting policies which are doomed to failure". Mr Miles is the chairman and a director of the London-based MEC International, which promotes business opportunities in the Middle East. He has a 10 per cent holding in the company and although he draws no actual salary he will receive L10,000 this year in consultancy fees from the firm. According to the company's website, MEC has been commissioned to produce reports for the Saudi Arabian Export Promotions Board and the Gulf Co-operation Council. An offshoot of the firm, called AIM, has carried out work for the government of Bahrain. The website also lists the Arab Gulf Co-operation Council, the Arab League and the National Bank of Egypt as among MEC's clients. Mr Miles last night insisted that he had no personal knowledge of these contracts and that they had not influenced him in drawing up the letter, although he admitted that the signatories were "slanted" towards Arabists. "MEC earns its money from the market, from companies and foundations, some of which are no doubt financed by Arab governments. "I am proud of my business links with the Arab world and would be happy to work for any Arab government. I am in contact with all the Arab ambassadors in London and a number of their embassies have been able to offer hospitality to MEC International." Mr Miles said that until this year he had drawn up to L4,000 annually from the company. He said the payments were not sufficient to "corrupt" and had nothing to do with his decision to organise the open letter. He added: "The eventual letter is slanted towards Arabists. "But that was more to do with the practicalities of the exercise rather than anything else. Because of my activities with the company I have maintained contact with former Middle East colleagues, which has made networking as far as the letter is concerned easier." Mr Miles, who drafted the letter while on business in Tripoli, said that he had been appearing at a conference at which he was an unpaid guest speaker. He said that he had paid for his own travel to the Libyan capital. Other signatories to the letter also have links to Arab organisations. Sir Archie Lamb, who was ambassador to Kuwait between 1974 and 1977, is a paid non-executive director of the international section of the Bank of Kuwait. He has been with the bank for 14 years, but declined to say how much he was paid for his work. He denied, however, that his links with Kuwait's biggest financial institution had influenced his decision to sign the letter. "I am a British subject and my entire career has been about protecting and promoting Britain. British interests will only be attended to by a settlement of the Israeli-Palestine issue, not by making it worse, as Mr Bush and Mr Sharon are doing." Sir Graham Boyce, who was ambassador to Kuwait between 1996 and 1999, is vice-chairman of VT International Services. This is part of the VT group, which has contracts with the Qatar emiri navy, the United Arab Emirates, the Jordanian navy, the Royal Brunei armed forces and the Egyptian navy. Only last year, the parent company won a lucrative contract to supply coastguard vessels to Oman. Sir Graham was unavailable for comment. Sir Alan Munro, the former British ambassador to Algeria, admitted that he had a "salaried position" advising companies on how to break into the Saudi Arabian market, but declined to say how much he was paid. Sir Alan also works for the Joint Arab-British Chamber of Commerce and the Middle East International Publishers, although these are voluntary positions. "I am called upon to address conferences around the world. I don't get a penny, but my travel and hotel accommodation are provided," said Sir Alan. "But none of this has anything to do with why I and others signed the letter. Those who say it is are barking up the wrong tree. I got involved because I am deeply worried about where Britain is heading in this part of the world." The conflict in Iraq is, however, having a detrimental impact on the London-based Joint Arab-British Chamber of Commerce, a private company that exists to forge closer links between British and Middle East businesses. The most recent set of accounts for the company, which has Sir Alan Munro on its board of directors, says the situation in Iraq has depressed trade, which in turn has contributed to its own continued loss-making. The same document, however, notes that: "The Arab ambassadors have, as usual, given us much support for which were are very grateful. The ambassadors share the same objectives as we have and we pledge ourselves to do all we can to help with their achievement." Other signatories are also prominent in organisations that have received substantial payments from Arab governments. Sir Terence Clark, a former ambassador to Iraq and Oman, is the volunteer chairman of the Anglo-Omani Society, which has received L70,000 from the Sultan of Oman, the organisation's patron. Sir David Blatherwick, a former ambassador to Egypt, is an unpaid director of the Egyptian British Chamber of Commerce. Over the past 18 months this private company has received L50,000 from the Egyptian government. A spokesman for the company said the money was in exchange for work carried out. To Go To Top

ISRAEL HAS NO PEACE PARTNERS! Posted by Dafna Yee, May 4, 2004.

In a message dated 4/6/2004, daveyb.... writes: Israel remains committed to peace. We will persevere in the hope that a partner for peace will emerge so that we can arrive at a political solution based upon the implementation of the Road Map. In the meantime, Prime Minister Sharon has announced plans for bold measures of disengagement that hold the potential for reenergizing the process. The Palestinian leadership has a choice. It can continue to get into bed with terrorists and tyrants. It can continue its morally depraved strategy of murder and terror and, in so doing, continue to bring suffering and despair on the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. But it can also choose a different path. It can prove to the world that it is ready to assume responsibilities, not just assume privileges. It can show that it is ready to establish a democratic society that will respect the rights of its people, and the rights of its neighbors, and not another terrorist dictatorship in the heart of the Middle East. Israel is ready, as always, to be a partner to such a leadership. The Security Council has a choice too. It does not have to continue to send a message that puts the response to terrorism on trial, instead of the terrorism itself. It does not have to pander to initiatives that defend the terrorist rather than his victims. In the legacy of resolutions 242, 338 and 1373, the Council can also send another message: one of hope and of peace. One that does not pretend that this is a conflict in which one side has a monopoly on rights and on victimhood. One that rejects terror without compromise. Which message will you send today, to our region, and to the rest of the world? http://www.israel-un.org/sec_council/gillerman23mar04.htm I had to read these sentences over several times to make sure that I was really reading the words correctly! Frankly, I am shocked and appalled that this Israeli politician is still putting forth the same worn propaganda that the "Palestinian leadership" is only associated with terrorists! THEY ARE TERRORISTS -- EVERY ONE OF THEM -- AND THEIR LEADER, YASSER ARAFAT, IS THE WORST TERRORIST OF THEM ALL! Israeli politicians who still talk of the Palestinian Authority as peace partners are as guilty of collusion in their terrorist acts as the UN Security Council that they are condemning. It doesn't matter if they call themselves right-wingers or die-hard leftists -- calling known terrorists "peace partners" is a betrayal to the State of Israel and to believers in Democracy everywhere. The phrases "Palestinian moderate" and "peace process" are oxymorons of epic proportions! The hard truth is that these are contrived terms that are part of the original plan that the "Palestinians" have been conducting from the beginning; the purpose of their lexicon is to give them all of Israel and make it judenrein! Arafat spelled out his plan to use "negotiation" and "promises of peace", instead of another war, as the way to eradicate Israel at the Rabat Conference in 1974. His promise to eliminate Israel was why he was given leadership of the PLO in the first place. He hasn't changed from either his plans or his determination to totally destroy Israel one iota except in one way: now many people consider him a statesman who is working for peace! When the British were in supposedly charge of security, under the Palestine Mandate, the Arabs carried out many horrendous massacres. One of the most notable for sheer brutality and horror was the one in Hebron in 1929. The British response to the survivors of that horrible massacre was to force the Jews to evacuate because they said their soldiers couldn't protect the Jews! (Sound familiar?) This ended over 1000 years of unbroken Jewish residence in the area. For a point of information, the British refused to use their soldiers against the Arabs in Hebron, except for one British policeman who was killed himself, although they knew a massacre was imminent. They had no compuctions against using British soldiers to force the Jews to leave their homes, however. (This was one major reason that forced even pro-British Zionists to recognize that the Jews could not afford to rely on a foreign power for protection.) Another important point is that the Jews of Hebron refused to have anyone from the Haganah there because they were afraid that it would antagonize their Arab friends who had personally guaranteed their safety! (http://www.womeningreen.org/judea/23j.htm) After three years of Arab riots and mass murder, from 1936-1939, the British response to Arab violence was to issue the White Paper to restrict and then halt all Jewish immigration in order to "allay Arab fears"! INCREDIBLY, THE ISRAELI GOVERNMENT IS PROPOSING THE SAME STUPID ANSWER TO ARAB VIOLENCE TODAY! That response was doomed to failure then (even if its aim really was to prevent violence and not just pandering to Arab oil and flagrant anti-Jewish sentiment) and it is equally asinine to consider using it again today in another misguided "land for peace" effort. Just listen to what the "Palestinians" say themselves about such concessions; their complaint is that it does not give them ENOUGH! Nothing except all of Israel will ever be enough for them and all the "goodwill gestures" and "concessions" in the world will not change that fact. If the Arab population of Israel refuse to live under Israel's sovereignty, then they should leave, by government edict and military force, if necessary. If the Arabs cannot live on Israel's land peacefully and within the law (and this land does include Gaza, Judea and Samaria despite all the Arab efforts to rewrite history!), then the Israeli government has the right to remove them. What makes the Arab settlements sacred? Why was the Arab population not evacuated and Arab immigration not restricted -- after all, they were and are the ones doing the killing? Most importantly, why can't Israeli leaders learn from mistakes -- their own (e.g. the Oslo debacle) as well as other leaders? If things are as terrible under "Israeli occupation" as the "Palestinians" constantly claim to the world media, then they should be happy to leave and go where no Jews are allowed (which is nearly the entire Middle East). There they can live under Muslim law to their hearts content! All the Arabs talk about today is their bond with their "Palestinian brothers" (although they have never given a damn about them except as a weapon to use against Israel!) So, let the Arab countries put their money where their mouths are and take care of them. (The vast majority of "Palestinians" were immigrants from outside of Israel in the first place!) No one can fight terrorism or terrorists if he is not willing to fight ALL terrorist organizations and not just pick and choose among them. You cannot negotiate with Arafat and the PA and call them peace partners any more than you could have negotiated with Yassin, Rantisi or anyone in the Hamas organization! If you insist on treating the PA as statesmen and "peace partners" rather than the murderers they are in the benighted hope that they will see the light of democracy if Israel gives them enough chances, then you are just as guilty for the deaths of Jewish innocents as the "Palestinian leaders" who recruited the actual murderers who blew up buses and pizza parlors or shot Jews at point blank range in their cars and beds. You can't have it both ways -- either you refuse to negotiate with every terrorist organization and conduct an all-out war against all of them or you stick with the same policies that have caused such death and misery for Israel -- stating that the proper response to the murder of your country's people is making "concessions" and you go on pretending that some terrorists are really "peace partners" that you can "negotiate" with. Those are the only options! So, which option will you choose today, for Israel, and for the rest of the world? For the sake of safety and security everywhere, as well as a true peace in the Middle East, I pray you choose to refuse. Dafna Yee is director of Jewish Watch Dog (JWD). Its website address is http://jwd-jewishwatchdog.home.comcast.net To Go To Top

DEHUMANISATION CHALLENGED Posted by IsrAlert, May 4, 2004.

Isralert's source is Al Ahram Weekly April 29-May 4, 2004. The article is archived at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/688/re2.htm The unprecedented awareness campaign (is) aimed at "reaching average Americans who do not know much about the conflict" Palestinian and American peace activists launched an unprecedented television campaign to dispel the negative Palestinian image among the US public. Khaled Dawoud reports from Washington. A long-standing taboo in popular local American cable television networks was broken this week. A pro-Palestinian group aired for the first time a number of short, sharp, catchy and extremely moving 15-second advertisements seeking to deliver a simple message to a largely pro-Israeli American public: Palestinians are human beings too. Shortly after the Palestinian Al-Aqsa Intifada started more than three years ago, prominent Jewish-American organisations, known for their strong support for the Likud Party, funded a television campaign emphasising the suffering of Israeli civilians due to "Palestinian terror". Portraying average, kind-looking Israeli mothers who lost their children in Palestinian attacks while stating that all that Israelis wanted was to live in peace, the adverstisments disregarded the suffering of Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza and asked Americans to continue supporting Israel. On Monday 19 April, the first in a series of advertisements was launched on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, MTV, The History Channel, Black Entertainment TV and several local stations. Imagine-Life -- mainly made up of young Americans of Palestinian origin supported by several pro-peace American and Jewish-American organisations -- spent months preparing for the campaign, carefully working on the message they wanted to deliver, and even more so on how to deliver it without giving influential pro-Israel organisations cause to protest and kill the project altogether. The campaign is planned to go on for six months with organisers hoping to raise more funds in order to prolong airtime. Janienah Shaouri Ghanam of Imagine-Life said that the unprecedented awareness campaign aimed at "reaching average Americans who do not know much about the conflict". Thus the logo that precedes each of the six advertisements reads "Occupation 101". The campaign highlights the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, mainly focussing on the cases of children, Palestinian Christians and average citizens who are not involved in the conflict. One advertisement refers to the Israeli pilots and soldiers who have publicly announced their opposition to the ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories and the excessive force they are ordered to deploy by superiors. Israeli Refuser Solidarity Network is among the various pro-peace groups backing the awareness campaign on US television networks. Other groups include Remember These Children, Jewish Voice for Peace and the Holy Land Christian Society. "We wish to convey to the American public that most people want to have a normal life without checkpoints and daily killing," said Hanna Hanania, another member of Imagine-Life. Nadine Wahab, who moved from New York to Washington to help in the production of the advertisements, said these topics were carefully chosen "as we have to concede that many Americans do not know what occupation means, or that there are Christians in Palestine, or that there are people inside Israel itself who oppose occupation and support Palestinian rights". Seeking to deliver their message in the most moderate and human way, the advertisements do not include any bloody scenes, or images of the depressing daily funerals of Palestinian martyrs or of Israeli soldiers brutally suppressing Palestinians. On the contrary, even in the adverstisment where a narrator reads parts of a letter written by American peace activist Rachel Corrie on the terrible conditions in the densely populated Gaza Strip, there is no mention of the fact that the body of the brave young woman was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer a year ago as she tried to prevent it from destroying a Palestinian home. "No amount of reading could have prepared me for the reality of the situation here," the narrator quotes from Corrie's letter to her mother, as images show Palestinian children walking next to their destroyed and bullet-riddled houses in Gaza. "You just can't imagine it unless you see it. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank shell holes in their walls, and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I'm not even entirely sure that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere." Another advertisement shows black and white images of poor young children -- some smiling, others weeping -- while member of the United Nations Human Rights Fact-Finding Commission Richard Falk recounts a psychological study of 1,000 Palestinian children which reflected how they were "so dehumanised and generally humiliated by the Israeli Defence Forces". However, two of the most moving ads, according to many of those who attended a fund-raising event to mark the launch of the campaign, used no images at all. One opens with a child's laughter, accompanied by a heartbeat and the sound of a machine indicating a normal pulse. Meanwhile, a typed script appears on the screen as the laughter of the child turns into crying, the sound of the heartbeat stops and a long beep is heard: "The collapse of the peace process has caused the death of innocence. Suffering is escalating on both sides. Nearly 500 Palestinian children and over 100 Israeli children have been killed since September 2000. How many children must die? Speak out against the cycle of violence." The other text-only advertisement is accompanied by the sound of an ambulance siren, comparing how it takes an average of five minutes for an ambulance to arrive in the US, while it takes a minimum of 80 minutes and up to three days for an ambulance to reach a Palestinian living under occupation, due to suffocating Israeli checkpoints. The advertisement on Christian Palestinians displays images of an ld priest arguing with Israeli soldiers to be allowed to pass through a checkpoint on the way to Jerusalem, nuns walking past tanks and the funeral of a Palestinian Christian killed during the Intifada. Leaders of prominent American Christian churches, meanwhile, provide the narration as they speak of the suffering of Christian Palestinians. Doug Dicks, of the Catholic Relief Services notes how "Palestinian Christians have difficulty getting to churches on Sunday morning if they want to come to Jerusalem, because they don't have the permission or legal right to come to Jerusalem for worship." Father Christiansen of the US Catholic Conference adds: "They [Palestinian Christians] suffer under the occupation just as Muslims suffer the occupation." The advertisement ends as Bishop Bartlett, of the Diocese of Washington, reminds the viewer that, "the majority of the Christians are Palestinians who have been there for thousands of years." "By producing and airing these television spots, Imagine-Life hopes to raise awareness of human rights violations [in occupied Palestinian territories] so that fair-minded Americans will seek to become more involved in resolving these injustices and encouraging peace," reads a statement issued by the group. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

IN THE WAKE OF THE WAR IN IRAQ: A PEACE PLAN PROPOSED BY CABINET MINISTER BENNY ELON Posted by National Unity Coalition for Israel, May 4, 2004.

Why the Road Map won't work The establishment of a Palestinian state in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (the West Bank), as proposed in plans such as the "Road Map", will only prolong the Arab-Israeli conflict and exact a heavy toll in human life. As in previous failed agreements, this current one also defers the solution of the real problems that perpetuate the conflict: * The Palestinian demand for the right of return of refugees to areas within the State of Israel. * The rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees. * The status of Jerusalem. * The nature of the Palestinian state and its borders. Within a short time, these unresolved problems will resurface and draw the region into yet another war. While based on the principle of "two states for two nations", the proposed Road Map does not achieve that goal. It is not a "two state solution" at all. Without the complete destruction of Israel, Palestinian Arabs can only be offered a state-like entity, unable to sign international agreements, without an army and made up of a number of small and overcrowded fragments of territory. This quasi-state would not have natural borders. Rather, population centers on both sides will straddle the border, perpetuating continued friction between Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinian entity's economy will be permanently dependent on Israel. This entity would be an Israeli protectorate, leading to an intensification of the sense of humiliation felt by Palestinian Arabs who would aspire to encroach further into Israeli territory. The refugee problem will not be solved through this entity and Palestinian Arab demands for the right of return will continue to threaten Israel's existence. The motivation for terror will remain high. From every aspect - geographic, economic and demographic - it is clear that it will be impossible to resolve the problem within the small, overcrowded area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Why - after the failure of the Oslo agreements - are we reverting to a model already proven catastrophic for both sides? It is clear that what is needed is a paradigm shift. Introduction to the Elon Peace Plan Only with application of a regional solution that includes the entire territory of British Mandatory Palestine (land of Israel) can the peace process be delivered from its impasse. A regional solution based on geopolitical and economic logic can provide the Middle East with long-term peace, prosperity and stability. The American and British coalition victory in Iraq has spurred an American commitment to instill democratic values in the Middle East and establish a new political map. This is an historic opportunity to enable the Arab nations to be part of the solution to the Palestinian problem and garner international support and funding. The Elon Peace Plan addresses the fundamental issues related to the conflict and offers a comprehensive solution for Israel, Palestinian Arabs and surrounding countries. Expanding the solution to include both sides of the Jordan River creates a new reality in which: * Israelis and Palestinian Arabs can exist alongside one another in two genuine, sovereign states. * A well-defined natural border would be established, far from population centers. * Both states would have strategic depth and ample land reserves. Dealing directly with final-status issues, the Elon Peace Plan offers: * An immediate permanent-status settlement to end the conflict. * Full and comprehensive rehabilitation of Palestinian refugees. * The granting of national expression and full rights for all Palestinian Arabs. * Removal of the threat to Israel's existence as a Jewish state. Key principles of the Elon Peace Plan: 1. Immediate dissolution of the Palestinian Authority, a non-viable entity with no future, whose existence precludes the termination of the conflict. 2. Israel will uproot the Palestinian terror infrastructure. All arms will be collected, incitement will be stopped and all the refugee camps, which serve as incubators for terror, will be dismantled. Terrorists and their direct supporters will be deported. 3. Israel, the United States and the international community will recognize the Kingdom of Jordan as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinians. Jordan will once again recognize itself as the Palestinian nation-state. In the context of a regional economic development program, Israel, the United States and the international community will put forth a concerted effort for the long-term development of Jordan, to rehabilitate its economy and enable it to absorb a limited number of refugees within its borders. 4. Israeli sovereignty will be asserted over Judea, Samaria and Gaza (the West Bank). The Arab residents of these areas will become citizens of the Palestinian state in Jordan. The status of these citizens, their connection to the two states and the manner of administration of their communal lives will be decided in an agreement between the governments of Israel and Jordan (Palestine). 5. Israel, the United States and the international community will allocate resources for the completion of the exchange of populations that began in 1948, as well as the full rehabilitation of the refugees and their absorption and naturalization in various countries. 6. After implementation of the above stages, Israel and Jordan-Palestine will declare the conflict terminated. Both sides will work to normalize peaceful relations between all parties in the region. [NOTE: For more rationale and details, see: http://www.therightroadtopeace.com/eng/FullTextEng.html#principle1-2 http://www.therightroadtopeace.com/eng/FullTextEng.html#principle3 http://www.therightroadtopeace.com/eng/FullTextEng.html#principle4 http://www.therightroadtopeace.com/eng/FullTextEng.html#principle5-6] Underlying principles of the Elon Peace Plan: No other proposal addresses final-status issues. The Elon plan offers a way to translate the achievements of the war in Iraq into a new "Marshall Plan" for the Middle East, a plan that is based, on the one hand on Israel, the only stable democracy in the region, and, on the other, on Jordan which has a quasi-democratic government, thus removing the Palestinian terrorist regime from the picture. The Elon Plan proposes a simple, sustainable solution that achieves historic justice and advances the vision of the prophets. It addresses the human tragedies of all the sides and does not harm Israeli deterrence - the most vital element for regional peace. The Elon Peace Plan manifests: Simplicity. Two states for two nations on either side of the Jordan River. This solution offers a natural and logical border, separation of hostile populations and an end to the human tragedy that has continued since the War of Independence. Sustainability. This plan grants the Palestinian Arabs citizenship in a real state that has the ability to sustain itself economically and politically, with clear and final borders. This state would not find itself in constant conflict with Israel and its future would not be predicated on the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state. Morality. This plan prioritizes the treatment of human issues over empty symbols. "Peace" proposals that are based on continued conflict perpetuate poverty, violence and ignorance. The Elon Peace Plan brings about a solution to the Palestinians. suffering without capitulating to terror and violence. Deterrence. An Israeli withdrawal of any kind would severely harm Israel's national strength while reinforcing the motivation for terror. The Elon Peace Plan preserves Israel's deterrent capabilities, making it possible for the first time to delineate secure and recognized borders. Justice. The secure existence of Israel corrects a historic injustice. The essence of Zionism is to establish a state for the Jewish people, a safe haven for millions of Jewish refugees from all over the world including from the Arab countries. The Arab world must be involved in a resolution of the Arab refugee issue, using its vast territorial expanses and abundant natural resources. This is not only justice in its most elementary sense - that of human decency - but also draws on deep Biblical sources, which view the Jewish people as a nation with a unique destiny and place in history. This plan is founded on the fundamental historic and Biblical truth that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. However, it realizes only part of this principle because it accepts the existence of a Palestinian state east of the Jordan River, part of the Biblical land of Israel. The realization of the Zionist dream - the return of the Jewish people to its land from all corners of the earth - is a historic event of global significance. Only when Israel's Arab neighbors accept its right to exist within secure boundaries as a fundamental reality, will regional peace and prosperity be achieved. The National Unity Coalition is "the largest worldwide coalition of Jewish and Christian organizations, with more than 200 groups representing millions of people dedicated to Israel. Though we have many different backgrounds, we have one common goal: A Safe and Secure Israel." "Israel is not just a Jewish issue. Millions of Christians resolutely endorse the principle of peace with security for the state of Israel. Because we work closely together and speak with a united voice, our message is being heard!" To Go To Top

REVISED PLAN Posted by Mikimia and Herb Sunshine, May 4, 2004.

Dear Arik, How would you like to be Prime Minister forever? How would you like to please your American Masters forever? How would you like history to record you as the most effective Prime Minister Israel ever had? How would you like the corruption allegations against you to go away forever? Would you like to: Remove the obstacles to peace, End violence and murder, Unite the nation and bring back confidence and hope? End your war against the Jews. Instead, DEFEAT THE ARAB UPRISING BY MILITARY FORCE SUBJUGATE OR TRANSFER THE HOSTILE ARAB POPULATION See how easy it is when you put your mind to it. Herbert B. Sunshine is Professor of Law (U.S.). He and his wife live in Jerusalem. To Go To Top

REFOCUS AND REMEMBER Posted by Ellen W. Horowitz, May 4, 2004.

When women, children and the defenseless members of our society are ambushed and murdered in cold blood, what's a nation to do? Well, the Jewish people have received our marching orders and instructions directly from the Almighty Himself. "Remember?" (Parashat Zachor) If you're waiting for salvation to come from the likes of Kofi Annan, Jack Straw and George Bush, well, don't hold your breath. Seems like a lot of us are still waiting for the Allied forces to bomb the tracks. The heavens must be truly be perplexed. I mean, G-d has given us the potential and means to be one of the most effective and motivated military powers in the world. But it seems that we have chosen to embrace death and victimhood rather than cherish and fight for life. We are a people who have had more than enough time to intensely examine and reflect on the consequences of destruction and exile. More than any other nation, it's our scholars, writers and greatest thinkers who have obsessed on morbidity, mortality and morality. And through the worst of times we have consistently drawn the conclusion that we must choose and fight for life. So what has happened? Our generation has witnessed and participated in a desecration of unknown proportions on a metaphysical level. We have stood by and watched silently at what is clearly forbidden. "Don't stand by your brother's blood" (Leviticus 19:16). In some measure, the atrocities we are witnessing may surpass that of the Holocaust, because we have the means at our disposal to stop the catastrophe and sixty plus years ago we were defenseless. Anybody who pats themselves on the back for taking the time to shoot-off an email to the heads of the European Union should think again. When our sincere and tireless efforts manage to elicit a veiled response like Such attacks do nothing whatsoever to advance the Palestinian cause", one has to wonder. What, pray tell, is the Palestinian cause? Is it to destroy every Jewish man, woman and child? Is it to grant territorial integrity and legitimacy to the concept of Hell? Perhaps it's both. Surely it must be time to redirect our efforts and place our rage at the doorsteps of the Knesset, and to place our military might at the entrance to Ramallah. With great finesse, Likud members and YESHA activists directed a well orchestrated campaign and managed to vote-down the disengagement plan, while at the same time being ever-so careful to prop-up an incompetent Prime Minister. The strategy worked brilliantly, but the victory was more bitter than sweet. And I wonder if the precious souls of a mother and 5 children (we can include an almost full-term baby, can't we?) will ever be avenged. And it's beyond all tragedy and cynicism to realize that if Ariel Sharon were to pull the plug on Arafat tomorrow, his reasoning would most likely be for political expediency. Is it not forbidden for our elected representatives to sit in this government? It seems that we as a people will continue to suffer bitter-sweet victories, because our policies reflect that same duality. We rely heavily on G-d's unending mercy but have reneged on our part of the bargain. Until our leadership vacuum can be filled and we fulfill our obligations, some of us will continue to die unspeakably senseless and brutal deaths. Others will continue to look away, because the very thought and images of what transpired at the Kissufim junction this week could cause one to die of a broken heart. Ellen Horowitz lives in the Golan Heights, Israel with her husband and six children. She is a painter, columnist for Israelnationalnews,com and co-founder of helpingisrael..com. She can be contacted through her website http://www.artfromzion.com To Go To Top

WHY THE GAZA REFERENDUM LOST Posted by Morton A. Klein, May 4, 2004.

Why did the overwhelming majority of members of Israel's ruling party vote against unilateral Gaza surrender? Look at the events of the past decade and it's easy to understand why and where we should go from here. Israelis were told that if they surrendered large parts of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to the Palestinian Arabs, it would bring peace. But they soon learned that giving up land only increases terrorism. Since 1993, Israel has surrendered more than half of Judea and Samaria, and virtually all of Gaza including the areas where 98% of the Palestinian Arabs reside and yet it has been subjected to the worst terrorism in its history. Israelis were assured that making concessions to the Arabs would lead to international acceptance of Israel. Yet despite massive Israeli territorial concessions since 1993, anti-Israel hatred and anti-Semitism have increased dramatically throughout the world. Even when Israel undertakes a basic act of self-defense, such as eliminating a terrorist leader such as Hamas chief Abd el-Aziz Rantisi, Israel finds itself condemned. The international community will not even let Israel exercise its right to simple self-defense against mass murderers. Israelis were told that international financial aid to the Palestinian Authority would help build a moderate, peace-seeking regime. Yet despite the over $1-billion that the U.S. has given, and the additional billions that European Union countries have given, the Palestinian Arabs continue their war to destroy Israel and murder Jews. Israelis were told that if they gave weapons to the PA police force, the PA police would use them against Arab terrorist groups. Israel gave the weapons. The PA used them against Israelis. When members of the Likud Party went to the voting booths this week, they rejected a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza -- by landslide proportions -- because Israel has spent the last ten years making unilateral withdrawals, and received nothing in return except more terrorism. Under these circumstances, a Gaza surrender would mean permitting the creation of a terrorist state next to Israel, and the forcible mass expulsion of more than 8,000 Jewish men, women, and children from their homes simply because they are Jews. Where do we go from here? By repudiating the Gaza surrender proposal, the Likud voters have also repudiated the flawed concept at the heart of the Bush administration's "Road Map" plan: the idea that the Palestinian Arabs should be given a sovereign state next to Israel as quickly as possible, despite their constant terrorism against Israel and failure to fulfill any of their obligations in their previous accords with Israel. The Bush administration should now recognize that the Road Map, as originally conceived, is unworkable. It cannot, and should not, be imposed upon Israel The time has come for a new Road Map a Road Map to Victory Over Palestinian Arab Terrorism. It should be based on the principles articulated by the Bush administration in its own fight against terrorists: * The Palestinian Authority is an evil terrorist regime and should be treated as such. As President Bush said to Congress on Sept. 21, 2001: "From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." * Israel should use all means at its disposal to defeat the terrorists. Secretary of State Colin Powell has said that the U.S. should use "overwhelming force" when confronting its enemies. And President Bush said on October 7, 2003: "Israel's got a right to defend herself, Israel must not feel constrained in defending the homeland." * The Palestinian Arabs' culture of teaching and glorifying anti-Jewish hatred and violence must be completely uprooted in a manner comparable to the Allies' de-Nazification of Germany after World War II. As Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on November 2, 2003: "We are capturing and killing a lot of terrorists, but we also have to think about the number of new ones that are being created ... The world needs to think about other things we can do to reduce the number of schools that teach terrorism." * Mass expulsion of Jews from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza is morally wrong and impractical. As President Bush acknowledged in his April 16, 2004 press conference, any Israeli-Arab agreement must accept "demographic realities." That should include accepting the demographic reality that the 200,000 Jewish residents of the territories have as much right to live there as the one million-plus Arabs who live in Israel. A new Road Map based on these principles would be a significant departure from previous administration policy but it would be perfectly consistent with the policies that the administration has adopted in its own war against terrorism. Only by adopting such principles, based on the complete defeat of the Palestinian Arab terrorists and the thorough de-Nazification of Palestinian Arab society, will it be possible to advance the chances for a meaningful and durable peace between Israel and the Arabs. Morton A. Klein is the National President of the Zoinist Organization of America (ZOA). It is located at 4 East 34th St. New York, NY 10016. Contact it by e-mail at email@zoa.org or visit their website: www.zoa.org To Go To Top

ISLAMIC HOME MOVIES Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 3, 2004.

It was also learned that the terrorists not only murdered the 34-year-old mother of four who was eight months pregnant along with her children, but then ran up to the vehicle and took a video of the results of their actions, filming the young victims as they bled to death. This is from Arutz-7 (www.Israel.NationalNews.com) (IsraelNN.com) IDF officials continue to investigate yesterday's terror attack on the Kissufim Road leading into Gush Katif that claimed the lives of Tali Hatual and her four children. They were gunned down in cold blood as they drove in their family vehicle. Preliminary reports indicate that an army patrol vehicle passed the scene ahead of the Hatuals, and was even hit with gunfire. The two soldiers in the non-armored vehicle sustained light shrapnel injuries from the gunfire. The question being asked is why they did not stop and return fire, and engage the terrorists in a shootout as is the standard response. Instead, they continued traveling to the Kissufim Checkpoint. The preliminary response appears to be they were injured in their hands and therefore, were unable to return fire. It was also learned that the terrorists not only murdered the 34-year-old mother of four who was eight months pregnant along with her children, but then ran up to the vehicle and took a video of the results of their actions, filming the young victims as they bled to death. IDF officials indicate the investigation into the attack continues to determine if the soldiers and officers involved responded appropriately. Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

TAKE (ONLY) A MOMENT'S REST Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 3, 2004.

Stop for a moment, say a prayer of thanks and take a rest - but, not too long. Don't be mislead by Sharon's statement that he accepts the judgement of his Likud Party or those who worked to defeat his planned Gaza retreat. You have already heard from his mouthpiece, Ehud Olmert, that the plan to evict 8,000 men, women and children will proceed. You have also heard from the head of the Shinui Party, Joseph (Tomy) Lapid. He said something to the effect that, those who voted against "withdrawal" are "only" a small part of the people. Perhaps Lapid forgot that Oslo was pushed through by only one vote, with only a handful of Labor Leftists led by Rabin, Peres and Beilin. At least, this referendum was out in the open unlike the conspiratorial Oslo which was planned in secret with the assistance of the Norwegians. Take a rest - but remember - when Sharon acts humble he may be planning his meanest acts. Like the Oslo gang, the Sharon gang of Olmert, Dov Weissglass and his son Omri also engaged in secret plans with the Colin Powell, the U.S. Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice, National Security Advisor - all with the approval of President George W. Bush - to give the President a pre-election boost with the Jews in the South and East of Israel paying the ultimate price. Sharon's next moves will be to attack those of his party and even his Cabinet for not obeying his "commandments". He will likely replace them with either conventional party hacks or select those who are known to be Left leaning. In this, he will likely collaborate with Shimon Peres so the Labor Party can undercut the landslide referendum decision by Likud, Sharon's own Party. Frankly, Sharon is very much like several party switchers of the past whose loyalty was only to themselves, namely Ezer Weizman, Moshe Dayan and Sharon, himself. All would and did switch ideologies if it temporarily benefitted their status in government. However, when weighed in the balance, all three were Left to radical Left in their characters. Sharon is obdurately set on pulling in Israel's borders, both in the South and the East. His retreat from Gaza was only one indicator. His dividing wall is another indicator of where everything east of that Wall/Border/Fence will eventually be relinquished to the mix of Arab Muslims Palestinians. Part of Sharon's plan was taken from the early Rabin/Peres plans of the early 1980s. I frequently wrote about their intentions extensively but few believed that such men would betray their fellow Jews and place them in jeopardy or in harm's way. The game plan then was to put extensive pressure on all the Jewish citizens east of the so-called green line to force them out. Besides cutting back on their municipal services (water, electricity, sewage treatment, roads, security, funding for individual and community buildings) the plan called for actually allowing only minimal armament for the settlers in YESHA (Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza). The regular army of the IDF was to be withdrawn. There would be no patrols, no checkpoints so that the Jews driving the roads would be left to the vicious actions of Arafat's shock troops. Presumably under that Plan, the Palestinians would drive the last of the settlers out. Now, we wait to see if Sharon, through his Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, starts to withdraw troops from Gaza, Judea and Samaria. It will be done slowly, allowing the pressure to increase incrementally. There would be fewer responses to road-side shootings (as just happened to Talia Hatuel, who was 8 months pregnant and her four daughters, aged 11 to 2.) Sharon's retaliation hit a radio station and some empty buildings - only. There would be less reaction to mortar, missile or RPG (Rapid-Propelled Grenade) bombings and terror attacks within the settlements. Even today, the most stalwart of defenders in the YESHA communities believe that the bare 15 minutes worth of ammunition they have on hand is insufficient because within 15 minutes, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) will be there to defend them. Not if the Arab Muslims within the newly created Palestinians "entity" collectively attack. If Egypt, Syria and/or Jordan are making aggressive moves, the IDF will have to defend Israel's external borders. Then the settlers, men and women, will be on their own and too many of them are NOT prepared, mentally, emotionally or physically with sufficient equipment. On the political level, Sharon, joined at the hip with Peres, will repeat the Rabin/Peres psychological policy of building resentment among the Jews who live along the coast in Tel Aviv, Haifa, etc. In coordination with the Leftist Media (Ma'ariv, Ha'aretz, Yediot Aharonot and the TV news channels, they will cast each terror attack in Israeli cities as the result and, therefore, the fault of the settlers NOT giving up their homes, farms, factories, land, etc. There will be every effort by the party hacks of Labor, Likud and Shinui to encourage hatred against the Jews of YESHA. The theme will go something like this: "If only the Jews of Gaza and the rest of YESHA would evacuate so a Palestinian State could be formed, we have "assurances" from the Arabs and from America that the Arab Muslims will cease terror." Also, if the Arabs have another Arab Muslim Palestinian State, they will promise - not demand - the entry of 3-5 million descendants of the 450,000 Arabs who left Israel in 1948. Sharon, Peres, Olmert will also offer assurances that the Wall will guarantee safety and the Arab Muslim Palestinian "refugees" will not pile up against the Wall/Fence in a long and massive teeming refugee camp. Those assurances of peace and no terror will also come from Arafat, Saeb Erekat and perhaps even Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad, Tanzim, Al Aksa Martyrs' Brigades. In the meantime, Sharon and his gang will work the Knesset with threats, bribes and whatever it takes to override their defeat in the referendum. First, recognize that those close to the Terror and who know it intimately voted NOT to bring the Terror even closer. The Terrorists, across their entire spectrum, have plainly stated that, as long as the Jewish State exists, they will attack the State and individuals, including as they did on Sunday, pregnant women and little children. Why, other than the personal interests of these two men, Sharon and Bush, believe that appeasing dedicated Islamic Jihadists will bring any kind of peace? Bush is learning in Iraq that appeasing the Iraqi people has brought nothing but excessive death to American troops. Why then does he believe he can get even one day of peace from Arafat, all the Arab Muslim Palestinians linked to Hamas, Hezb'Allah, Al Qaeda, etc. who are further linked to Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc. (remember the nineteen 9/11 hijacker/suicide bombers were 15 Saudis and 4 Egyptians)? The simple fact to remember is that, the Arab Muslims will NOT give the West even one day of peace. Sharon and Bush know this beyond question. Why are they ready to sacrifice the Jewish people for their petty, political needs is something the historians will argue about long after these two men have gone. So....What to do? 1. Anticipate all of the above and more. 2. Don't rely on Sharon's assurances but re-double your efforts to bring your case directly to the people. 3. Pull together politically and, if necessary, start the process of framing out a new party from the disenchanted Likud members. (Become a political power to be reckoned with.) 4. Anticipate the collusion of Sharon and Peres. Anticipate the most dirty and scurrilous tricks and, even then, you may likely fall short of the tricks they may invent. 5. Work the Knesset and let them know their seats will disappear in the next election IF they betray any of the Jews outside of Sharon's Wall/Border/Fence. 6. Don't trust or believe promises made by other nations. As Bismark said: "Nations do not have friends, only interests!" 7. Watch for collusion between the State Department, Sharon, Peres and the Beilin Geneva cabal. Think about how they would set in motion their collective dirty tricks department. We have already observed Dennis Ross, formerly of the U.S. State Department and Ambassador to Israel - now on TV - offering suggestions on how to overcome the impact of Sharon's failed referendum. Some may recall that Ross, along with Daniel Kurtzer (current U.S. Ambassador to Israel) and Aaron Miller were often referred to as James Baker's Jew Boys. Listening to Ross on FOX NEWS with Brit Hume (1), I clearly heard the State Department setting in motion a campaign to insure that Sharon tramples the Jews in Gaza and all those who defy Sharon and Bush on their march to ethnically cleanse Gaza, Judea and Samaria of Jews. When you see Baker's Boys acting as point men, be assured that the State Department is close by and manipulating their former employees. I would guess that the U.S. State Department with the approval of President Bush, will come up with some sort of seemingly unrelated penalty, which will be used as a bargaining lever to force the Gaza Retreat/Road Map back into motion. There will probably be other tricks but, if you know they are coming, you (all) will be on the alert for the smell. So, take a brief rest and then re-double your efforts for Sharon's next push. Don't believe the excuses by Sharon's strategists that "the settlers had millions of dollars to spend and that's why we lost." It seems that the most effective campaign strategy was when the actual residents of Gush Katif volunteered their time to visit with the potential voters and tell them the facts. When the issue had a "face" and the real story, the propaganda lost and the people won. ### 1. "Special Report" with Brit Hume" on Fox News, May 3, 2004. Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

TEN QUICK OBSERVATIONS ON DEFEAT OF RETREAT PLAN IN REFERENDUM Posted by Aaron Lerner, May 3, 2004.

The key difference between the Likudniks who voted massively against the retreat plan and the rest of Likud voters - and for that matter the "average" Israeli - is not a matter of ideology but knowledge. By the same token that a huge number of secular and traditional Likudniks who originally told pollsters that they supported the retreat plan changed their positions after being presented with the facts, the general body of Likud voters - and "average" Israelis - can also be brought over to opposing retreat when provided the opportunity to learn the facts. A key theme driving support for retreat among Israelis is a view that there is a need to "do something" about the "situation". But the key element of "the situation" is not specifically the Arab-Israeli conflict but instead the economic situation. The greater the proportion of the population that is drawn into the ongoing economic recovery the lower the pressure to "do something". Thus, the longer the window available for both the education of the public on the one hand, and an improvement in the economy, on the other, the greater the possibility of bringing over the majority of the Israeli public to also oppose retreat. By the same token that the massive propaganda campaign by the Israeli media supporting Sharon's retreat plan failed to convince Likudniks, the general Israeli public, jaded by over a decade of media Oslo propaganda, will not be suckered into accepting the massive media campaign that was launched at 10:00 PM this evening with the announcement of the exit poll results to paint the Likud as a radical right wing party out of touch with the rest of the nation. While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was willing to warn of the catastrophic consequences on both the diplomatic and economic front if his retreat plan is rejected, he has no interest in such a catastrophe now that he has been trounced. Nothing will be done to interfere with the economic recovery well under way and the last thing that President Bush wants to do, only months before his own election day, is punish the Jewish State for the outcome of its democratic processes. Prime Minister Sharon's harsh words against his opponents during the campaign in no way prevents cooperation in the future. Sharon's terming his opponents "extreme right" is nothing as compared to the words that the Labor Party used against him in the heated election campaign of 2001 which he gracefully ignored the moment the polls closed and he invited them to join the ruling coalition. Shinui leader Minister Lapid doesn't threaten to even consider leaving the ruling coalition if the retreat plan is rejected - he only asks that he be given the opportunity to vote on it in the cabinet - where it will be defeated. He does this in full knowledge that the overwhelming majority of his own party (77% in a poll last week) wants to stay in the coalition even if the retreat plan is rejected. Binyamin Netanyahu and the other "shfanim" ("bunnies") - Limor Livnat and Sylvan Shalom - unintentionally made a greater contribution to defeating the retreat plan by half heartedly endorsing it than they would have made if they took key roles in the campaign against the plan. Their absence prevented Sharon from turning the vote into a personality contest between him and the prime ministers in waiting. No one could possibly claim that Minister Uzi Landau, who led the campaign against retreat, is a contender for the prime minister's slot. Likudniks did not have to worry that a vote against retreat in any way could be interpreted as a vote in favor of a candidate they do not want to support. It is doubtful that Netanyahu's political future was seriously hurt by his move since no major Likud personality who is considered a possible candidate for prime minister had the intestinal fortitude to openly oppose Sharon's retreat plan. Netanyahu only reminded the rank and file of his perennial orthopedic problem. The puzzle for Likudniks is not, therefore, which candidate to support in the future, but rather what mechanisms or devices might be employed to deal with their seemingly inevitable spinelessness. While the media welcomes Deputy Minister Ehud Olmert's calls to immediately reward savage Palestinian terror with retreat, it is far from clear if Mr. Olmert, who returned from the defunct Central Party to the 32nd place in the Likud, will be able to make the cut in the next Likud primaries. Finally, the last thing Ariel Sharon wants to do today is risk forfeiting the special standards that are applied by the attorney general when considering the criminal indictment of a prime minister. A serving prime minister is only indicted if there is a close to absolute certainty he will be convicted. A former prime minister can be sent to court if the odds for a conviction are just better than even. Hence his announcement already tonight that he has no intention to resign. Dr. Aaron Lerner is director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava, Israel). IMRA's Internet address is http://www.imra.org.il and email address is imra@netvision.net.il This was a Freeman Center broadcast - May 2, 2004. To Go To Top

WHY SOME ARE NOT SHOCKED ANY MORE Posted by American Chin High, May 3, 2004.

(In Israel May 2004) A Pregnant mother... An Unborn Fetus... Other daughters, one by one, "carefully" butchering them... And the deafening silence. Let's try, though it's so difficult, to 'skip' the fact of "usual" silence on the innocent Israeli noncombatant Victims versus the commotion for eliminating COMBATANT 'Palestinian' Arabs. But rather let's try to understand ourselves, Where are we? Where are our UNUSUAL Shock, the abnormal outcry, the extraordinary tremble? Did it happened to you? Were you wondering so relentlessly? Did this bother you till you feel so embarrassed even uttering the tragic fact? Well, Let me give you a hand, this is where my words want to come in: We are USED to it. Caution, I do not mean 'used to tragedies' per se, but used to this gap, to this heaven and earth contrast, to these gorgeous victims versus the Arab 'Palestinian' majority that backs its front runners - the Baby Butchers. We are used to the horrific ways the Arab 'Palestinian' "freedom fighters" target the weak unarmed masses, the more "the better", they say, the younger the victims, "the better", they say, the more crowded the crowd, "the better," they say, the more outrageous the crime, the "more heroic" it is, they say. We are used to see the glory and courage and tolerance of 'David' Israel, we are used to see the COWARD 'Palestinian' Arab Goliath Terror, "frustrated" premeditated heartless "society." We do understand you. We are all USED to it. And the biased media is used to NOT seeing this. To Go To Top

P.M. SHARON HAS THE MARK OF CAIN ON HIS HANDS Posted by AFSI, May 3, 2004.

Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI extends warm congratulations to the organizers and participants in the huge grass-roots effort that defeated Prime Minister Sharon's Likud party referendum on expelling the 8000 Jews of Gush Katif/Gaza and turning their homes, farms, schools and synagogues over to the Arab terrorists. During months of intense work, Gush Katif and Yesha leaders launched the campaign to alert Likud members to the truth that victory for terrorism in Gaza would be the beginning of the end for all of Israel. AFSI in America is proud to have participated in that effort. Today, however, just one day after Sharon's resounding defeat, Herbert Zweibon, Chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel, warns: "The Likud's defeat of PM Sharon's Gaza "disengagement plan," is nothing but a temporary pothole on the road map to surrender. Israel's so-called "hawkish" Prime Minister has opened a door which can no longer be shut, regardless of the squabbles among ministers. Furthermore, he has broken his promise to abide by the outcome of his party's referendum. American and European supporters of the Gaza surrender plan have been put on notice that Israel is willing to cede all of Gaza and major portions of Judea and Samaria. The pressures from the United States and the Arabs will be intense, and as history shows over and over again, Israel will accede." Zweibon adds, "What is morally repugnant is the Prime Minister's response to the Nazi-like execution of Tali Hatuel, her four daughters, and the eight month old son with whom she was pregnant, in an ambush near Gush Katif. To claim, as he does, "Today's terrible murder is the Palestinian way of rejecting and disrupting the plan," is outrageous. No, Mr. Sharon. The Nazi-like barbarians were not enemies of any plans for Israeli surrender. They were enemies of Jews - those Jews who live under your jurisdiction, and whose security is your mandate. Those thugs who danced in jubilation after the massacre are the only ones gratified by your craven response." The Prime Minister has had charges of bribery dropped against him. He is guilty of far worse charges. Mr. Sharon has the mark of Cain on his hands. Shame on him. Shame on him. Americans For a Safe Israel/AFSI is a pro-active pro-Israel advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128, Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717; by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website: www. afsi.org. Helen Freedman is Executive Director. To Go To Top

JACK STRAW IS FINALLY SHOCKED AND SICKENED BY TERRORIST Posted by Anita Tucker, May 3, 2004.

Most of the world doesn't seemed to disturbed by these cruel sickening murdering representatives of the so-called Palestinians. This comes from Naomi Ragen (http://www.NaomiRagen.com). British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw issued a statement saying, "I am shocked and sickened by this act of terrorism. My sympathies are with the friends and families of all of the victims of this horrific attack ... The perpetrators of this atrocious attack clearly have no respect for innocent lives. We cannot let the terrorists succeed." What attack was he talking about? The murder of a mother in her eighth month" The deliberate, cold blooded murder of this woman's children, an eleven year old girl, and her nine, seven and two year old sister/ Because that would have been an appropriate response. From his language, we see Jack Straw is capable of seeing what is bad about a terrorist attack. But no, Mr. Straw was referring to the attack in Saudi Arabia that took place at an Exxon refinery and resulted in the death of British and American nationals. I suppose they weren't Jews, so Mr. Straw was shocked and sickened. I have yet to hear him talk about being shocked and sickened about the Hatuel family murders. Mr. Straw, you are such a hypocrite, you make me ill. But then, Britain only started fighting the Nazis when they attacked Britain, and by then it was almost too late. They never learn. Anita Tucker lives in Netzer Hazani, Gush Katif, Gaza, Israel. To Go To Top

NPR BLAMES MOTHER AND DAUGHTERS FOR THEIR OWN MURDERS Posted by CAMERA, May 3, 2004.

In perhaps the most distorted coverage of the brutal murder of a pregnant Israeli mother and her four young daughters, NPR's Julie McCarthy today blamed the victims for their own slaughter. In the atrocity yesterday, the gunmen reportedly targeted the family's car from 20 yards away. When 34-year-old Tali, a social worker who was in her last trimester of pregnancy, lost control of the vehicle, the Palestinian terrorists approached the vehicle and executed Tali and her daughters -- Hila, 11; Hadar, 9; Roni, 7 and Merav, 2 -- one by one at close range. According to press reports, the younger children were still strapped into their car seats, the car was blood-soaked, and it took the ZAKA recovery crew a long time to extract all of the bullets and collect the body parts. Julie McCarthy's egregious statement on "Morning Edition" today came at the end of a report about Ariel Sharon's referendum loss on his "disengagement" plan. McCarthy reported: "The settlers rallied support saying Israel was withdrawing under fire. But there was ample evidence yesterday to show that their continued presence in Gaza is provoking bloodshed. Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian gunmen after the men ambushed a mother and her four small daughters outside the Gaza settlement of Gush Katif. The family was shot and killed on their way to the Israeli city of Ashkelon where they intended to campaign against Ariel Sharon and his plan to uproot them from Gaza. Julie McCarthy, NPR news, Jerusalem." BLAMING THE VICTIM McCarthy's editorializing that the Jewish community's "continued presence in Gaza is provoking bloodshed" is consistent with the Palestinian Authority view that the killing of settlers is a natural and legitimate outgrowth of the fact that Jews dare to inhabit territory that the Palestinians claim as their own. According to Ha'aretz, "A senior Palestinian source said he thought there was no chance the Palestinian Authority would express reservations, since every settler was considered an integral part of the occupation against which action must be taken" (Danny Rubinstein, 5/3/04). Of course, though, there is no justification whatsoever within international law that justifies the killing of civilians simply because they live in territory which others claim as their own. Unfortunately, McCarthy's report suggests justification where there is none. REVERSING CAUSE AND EFFECT McCarthy further distorts the killing of the Hatuel family members by reversing the chronology of events. She states: "Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian gunmen after the men ambushed a mother and her four small daughters outside the Gaza settlement of Gush Katif." Why is the Israeli response mentioned before the Palestinian murder" The result is that the defensive Israeli action is amplified while the Palestinians' barbarous act is de-emphasized. SOFT-PEDALLING THE MURDER McCarthy's sanitized description of the Hatuels' murder employs equivalent language to describe Israel's shooting of murderers and the murderers' butchering of young children and their mother. Thus, "Israeli troops shot dead two Palestinian gunmen," "the men ambushed a mother and her four small daughters," and "the family was shot and killed." From these indistinguishable descriptions, listeners would have no clue as to the brutality of the execution of a mother and four children whose bodies were riddled by dozens of bullets shot at point blank range. CAMERA - Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America - monitors the news and TV media for how fair they are in reporting on Israel. Their website address is www.camera.org To Go To Top

HALLEL Posted by David Wilder, May 3, 2004.

Yesterday was one of those days - one of those days when you don't know what to say. On the one hand, you breathe a great sigh of relief. Thank G-d, the hard work paid off and the referendum failed. Of course, concurrently you ask yourself why there was a referendum in the first place. Since when is Eretz Yisrael for sale? How is it possible that an Israeli, a Jew, especially someone with a long track record, most specifically, Ariel Sharon, could conjure up such a nightmare - giving parts of Eretz Yisrael to our enemies, whose sole desire is to destroy us!? Certainly it doesn't make any sense. With that, you still offer a prayer of thanksgiving. Thank G-d for miracles. To be honest, as soon as Limor and Bibi decided to go with Sharon, I was despondent. I told my friends and colleagues, "it's not worth the struggle - the referendum is lost - don't waste any time on it - now we have to start preparing for "the day after." Boy was I wrong. This is as good a time as possible to repeat the age-old mantra: Never Give Up! On the other hand, it was difficult to smile, or show any expression of joy. The haunting pictures of Tali Hatual and her four girls are paralyzing. Such a beautiful family, such beautiful people. In truth, six, not five people were killed. Tali was beginning the ninth month of her pregnancy. Her husband David was quoted as saying, "We knew it a boy. We were so happy." According to IDF sources, after killing Tali with the first burst of gunfire, the terrorists approached the car and systematically murdered the four girls, one by one, shooting each child in the head. To define such behavior as beastly is an insult to beasts. There are no words to describe the deliberate viciousness of such creatures, posing as human beings. And what about the husband, the father? Can you imagine being at work, hearing of a terror attack, and not being able to reach your loved ones who might well have been in the vicinity of the assault? That's what happened to David Hatual. According to witnesses at the scene, Tali's cell phone didn't stop ringing - her husband was calling her. No one dared answer. David, a teacher and school principal, sped from Ashkelon towards his Gush Katif home, only to be stopped on the way by his father-in-law, who broke the tragic, terrible news to him. Not only a pregnant wife, but his four daughters, his four children, his entire family. Inconceivable. Not even in the worst of your worst bad dreams. But it happened. Responsibility: Where does it start and where does it end? Some of the names are all too familiar - they need not even be repeated. Leadership is bound by the motto, "the buck stops here." Others are also not lacking in accountability. For example, this morning General Moshe "Bugi" Ya'alon, Chief of Staff of the Israeli Armed Forces, pointed a finger at another guilty party. An Arutz 7 report states: "He places the blame on the Supreme Court. He said that lining the Kisufim Route are "houses that, for security reasons, we wanted to remove, and pay the occupants compensation. But the legal system did not allow us to do this." The homes served as camouflage for the terrorists and their actions." In other words, had those homes been destroyed, it is quite likely that none of us would ever had heard of the Hatual family. The Hatuals and others. But responsibility for close to 1,000 deaths and over 6,000 casualties cannot be shouldered by any particular person. The problem is conceptual. It demands an unyielding grasp of abstracts, such as faith, such as the association between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael. Let's face it. Without faith it is almost impossible to live here. And I'm not talking about Hebron. I'm referring to the entire State of Israel. Clearly, nothing about the past 56 years - or even the past 100 years, is linked to logic or rationality. Be it 1948, 1967, 1973, or today. If G-d didn't want us here, we simply wouldn't be here. That does not mean that we sit back and wait for a celestial hand to appear from the heavens. Many hundreds and thousands of people worked very hard over the past few weeks, bringing about the positive results of yesterday's vote. As far as the land of Israel is concerned, the first sentence of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen's quintessential work "Orot" says it all: the land of Israel is not an intermediary, a superficial land entity where Jews can take refuge. Rather, it is an indispensable element of the existence of Judaism, together with Torah and Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. Without Eretz Yisrael, there is no Judaism. Of course, if Eretz Yisrael is only earth and rocks, then who cares if we relent and give some away. But should Eretz Yisrael be an actual part of our collective neshama, our collective soul, how could we even entertain such thoughts? And that's exactly what it is. These are the elements that Israel's leadership is lacking. Why else would Ariel Sharon do an about-face? Why would Rabin initiate Oslo? Both, for the same reason. They have no faith, no faith in G-d, no faith in the determination and ability of Am Yisrael, and no faith in the sacredness of Eretz Yisrael. Deficiency of faith leads straight to despair, which in turn, leads to bizarre decision-making, (see: Disengagement). Yet a question remains: given the two sides of the coin, as presented above, which takes precedence: the sorrow or the celebration? Early today, Rav Dov Lior, Chief Rabbi of Hebron-Kiryat Arba ruled that this morning's prayers be appended. He decided that due to yesterday's miracle, a special prayer be added. On Jewish festivals, or following a miraculous event deserving of exceptional gratitude, a prayer of Thanksgiving is included during morning services. This morning, at Rav Lior's yeshiva Torah institution, worshipers recited the Hallel, verses of praise extracted from Psalms. Yesterday we cried while breathing a sigh of relief. Today, we paid tribute to the glory of G-d. And now, we must return to work, so that all Israelis will understand why Hallel was chanted after the Jewish people voted for Eretz Yisrael. With blessings from Hebron. David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish Community of Hebron. You can contribute directly to The Jewish Community of Hebron, POB10, Kiryat Arba-Hebron 90100, hebron@hebron.org.il, 972-2-9965333 or write to The Hebron Fund, 1760 Ocean Ave., Brooklyn, NY 11230, hebronfund@aol.com To Go To Top

REJECTING THE SAMARIA AND GAZA GIVEAWAY DOES NOT UNDERMINE U.S.-ISRAEL TIES Posted by IsrAlert, May 3, 2004.

This comes from Yoram "Tex" Etinger in Texas. THE GIVEAWAY IS NOT A TOP U.S. OBJECTIVE *FACT: President Bush did not initiate the Giveaway, does not consider it a top priority, and therefore refuses to finance it. President Bush has limited his support to very friendly declarations, which are ambiguous, non-binding, and do not repudiate the "claim of return", nor do they support Israel's sovereignty beyond the Green Line. *FACT: In 1974, President Nixon and Congress extended Israel a military grant of $983MN and a loan of $4.15BN, as an inducement to stop the siege over the Third Egyptian Brigade and to withdraw from certain parts of the Sinai Peninsula. *FACT: In 1979, President Carter and Congress provided Israel $3BN ($800MN in grant), as an expression of the top priority accorded by the US to the full withdrawal from Sinai. *FACT: In 2000, President Clinton offered Israel an $800MN grant in order to facilitate the withdrawal from So. Lebanon, which he viewed as a top priority. THE GIVEAWAY UNDERMINES U.S. WAR ON TERRORISM *FACT: VP Cheney and Secretary Rumsfeld contend that Israel's withdrawal from So. Lebanon has propelled Hizballah from a local terror organization to a regional terror organization, facing the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. Israel's disengagement from Gaza (which took place already in 1993!) bolstered Palestinian terrorism. Further withdrawal will add more fuel to the fire. *FACT: The Giveaway contradicts US' own war on terrorism: Offensive on the enemy's own ground (and not defensive); Swift and traumatic submission of the enemy (rather than a protracted war); Military solution and destruction of the terror political infrastructure (and not co-existence with terror). *FACT: The Giveaway strengthens Israel's critics, and weakens Israel's top supporters, in the US. It implements the goals of Foggy Bottom and the CIA (pushing Israel to the 1949/67 Lines), which are the ideological rivals of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Congressional leaders. REJECTING THE GIVEAWAY - CONSISTENT WITH U.S. DEMOCRACY *FACT: Congress tends to reject about 35% of presidential initiatives. *FACT: According to US democracy - and contrary to dictatorships - a presidential commitment to a foreign country (even a military commitment), is non-binding unless legislated or ratified by 2/3 of the Senate. *FACT: In 1999 Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, along with major global powers. Senate non-ratification did not raise doubts about the viability of US democracy; it was a testimony to its strength (checks and balance; constrained Executive; separation of powers). THE COST OF THE GIVEAWAY - ECONOMIC CRISIS *FACT: President Bush and Congress refuse to finance the Giveaway. *FACT: The cost of the withdrawal from the Rafiah Salient (5,000 residents; 5 year tenure) was 15BN shekels in 1990, which is equal to some 30BN in 2004, which is similar to the annual defense budget! *FACT: The cost of the Giveaway could exceed 40BN shekels, considering the 8,000 residents with 30 year tenure in the Gaza Strip. A minimalist assessment - different than the Rafiah precedent - could lower the cost to 26BN shekels, which includes housing (furniture and improvements), two year adjustment pay, compensation, employment infrastructure, roads, communications, electricity, water, sewage, classrooms, community structures and relocation and upgrading of military installations. *FACT: The cost of the Giveaway would devastate the economy: averting economic recovery, worsening unemployment, increasing taxes, imposing government bonds, cutting infrastructure development and human services, decreasing government subsidy of public transportation and gasoline, etc. WHAT CAN ISRAEL EXPECT IN RETURN FOR THE GIVEAWAY? *No peace agreement. *Land for Economic Crisis. *Land for Terrorism, which tends to doubly terrorize those who run away! *Land for very friendly, but non-binding, ambiguous presidential declarations (which were also proclaimed by LBJ, Reagan and Clinton). IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

CHIEF OF STAFF BLAMES COURT FOR ATTACK ON HATUEL FAMILY Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, May 3, 2004.

This was a news item in today's Arutz-7 (http://www.IsraelNationalNews). More details on yesterday's massacre of the five members of the Hatuel family are now known. Two terrorists from Dir el-Balah, the Arab village closest to Kfar Darom and the Kisufim route to Gush Katif, lay in wait around noon for Jewish cars to arrive. They then opened fire with their Kalachnikov rifles on the cars passing by - the first of which were two armored vans belonging to a CNN news team. No one was hurt, but producer Mike Schwartz realized that a terrorist attack was in progress, and instructed the cars to drive forward and then park in the middle of the road. He thus prevented additional cars from falling into the ambush trap. Though Schwartz heroically saved the lives of those in some ten cars behind him, he couldn't help the Hatuel family, who was already on its way into the trap. The terrorists shot at the car carrying the mother and her four daughters, and the vehicle veered off the side of the road. The terrorists then ran over to the car to perform "ascertainment of death," i.e., at point-blank range, they shot each of the occupants to death: Tali, the 8-month pregnant mother, and Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and two-year-old Meirav. The murderers then continued to unload dozens of more bullets into the bodies. Zaka volunteers worked for a long while afterwards to collect the body parts from the car and its vicinity. It is possible that the terrorists evaded detection by first shooting at nearby IDF outposts, thus causing the surveillance cameras to be momentarily directed away from the road. The murderers took advantage of the moment to run up to the road and take up their positions. In addition to shooting at the cars, the murderers also threw a small bomb at the vehicles. IDF forces who did arrive on the scene shot and killed the two terrorists. Two lightly-wounded soldiers and one moderately-wounded civilian were flown to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheva. Hamas, one of the terrorist groups that took joint responsibility for the attack, said afterwards that just as the Jews of Gush Katif are about to be expelled from their homes because of the Arab resistance, so too will all the Jews of Judea and Samaria be expelled from their homes. Other Hamas figures have said in the past that their goal is to uproot and destroy the entire State of Israel. IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Yaalon, who arrived at the scene of the attack this morning, made it plain where he places the blame: The Supreme Court. He said that lining the Kisufim Route are "houses that, for security reason, we wanted to remove, and pay the occupants compensation. But the legal system did not allow us to do this." The homes served as camouflage for the terrorists and their actions. As of last night, however, this is no longer true: the army did not ask anyone and destroyed 13 houses in the region, as well as three more in the Rafiach area. Four of these were houses that the Court previously ruled could not be destroyed, and two of them were houses that helped hide yesterday's terrorists. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org To Go To Top

EVEN BEST FRIENDS HAVE THEIR LIMITS Posted by Herbert Zweibon, May 3, 2004.

Sir, - For all their heartfelt sentiments, my good friends Jan Willem van der Hoeven and Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein do Israel a profound disservice in pretending that its proposed surrender of yet additional portions of the Land of Israel to Yasser Arafat and his Hamas and Islamic Jihad associates will have no impact on continued American Evangelical support for the Jewish state ("Evangelical leaders say they'll back Israel despite withdrawal," April 20). In whatever light the Sharon government may regard Shiloh, Hebron, Beit El, Elon Moreh and other Jewish communities almost certain to follow Gush Katif to the chopping block, to the Christian Zionist groupings with whom we deal in the US on an almost daily basis these are places of major spiritual import. To turn them into radical Islamic beachheads would amount, in their eyes, to a repudiation of God's word, an undermining of the scriptural foundation on which the Judeo-Christian enterprise rests. The damage already inflicted on that enterprise by Israel's handover of Bethlehem to Arafat and its much-belated action in halting the construction of a giant mosque in front of Nazareth's Church of the Ascension could become irreparable. The support of even the best of friends has its limits. In embracing a "road map" mandating the creation of what can only result in a violent, corrupt Arab dictatorship in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, the Sharon government risks exceeding those limits with an increasingly important, increasingly bewildered American Christian Zionist constituency. Telling a sick friend that everything will be all right isn't going to make him well. What he needs to be told is the truth. Herb Zweibom is Chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (AFSI), a pro-active pro-Israel advocacy group. AFSI may be contacted by mail at 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, N.Y. 10128, Tel: 212-828-2424; Fax: 212-828-1717; by email at afsi@rcn.com; or by accessing its website: www. afsi.org. Helen Freedman is Executive Director. This essay appeared yesterday on the Jerusalem Post Online Edition Letters to the Editor page (www.jpost.com/Letters). To Go To Top

SUDAN: 56 BOY SLAVES FREED FROM CATTLE CAMPS Posted by Christian Solidarity International, May 3, 2004.

ABYEI MOU, Sudan, May 3, 2004. 56 boy slaves were liberated at the end of April from the cattle camps of Arab nomads in the borderlands between northern and southern Sudan. Their liberation was a joint action undertaken by CSI and the Arab-Dinka Peace Committee based at the borderland market town of Warawar. The boys had been abducted during government sponsored jihad slave raids against Black African, non-Muslim communities in northern Bahr El Ghazal. Upon releasing the slaves, the head of the Baggara cattle camps between the Bahr el Arab and Lol Rivers, Shegir Al Agar, claimed that the boys had been very happy with their masters, whom they affectionately called "father". However, interviews with the boys revealed a clear pattern of physical and psychological abuse. They reported cases of beatings, stabbings, boy rape, racial insults, death threats, and forcible conversion to Islam. A 12-year-old slave named Piol recalled: My master (Ibrahim Mohammed) told me not to ask about my mother and father, and ordered me to call him "father". Whenever I displeased him, he beat me. Once he hit me on the head with a cow's horn. Another time, he burned me on the arm. Sometimes he refused to allow me to eat. Ibrahim's son, Khalid, also bullied me. He threw stones at me, and called me "dog", "bastard", and "slave". Ibrahim made me go to Koranic school. The teacher, Mohammed Razik, said that we should forget about the religion of our people and become Muslims. Otherwise, we would be infidels. CSI encountered two slaves who were not released by their masters. Osman was in the bush looking after cows, and Majok Miir was making tea for cattle camp masters. Shegir Al Agar reported that there were many more slaves in the area. The Baggara will start moving their cows and slaves back to their home areas north of the Bahr El Arab River later this month when the rainy season begins. They had brought their cattle south of the river last February, during the dry season, in search of water and pasture land. Slavery is an internationally recognized crime against humanity. In the spring of 2002, a U.S. government-sponsored international Eminent Persons Group charged Sudan's Islamist regime of using slavery as a weapon of war against Southern Sudan. At the beginning of his mission, U.S. Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan, former Sen. John Danforth, identified the eradication of slavery as a pre-condition for a just and lasting peace. However, the issue of slavery has not yet been placed on the agenda of the peace talks between the Government of Sudan and the Sudan People's Liberation Army. CSI's President, Revd. Hans Stuckelberger, has pledged that "CSI will continue its campaign to eradicate slavery in Sudan until the last slave is free". You can contact Stephen Crawford, Christian Solidarity International (CSI), 870 HampshireRoad, Westlake Village, CA, 91361: (805) 777 7107 tel, (805) 777 7508 fax, csi@csi-usa.org To Go To Top

TWO WALLS Posted by Saul Goldman, May 2, 2004.

I guess I finally began to realize that Israel was losing its struggle for survival when the Government conceived the idea of building a wall between Israel and the Arabs. Think about it, a modern high tech country who has proven its military prowess over the years, comes up with a medieval idea about national defense. What's next, I asked myself, a moat? But, then powerless people are often overcome by the anxiety that accompanies the insight that they are impotent and vulnerable. And Israel is powerless. Power, of course, does not reside in machines or in technology; power resides in people. Visualize a quantum of psychic/spiritual energy surging through individuals nourishing their sense of well-being and their confidence. Modern psychology, since Freud, has greatly expanded our understanding of the human mind. Healthy individuals manage to negotiate their way through life by processing the outside world through reason and action, while preventing their inner worlds or unconscious from spilling over and contaminating the way they function in the real world. Freud called the apparatus navigating our course in life, the "ego". With the help of crucial psychic mechanisms (repression, sublimation, rationalization) we keep the irrational from inundating and affecting our lives. When these mechanisms fail us we become mentally ill. We know another truth about anxiety or mental disorder, it affects large conglomerates of individuals. Nations, too, have sick souls (Isaiah 6:10). Perhaps, more than other nations, Israel has endured the kind of traumas that were not or could not be cured. On an individual level, when we see persons acting abnormally because of a past event, we diagnose that as traumatic neurosis or "post-traumatic stress disorder". Our entire nation suffers from this disorder. Sharon's wall and unilateral disengagement plan are further symptoms of this national malaise. Why? Because, the withdrawal from Gaza merely mollifies Bush, but neither contributes toward his own war against Arab terror nor satisfies Israel's tactical objectives. The wall, however, is a much more florid sign of our internal disorder. Arabs who hate Jews will not remain passively behind the wall. First, they will employ their "human rights" groupies to allege that we are imposing a harmful entity upon the general welfare of the area's residents. Then, of course, they will find ways to overcome this rather expensive and annoying obstacle. The wall, however, as I said is not stupid; it is insane. Stupid is an error in tactical planning; insanity is re-enacting for the Arabs our own persecution complex. The neo-nazis in Europe as well as profoundly disturbed Jews are already calling us "Nazis" and accusing us of German-style crimes against the Jews. And we erect the one symbol of discrimination that the world remembers so well; the ghetto wall. Now what does it mean when an individual inflicts upon someone else the same torture that had been inflicted upon him? Psychiatrists, of course, have a name for that: displacement. Sharon is not protecting his people by building walls. There are no walls high enough to keep our enemies out. So what constitutes the reasoning for such a project? I imagine that the level of thought was pre-logical or downright irrational. Symbols hold only unconscious power and therefore the wall is only meaningful to Jews who suffered behind such walls. Inasmuch as Arabs have never endured ghettos; they have only erected them from Morocco to Syria, the Arabs really do not know what to make of the Jews' idiotic wall. Indeed, how do we make sense of it, especially when we were lethally disappointed by another "wall" we had built to protect us against the Arabs on the Egyptian front in the 1970s. We called that wall, the Bar Lev line and as I recall, the sad joke was that the only thing left of the Bar Lev line were the villas of the contractors who built it. But, Israel today, like Israel of 35 years ago, lives in constant anxiety. Then, the daily news broadcasts reported upon casualties along the line with Egypt; today the casualties are on Egged buses and in Haifa cafes. Despite all of those wondrous tactical achievements on the part of our airmen, seamen and soldiers, the enemy continues to advance. Intense anxiety evokes magical thinking. Religion, for example, is an illustration of the "magical defense" against the angst of living and dying. And now Israelis allow a wall to be constructed that will prove to be the next great folly of Israeli tacticians. Forget the fact that walls are at best no more than a logistical challenge, think of the message sent to the world: Israel is afraid and is trying to hide behind a wall. We want to destroy our enemies; not annoy them. Sharon's wall further undermines any residual deterrence that may have remained in the mythos of the IDF. The wall slumps abjectly as a symbol of Israel's persecution complex. After almost sixty years of freedom, the Jews prefer a ghetto and so they have reconstructed the very same ghetto walls that throughout history only held them within so that their enemies could harm them at will. There is a Seinfeld-like neurotic quality to the wall. It makes its architect, Ariel Sharon, look a lot like George in one of his desperate and delusional investments. There is, in addition, another wall which the Arabs are trying to destroy because it is a symbol of strength. We sang and prayed there. It was our topographical locus of contemplation and self-realization for two thousand years. Now it is threatened by Arabs who earnestly work to undermine its foundations and to destroy its presence. Above its nostalgic glory sits a shrine to Islamic terror. This is the Western Wall. Its capacity to defend us is not determined by how it surrounds us, but rather by how it instills us with pride, self-esteem, and sense of historic and transcendent identity. The former kind of wall (exterior wall) is merely an illusion of security. Nehemiah (4:16) tells us that during the reign of Artaxerxes, the Jews were allowed to complete the re-building of Jerusalem. The craftsmen and construction workers labored day and night with tools in one hand and a sword in the other. The Jews built this great wall because they believed that it would protect them. They were wrong. Such walls are always permeable because they corrode from within. This wall cannot prevent the real causes of disaster which are the internal forces of selfishness or in Freud's language narcissism. It is this total devotion to one's pleasure that corrupts one's environment. And as we have seen Israel began to crumble from within those walls before the Romans actually tore down the walls. The Hellenizers diluted Judaism by pollinating it with pagan ideas. The point is that real power is not derived from any materiel, but from the inner life, that vital core of spirit and culture. That is why the Maccabees were able to defeat the more technologically advanced Syrian army and temporarily restore our freedom. And that is why, I recall, each of us at the completion of IDF basic training, took an oath with Bible in hand. The only wall that can protect us is the Western wall, not because it encompasses us but because we have embraced it. History records what happened when that inner source of power was corrupted. The sages cogently summarized these cultural facts when they concluded that the First Commonwealth fell to avodah zara or the paganization of Israeli society while the Second Commonwealth fell because of sinat hinan or hatred among Jews. Sounds ominously familiar! Both of these national conditions are the result of that personal and inner drive for self-aggrandizement at all costs. Hence, the significance of the remaining piece of wall. This wall is not a reminder of our past glory; it is a warning; in religious language a call to repentance. The remains of the outer wall of Herod's Temple, had been transformed by modern Israel from a memorial to disaster into a tribute to courage. It had become the very soul of Judaism; an earthly intersection where a nation faced its history and destiny. Jews went to that wall in order to pray and to discover their real strength which had always reposed in their minds and hearts. Modern Israel like ancient Israel will fall to the delusions of power that are assigned to objects be it ancient walls capable of resisting Roman battering rams or modern forms of techno-idolatry. What has become of the incredibly ingenious folk that responded to the Iraqi nuclear threat with a daring air assault or to the kidnapping of their civilians by the raid on Entebbe? We had once deterred the Arab world by our posture as a fierce David? Lately, we have resorted to exchanging terrorists for the mutilated corpses of our soldiers and negotiating with them over how quickly we will abandon our rights in our own land. No wonder, then, that Sharon comes up with the "ghetto" solution to the crime of murder. I can only imagine that such an idea emerged from the recesses of his Jewish soul; a reflex that remained of the old years when a Jew belonged nowhere. Somehow, I agree with the European Union and the State Department when they call the wall a human rights violation. It violates the rights of millions of Jews to travel freely in their own land; it violates the rights of decent Arabs to travel freely and it violates the canons of Judaism as well as common sense to propose that a wall will protect the citizens of Israel. Once, when asked by a citizen and council member, if Sparta should build a wall around it, Lycurgus answered, "that city is best defended that has a wall of men rather than brick." If it is not already too late, Israel's security reposes in the energy and capacity of our teachers and scholars to teach about Judaism and Jewish history; to re-vise the revisionist distortions of our story. As long as we listen to teachers like Neve Gordon or the host of anti-Zionist disciples of the old Judah Magnes-Martin Buber circle of Jews, we will lose because they taught the philosophy of defeat. The sages report an incident in which a rabbi visiting from Babylonia was escorted through a certain city. When he asked about their neturei karta (guardians of the city) he was shown the local constabulatory. He remarked that they were merely men who carried swords, but the true guardians of the city were its scholars (J. Hagigah 1:7). Today, as then, Israel's guardians are the sages and teachers who are entrusted to rear and educate a generation grounded in Biblical values and steeled by Jewish history. When this generation arrives at the IDF induction center, Israel's enemies will have met their match. Saul Goldman is the rabbi of Congregation Aliyah of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. To Go To Top

OUTRAGEOUSLY ANTIDEMOCRACY STATEMENT BY U.S. GOV Posted by Lise Rubin, May 3, 2004.

It appears that the "White House" is ignoring the rights of Israeli's to self-rule!!! This appeared in IMRA and is archived at (http://www.imra.orgil/story.php3?id=20660) Monday, May 3, 2004 Statement By White House Press Secretary on Likud Vote - View Unchanged WASHINGTON, May 2 /PRNewswire/ www.prnewswire.com -- We have been informed of the results of the Likud voting. Our own view has not changed: The President welcomed Prime Minister Sharon's plan to withdraw settlements from Gaza and a part of the West Bank as a courageous and important step toward peace. We will be in consultation with the Prime Minister and the Government of Israel about how to move forward. SOURCE: White House Press Office Web Site: http://www.whitehouse.gov IMRA suggests there is an alternative way to interpret this: #1 "View" not changed = views expressed about right of return, secure borders, etc. #2 "Move forward" = "movement" in general - not necessarily the retreat program.] Dr. Aaron Lerner is director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava, Israel). IMRA's Internet address is http://www.imra.org.il and email address is imra@netvision.net.il To Go To Top

INCONSISTENCIES OF "OCCUPATION" AND SHARON PLAN Posted by Richard H. Shulman, May 3, 2004.

The Associated Press reported PM Sharon as warning that if the Arabs continued their violence (i.e., "terrorism") after Israel abandons Gaza, Israel's response would be "even harsher than it is now." Below that, A.P. actually quoted PM Sharon as stating, "would be much harsher." "Much harsher" does not mean that Israel's response is harsh now. He reportedly asserted that Israel already is taking stiff measures, referring to killing the heads of Hamas (not stiff but overdue). Sharon urged the Likud referendum to approve the plan, so the P.A. no longer could explain violence as resisting Israeli "occupation". He warned that rejection would negate US guarantees that Israel may keep parts of Judea-Samaria and deny entry to Arab "refugees." (NY Sun, 4/28.) Sharon's claim has an internal logical inconsistency. Since Israel would, at that point, still be present in parts of Judea-Samaria, the Arabs still would claim they are fighting occupation. The Arabs explain it now but are incorrect -- Israel is not occupying foreign territory. Since the Arabs don't care about accuracy now, they won't later. Making sacrificial steps to remove excuses from a culture based on making false excuses, is futile and dangerous. It is not for the US to guarantee part of the Jewish homeland. It is up to Israel to deny entry to Arabs who want to stream in to take over, whether they invade with bullets or ballots and welfare claims. It is up to Israel, as primary claimant in Judea-Samaria, whether and how much territory it wishes to retain. Nor did the US guarantee anything. It made observations. Sharon is lying. INCONSISTENCY ON ANTI-TERRORISM Israel attacked the Hamas leaders when fewer civilians were around them. It had no choice but to attack them from the air. In Gaza, it can't capture them without a pitched battle that would produce more casualties and worse criticism. Hence it executes them via missile strike. The US has given orders to kill Bin Laden, Taliban Mullah Omar Mohammed, and Iraqi Shiite rebel terrorist al-Sadyr. Those men are part of a terrorist or military army, and therefore legitimate targets. Same for Yassin, Rantisi, and Arafat. There is no difference in the piratical criminality of all six. Nevertheless, people accept US action as legitimate, while criticizing the same type of action when taken by Israel. British Foreign Sec. Straw mistakenly declared the Israeli action in violation of international law. His government, however, authorizes the killing of terrorist leaders. Yassin and Rantisi are terrorists, too, having ordered specific acts of terrorism (and running the terrorist group). Britain has forfeited its credibility (Prof. Steven Plaut, 4/23, e-mail, from Alan Dershowitz). Is this inconsistency or antisemitism? The Arabs commit the same kind of terrorism against Israel as against foreign aid workers in Iraq. The British favor the Arabs against Israel despite the terrorism by those Arabs and in behalf of the same jihad that targets the entire West. "Antisemitism" would explain British behavior. WHY DOES SHARON NOT EXPLAIN HIS RETREAT PLAN? PM Sharon is selling his retreat plan as a way to extricate Israel from the problems with Gaza (which it would exacerbate for Israel). He is silent about the more significant part of the plan, which is to exit from most of Judea-Samaria. He is afraid to draw attention to his ultimate plan to transfer tens of thousands of Jews from Judea-Samaria to the State of Israel. What Sharon is ashamed to admit he should be anxious to shout. By leaving much of Judea-Samaria, but retaining the high ground needed for defense, Israel finally would gain recognized and secure borders. These borders would include nearly all of the major Israeli settlements and few of the Arabs. Since the Bush administration has given those borders its unofficial blessing, so would other countries (Hillel Halkin, NY Sun, 4/27, p.8). The US gave Israel no such blessing! The US repeatedly has made clear that it merely suggested something for the negotiators. There is no excuse for intelligent commentators still to claim that the US is guaranteeing anything about the retreat plan. Why do they let the State Dept. dupe friends of Israel about it? The scenario is: (1) Israel withdraws from much of Yesha; (2) Then negotiations begin and Sharon would contend that since Israel showed its goodwill by leaving half of Yesha, it should be allowed to keep the other half as a compromise; (3) The Arabs would reply that they made no agreement with Israel over this, and they claim the whole of Yesha (and would not admit that after getting it, they would claim Israel, itself; (4) Most of the world would side with the Arabs; (5) Israel would appeal for State Dept. clarification; (6) The State Dept. would answer that the final agreement is up to the two parties, and urge Israel to compromise, again, including giving up the key areas needed for defense. One-way give-away wrong way. Now suppose that Israel did eestablish official borders. What do official borders mean to the Arabs, who are recidivist aggressors? This notion of having official borders is one of Mr. Halkin's major points, but is pointless. This is an example of the "NY Sun" starting out pro-Israel and becoming appeasement-minded. THE FENCE IS NOT ENOUGH BY ITSELF A true defense involves interlocking means. The security fence is one component. Another is the ability to send armed forces beyond it. The Army must be able to eliminate terrorist cells before they attack. Otherwise, it cannot defend the fence. In addition, the Army needs a tactic for dealing with rocket attacks. One of the mutually reinforcing means are bulldozed security baffle zones. Baffle zones were omitted from the route of the Judea-Samaria fence. Neither has Israel provided special rules of engagement for troops monitoring the area, so they could make timely decisions, themselves. The time for troops to act is when they detect the enemy. That is no time to call in a description to headquarters and discuss options. Terrorists exploit these omissions. May Israel shoot into civilian areas? Yes. Under the rules of war, Israel has the right to attack civilian areas used for military purposes. Those areas have become military areas. Gen. Almog made those points as a military expert. He went on to plead for employing Arabs in Israel. This he based on speculation and hope, no facts given (IMRA, 4/23). The facts are that some terrorists come in with or as workers, and workers' money goes back out to support terrorism. THE TWO FACES OF THE ISLAMISTS In Australia, "the mufti, who had enjoyed a reputation of being a liberal, had been exposed when a series of his interviews and sermons over the past two years were translated from Arabic into English in a February report by MEMRI." (Steven Stalinsky, NY Sun, 4/28, p.7.) The same thing happens in the US. Islamists here profess peace and tolerance to American officials, but in Arabic rouse their rabble to hate America. The White House then welcomes the Islamists as if moderate. Some of these Arabs are appointed to State Dept. posts or human rights commissions. One would expect the US would be more wary of enemy infiltration, after having suffered through the Communist infiltration decades ago. Unfortunately, leftists in the media, as on NPR, pretend that there was no infiltration, and that Sen. McCarthy fabricated it all. It did exist, although it had been eliminated by the time Sen. McCarty exercised his demagoguery over it. Americans are not much aware of what happened then. Since they don't know significant history and have been misled about it, they are unable to learn from experience. NEW P.A. TACTIC Armed P.A. Arabs grab children and run with them to attack Israeli soldiers. An Israeli brigade commander revealed this after the P.A. reported that Israeli tanks, seeking to destroy rocket launchers, entered an Arab town, and killed a child. The commander told "Maariv" that the IDF would not deliberately kill any child trying to harm an IDF soldier, because that "would delegitimize our struggle in the area." IMRA calls that morality bizarre. It prefers dead soldiers to stopping Arab minors from attacking soldiers (IMRA, 4/23). The Arabs get their children killed and then get the world to blame Israel for it. If Israel had a propaganda weapon, it would publicize these dirty Arab tactics. It would shame the supporters of the Arabs, especially those who lament children's death. When women, children, and the elderly become as bestial as male terrorists, they deserve no gallantry. When the children are exploited as human shields, the troops retain the duty to defend themselves. If the troops don't fire, more children would be used against them, some willingly. Too bad about any innocent children, but the terrorists should not be allowed to murder Israelis because of it. I think that the commander's morality is more than bizarre. It is neurotic. It is the Jew bending over backwards to be nice to gentiles, to prove he really is decent. Therefore, it is indecent. That commander dooms some of his men to underserved death. Mr. Shulman is a veteran defender of Israel on several web-based forums. He provides cool information and right-on-target overviews. He distributes his essays by email. To subscribe, write him at ricshulman@aol.com. To Go To Top

IT IS TIME Posted by David Frankfurter, May 3, 2004.

All children are precious. It doesn't matter if they are boys or girls. Nevertheless, to have both boys and girls is wonderful. I am a father of four girls, and I remember the joy and anticipation that awaited the arrival of our youngest - a son. I have watched with such pride as his four extra 'mothers' have joined Rochelle and myself in bringing him up. We try to convince ourselves that he is not spoilt - just well loved. It is with a special sense of identity and grief that I share the loss of David Hatuel. Yesterday, terrorists shot at the car carrying his wife and four daughters. His wife was pregnant with their fifth - a son. Then the terrorists went to the car and, at close range, put two bullets into each victim to ensure their 'kill'. Bullets in the head at close range of a pregnant woman and four little children. David Hatuel will never know the joy that was potentially his, the happiness that I know comes from a household of four girls and a young son. I grieve with him deeply. And what does the official voice of the Palestinian Authority have to say about this barbarism? Dr Michael Widlanski, an Arabic speaking journalist reports: The Voice of Palestine called the men who carried out the earlier attack today that left a pregnant mother and her four children dead "an act of heroic martyrdom". The radio station repeatedly used the term "is tish-had" (heroic martyrdom) and "mustash-hidin" (heroic martyrs) to describe the act committed by "two youths". After reporting the attackers names the radio repeated that they were heroic martyrs. Can you be silent? It is time for all reasonable societies to say 'enough'. There is no excuse for this sickening violence. Any society which does not condemn it and cut itself off from it is tainted with the same sickness. It is time to call out loudly that the hypocrisy of the Palestinian leadership who mouth platitudes about peace and encourage this sort of barbarism is not acceptable in human society. I ask you to write to your local newspapers, to your church leaders and to your politicians. It is time that we demand that all respectable countries cut all ties - diplomatic and economic - with the Palestinian Authority and their representatives until they fulfill their obligations under treaties they have signed, under the Roadmap, and under the god they pretend to worship to put an immediate and complete end to all forms of terror and incitement to terror. With prayers for peace, David Frankfurter is a writer on the Middle East conflict. He sends "Letters from Israel" emails to subscribers. Contact him at David.Frankfurter@iname.com To Go To Top

MUGABIAN DEMOCRACY IN ISRAEL Posted by Steven Plaut, May 3, 2004.

Well the official ballot count is in. The "disengagement plan" was shot down by 60% to 39%, a 21% margin in favor of the opponents. As far as I know, I was the only person around who publicly issued a prediction before the vote that the plan would lose by a double-digit margin, and even I did not dare suggest it would be by over 20%. For the past 12 years Israel has been dominated by the doctrine of "We will do the democratic thing no matter what those damn voters think", also known as the Robert Mugabe school of democratic thought. Every single time voters were allowed to express their opinion on the Oslo "peace process" and its strategy of trying to appease our way to peace, the voters of Israel rejected it by large margins. The politicians proceeded to implement the appeasements anyway. Every single time Israeli voters have been asked, they favored dealing with the PLO through achieving military victory over it, through annihilating it and its terrorists. They favored dealing with the enemy through fighting him, not appeasing him. Days before this referendum, Ariel Sharon was announcing that the Likud voters could go get stuffed because he would implement his appeasement plan whether they liked it or not. After all he had given George Bush his word. Then when it looked like the referendum would go down with a small loss, Sharon announced that, since it was only Likud members voting, he would take a small margin of loss as a sign that the public endorsed him. Such Mugabism evidently enraged the Likud rank and file. Witness the final vote numbers. The continued domination of Mugabism in Israel is evident in other ways as well. The Left has long been arguing that leftists should be exempt from having to obey the laws of the country as long as the government is not implementing the policies advocated by the most-extremist 5% of the voters, and that soldiers should be encouraged to mutiny when national policies are not those advocated by Israel's communist party. Shimon Peres dismissed the referendum as irrelevant, saying that no minority should be allowed to dictate to Israel its choices. Yup, a 60% to 39% majority in the poll is an insignificant minority in the "mind" of the man who once insisted that, when Oslo was implemented, he was far more concerned about the danger from the infiltration of cable television into Israel than he was about the danger of infiltration of Palestinian terrorists. Other people, like Jerusalem Post columnist Yosef Goell, are joining in the call for more Mugabian democracy in Israel (see his insisting that in spite of the referendum the "majority" will yet prevail at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/ JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083468527580&p=1006953079865). Incidentally, since I am on a roll with getting one prediction in a row correct, let me venture another. Yes, of course the referendum yesterday was not representative because it was only Likud members voting. But if a national referendum will now be held on the same "plan", it will ALSO lose. Remember where you heard it predicted first. What will be? Well, I will tell you what now SHOULD be. The Likud should immediately split into to separate parties. Likud-Aleph and Likud-Bet. Likud-Aleph would consist of all those party apparatchiks who wish the Likud to serve as the Other-Labor-Party and compete with the Left in terms of developing appeasement plans. It would include all those party functionaries who believe in nothing except keeping a cushy party job or public service slot, and the people who regard the Likud as their alternative to gainful employment. All the others, who actually believe in Israel, Zionism, and peace through victory would form Likud-Bet. Such a split should have taken place years ago. After such a split, the Israeli voter would at long last have a real ballot choice. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

EXPULSION OF ISRAELI CITIZENS IS A VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW AND ISRAELI HUMAN RIGHTS LAW Posted by Gail Winston, May 2, 2004.

Dear Friends, The Vote Is In! Sharon Bet His Political Life On This Referendum To Evict Katif and Samarian Citizens. He Lost By 20%: 62% Against To 38% For Retreat (with half the vote counted as of 2:30 am Israel time). Don't know what dirty tricks Sharon still has up his sleeves. This article was written by David Bedein, Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron Int'l Press Center, Jerusalem. Friday, April 30th, two days before the referendum of Likud Party membership on Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's plan to expel 21 Jewish communities from the Katif district of Gaza, a plan which would also involve the decimation of four Jewish communities in Northern Samaria, a plan which would offer their homes, farms and land to the PLO... Eliav Schochetman Hebrew Professor of Law Emeritus and the Dean of the Shaari Mishpat Law College, gave a briefing today on the subject of "The implications of forcible expulsion in the light of Israeli civil rights law and in light of international law." The briefing was held at the Beit Agron International Press Center in Jerusalem, and sponsored by a foundation grant to the Center for Near East Policy, located in Wellesley, Mass. Prof Shochetman prefaced his remarks with a reference to the days of monarchs and dictators who make decrees which often result in orders to expel people from their homes, at a time when regimes legislated no constraints concerning any consideration of human dignity, civil liberties and basic human freedoms. Regarding the constraints on such matters in Israel, Prof. Schochetman mentioned the state of Israel preserves its democratic system under the constraints of The Israel Basic Human Dignity Law which oversees Israeli democratic institutions in matters of human rights and civil liberties, much as the US Bill of Rights ensures that the US government can never trample on the human rights and civil liberties of American citizens. The Israeli law is also based on the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which all democratic governments are adherents. Prof. Schochetman quoted numerous court cases in which Israel Chief Justice Aharon Barak invoked the Israel Basic Human Dignity Law to intervene on behalf of Israeli citizens whose civil liberties and human rights had been abused, He asserted that in the current situation, given the legal precedents from Israeli court cases and from court cases around the world, any Israeli government decision to expel people from their homes, even in the context of a diplomatic move, would represent a wanton violation of basic human rights and civil liberties that are protected under Israeli and international human rights law. Prof. Schochetman cited clause 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,which states that it is illegal for sovereign governments to expel their own citizens from their homes, their private properties or from their farms. Prof. Schochetman applied Universal Declaration of Human Rights constraint to the proposed policy of the Prime Minister of Israel, whose April 18th plan, featured at www.pmo.gov.il,. would mandate that Israeli citizens would be expelled from 21 communities in Katif and from 4 communities in the Northern Samaria region. Since the only group slated for expulsion would be Jews, it may be recalled that he government of Serbia was recently held liable for international prosecution at the International High Court of Justice in the Hague, under the charge of "ethnic cleansing", after leaders of Serbia expelled an ethnic minority, solely because of their religion. Prof. Schochetman invoked another aspect of international law, the 1921 San Remo legislation of the League of Nations, reaffirmed by the United Nations in 1945, which serves to protect and defend the right of Jews to purchase land anywhere west of the Jordan River, along with the legal briefs of Dr Eugene Rostow, the author of UN Resolution #242, in which Rostow wrote that no peace arrangement should preclude the eminent right of Jews to settle anywhere in the state of Israel. Regardless of what happens in the Likud referendum on May 2nd, Prof. Shochetman noted that no expulsion of landowners in Katif or Samaria could take place without a decision of Israel's Knesset parliament that would hold up under international human rights law and Israel civil liberties statutes. No one in the Israeli government has bothered to even communicate with the 8,000 residents of Katif concerning the fate of their 325 farms, their property and their lives. More than a month ago, I wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Olmert, the prime advocate of the Sharon Plan, to ask him about what the government has in store for the Israeli citizens who are supposed to be removed from their homes and livelihood. Olmert would not answer, nor has he related to anyone in the media about the fate of Israeli citizens who face expuslion from their homes.. However, the Israel Prime Minister's office manager and personal lawyer, Dov Weissglass, declared to the media on April 17th after returning from the Bush Sharon meeting that he is seeking a "responsible Palestinian factor" to take over the property From the Katif communities. Weissglass has professional experience with "Palestinian factors", since his law firm represented the Palestinian casino operation in Jericho and the head of PLO finance, Mr. Mohammad Rashid. On April 27th, US Secretary of State Colin Powell told Reuters News Agency confirmed Israel's offer that Israel was indeed offering the homes and property intact to the Palestinians. All this at a time when the preamble of the Sharon Plan states that there is "reliable Palestinian peace partner." On May 2nd, Israel Deputy Mayor Ehud Olmert is scheduled to address the groundbreaking ceremony of the Museum of Human Dignity, preceded by an address to the Board of Governers of that new venture How a deputy prime minister of a sovereign nation can speak about human dignity while ignoring the human dignity of some of his own citizens which may become an unexpected newsworthy event of the day. David Bedein is Bureau Chief, Israel Resource News Agency, Beit Agron International Press Center, Jerusalem and a Fellow, Center for Near East Policy Research, Wellesley, Mass. To Go To Top

THE ARAFAT PROGNOSIS Posted by Yashiko Sagamori, May 2, 2004.

Life is funny. Sometimes one wakes up in the morning and has no idea what he is going to have for breakfast. Some other times, however, events of historic importance can be predicted without a problem. For example, I can name the exact date when the War on Terror will end: January 23, 2009. Here's why. This November, John Kerry doesn't stand a chance, but by November 2008 everyone is going to be sick and tired of the Republicans, and Hillary Clinton will easily win over Dick Cheney or whoever else the GOP may come up with for the purpose. On January 21, 2009, she will be sworn in; the next day she will be recuperating after the inaugural festivities, like any normal human being would do in a similar situation; but on the morning of January 23, like it or not, she will have to start taking care of business, and there will be no business more urgent than getting out of that senseless war. Senseless not because it isn't necessary - it most certainly is - but because the way it's been conducted guarantees that we cannot win it. The only way to fight malaria is to drain the swamps. Hunting the baddest mosquitoes individually the way Israel does, or invading the swamp hoping that a new, non-bloodsucking mosquito species will emerge as a result as we do, can only get us so far. Too bad our leaders lack the wisdom, courage and ability to tell right from wrong needed to defeat terrorism. Arafat's future is not difficult to predict either. Arafat will die. I know it's hard to believe. With his lifestyle, he should've died a really ugly death a long time ago. Why do you think he didn't get married until old age? Even he didn't think he would've lived that long, so, instead of messing with human females, he was waiting to get to his heavenly harem. Then he saw he wasn't going anywhere soon and married a fat, drastically unnatural blonde with a poetic name, Suha. He even fathered a child with her; at least, that's what the official version says. Then Suha moved to Paris, where she lives the life of ease under the watchful eye of her husband's goons. The only kiss she has gotten ever since came from Hillary Clinton. But this is all in the past, while we are interested in the future. As I said, in the future Arafat will die. However, he will not die a violent death like Sheikh Yassin or Dr. Rantisi. He will not suffer a heart attack either, because heartless monsters are immune to that particular disease. Arafat will pass away of a long, grave illness in some hospital in Cairo. Getting him there will have to be coordinated with the Israelis who haven't allowed him to leave the Mukata for many months. The Israeli government will have to choose between two distinctly different approaches to the situation: one will demand to show humanity towards a frail old man; the other can be best expressed with the words "Let him croak in his Mukata!" Needless to say, the suicidal Jewish humanism will win, and Arafat will be allowed to leave. However, he will be in no hurry to take advantage of his enemies' inexplicable kindness. First, he will demand guarantees from the United States that he will be allowed to return whenever he likes. In fact, by that time, it will be clear to everybody that Arafat will never return to Ramalla, but not because of the proverbial Israeli cruelty or his failing health. During his long years at the helm of the terrorist organization known as the "Palestinian people", a long and impatient line of wannabes formed behind him. His terminal illness will present an opportunity they won't want to miss. Despite that certainty, the government of Israel will at first refuse to guarantee his return, expecting to squeeze something out of the United States in exchange for that. The bargaining will take time, and the Americans will try to use it by sending State Department operatives to the terrorists in hope to replace the dying rais with someone they will be able to work with. Nothing will come from their efforts. Finally, the Americans will promise something to Israel, and Israel will relent. The Americans will never deliver. Meanwhile, mass media all over the world will be outraged by the cruelty of the Zionists condemning the harmless old man to death. As usually happens whenever Israel is concerned, a highly non-obvious analogy will be suggested between the treatment of Arafat by the Israeli government and medical experiments on Jewish children conducted during the Holocaust by SS doctors. Despite its apparent flaws, the analogy will become very popular, especially among Holocaust deniers. Arafat will use the delay to ensure that his own people will not use his illness to quietly finish him off and blame the Jews for it. He would much rather go to a hospital in Israel, since both their doctors and security are far superior to whatever he will be able to get in Egypt. But Israel will not extend an invitation, and the trusted envoy Arafat will send across the Green Line to try and elicit it will return empty-handed. The only people this envoy will have access to will not have the power to make decisions. Their meeting with him will be postponed several times, and when it finally takes place, they will be impeccably polite, unpleasantly non-committal, and manifestly disinterested in whatever Arafat will have to offer in exchange for medical treatment in Israel. Afghanistan, which at the time will hold the presidency of the Security Council, will propose a resolution condemning Israel for Arafat's illness. The resolution will be co-sponsored by France and Germany. It will get 13 votes; Great Britain will abstain; the United States will veto it. The nonaligned states will try to introduce a similar resolution at the General Assembly, but before the slow wheels of the UN bureaucracy start turning, Arafat will have arrived in Cairo, and the resolution will never see the light of day. Installed in his hospital ward in Cairo, Arafat will not die right away. For a while, "Palestinian" VIP's and equally unimportant Arab officials will visit him more or less regularly. But the stream of visitors will gradually dry up, until one day a newly elected president of the future "Palestinian state" comes to receive his official blessing. After that, he will be largely forgotten. Besides the security guards, a faithful Suha will stay at his side the longest, getting more and more on his nerves, but even she will eventually tire of waiting for his death and return to Paris to take care of her billions. Most foreigners attending the funeral will be figureheads from local embassies. The Arab world will correctly perceive their low rank as a sign of disrespect. Nevertheless, their presence will prevent turning the funeral into the usual "Palestinian" hate parade with calls for the murder of Jews and their American lackeys. Arafat will be declared a shaheed, whose death can only be avenged by expanding and intensifying jihad. Israel will attempt to prevent burying Arafat on the Temple Mount. In exchange for a promise that will never be fulfilled, Americans will convince Israel to agree, on condition that the interment will not be accompanied by too much pomp. Despite all precautions, the ceremony will attract huge crowds and end up as a riot. Israeli police will not interfere, and the "Palestinians" will kill a couple of dozens of their own. Newspapers will report that the riot and shooting were provoked by agents of Mossad and the CIA. Arab countries will try to push for an appropriate condemnation at the Security Council, but the US and Great Britain will quietly, behind the scenes state their opposition, and the vote will never take place. Due to the complexity of the overall international situation, the Russians will take the demise of their protege in stride. The Chechens will rename one of their bigger villages Yasserabad. After careful consideration, Mel Gibson will decide not to make a movie about the last 12 hours of Arafat's life. Arafat's tomb will begin attracting an inordinate number of pilgrims, which will emphasize the status of Jerusalem as the third most important holy place of Islam. Israeli authorities will be forced to regulate the stream of visitors. Their measures will cause protests all over the world and inspire the UN to adopt a few dozen more anti-Semitic resolutions. Muslims everywhere will be demanding that the hero's tomb be liberated. About 70 years later, an earthquake will hit Jerusalem. The city will remain mostly undamaged, but everything on top of the Temple Mount will be destroyed to the ground. The Israeli government will show an uncharacteristic determination and reject all attempts to rebuild the mosques until every ounce of soil is put through a fine sieve in search for long lost artifacts. Without a special invitation, foreign archaeologists won't be allowed even to observe the work at the dig. The work will take decades. Most finds will be damaged beyond recognition. Only one object, thought to have been lost forever many centuries ago, will be found in a surprisingly good shape. Years of painstaking research will confirm the initial guess of its identity: the Ark of the Covenant. Clearing out the remnants of the Temple Mount of everything that doesn't belong there will take several more years. By the time construction of the Third Temple begins, oil will no longer be the lifeblood of world's economy. The Arab world will be afflicted with myriad plagues, terrorism being the most painful and persistent among them. This will allow Israel to tactfully disregard passionate objections of its neighbors. And when the newly rebuilt Temple finally opens its doors to worshippers, the world around it will be very different from ours. And Arafat? Arafat will be forgotten. Yashiko Sagamori is a New York-based Information Technology consultant. To read other articles by the author, go to http://www.middleeastfacts.com/yashiko/ or email ysagamori@hotmail.com To Go To Top

REFERENDUM: 60-40 AGAINST Posted by Joseph Alexander Norland, May 2, 2004.

Today, Sunday May 2, 2004, the membership of the Likud party were asked whether they accept the surrender plan of Ariel Feet-of-Clay Sharon. Governments rarely level with the people, so the question was not phrased in terms of "to surrender or not to surrender", but rather in terms of "disengagement". The Likud members were not fooled, and as I write this piece at 6:25 pm EDT (1:25 am on May 3, Jerusalem time), it seems that they have defeated the surrender plan, 60% / 40%. My congratulations to Likud members who brought about this victory for the people of Israel. But let us think about the day after. How did we get to the point where an Israeli government can contemplate ethnic cleansing of Jews in parts of the Land of Israel, accept a "two state solution", and talk about "Palestinians" (without quotation marks)? How did we get to the point where Bush is considered the defender of Israel, when he is the first US president to threaten the free world with a "Palestinian" state? How did we get to the point where the hostility of Europe towards Israel is omnipresent and ubiquitous? We, Israel supporters, must engage in a vigorous and urgent campaign to reverse these trends. We must, among other things, ensure that we explain the root cause of the Israel/Arab conflict: the all-consuming hatred and rejection by the Arabs of the West, of Jews and of Israel. We must purge our language of the enemy terminology - no more "Palestinians", for example, just Arabs living in Yesha. We must counter every enemy argument, and highlight the enemy's systematic campaign of lies, from Blood Libels to Jenin and al Dura. Those among us who opposed the surrender plan were faced with the count-argument about the economic burden of Gaza. We must obviate this argument by increasing our contributions to Israel and by ensuring that we purchase Israeli goods at every opportunity. And those among us who invest, can find other avenues to support the Israeli economy and profit personally. We must also present alternatives to territorial surrender and creation of yet another Arab state. We can, for example, support the proposal of autonomy for Yesha Arabs under Israeli sovereignty over all the former Palestine, a solution advanced by Benjamin Netanyahu in his opus magnum, Durable Peace. We must not give up on EUrabia, difficult as it may seem. We must engage the people of that continent in dialogue until they see the light. Miracles do happen. These are but a few of the things we can and must do to support our sister-democracy, Israel. Above all else, we must not sit idle and wait for the tide to change on its own. The Likud membership has done its job against all odds; let us congratulate them and support them. A Canadian addendum: On October 30, 1995, the provincial government of Quebec (Canada), had the people of that province vote on separation from Canada. Governments rarely level with the people, so the question was not phrased in terms of "to separate or not to separate", but rather, "Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995, Yes or No?" The people of Quebec were not fooled: they knew it was a referendum on separation, and they defeated it 50.5% / 49.5.% Posted by Joseph Norland is co-publisher of IsraPundit (http://israpundit.com), which is "dedicated to pro-Israel advocacy through the presentation of news and views." To Go To Top

WHAT DOES IRAQ'S SITUATION TEACH US? Posted by Professor Barry Rubin, May 2, 2004.

Things are not going well in Iraq, though perhaps not so badly--or for the same reasons--as some may think. The key issue now is defining priorities. American forces attacked Iraq a year ago to eliminate the regime of Saddam Hussein, with all that entails, and to establish a new government there. The former goal has been successfully accomplished; it is the latter that provides the big problem today. Originally, the goals were to create a democratic government which would ensure that Iraq was stable, at peace with its neighbors, and even become a light unto other Arab nations as an example for the rewards of moderation. The lions would lay down with the lambs and federalism could solve the difficult issue of distributing power among Kurds, Sunnis, and Shia. To oversee this process and ensure its success, U.S. forces would remain in Iraq for a long time. Probably, this vision was impossible to realize. Its advocates were often people knowing startlingly little about the Middle East and who drew their analogies from elsewhere, notably Germany and Japan in 1945. (In fairness, it should be added that the failures of Middle East experts in American academia and officialdom who often spout the greatest nonsense, was no better and set the scene for their own loss of influence.) Perhaps if the United States had gone into Iraq with a predetermined interim government, everyone would have started courting this authority. Ironically, it was American sincerity about not acting like an imperialist power and offering all forces in Iraq an equal democratic opportunity that was a major factor leading to instability. Perhaps, too, if the Iraqi army had been left largely intact, it would have been capable of restoring order and keeping its soldiers on the U.S. side rather than shooting at Americans. But these options are gone now. It is important to recall that this situation has many parallels in both American and Middle Eastern history. For example, it is forgotten that while some of the many U.S. interventions in Latin America in the early twentieth century were directed by corporate interests, a more important motive was the desire to bring stability and democracy to various countries there. Given the limit of what external forces can do--and the time they are likely to stay on the ground--these places soon reverted to dictatorships. The idea of a rational series of measures to "solve" some Middle Eastern problem is a mainstay of Western thinking. There was, for instance, the dispatch of U.S. forces to Lebanon in 1982, European Union efforts to make deals with regional dictatorships (most recently the already failed effort to buy Iran away from developing nuclear weapons). And, of course, it is simply not permissible in most of the West to suggest that maybe ending the Israel-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli conflict is not such a quick, easy matter of finding the correct diplomatic formula (based mainly, of course, on pressuring Israel to make unilateral concessions). Israel, too, has tried this approach on occasion, including obviously its 1982 attack on Lebanon (to put in place a friendly regime there) and, arguably, the Oslo peace agreement of 1993. And there are many--Communists, Ba'thists, Islamists, and others--who have argued over the years that revolution would install a new system, create a new type of human being, and solve all of society's problems pretty fast. In short, what is at stake in the failure of Iraq is not just a single action but a whole style of thinking and strategy. What if, in fact, there is little that outside forces can do to mend the region's problems? What if, unfortunately, it is going to take a long time with the key ingredient being a long-term change in the Arab world's systems and thinking? Is that really so unimaginable even if it is unpalatable? There is nothing innate in Islam, the Arab character, or Middle Eastern societies that prevent them from becoming moderate, economically successful, peaceful, and democratic. But the same statement could have been made for Europe, say, in 1700 or 1800. What do exist are tremendous structural impediments involving ideology, dictatorship, specific interpretations of religion, male-female relations, and many other factors. Recently, I have been reading Mark Bowden's remarkable book, Black Hawk Down about the failed 1993 U.S. mission in Somalia to capture the warlord making so miserable the lives of that country's people. The operation was a disaster (anyone criticizing Israel for killing rather than trying to "arrest" Hamas leaders should read this book) in which not only did U.S. forces suffer heavy casualties but killed as many as 1,000 Somalis, most of them civilians. Here is what Bowden writes of the views held by the Clinton--not Bush!--administration at this time: "There were plenty of politicians, diplomats, and journalists with bright hopes for a new millennium of worldwide capitalist free markets, America's unrivaled big stick could right the world's wrongs, feed the hungry, democratize the planet." But the Somalia debacle, in Bowden's words written in 1999, "ended a brief heady period of post-Cold War innocence, a time when America and its allies felt they could sweep venal dictators and vicious tribal violence from the planet." Indeed, one U.S. official said the lesson learned was this: "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil thuggish leaders." But Somalia showed there were places where problems existed because everyone "is caught up in hatred and fighting.The hatred and the killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it." This is the reality of the Middle East. It will not go away by the appeasement of terrorists and dictators, nor by a change (forced or voluntary) in Israel's policy, nor by a Western public relations' campaign, nor by European diplomatic cleverness. It is a tragedy but the best way to make a tragedy worse is by acting on the basis of wishful thinking. Professor Barry Rubin is Director of The Global Research in International Affairs Center (GLORIA) and Editor of Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA). To Go To Top

WHERE ARE THE PROTESTS? Posted by Jack de Lowe, May 2, 2004.

I sent this letter to Javier Solana (presse.sghr@consilium.eu.int) and Kofi Annan (ecu@un.org), with copies to EU Monitoring Centre on Racism & Xenophobia (office@eumc.eu.int), EU Ombudsman (euro-ombudsman@europarl.eu.int), EU Parliament (civis@europarl.eu.int), and EU Court of Justice (info@curia.eu.int). When Israel builds a fence to keep out terrorists, the UN and EU are up in arms because it makes it difficult for terrorists to kill more Jews. When terrorists kill an 8 month pregnant Jewish woman and her 4 little girls, there is absolute silence from your organizations. If you think your indifference goes unnoticed, count the number of messages you will receive world-wide in the next 48 hours on this subject. The Hatuel family: This family was murdered at close range by Palestinian Terrorist Include 8 month pregnant mom, Tali Hatuel, only 34 years old, and her little girls Hila, 11, Hadar, 9, Roni, 7, and Merav, 2. The terrorists looked at this beatiful pregnant woman, her beautiful babies and murdered them. After hitting the Hatuel car, two Palestinians approached and murdered the children and mother at close range under cover of a general offensive by several Palestinian bands on Israeli military positions. This is the difference between the terrorists and the Americans, British, Israelis, and all decent people. If you could find one person amongst the decent who would do such a thing, even in a time of war, it would be shocking and their own people would condemn and punish them. In the case of the terrorists, it is a common occurance and their people will call these murderers heros! Vicious murderers and their families who look into the eyes of women and little girls and blow them to bloody pieces are the recipients of large sums of money and have colleges and soccor teams named after the murderers. The western world targets the terrorists and the terrorists target women and babies. If the Palestinians were to lay down their weapons today, peace would ensue. If Israel were to lay down her weapons today there would be a lot of dead Jews. To Go To Top

YO, WHERE'S MY FELAFEL! Posted by Steven Plaut, May 2, 2004.

1. Sunday Evening, 10 PM Israel time: The referendum polling booths are closed and all three Israeli TV stations are declaring on the basis of samplings of voters at poll stations that not only was the Sharon-Bush "Gaza Disengagement Plan" rejected, but all three stations are saying that I have won my bet, and that the vote gap in favor of those rejecting the "plan" is indeed double-digits, just as I predicted would be the case in these postings last week. Actually the vote spread in favor of those rejecting the plan is between 12% and 22%, depending on which TV station poll you wish to accept, but they are ALL double digits. The final numbers will take a day or two. You realize what this means? It means that all you suckers who took me up on my bet on whether the gap would be double digits now owe me a felafel, and I mean it should have extra tehinna sauce! 2. It is one of those things I usually keep to myself, like my third nipple, but it turns out I grew up in the Habonim socialist-Zionist youth movement, loosely tied to the Israeli Labor Party, and which is named "Hanoar Ha'Oved Ve'Halomed" inside Israel (the "working and studying youth"). I parted company with the movement ideologically around the time I started shaving on a regular basis. No, silly, my face. I think it was shortly after Woodstock. In any case, back then Habonim was still a militantly Zionist organization, whereas it has morphed into a further-Left organization that is not always clearly distinct from things like Meretz and Tikkun. Be that as it may, I ordinarily do not spend a lot of time pondering my old youth movement, other than trying to recall the names of some of the better-looking young women I hung around back in the Johnson and Nixon Administrations. But I must say that for the first time in decades, I was really quite proud of my old alma mater. The same organization decided to "celebrate" the May 1 Hammer and Sickle Day (yes, groan, Israeli youth movements still "celebrate" that day) by bashing "anarchists" and kicking their butt. Here is a report on the affair from an anti-Semitic "anarchist" web site: http://www.ainfos.ca/ainfos24315.html Israel, Tel Aviv, Violence against the anarchists in the first of May rally Stewards and members of the "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed" [learning and working youth - national/Zionist socialists youth movement associated with the Labor Party] attacked the anarchists and tried to prevent them from entering the rally. Today, there was a first of May event and a rally at the Tel Aviv museum square - organized by a joint first of May comity of the "Hashomer Hatsair", "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed", "Hadash" [the communist party front] "Tseirey Yahad" and others. Stewards and other members of the "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed" tried to prevent from joining the assembly a group of anarchists (which included activists from the Anarchists Against The Wall initiative, the "Maavak Ehad" anarchist collective, and others). They attacked the anarchists and asked the police force on duty to keep them out. They announced that the entrance of the anarchist activists is forbidden. The anarchist who arrived with black and red&black flags and a flier with the heading of "The First Of May is Ours" told in advance they intend to distribute leaflets and carry their flags. At first, the police and the stewards of the "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed" prevented their entrance. Later, after the intervention of the lawyer Gabi Lasky, the general secretary of the "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed", and Tamar Gojanski - the ex-parliament member of the Stalinist Hadash party, which headed the comity that organized the assembly, the entrance of the anarchists to the square was allowed. After the anarchists enter, the stewards of the "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed" tried again and again to confiscate the fliers in spite of repeated talks with the general secretary of the "Hanoar Haoved Vehalomed". At the end of the rally, when the other participants of the demo started to sing Israel's national/Zionist anthem, Ha'Tikva, the anarchists seat down on the ground and shout "Zionism is Racism!" (and joined the singing of the Internationale). Participants in the demo, all of them from the Hano'ar Ha'Oved Ve'Halomed, started to beat and kick the anarchists, and tried to break the camera that documented their violent actions. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

MONSTERS, INC. Posted by Mordechai Ben-Menachem, May 2, 2004.

Let's get the facts absolutely straight. The murderers specifically waited for a "proper" target. When they got this car, they stopped it, shop an eight-month pregnant woman at point blank range, and then shot each of her daughters, including the 2-year old. All at point blank range. This is not simply murders. These are monsters. This is what the US and the UN are asking us to deal with. These are the people that we signed the Oslo Accords with. This was the news item on it on Arutz-7 News today. In a double terror attack at 12:45 PM today, Gazan Arabs opened fire and murdered a Jewish mother in her 8th month of pregnancy and her four children. Another civilian and two soldiers were wounded in ensuing exchanges of fire. The attack was perpetrated on the Kissufim Road leading into Gush Katif, along Israel's southern Mediterranean coast. The preliminary investigation indicates that two terrorists came from the nearby Arab town Dir el-Balah and waited for an Israeli car to pass by on the main vehicular artery into the Gush Katif region. The first burst of gunfire targeted a civilian vehicle, murdering Tali Hatual, 34, of Moshav Katif, who was eight months pregnant. Also murdered were her daughters, Hila (11), Hadar (9), Roni (7) and Meirav (2). As a second civilian car approached, the terrorists opened fire again, as was the case when the third vehicle arrived, an armored IDF patrol. The soldiers immediately returned fire and engaged the terrorists in a gun battle. As the soldiers pursued the attackers, an explosive device or a grenade was detonated against them, resulting in injuries. The terrorists were eliminated. In what has become a common scenario following terror attacks, Arab civilians in several locales under Arafat's control celebrated in the streets the murder of the Jewish mother and her children. Mordechai Ben-Menachem is at Ben Gurion University. He can be reached by email at quality@computer.org To Go To Top

SEVERAL DISENGAGEMENT ITEMS FROM MA'ARIV IN ENGLISH Posted by Gail Winston, May 2, 2004.

TODAY IS THE VOTE! READ THIS & VOTE IF YOU DIDN'T, SPREAD THE WORD IF YOU DID! These were forwarded by Yisrael Medad. Emphasis In Bold &/Or Brackets are mine. Against the grain The supporters do not have money and their organization is blatantly defective. [WRONG!] Shalom is sparring with Olmert and meanwhile Netanyahu is waiting in the corner. The hard liners have been mounted an impressive grass roots campaign, thanks to an almost unlimited budget. [NOT TRUE!!] "Everyone wants to leave Gaza, but evacuation doesn't come naturally to us", said a Sharon supporter providing a possible excuse for the day after. Shalom, Yerushalmi MK Omri Sharon, dressed in a blue sweatshirt, jeans and cowboy boots came the day before yesterday to the home of Moshe Dadash in Givat Hamivtar to organize forces in Jerusalem for the referendum of the Likud members this coming Sunday. There, Omri met with many droopy eyed and angry faced activists. Almost all of those present though they supported the program, had trouble believing that there will be victory. In discussions held in the hallway of the house, which has in the past known such happy meetings, the activists began to contemplate the reasons for a loss, although a lot can happen between now and Sunday. The main claim, as expected was that the dismantling of settlements is not a natural or acceptable step for Likud voters, so therefore the opponents have an important moral advantage. The various branches and voting areas saw energies moving in one direction only. Those who are against disengagement are running around and those who are in favor are standing idle. "Everyone wants to leave Gaza, but evacuating is not in our blood", explained Arnon Giladi, deputy mayor of Tel Aviv and supporter of the plan. "I personally, say to people, 'Go back to the source.' The Likud increased in popularity and caused a revolution not over the 'complete land of Israel', rather because of the second land of Israel: the need to transfer money to welfare and social causes. This is also our ideology". In Dadash's house, those who spoke tried to bring up morale, but they all agreed it is a problematic program. "I have doubts, not everything is clear to me. I don't like every part of the program", said Omri Sharon. There is an attempt to influence our Likud decision from the outside. These are the came forces who caused Shamir's fall, and because of them we got Oslo, and the same ones who caused Netanyahu to fall so that we ended up with the Taba program". MK Roni Bar-On praised the accomplishments of Sharon, but made a point of saying that his support for the plan "is not wholehearted, and not with alacrity or excitement. It's a choice between bad and very bad". Last Sunday, the Prime Minister asked his three most senior ministers, Shalom, Netanyahu and Livnat to help him market the program. They were not thrilled. Activists on the ground picked up on this dispute immediately, and they also decided to stay home. In the mean time a number of arguments broke out between the ministers, which didn't add to the ranks of the supporters. Olmert declared that minister Silvan Shalom is a caricature of a Foreign Minister. Silvan for his part, promised in private conversations that in the next term of office, Olmert will not be a minister or even an MK. Sharon's close supporters are saying that these disputes will cause the plan to fall. "This caricature will cost us the referendum. Netanyahu wants Sharon to fall that is clear- so that he can inherit his position quickly. Limor Livnat cannot work for the plan, we understand. Silvan might have helped, but now he'll act against the program, in order to take revenge on Olmert". Like the Old Shas The right wing newspaper, "B'Sheva" reported this week in its main headline that "The grass roots power of the disengagement opponents is taking on the power of Sharon's establishment". The picture on the ground is just the opposite. The settlement establishment appears many times more effective than the folk affection of Sharon and his supporters. The naysayers have an almost unlimited budget, vehicles, [NO, THEY DON'T. THE OPPOSITION HAS VOLUNTEERS WHO ARE UNDEFEATABLE!] and action headquarters at hotels, offices and marketing tools. In recent weeks, it was hard to find posters in support, but the country was inundated with thousands of posters and placards against withdrawal, as if it were a real election day. "The opponents are ten times more organized than we are and they have a hundred times more recourses than we do", complained the activists in Dadash's house to Omri Sharon. At the beginning of the week, I visited the central headquarters of the opposition campaign in Tel Aviv. I saw the central Yesha people there as well as the smaller groups within the Likud. There were long tables with telephones, and young girls from Gush Katif were on the phones arranging home visits, apparently the weapon that will decide the battle. The opponents are imitating Shas at its peak, when its activists used to go door to door with letters from Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and amulets from Rabbi Kadouri. The settlers are going to people's houses with glasses of tears and emotional hand written letters, pictures and personal keepsakes. In both cases it worked. On Independence Day, there were impressive identification demonstrations with the settlers from Gush Katif. They were organized through the opposition headquarters. [I BELIEVE THE FLOW TO GUSH KATIF WAS SPONTANEOUS - NOT ORGANIZED. I DIDN'T SEE ANY NOTICE ON THE INTERNET TO GO TO KATIF ON YOM HATZMAUT.] Those who went described a traffic jam that began at the Masmia junction. The enthusiasm can be seen everywhere. On Memorial Day, near my house, stood students from the Noam Yeshiva high school handing out flyers opposing the plan. One of them explained that the principal had cut short the school day to send students out to intersections, "because it's more important". There was no such phenomenon on the supporter's side. [IT WAS A REMARKABLE PHENOMENON!] The Prime Minister is in a quandary. In 1999, he didn't need money for the Likud primaries, but he raised millions of dollars to compete with Ehud Olmert, even though the latter was not considered a real threat. Those primaries established the false friendship with Cyril Kern. Sharon's associates are not willing to make the same mistake and begin serious fundraising for the plan. Sharon thought he could attack the Likud members from above, with U.S. visits, generous commitments from Bush, the elimination of Rantissi, the drafting of support from senior ministers, and his sudden generosity in granting press interviews in which he is threatening to resign. It didn't work. At the Prime Minister's bureau over the weekend, panic was being in broadcast in the likely hopes that it will influence the referendum. This because the Likud is in no rush to issue a vote of no confidence in Sharon, sending him home and allowing new elections in which lies danger of a takeover by the left. On the other side, to Sharon and Omri's bad luck is MK Yisrael Katz who knows the Likud well and dragged Sharon into the referendum process in the first place. Sharon went with it and said he would be committed to the results and then found Katz leading the opposing team. Katz took the cake by quickly locating places where there was opposition to Sharon even over other issues and then meeting with settlement leaders and encouraging them to invest in sentimental home visits to people they knew. The gap between the supporters and opponents can be attributed to Katz. [YASHER KOACH TO KATZ!] Three days before the referendum, the forecasts on both sides are similar. All agree that if only half of the 195,000 voters come to the polls that the opponents will win. A greater voter turnout will give the supporters a better chance. This is why Sharon and his son Omri are making such an effort to encourage people to vote. In the 1992 primaries Sharon took advantage of the national stage he was given after the attack in Beit Sha'an and called all the Likud members to the polls. That was how he beat Netanyahu. This time the campaign is mostly negative, against the external influence of the extreme right [WHY CALL THEM EXTREME - UNLESS YOU MEAN THEY ARE EXTREMELY CORRECT?]and international publicity damage that would be caused. Supporters say that Sharon must be drastic because there's no one else like Yasin or Rantissi to eliminate and the government wants to leave Arafat in the Mukata like a prisoner. Sharon knows that if the plan does not pass, he can head home. He will lose his leadership at home and his trustworthiness abroad. He would not be able to start working on an alternative program after his last one was drowned at the polls. And just to bring home the motivation gap, waiting outside Dadash's house were activists from Bnei Akiva handing out newspapers portraying the imaginary "day after" the withdrawal. I also saw three settlers in Beit Hakarem with a torch outside the home of the neighborhood doctor at 11:00 in the evening waiting for him to return from an evening shift because they weren't going to give up on his vote. http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=6747 Both sides of the barricades Major Generals (Res.) Dani Yatom and Ya'akov Amidror share a heritage built on a lifetime of serving in the highest echelons of the country's defense and intelligence agencies. Yatom served as OC Central Command and Head of the Mossad. Amidror headed Aman's (Military Intelligence) Research Division. This week they participated in a public debate on the security implications of the disengagement plan. A debate on intelligence, Kassam rockets, Palestinians, lessons learned for the previous withdrawal - Amir Rappaport Maj. Gen. (Res.) Dani Yatom, formerly OC Central Command, Head of the Mossad and former premier Ehud Barak's NSA (National Security Adviser), is currently a member of Knesset from the Labor Party. He was one of the first people to speak out loud about unilateral separation from the Palestinians. He did so more than three years ago, when the Barak government was drowning in the blood of the second Intifada, which began in late 2000. At a meeting held on Wednesday evening in Yatom's Ramat Gan office, Maj. General (Res.) Ya'akov Amidror, the former OC IDF Defense College and Aman's Chief Analyst, Amidror predicted the worst when he headed the Research Division of Aman during the height of the post Oslo euphoria. Today, he is again issuing gloomy warnings about the implications of the separation plan. He arrived at the meeting with a briefcase full of arguments against plan. Yatom, an enthusiastic supporter of disengagement, began by scribbling his main points on the back of a business card. As the evening progressed, he began to make note of his arguments on slightly larger pieces of paper. Yatom, a serious chocolate-lover, fueled his guest with candy but their sweetness did nothing to dim Amidror's blazing intensity. Although each general lectured on his position, we will present the issues one by one. Shortening the line Amidror: "At first I thought positively. Perhaps the plan would allow the army to use fewer personnel in the Gaza Strip. However, when I checked experts in the field, I learned that the savings would be trivial. I do not think that we can call it 'shortening the lines' when Israel runs away and gives the Hamas and Islamic Jihad more freedom." Yatom: "The current friction in the territories creates an impossible, confused situation in which soldiers are unsure about who is on which side. The situation is dizzying. Soldiers at roadblocks must constantly look in all directions because they cannot know from which side the next attack might come. The forces are mixed together and you do not know where the front is and where the enemy could be. Therefore, we need a border where we can be one side and they can be on the other side. Withdrawal will shorten the lines that we need to defend". The threat of Kassam rockets Amidror: "We must taken into account that after withdrawal Ashkelon, a major Israeli city, will be within the effective range of Kassam rockets. In the future, when sea and airports are built in Gaza and we will have no control, they will have Katyushas with a longer range that can also reach Kiryat Gat or southern Ashdod. This sounds like a horror story but Dani knows that in 1993, in the Intelligence Directorate we said that the Oslo Accords could end with Katyushas being fired on Ashkelon. Everyone looked at us like we were crazy". Yatom: "Before the withdrawal from Lebanon, the Intelligence Directorate also threatened us with Katyushas reaching Hadera and we see what actually happened. I estimate, and my estimate is just as valid as those that threaten us with horrors, that after we leave the Gaza Strip, terrorism will decrease, not increase. However, I see that I have not succeeded in convincing you, Amidror". Intelligence capabilities Amidror: "It needs to be clear that after withdrawal it will be much harder for us to gather intelligence and to use the IDF on the basis of that intelligence. This is not an estimate. It is a fact that is based on our experience after we left the area, as required by the Oslo Accords." Yatom: "I agree that the farther you are from the territory, the harder it is to collect intelligence. However, that should not be one of the main reasons for us to remain in the Gaza Strip. According to that logic, we should be in Beirut so that we can gather intelligence about Hezb'Allah more easily or in Iran, in order to gather intelligence about their plans for developing non-conventional weapons." Our presence in the territories Yatom: "We have been in the territories for 37 years. Hasn't there been terrorism? Has our intelligence been so good for all those years that terror has not harmed us? Did we succeed in foiling all of the planned attacks when we were there?" Amidror: "We should remember that when we were in the territories during the Intifada, armored jeeps were the heaviest weapons we used. We controlled Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip without it requiring the entire IDF. We did not call-up the reserves, we did not dream of using tanks, helicopters or airplanes. By contrast, after Oslo we not only needed all of those but during Operation Defensive Shield we paid with the lives of more than 20 soldiers just to conquer a small section of the Jenin refugee camp." Influence on the Palestinians Yatom: "Among the Palestinians and other leaders in the region, there will be some who consider our unilateral action a sign of Israel's weakness. However, in my opinion, they will be a minority. As the situation along the border between Israel and Lebanon continues to develop quietly, I think that the understanding that unilateral withdrawal did not hurt Israel or worsen our situation is growing both in Israel and among those who hate us. Anyone who is familiar with the details knows that the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was not proposed because of insurmountable difficulties but because of a conscious decision. If we wanted to, Israel could remain in the Gaza Strip for a very long time. There is a chance to change the equation between the Palestinians and us in a way that might encourage Palestinian pragmatists to act. This step is shaking things up in a way that might restart the dialogue between us, even if that is not a guaranteed development". Amidror: "The problem is that our unilateral withdrawal is telling those few Palestinians who are considering abandoning terrorism and beginning to negotiate that it is unnecessary. Continue with terrorism and you will receive everything. If the pressure of terrorism will eventually cause the Jews to run away, why negotiate?" The lessons of Lebanon Yatom: "I remember the opposition or military people to the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon and statements of Lieutenant General (ret.) Shaul Mofaz who was Chief of the General Staff at the time. He strenuously opposed the withdrawal and managed to infect some of the people under him with his statements, even though they didn't actually agree". I remember Amos Gilad and the chaos that he predicted would develop. We also participated in most of the meetings. Go the Galilee and see for yourself how it is blossoming now. "Unlike you, Amidror, I think that the withdrawal from Lebanon influenced the collective opinions of the Palestinians and the Arabs less than the power of the IDF, which we recently used to assassinate Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abd al-Aziz Rantisi. The IDF's precision and ability to hit terrorist leaders has far more influence on Arab public opinion. That capability will remain after we leave the Gaza Strip". Amidror: "The withdrawal from Lebanon influenced the way that the Palestinian public viewed the State of Israel. I do not believe that after seeing Hamas flags fluttering in the wind and synagogues being turned into mosques, anyone in Israeli society will feel that the withdrawal came from a position of power. I think that it is an illusion or naivete to say that. In the Gaza Strip, there is no one who can enforce quiet, as the Syrians did in Lebanon after we finally dealt with them wisely." Broader security aspects Yatom: "In general, security is more than the army. It is also education, a public feeling, social solidarity and the willingness of individual's to contribute to society. When all aspects of security are considered, unilateral withdrawal has more advantages than disadvantages. For example, in the Gaza Strip, there are approximately 1.5 million Palestinians. In another 12 years, there will be three million. [NONE OF THE PREVIOUS DIRE DEMOGRAPHIC PROJECTIONS HAVE PROVEN TRUE. THE % OF JEWS TO ARABS IN ISRAEL IS ALMOST THE SAME AS IN 1967.] The deeper our hold on the Gaza Strip, the more we will need to give more to the Palestinians. We will need to direct more resources education and welfare for Palestinians, like we did before Oslo. I think it would be preferable to invest that money in Israel's security." Amidror: "When people begin to explain that security also includes education, the economy, agriculture and industrial development, it usually means that they do not have worthy responses to the security issues. In my opinion, the chances that someone will consider the withdrawal an expression of Israeli strength are baseless and not founded on logic. Danny, you are known for your logic and it is strange that you, of all people, are taking a mystical view". The war on terrorism Yatom: "Amidror, you may think that it is possible to the run the world from a perspective based only on security. Despite that, I disagree with your comments and think that my security-based arguments are far stronger than yours. For example, it may be that the withdrawal will require the Palestinians, if they want to live and survive as a Palestinian Authority, to try acting with authority and control the situation. This could actually be the first time that an armed conflict develops between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas and Islamic Jihad, even though it is not certain to happen." Amidror: "Doesn't that remind you of the claims presented by people who supported the Oslo Accords, who said that if we just let the Palestinians alone, they will deal with terrorism, 'without the High Court and human rights organizations?' We have seen what became of that. Why do you think that it will be different this time"? Ethical perspective Yatom: "We must no forget that ruling over the Palestinian is causing ethical paralysis. [NOT TRUE! MOST PALESTINIAN ARABS PREFER THE ISRAELIS TO ARAFAT'S PA ADMINISTRATION. THE ISRAELIS ARE KINDER.] I have no doubt that the army was not intended to rule a civilian population. Today, our 18 year-old children are on the front line of a debilitating conquest. There is friction and the moment that your life is endangered, you shoot and injure people. Sometimes, they are innocent people. These incidents just increase their motivation to recruit more suicide bombers, male and female". Amidror: "It is enough to know that there will be civilians on the other side of the fence in the Gaza Strip. If terrorism continues, as I think it will, we will be forced to continue fighting terrorists within the civilian population. However, our situation will be worse because we will have less intelligence and be farther away, which will force us to be less accurate. Therefore, more civilians will be injured and the world will not give us even a millimeter of legitimacy for having withdrawn." International responses and the overall process Yatom: "We will have a PR advantage, which is also a component of security, in the wider sense of the word. From the moment that we are not there, it will be easier for us to explain what we are doing when we need to go there to fight terrorism and why we are launching missiles, if we must." Amidror: "After unilateral withdrawal, we will leave behind the world's first terrorist state that does not have any address or any responsibility. The nations of the world will rightly say, 'You are guilty, you left Gaza in the control of terrorists and now you are complaining?' 'On the strategic level, there is a debate in the Arab world with subterranean currents. On one side there is Hassan Nasrallah's approach, which holds that the Jews are weak and can be subdued by the force of terrorism, and those who think that Israel is a strong country and it would be better to compromise with it, even if you don't like it. Unilateral withdrawal will help Nasrallah's position to prevail." Yatom: "No doubt the best possible option would be to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, if it were possible. However, in the foreseeable future, there is no chance of making peace. In essence, we have one choice: continue the current situation or try to create change by taking a unilateral step. There are advantages and disadvantages to both options but the current situation is far worse. Amidror, you present disengagement as "running away" and that is your strongest point. None of us likes to capitulate or surrender. However, even if the disarrangement has not been planned for a long time, it has been cooking for a long time. I think that it is a step that we should have taken long ago. I am glad that even the head of the Likud has finally reached the conclusion that disengagement is an essential move. http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=6745 Apocalypse Now Sharon planned to be Ben-Gurion in his twilight years, but he is liable to find himself playing the role of Shimon Peres - the perennial battle-loser. * The outcome of next Sunday's Likud referendum, which initially seemed to be safely tucked away in his back pocket, now seems to be slipping through his fingertips. * "We fell asleep", admits sources close to Sharon, "We thought we'd win without a campaign. Apparently we were mistaken." - Ben Kaspit Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is now sailing towards another "close shave" next week, this time with Ariel Sharon. [It] is critical for the political future of many people, and perhaps of a nation (or two). Suddenly, for no reason at all, after everything has been organized and settled, it seems as if the referendum of those in the Likud ranks this coming Sunday is going to resemble Apocalypse Now, at least according to the polls. The atmosphere surrounding the Prime Minister is one of gloom. "We fell asleep", they say, "We thought we'd win without a campaign. Apparently we were mistaken." Ariel Sharon had planned, finally, to resemble Ben Gurion in his twilight years, but on Monday morning he is liable to find himself more suited to the role of Shimon Peres, a man about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, despite being embraced by the USA, accepted by the world, favored by the media and mingling with princes. Much has been said and written about Sharon's brilliant moves in the past few months, about how he maneuvered, bent and managed everybody. But when the celebratory stardust dispersed, it seems that he himself has been maneuvered into a cul-de-sac. History is known for its sense of humor, but the humor now emerging is gallows humour, and Sharon is not at all amused. He, more than anyone else, should have known, as it was he, more than anyone else, who created and refined the war machine of the Settlers. There isn't a hill he didn't ride over with Zambish and his cronies. But now there are no more hills left. He cried, "Follow me", attacked, and like Barak and Netanyahu before him, turned round to see his friends guffawing behind his back, some attacking him from behind. All Mofaz's Men Shaul Mofaz was supposed to be one of the proponents of the disengagement plan - the popular Defense Minister, eliminator of terror, Arab-hater and Hamas's greatest threat. But Mofaz too somehow doesn't fit the bill. Something is not quite as it should be. Experienced experts on Mofaz see a problem here. On the one hand Mofaz is a winning card. Even if the Palestinians do eventually succeed in perpetrating a terrorist act of revenge, statistics never lie. Terror has been contained to manageable dimensions. Mofaz's claim that "The terror keg is not bottomless" has proven itself. The targeted killing of Hamas leaders has wreaked havoc and confusion in the organization. The GSS has achieved unprecedented levels of intelligence gathering and terror-thwarting capabilities. The IDF, sophisticated and stretched to its limit, is delivering. Yet, against this backdrop, Mofaz is now expected to orchestrate a withdrawal from Gaza, under fire. It is no wonder that his eyes are not shining with enthusiasm. On the other hand, his words are very clear: "Gaza is not good for Israel. Continued presence in Gaza will lead us towards a demographic disaster. We will either become a State without a Jewish majority or an undemocratic State, or perhaps both". Mofaz's words follow a meeting he had with demographer Prof. Arnon Sofer, Gen. (Res) Yossi Peled and Brig.Gen. (Res.) Itzik Segev. They sat with Mofaz and sketched, with great trepidation, Israel's critical demographic reality. The fact is that today only half of the 10 million people already inhabiting the area between Jordan and the sea are Jewish. In 16 years, in 2020, only 40% of the 16 million people inhabiting the same area will be Jewish. The demographic clock is racing against Israel. The Palestinian population is mostly poor, uneducated and faltering, especially in the Gaza Strip, which by 2020 will have a population of almost 3 million Arabs. [BIASED DEMOGRAPHER. CHECK WITH OTHERS.] This population density will be the cause not only of the loss of a Jewish majority, but also of a severe ecological, cultural, and financial and security crisis, threatening our very existence. The only way to stop the cart from rolling into an abyss is to implement unilateral disengagement from as many Palestinians as possible in the shortest time available - to discard as many rocks from the cart as possible and continue rolling towards the top of the hill. "We need to release ourselves from the yolk of controlling another nation," says Mofaz, as Peres did in the past. "It will be good for us. Our security forces are operating under extremely difficult conditions, trying to differentiate between terrorists and innocent civilians, between regular women and women suicide bombers. We need to change this situation. The Palestinian population grew at a rapid rate. This step is not easy for us, but it is what the situation demands. It is a crucial step for the country, which will change the demographic balance and strengthen our main settlements. We need to embrace the settlers. There is place to absorb them in our main produce granaries in the Negev Desert and in the Galilee." Mofaz rejects the claim that the Palestinians will regard withdrawal as a prize for terror that will encourage them to continue their terror activities to oust us from Judea and Samaria. "It matters not what they say. What matters is what we do. It is certainly preferable to withdraw in terms of an agreement, but we don't have with whom to make an agreement. We have exhausted all options. Fears of Gaza turning into Hamastan are also groundless. We will redeploy around them, control from all sides including from the sea, the air, along the passes, the Philadelphia road. We will continue fighting and weakening the Hamas. The new reality will have implications for Judea and Samaria. Hopefully a new, pragmatic leadership will emerge. [FROM WHERE? HAVEN'T YET. SINCE OSLO, THE TERRORISTS HAVE GAINED TOTAL CONTROL.] They will understand terror and violence will lead them nowhere." How will they understand this? We withdrew from Gaza unDer threat of terror and violence. "Have they established a State? Did they get Jerusalem? The opposite is true. We have received unprecedented historical statements by the American president. All those voting on Sunday should take this into account. Can they reject a good plan? Should they say no to a sympathetic president? The 2nd of May will be an historic date, as was the 14th April when Bush declared his support." And what about the Likud and its ideology? "Any political platform or ideology that does not serve the good of the country and which is not suited to reality needs to be adapted accordingly. Once there was talk of "Two sides of the Jordan (River), that too is ours." Does that have anything to do with reality? No, it's simply a dream. We need to be realistic in the given situation. I am an adherent of the Likud ideology and these ideas are borne out of values, education and dreams. We should however adapt them to our current situation on the ground." Telephone from the grave What is happening on the ground, however, is far from encouraging. The Settlers are taking over the area. Hundreds of head-covered women and sandaled, bleary-eyed men are conducting house-to-house visits, from one Likud activities to the next. Chabadniks are sitting in the Lubavicher Rebbe's Brooklyn home, visiting his grave and calling Israel from there, connecting to the homes of hundreds of religious Likud members, offering them the late Rabbi's blessing as an incentive to vote. Last Sunday a secret meeting took place in Jerusalem where dozens of Likud members distributed the names of Orthodox members amongst themselves. There are thousands of these, (12,000 by the last count in Kaufman's Jerusalem group and other groups), who are now being approached to go and vote against Sharon. Why? Because he took away their child allowance payments. Nothing to do with disengagement. These Likud members, the majorities of whom are distanced from the Likud and some even distanced from Zionism, are about to determine the security and political fate of Israel. Israel's ruling party is liable to be obliged to redefine itself as a fringe right-wing party. Sharon's people are trying to caution that the Likud could lose the government. It would not take much for this to happen - five to seven mandates moving in either direction - and it will all be over. How they will move, why this will happen, how come elections, what exactly is the issue - is not quite clear. That's the threat, and that's all that matters. The Spector Trauma Over Yom Ha'atzmaut, during the ceremony held at the President's residence for heads of the security forces, Sharon turned to IDF generals and quite openly said, "I'd tell you all to "go and vote" but apparently you were not counted in the ranks of the Likud". Not everyone was amused. The IDF General Staff has recently been placed in hermetic cold storage whereby nobody exits, talks or enters. Everyone is treading carefully. The IDF is not crazy about Sharon's plan, yet does not reject it. It has its pros and cons. If Ya'alon and other generals had their way, they would have adopted another plan, a multi-national one that would encompass the entire region and include some ideas for the day after. But at this point in time it does not depend on them. It depends on those counted in the ranks of the Likud. The Prime Minister has in the past few days been rolling up his sleeves and diving into the swamps. The very person who created the Likud Party 31 years ago is now attempting to recreate it. Sharon is gathering votes. One man, almost single-handedly, against the herd. Take, for instance, Zion Finyan, a prominent Likud activist from Tiberius, member of the city council, aspiring Knesset member who was left out in favor of Omri Sharon's preference for Eli Afflallo. So today Afflallo is an MK, and Finyan is not. But this Finyan person has sway with hundreds, if not more, of Likud members. Finyan is telling Sharon's people to go to Afflallo for support. So Omri Sharon and Uri Shani visit Silvan Shalom to try and persuade him to persuade Finyan. Silvan drags his feet - Finyan is actually on the side of Bibi, who never drags his feet. And that's how it is. Everyone is talking to and threatening everyone else. How is it possible that no-one thought of establishing a public association headed by Zalman Shoval, for instance, that would call upon all those rich industrialists who have, for the last eighteen months, been spoiling their Fridays with fateful meetings in favor of a Gaza withdrawal. Any one of them could easily have put down a million shekels, or dollars, towards this goal. But no, the trauma of Spector had its effect. No one is interested in being associated with a non-profit organization, or with money, or with anything of this nature. The fear of (Attorney General) Matzos has paralyzed them all. [SO HE DID SOME GOOD - EVEN IF HE CANCELED ALL GOVT. PAYMENTS TO ALL SETTLEMENTS 2 WEEKS AGO.] They believe that the Bush-Yassin-Rantisi festival will do the work for them. Friday morning two weeks ago, everyone thought the game was over. Well, now we know that nothing is settled. The game is just starting. Uri Shani was the principle instigator of the referendum. To his credit, from the start he claimed that it was a risky move. "Life here is risky," says Shani, "We have no choice. We have to take risks." According to Shani, who can read a political map, Sharon had no alternative. He does not have a mandate without the Likud's support. The problem was not the referendum itself, but the path taken in approaching it. One survey received by the Prime Minister showed that support for Sharon within the Likud exceeds support for his plan by 25% (!). Appropriate action might have, in one month, created a closer identification between Sharon's future and the fate of his plan. This was not done. As things stand now, the atmosphere around Sharon is red hot. Not everyone understands Shani's logic. Failure in the referendum, for example, would be unbearable. Only Ariel and Omri, Duby and several other members would remain. There is no option - success is imperative. The paradox herein is that the narrower the gap, the more impressive will be the victory. But what if they lose? It is not clear whether Sharon will resign (this is somehow difficult to envision) and the fate of his people is even less clear. Weissglass, who made the effort but lost, those skin-deep campaigners and the various advisors. It will be an earth-shattering event that will send a herd of limping and quacking ducks flying into the PM's bureau. It will be interesting, and not particularly pleasant, to watch. Everyone's tutor Now back to Mofaz. Mofaz is everyone's tutor. The Defense Minister is not a man of many words, nor the master of small talk. He mainly sits quietly, but he is there. A man's man, but also a genuine person. Facing problematic surveys, he is still hopeful. "It will pass, I believe that ultimately it will pass," says Mofaz. And if not? "We will have to find a way to implement the plan even if it doesn't pass." I question him about Likud ministers who are not being particularly helpful. "I don't want to talk about ministers. I am only thinking of the Minister of History, " he answers evasively. [THE ONLY MASTER OF HISTORY IS HASHEM AND HE PROMISED THE LAND TO THE JEWISH PEOPLE. LET US LISTEN TO HIM]]. "But what if the members' referendum indeed fails?" Then perhaps we will have to hold a national referendum, or to have another meeting with Bush," he says, in an attempt to joke. Mofaz has a full, warm smile that transforms his whole face. A wholehearted smile. Towards the end of this week, this smile was a sad one. http://www.maarivintl.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=6731 Gail Winston is, Founder of M.E.I.R, Mid East Information Resource. To Go To Top

DISENGAGEMENT SUPPORTERS ATTACKED AT POLLS Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 2, 2004.

The Jerusalem Post at its best. Protesters yelling insults at politicians and threatening to remove them from office are about as news worthy as "Dog bits Postman!" Not a word about possibly thousands of Likud members whose names mysteriously disappeared from the party voting lists or the gangster tactics of Sharon's son. Nothing mentioned about the totalitarian methods Sharon has used within the Likud to leave the door open as wide as possible for massive voting fraud. Just snide insinuations and half statements so that, G-D willing, when Sharon loses by a massive vote they can begin the campaign to de-legitimize the results. The can wine at how the sweet, sincere Sharon's forces where intimidated and were afraid to vote by the big, bad bullies of the "fanatic right wing." I am sure that the fact that Sharon and members of his gang own a large chunk of this rag in noway influences their reporting. This was written by Gil Hoffman and is archived at http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083468524448 The Jerusalem Post Internet Edition It wasn't safe to be a high-profile unilateral disengagement supporter at polling stations on Sunday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's son, MK Omri Sharon, Industry, Trade, and Labor Minister Ehud Olmert, and dovish Likud MK Eli Aflalo were each verbally abused, and in Sharon's case physically threatened, in campaign visits to polling stations. "We will throw you to the garbage where you belong," a woman shouted at Olmert shortly after he cast his ballot at the Jerusalem International Convention Center. Olmert ignored the woman and told the press that she was "imbalanced." Activists also shouted at Olmert in Beit Shemesh. Two hours later, Sharon came to the convention center and was immediately surrounded by opponents of the plan who shouted obscenities at him. Police distanced Sharon from the area in fear that he would be physically harmed. Hundreds of anti-disengagement activists dominated the plaza outside the center, while supporters of the plan could not be found. The activists, who included Kach activist Baruch Marzel, distributed ballots, performed skits, and impersonated Sharon. Aflalo filed a complaint with police, alleging that he was attacked at polling stations in Haifa and Hadera. Aflalo said he was called a murderer, liar, and a villain. The Likud also received complaints that supporters of the plan were prevented from approaching polling stations in Gedera. Likud director-general Arik Brami blamed the attacks on "outsiders who are unconnected to the Likud." This article can also be read at www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename= JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083468524448&p=1078027574121 Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

MOTHER, 4 CHILDREN, KILLED IN GAZA SHOOTING ATTACK Posted by Gail Winston, May 2, 2004.

HORRIFIC! According to new American law, the mother's unborn child must be included in the casualty total, therefore, mother and 5 children have been brutally murdered. More horrific is that PM Sharon's Media Advisor claims this murderous attack was BECAUSE the disengagement plan is a "Harsh & painful blow to the Palestinians. The Palestinians will do everything to prevent its being accepted. Today's terrible murder is the Palestinian way of rejecting and disrupting the plan. We will fight terror & do our utmost to prevent such incidents from recurring and, therefore, I will fight for my plan." What?!! To retreat from the 21 farming communities of Gush Katif plus 4 in the Northern Shomron is a reward for terrorism. Sharon's message to the Palestinians Arab Muslims is "Vote for my plan, you win!!!" This is electioneering on the blood of the mother & her 5 children. How low can he stoop?!! He also manipulated the voting by NOT allowing any opposition observers into the polling places. Sharon could manuever the counting of the votes in this manner by stuffing the ballot boxes?!! It was agreed in advance that observers would be allowed access. Get out there and vote! The news is reporting low turnout. More power to the people. Make the politicians listen & behave! This was written by Margot Dudkevitch, a columnist for the Jerusalem Post. It appeared today. A mother and her four daughters were shot dead Sunday after two terrorists opened fire at Israeli cars traveling near the Kissufim Crossing at the entrance to the Gush Katif settlement bloc in the Gaza Strip. The mother was reported to be six months pregnant. Two soldiers and an Israeli civillian were also wounded in the attack and were evacuated to Soroka Hospital in Be'er Sheba. The IDF said that both of the gunmen, who arrvied at the area by car, were killed in an ensuing firefight. Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack, Channel Ten reported. The family is from the settlement of Katif located in the northern Gush Katif settlement bloc. The terrorists arrived by car from the nearby Palestinian village of Dir al Ballah and began to fire at passing Israeli vehicles, consequently killing the mother and her four children. Another Israeli traveling in the opposite direction, was also wounded. An IDF jeep arrived at the scene and engaged in gunfire with the gunmen, killing them. During the gun battle an explosion took place but it was still unclear whether it was caused by a grenade or by a bomb. Two soldiers were wounded during the gun battle and were airlifted to Soroka hospital in Be'er Sheva together with the Israeli civilian. A CNN crew which was driving in two vehicles before the car carrying the mother and her four children was hit by the first round of bullets and stopped on the road trying to prevent other cars from proceeding into the gunmen's line of fire. Following the attack, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz canceled his participation in the groundbreaking ceremony of the Center of Human Dignity Museum of Tolerance, sponsored by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in Jerusalem Sunday. Settler leaders said that the attack proves that Likud members must vote against the disengagement plan in order not to give a prize to terrorists. Meanwhile Sunday, the Likud referendum on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan opened at 8 AM with polls to close at 10 PM. Final results will be announced at 2AM Monday. 443 polls have been set up for the 193, 000 card-carrying Likud members who are eligible to vote. Roughly 1, 300 security guards and police will secure the proceedings throughout the country. 176 lawyers have been tasked with overseeing the vote's legality. Matthew Gutman contributed to the report. * Find this article at: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite? pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1083468521814 Gail Winston is, Founder of M.E.I.R, Mid East Information Resource. To Go To Top

WHERE TO BUY GAS? Posted by Ken Heller, May 2, 2004.

Why didn't George W. think of this? Gas rationing in the 80's worked even though we grumbled about it. It might even be good for us! The Saudis are boycotting American goods. We should return the favor. An interesting thought it to boycott their GAS. Every time you fill up the car, you can avoid putting more money into the coffers of Saudi Arabia. Just buy from gas companies that don't import their oil from the Saudis. Nothing is more frustrating than the feeling that every time I fill-up the tank, I am sending my money to people who are trying to kill me, my family, and my friends. I thought it might be interesting for you to know which oil companies are the best to buy gas from and which major companies import Middle Eastern oil (for the period 9/1/00 - 8/31/01): Shell.........................205,742,000 barrels Chevron/Texaco.........144,332,000 barrels Exxon /Mobil..............130,082,000 barrels Marathon/Speedway...117,740,000 barrels Amoco......................62,231,000 barrels If you do the math at $30/barrel, these imports amount to over $18 BILLION! Here are some large companies that do not import Middle Eastern oil: Citgo....................0 barrels Sunoco............. .0 barrels Conoco............. ..0 barrels Sinclair............... 0 barrels BP/Phillips.......... 0 barrels Hess...................0 barrels All of this information is available from the Department of Energy and each is required to state where they get their oil and how much they are importing. But to have an impact, we need to reach literally millions of gas buyers. It's really simple to do. Now, don't wimp out at this point... keep reading and I'll explain how simple it is to reach millions of people!! I'm sending this note to about thirty people. If each of you send it to at least ten more (30 x 10 = 300)... and those 300 send it to at least ten more (300 x 10 = 3,000) ... and so on, by the time the message reaches the sixth generation of people, we will have reached over THREE MILLION consumers! If those three million get excited and pass this on to ten friends each, then 30 million people will have been contacted! If it goes one level further, you guessed it..... THREE HUNDRED MILLION PEOPLE!!! Again, all you have to do is send this to 10 people. How would all that take? If each of us sends this e-mail out to ten more people within one day all 300 MILLION people could conceivably be contacted within the next eight days! Ken Heller is a pro-Israel activist and heads the Philadelphia Chapter of Americans For A Safe Israel. He can be reached at kjhnha@aol.com. To Go To Top

REMEMBERING YOSEF, REMEMBERING YISRAEL BEN MOSHE OF NAJARA, REMEMBERS THE KING OF KINGS AND WILL SAVE GAZA FOR ITS JEWS Posted by Evelyn Hayes, May 1, 2004.

Yosef was the brother of Judah whose portion was Ashdod and Gaza, the cities and the towns, Yosef is remembered on Rosh Chodesh Tammuz. If we remember Yosef, we will remember the portion of his brother. It is when they knew not Yosef that Jews suffered slavery by Egypt. It is when they ignored the attack on Kever Yosef that the Intifada became a deadly armada. Yisrael ben Moshe of Najara was the student of the ARIzal of Tzefat. Yisrael of Najara is remembered on Rosh Chodesh Tammuz. If we remember Yisrael of Najara wrote Kah Ribon as Rabbi of Gaza in the 16th Century, we will remember Gaza as a Jewish holy city. It is when facts are forgotten that independence is sacrificed. It was when Gaza I failed and the terrorist infrastructure was ignored that jihad accelerated. The King of Kings is the Master of this world and all worlds, G-d to Whom belongs honor and greatness keep Your People in their Promised Land. People in His Promised Land appreciate the gift for it is a gift that creates fruit in a barren land, goodness instead of rifts from wrath. The King of Kings is the Master of this world and all worlds, G-d Who makes spirits and souls soar, G-d Who makes deserts bloom, Protect Your People from those lusting for their land, livelihood, legacy, legitimacy and lives. Keep Your People in Gaza now and forevermore and let the miracles in the desert make truth supreme. The King of Kings is the Master of this world and all worlds, G-d to Whom belongs honor and greatness, G-d Who makes spirits and souls soar, We pray, let Your People vote to stay; and, let the miracle be that all worlds see that Jews in Gaza is so right because they have survived the Romans, Mohammedans, Napoleon, the British, the Arab wars; because they have turned swords into plowshares and produce, produce, produce; because memory is a memorial, and we remember Yosef and on Shabbos sing Kah Ribon Olam, because memory is a memorial and Gaza is a living memorial of Jewish history, the return and rectification of the Jewish refugee, and a living manifestation of the miracles of the King of Kings. Evelyn Hayes is author of "The Eleventh Plague, TWINS, us, because their hearts were softened for more." and just released sequel, "The Twelfth Plague, GENERATIONS, because the lion wears stripes." To Go To Top

THE ASSOCIATES OF HERR ZUNDEL Posted by Steven Plaut, May 2, 2004.

Ernst Zundel is a Germany-born nazi, Holocaust Denier, and anti-Semite. He makes his living by selling nazi military paraphernalia. He moved to Canada from Germany when he was 19. In 1978, a Canadian Broadcasting Company journalist revealed that - using his middle names - Christof Friedrich, Zundel had become Canada's leading pro-Nazi and Holocaust-denial propagandist. Once exposed, Zundel continued his efforts under his conventional name. The principal outlet for Zundel's early activities was his Toronto-based company, Samisdat Publishers, Ltd., which produced Zundel originals (like The Hitler We Loved and Why) and Holocaust-denial "classics", (including The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Arthur Butz; A Straight Look at the Third Reich and The Six Million Swindle, by Austin App; and Auschwitz, Dachau, Buchenwald: The Greatest Fraud in History, by Richard Harwood. He produces books and articles with other anti-Jewish libels. He is also a white supremacist. For his full bio by the Anti-Defamation League, see www.adl.org/learn/Ext_US/zundel.asp? xpicked=2&item=zundel. (Some of the material below is taken from that site.) "Ernst Zundel epitomizes and sanctions the worst form of Holocaust denial," contends Bernie Farber, a spokesman for the Canadian Jewish Congress (www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/ TPStory/LAC/20040306/ZUNDEL06/TPComment/TopStories). Zundel was arrested numerous times in Canada, is today wanted for criminal activity in Germany, and currently lives in Tennessee. He is fixated on U.F.O.'s, believing them to be Nazi secret weapons based somewhere in Antarctica. In 1985, Zundel was charged under Section 177 of the Criminal Code of Canada for "knowingly publishing false news." Among those testifying for the prosecution at the trial were Holocaust survivors, a history professor and even a banker -- since Zundel had claimed that an international conspiracy existed among Freemasons, Communists, international financiers, and Zionists. Speaking for the defense were such leading Holocaust deniers as Sweden's Ditlieb Felderer, France's Robert Faurisson (a close associate of Noam Chomsky, the professor of Cambodia genocide) and Canada's James Keegstra, all of whom have been convicted in their own countries under hate crimes laws for their Holocaust-denial activities. To win, prosecutors had the distasteful task of "proving" that the Holocaust had occurred and the difficult task of proving that Zundel had knowingly lied when he wrote that it had not. Zundel was convicted on February 26, 1985, of publishing false news about the Holocaust. He was sentenced to fifteen months in jail, and three years probation, during which he was prohibited from publishing on the subject. Zundel did not serve his sentence. In January 1987, the Ontario Court of Appeals overturned the 1985 conviction, citing procedural errors during the trial. In June 1987, a new trial was granted. Also testifying for Zundel was David Irving, the British convicted Holocaust Denier. On November 13, 1988, Zundel was convicted and sentenced to a nine-month jail term. When an appeals court upheld the conviction, Zundel reported to Toronto's Don Jail on February 5, 1990, wearing a striped "concentration camp" costume labeled "Political Prisoner Ernst Zundel." After spending a week in jail, he was released on $10,000 bail pending an appeal to Canada's Supreme Court. On August 27, 1992, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down as unconstitutional the law banning the spread of false news. In February 2001, after being denied Canadian citizenship, Zundel left Canada for the United States. He currently resides in Tennessee. In August 1996, the Canadian Human Rights Commission opened yet another chapter in Zundel's saga with the law. At issue was an Internet site that bore Zundel's name -- the so-called "Zundelsite" -- which, since mid-1995, had served as an electronic library of Holocaust-denial texts and which incited hatred against Jews. The Canadian Human Rights Tribune ordered that the site be shut down, but because it was operating from a computer server inside the United States, the Canadian order was not enforceable. At the trial, evidence was presented that Zundel and his wife personally control this web site. On February 5, 2003, officials from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service arrested Ernst Zundel at his home in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, for alleged immigration violations. He was deported to Canada and has been in jail ever since. Mr. Zundel is confined to a Toronto detention centre because the government is holding him on a national security certificate -- the controversial and Draconian procedure usually reserved for terrorist suspects. The "Zunderlist" continues to operate as the main vehicle for spreading Zundel's nazi doctrines, at http://www.zundelsite.org. Zundel's wife also continues to send her daily "Z-Grams," which are less devoted to Holocaust denial and more to fulminations against "Jewish power," anti-Semitic and anti-Israel conspiracy theories, and attacks on the U.S. government and the War on Terror. There is one other interesting fact you should know about the Zundelsite. It carries at least two articles published by Neve Gordon, the leftist extremist lecturer in political science at Ben Gurion University, best known for his pronouncements that Israel is a fascist, terrorist, apartheid state! One of these Zundelsite pieces is Gordon's article praising Norman Finkelstein: (www.zundelsite.org/english/ zgrams/zg2000/zg0010/001027.html), who himself is almost universally seen as a neonazi, Holocaust Denier, fraud and anti-Semite. The book by Finkelstein in this article was compared by the NY Times to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Note how Gordon compares Finkelstein here ethically to the Prophets of the Bible (last sentences). The other Zundelsite publication of a Gordon article is at (www.zundelsite.org/english/zgrams/zg2002/ 2002-November/000106.html ). Gordon's articles have been published and cited with favor in many other anti-Semitic and anti-Israel printed and web sites and magazines, ranging from al-Ahram, to Radio Islam web site, to David Irving's web site, and Gordon is a regular columnist for "Counterpunch" an extremist and anti-Israel web magazine (it has published articles favoring Israel's liquidation and termination), and is owned and edited by Alexander Cockburn, who has been very widely denounced (including by the liberal New Republic magazine) as an open anti-Semite. The publication of Gordon's articles on Zundelsite also comes against the background of growing criticism of the activities of far-leftist extremists at Israeli universities and especially at his own university, Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheba. Israel's Minister of Education recently announced she was boycotting Ben Gurion University because of the political activities there of a radical sociologist faculty member, who published articles declaring that Israel was practicing genocide against Palestinians. The press in Israel claims there is growing anger against Ben Gurion University among Jews around the world and that some have announced they are withholding financial support for the university as long as the faculty extremists operate under university auspices. Israel's recently-released nuclear spy and traitor, Mordecai Vanunu, had begun his activities while a member of a communist student cell at Ben Gurion University. The same Neve Gordon whose articles are published by Zundelsite and Counterpunch has also filed a malicious SLAPP suit against me, already being widely compared to the libel suit filed by David Irving against Deborah Lipstadt (http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ ReadArticle.asp?ID=11497 ), because I criticized his political opinions and his public political activities (such as his joining the "human shields" who illegally entered Ramallah to interfere with the Israeli army's siege against Arafat's offices, while Arafat was hiding the murderers of an Israeli cabinet minister in those same offices), and especially because I criticized his praising Norman Finkelstein in the article discussed above. SLAPP stands for Strategic Lawsuit against Public Participation, and a SLAPP suit is a harassment suit designed to suppress free speech of one's critics. There are severe penalties against those who file them frivolously in many parts of the United States. Free speech in Israel is indeed under attack - by the extremist Left. Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top

LIKUD COMMITTEE REFUSES TO ALLOW OBSERVERS AT EACH POLLING POSITION Posted by Aryeh Zelasko, May 2, 2004.

This article appeared on the IMRA website April 22, 2004 and is archived at www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=20641 Israel Radio reported this morning that the Likud Election Committee chairman, Judge Zvi Cohen, ruled this morning not to allow representatives of those opposing retreat to observe the voting at each polling position, allowing instead the presence of an observer who is to follow all the polling positions in a polling location. In each polling location there are a number of polling positions each serving it own list of Likud members. Likud members present a photo ID at the manned table of polling position where they sign next to their name, receive an envelope and then proceed to the adjacent booth that has piles of three slips: for, against, blank. After putting a slip in the envelope they return to the manned table and put their envelope into the ballot box. The election committee has consistently demonstrated their loyalty to Prime Minister Sharon, refusing to even consult with retreat opponents before making the various decisions relating to the referendum (timing, content of material sent out by the Likud itself on the referendum, holding of debate between PM Sharon and Minister Landau, etc). There is great concern that this last move is designed to leave open the possibility that Sharon can win the referendum in the count of the votes even if the majority of the voters vote against retreat. The major cities have a large number of polling positions in the same polling location, thus making it possible for someone to orchestrate ballot box stuffing. YNET reports this morning that MK Chaim Katz complained this morning that observers were barred entry to some polling stations even though it was agreed in advance that they would be allowed access. Dr. Aaron Lerner is director of IMRA (Independent Media Review & Analysis) (Mail POB 982 Kfar Sava, Israel). IMRA's Internet address is http://www.imra.org.il and email address is imra@netvision.net.il Aryeh Zelasko lives in Beitar Illit, south of Jerusalem. He is Director of Sales and Marketing of Israel Visit (www.israelvisit.co.il) which provides information and an internet buying facility for American visitors to Israel. To Go To Top

YAKOV BIRNBAUM'S FREEDOM RIDE Posted by Moshe Brodetzky, May 2, 2004.

Yakov Bernbaum, the forgotten man of the Soviet Jewry movement gets his due, 40 years on. This appeared today in the Jewish Week of NY (http://www.thejewishweek.com). If anyone doubted that the Soviet Jewry movement is gone and forgotten, definitive proof came last autumn when Natan Sharansky had a pie thrown in his face on an American college campus. The pie-thrower, a Jewish student, saw Sharansky not as an icon of Jewish liberation but as a member of Israel's cabinet and therefore worth attacking. Who remembers? Sharansky was freed when the pie man was a baby. A few days after the pie attack at Rutgers University, Sharansky visited Columbia University, and Rabbi Charles Sheer, Columbia's Jewish chaplain, in introducing Sharansky to his students, realized a history lesson was in order. The Soviet Jewry movement began right here at Columbia, explained Rabbi Sheer, with the first meeting of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, in April 1964. Four days later, SSSJ (popularly known as "Triple-S-J") held its first demonstration outside the Soviet mission to the United Nations. It was May Day, 40 years ago this week. From that Kitty Hawk moment to Sharansky's 1986 walk across a Berlin bridge to freedom - watched on TV by Jews as if it were the first walk on the moon - to the fall of the Iron Curtain, Soviet Jewry captured the American Jewish imagination like nothing else. Of course, a great escape of this magnitude needed many masterminds and accomplices, but in 1964, explained Rabbi Sheer to his students, there was a man named Yaakov (Jacob) Birnbaum, and so begins a legend. Birnbaum was 37 in 1964, a German-born Englishman who'd been director of the Manchester Jewish community council. He'd been freelancing in Jewish causes, from North Africa to helping Holocaust survivors. He was old school, the school that said if a Jew's in a fight, it's your fight, too. Remembering those years, as he sits in his Washington Heights apartment, his voice shifts between prophetic urgency and a British patrician obviousness about duty. When there was trouble in Morocco, "I brought out many young people when bombs were going off, and all that, you see." Rabbi Irving "Yitz" Greenberg was a young Fullbright scholar when he met Birnbaum in Israel in 1962. Rabbi Greenberg says, "The main thing I remember thinking was, gee, this is the grandson of Nathan Birnbaum," a seminal figure of the 1800s who formed the first Jewish union of Jewish students, was the first to use the words "Zionist" and "Zionism," and who later was elected secretary-general of the first Zionist Congress in 1897. "Yaakov was compelling from that historical point of view," says Rabbi Greenberg, "and he was obviously a character in his own right." Also in Israel, Birnbaum met a student now known as Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, chief rabbi of Efrat. "He was like he is now," says Birnbaum, "a very bouncy guy. When I first came to New York in 1963, Stevie Riskin picked me up at the airport. Stevie Wonder, they called him. I made him the first chairman of SSSJ." In those days, recalls Birnbaum, "I was looking for signs of renaissance, among Jews, among Christians, whomever, you see. My philosophy was that all patterns of living were disintegrating," and disintegration would come to the Soviet Union, too. From the beginning, he imagined the return of the Lost Tribes, the Georgians, the Bukharians, the mountain Jews, the Moscow Jews. "You can't do anything but plant points of ferment," said Birnbaum, "and you hope the ferment spreads." Rabbi Greenberg was back in New York, teaching at Yeshiva University, when "Yaakov came around, wanting to talk." Birnbaum had begun knocking on dormitory doors, looking for allies, and he figured his friend could help. "I had been thinking about the impact of the Shoah, but Soviet Jewry was not yet an issue for me or anyone," says Rabbi Greenberg. "Yaakov pushed that button, driving home the point that for all our hindsight about the Holocaust, Soviet Jews were threatened by their government and by our indifference, and we couldn't let that happen again." After more than four decades of anti-religious edicts, killings, refusals of emigration, and banishment to the Gulag, there had yet to be any full-time watchdog, lobbyist, or sustained campaign of protest in the United States for the Jews of the Soviet Union. And the United States, Birnbaum figured, was the one country that could exert some leverage. "I managed to hold a rally in early 1964 at YU, a rally chaired by a student named Charles Sheer," then 21, remembers Birnbaum. "We Need A Struggle" On April 27, 1964, Birnbaum convened the first official meeting of SSSJ in Columbia's Philosophy Hall, with a few hundred students from several city colleges. "We don't need committees, congresses and conferences," said Birnbaum of Jewish organizations. "We need a struggle," a student struggle. Glenn Richter, then a teenaged student at Queens College, later to become SSSJ's national coordinator, said Birnbaum's call had a great appeal for people like him, and others such as Rabbi Arthur Green (later to head of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Seminary), and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of the Jewish Theological Seminary, who were active in the civil rights movement. Richter had been a volunteer with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a major civil rights group. Activism was coming alive in America, says Richter, "and here was an opportunity to demonstrate as Jews, for Jews." This was the '60s, adds Rabbi Greenberg, and even yeshiva students were not impervious. Just six weeks before SSSJ's first meeting, the Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, and a defiant youth culture was shaping up in which the Jewish "generation gap" was exemplified by the simplistic accusation that the Holocaust generation was passive and "did nothing," but now "We are Jews, we couldn't be prouder," as the chant went. That first SSSJ meeting ended with an enthusiastic rush to plan a demonstration for May Day, a major day on the Soviet calendar, just four days away. Rabbi Sheer remembers going down to the old Stern College dorm, "where we used stencils to paint words, such as 'Let My People Go,' on oak-tag placards. Who knew how to make placards?" Friday, May 1, dawned with decent weather. Outside the Soviet mission, came more than a thousand Jewish students. "We all just sort of looked at each other in amazement," says Richter. Attracting Talent Though the inner core of SSSJ was never comprised of more than a few dozen activists, Birnbaum had a knack for attracting young talent to the movement. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Organizations, remembers being a 19-year-old graduate student in Philadelphia and going to see Birnbaum. "I believed that the Soviet Jewry issue was critical," says Hoenlein, "and he was the only one then involved. I took materials and ideas back to Philadelphia." Birnbaum says, "Malcolm, I knew him when he was a skinny kid and came to my apartment. I gave him every phone number, every scrap of information." Later, when Hoenlein became the executive of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry, says Birnbaum, "He had a hard time because the establishment really hated me. Malcolm had to disassociate himself, somewhat, from us wild guys, but we remained good friends." The clash between the young activists and the establishment was not only about strategy - demonstrations vs. quiet diplomacy - but about personalities and commitment. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin recalls, "When I was co-president of the YU chapter of SSSJ [1967-1968], Yaakov would call me almost every night. I was aware that I was just one of many people he was in constant contact with." Birnbaum remembers taking a young Dennis Prager with him to City Hall to meet with Mayor John Lindsay. For the "Jericho March" in 1965, a circling of the Soviet mission with shofars blowing and SSSJ's typical evocation of biblical imagery, Birnbaum urged Shlomo Carlebach to write "Am Yisrael Chai," the rousing anthem that became a fixture at rallies ever since. In 1965, Birnbaum recruited Yossi Klein Halevi, today a senior columnist with the Jerusalem Post and The New Republic, but then a 12-year-old who spotted Birnbaum handing out materials on a Borough Park street. Birnbaum treated the boy like a man and put him to work. Hoenlein attributes Birnbaum's success in attracting future leaders to the fact that Birnbaum's movement "wasn't institutionalized. Everyone could be a part of it. People who were good could emerge. You didn't have to be rich or famous." You didn't need a resume and you didn't need to fit in. Rabbi Avi Weiss, national president of Amcha, an activist group that grew out of SSSJ, which Weiss chaired for many years, explained that "Yaakov's genius was tapping people in their strengths and interest. SSSJ was a place where you could take risks," something not possible in more rigid organizations. Rabbi Greenberg adds, "Once people got turned on by Yaakov, they kept moving into other areas of activism on all sorts of other issues." Before long, Birnbaum went from knocking on dormitory doors to successfully lobbying Congress for legislation linking Soviet trade privileges to Jewish emigration. The emotional high point and culmination of the Soviet Jewry movement was the December 1987 rally in Washington, D.C., instigated by the newly freed Sharansky, which drew 250,000 Jews. If it wasn't under SSSJ auspices, it was its spiritual child. With the collapse of the Soviet Union a couple of years later, the story seemed to end. Forty years after that improbable spring of '64, Birnbaum is old and nearly blind, ill and nearly forgotten. He advises those more active than he, but is an unidentifiable figure in New York's Russian neighborhoods. It is no small irony that The Jewish Week photographer for this story is a Jewish emigre from Georgia, which is like a former slave photographing Abraham Lincoln. The photographer hadn't heard of Birnbaum, nor would others who have left the FSU over the years. Let the last word go to Yossi Klein Halevi, whose essay in the current issue of Azure (www.azure.org), a journal of the Shalem Center, may be the definitive history of the movement. He writes that SSSJ taught American Jews "how to fight a Diaspora-generated struggle and experience victory - not vicariously through Israeli heroism, but as active partners in their people's fate." "American Jews came to see themselves as a major force for Jewish freedom and security, protecting endangered Jews through political means, just as Israel did through military means. In its struggle for the freedom of Soviet Jews," Halevi writes, "American Jewry liberated itself as well." [Editor's note: Moshe Brodetzky was the man who mobilized the Washington Jewish community - a group not noted for activism in behalf of Jews - to help free Soviet Jews. He innovated the use of signs such as "FREE SOVIET JEWS" and "LET MY PEOPLE GO" in front of synagogues and churches. He started the daily vigil in front of the Russian embassy. He sent out press releases. He kept his cool and displayed amazing patience but steadily prodded the timid, and, in the end, he could be proud of what he helped accomplish.] To Go To Top

IS SHARON A COURT JEW? Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 1, 2004.

Sharon is pulling every misleading trick that corrupt politicians become skilled at. He is using the promises of the American President who has vital vested interests with Saudi Arabia and who is already backing away from his paper-thin commitments to Sharon. President George W. Bush knew that Yassir Arafat and the Arab Muslim Palestinians would continue to demand a full 'right of return' - not of the 450,000 Arab Muslim farmers who left on the demand of the seven invading armies in 1948 but, all those who claim to have descended from them - between three and five million depending on who is counting. Sharon, using the lowest of tricks, tells the Israeli people that President Bush will be "angry and deeply disappointed if the Israeli people do not vote first to abandon Gaza and then abandon the settlements in Judea and Samaria." Sharon has become a political liar, willing to sacrifice both his own people and the nation to save himself both as Prime Minister and in his epitaph of history. Sharon, like Rabin, Peres, Barak and Beilin is perfectly willing to encourage the Left living on the coast to sacrifice their brothers living in YESHA (Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza), telling the Lefties they will save themselves if they betray those in YESHA. I cannot say, never was there a more corrupt person than Sharon because our Jewish history is filled with them. Whether Herod invited in the Romans or the Judanrat of Europe, sacrificed their Jewish friends, even family, to save themselves. Sharon encourages those of the Left, those who live in Tel Aviv and Haifa that, if they feed the Jews east in YESHA to the Arab Muslim Palestinian terrorists' claims, they will buy time for themselves. He panders to the Arab Israelis to vote in favor of his Gaza retreat - using Arab voters to break the back of the Jewish battle for survival. He appeals to the lowest instincts of promised survival but, his promises are as empty as were those of the Oslo Gang. Sharon first tells us he will abide by a popular referendum of Likud Party members but, when the people of Israel show their objections to his plan, he tells us that he never intended to listen to the people or anyone except the Bush family dynasty and their cronies. Sharon is more than a disappointment. History will likely decide that he has become a quisling to his own people and I would say to his G-d - except he seems to believe in neither. Is this is a man who has sunk so low that he has joined the self-proclaimed enemies of Israel and, most certainly joined the friends of the Arab Muslim terrorists? Sharon has become the quintessential court Jew who panders to those among the nations who will pretend not to hold their noses when he enters a room. He is corrupt and is easily bent to the desires of the nations who hate the Jews and pursue Arab oil. Why are we continually cursed when characters such as these last five Prime Ministers rise up as leaders? Why do we not select those who will say "No!" to our detractors? Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

TIME TO USE THE STAFF Posted by Emanuel A. Winston, May 1, 2004.

The fight for Gaza and all the Land of Israel has just begun. Sharon has promised to carry through his plan to make refugees out of the Jews of Gaza and then move on to the rest of YESHA (Yehuda, Shomron and Gaza). When Moses confronted the tyrannical Pharaoh, it was with his staff. When Moses climbed Mt. Sinai to receive the Law from G-d, he was assisted by his staff. When Isaac tended his flocks before he returned to Israel, he used his staff to ward off predators. What David was a shepherd, he used his staff against the hungry wolves. The Staff was always present among the Jews. It helped them walk, climb and defend themselves. The wolves and other predators are once again after G-d's flock. It is time for the Jews to make themselves a staff. Go, cut for yourself a staff taller than a man. Then march to Jerusalem to tell the government that they are your servants and you are not theirs. Perhaps there will come a time when the caliber of leaders shall once again be like Abraham, Isaac, Moses and David but, that time has not yet come. Perhaps, too, in time the Moshiach will come and will appoint judges and leaders - as once recommended by Jethro to Moses. But, until that time, those who are anointed (voted) as temporary custodians must not be allowed to act as dictator or self-styled kings. March - as you did on Israel Independence Day to Gush Katif with your staffs. Circle the government compounds and make your presence known. Strike your staff on the ground in unison until the walls and floors of the buildings shake and the hearts of weak leaders pound. Make a mighty sound that tells the government of Israel that you are a strong people who deserve leaders with spine. Let them know that yours is the Staff of Life and not the shameful cowardice they have displayed before the world and our enemies. Strike the Land with your staffs, telling the Knesset (Parliament) and Prime Minister that you will no longer accept retreat or defeat or surrender of what is yours and ours as promised by G-d. Let the sound ripple out to the Arab capitals, on to Washington and the capitals of Europe. Let the sound of your staffs tell them that you will no longer allow your/our leaders to wring their hands in weakness and despair. Remind them we come from great leaders: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon and the Prophets. You walked to Gush Katif en masse. Now walk to Jerusalem. Let the whole nation gather to tell the government to stand up straight or leave! Emanuel Winston is a commentator and Middle East analyst. His articles appear often on Think-Israel, Gamla (http://gamla.org.il/english) and the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (http://www.freeman.org/online.htm) To Go To Top

IRANIAN TV SERIES BASED ON 'THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION' AND THE JEWISH CONTROL OF HOLLYWOOD Posted by IsrAlert, May 1, 2004.

This documentary is the first release from MEMRI's Arab TV Monitoring Project, which will be launched in May 2004. Translated video clips will be available in real time, through a dedicated website as well as through a special distribution to the media. To see this documentary, go to http://memri.org/video/ To view MEMRI video clips, you will need Real Player. If you don't have Real Player, you can download it at: www.realplayer.com MEMRI's website address is http://www.memri.org For more on the memri arab antisemitism documentation project go to: http://www.memri.org/antisemitism.html Throughout the first two weeks of April, the Iranian TV station Al-Alam aired a documentary titled Al-Sameri wa Al-Saher. The series purports to explain how the Jews control Hollywood by the directives set out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The following are excerpts from the documentary: [1] The False Myth About the Murder of Six Million Jews "The most important film produced under Zionist guidance in the 60s was called Operation Eichmann. This film completed the false myth about the murder of six million Jews in the hands of the Nazis. "But the film producers did not mention his provocative trial on December 17 1961. This is because of what Eichmann said about the German Jews' expulsion and killing: 'I was only carrying out the orders of the Zionists. They asked me to gather the Jews in a specific place in the world, using expulsion or murder. First, their target was Poland, then Madagascar, but in the end they chose the Middle East. If I am guilty of the so-called killing of 6 million Jews then the Zionist leaders are much guiltier than I am. This is because they wanted to silence the world under the pretext that if they had stayed in Germany they would have been killed. Because they don't have a country they are forced to occupy other people's land. And that is what they did.' The Zionist authorities finished the trial quickly to avoid further commotion. They hanged Adolf Eichmann in 1962 so the secrets of the collaboration between the Zionists and the Nazis would remain hidden. "The plot of the film [Funny Girl] served to introduce the ugly Jewish actress Barbra Streisand, who played the role of Fanny Brice. Films portraying a positive image of the Jews appeared in early 1980's. Among those were the third version of The Jazz Singer, The Shout from 1981 directed by Valentino, and the film Tootsie, in 1982, directed by Sydney Pollack. "The movie Yentl which Barbra Streisand starred in and produced in 1983, dealt with the Zionists' wish to benefit from feminism, the new women's movement, as time goes by. "Awarding Driving Miss Daisy the Oscar for best picture in 1989 strengthened this conservative Jewish trend. The film Driving Miss Daisy tells of an old Jewish woman and her black driver. In the beginning, the old woman hates the driver, but in the end she establishes a friendly relationship with him. The Jews Control of the Music, Movie, and Arts Industries "Dr. Muhammad Madad Bour, university professor: 'Modern music was invented by the Christians, but the Jews took control over its industry. Cinema was invented by the Christians - Edison or the French Lormier brothers - but the Jews took control over its industry. The same goes for painting. Modern painting was invented by the Christians. The Christian message is very clear but the Jews control all the exhibitions. The art trade market is in their hands. "'Note that generally they have never been creative. Note the factories, there are no Jews there. But on the other hand, we see that most management and service companies in the West and most banks are held by Jews. "'They wrote the human rights laws, so they can do what ever they wish. They worked to destroy the holy places, reject religion, religious schools of thought, and morale. They suggested in their protocols that people's beliefs should be destroyed, so the people would have no faith and then they would become their captives and putty in their hands. Globalization Means 'Judaize the World' "'One of their short-term plans is establishing this Zionist state. In fact, the Israeli plan is a short-term one within the greater plan - globalization. First, they say globalization, and then they will begin to Judaize the world. Today, there is competition in trade and economic globalization without taking justice into account. Those who struggle against this plan are the non-Jews. The Jews defend the globalization, from which the poor suffer and so they resist it.' "Nader Taleb Zada, producer: 'In the 20th century, we witnessed the establishment of a superpower, two, or more. Cinema had to make progress in a way that benefited them. So, it was only natural that cinema should fall in the hands of the World Zionists, imperialism, and the very wealthy, who are mostly Jews, and of course Zionists. Jews Use Films to Spread Plagues "'Today, using cinema, one can infiltrate all homes. Using cinema, one can enslave many of the skills and powers.' "Majed Shah Huseini, critic: 'Today, many new films dictate the same concepts. One of these methods is presenting religious concepts through cinema, according to the biblical approach, like Satan, Judgment Day, Heaven and Hell. Toady, these concepts appear in many films; I don't want to mention which because I don't want to promote Hollywood films. But it is obvious that many viewers are familiar with many of these films. A different issue is that their moral perspective is superficial. They spread tolerance and disregard of morality amongst other nations but not among themselves. They know that by doing so they are spreading a plague. They, of course, protect themselves from it, but they have no objection to spreading this plague among others, be the consequences as they may. "'Their other position relates to science fiction. They always create imaginary threats to Earth on which we safely live. They speak of alien creatures, occurrences in outer space, and metaphysical catastrophe that will happen and affect our lives. Hollywood cinema, and to a great extent the Jewish companies in Hollywood, are trying very hard, using extraterrestrial threats, to portray a certain image of stability in the world. "'In [Independence Day] the first catastrophe occurs in Iraq. Meaning, this force struck the first blow on an Arab Muslim country. Now, America, as a representative of the planet, is required to do something against this threat from outer space. This is how they dictate to the viewer that America is the savior and that it is the only one who needs to save everyone and the others are unimportant.' "The Matrix was a meeting point between Hollywood and Jewish Zionist fundamentalism. In using The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers tried to embellish the ugly image of the State of Israel and to introduce the Zionist society as a utopian future society. The plot for The Matrix is derived from the teachings of Gush Emunim, or the fundamental Zionists. The agents' purpose in The Matrix is to arrest the resistance leader, Morpheus, in order to eliminate the Zionist resistance movement by obtaining the entrance code to its network. In the film The Matrix, Zion is regarded as the only sanctuary and as the center of human resistance in the third millennium. The film indirectly suggests to the viewers that all other beliefs and ideologies are null and void. This is the Zionist racism, which wants everything for itself and does not conceive of non-Jews as deserving to live and prosper. This is only a miniscule part of the proof of the political, religious, and biblical aspects of The Matrix. "'This is the fundamental Zionist Jews' way; they try to distribute the idea of biblical justice and to rebuild the Holy Temple by using the traditional extremists. But still there remain people around the world who do not let them lurk in the dark. Likewise, history shows that the peoples don't let oppressors go unpunished. "'The Korean War proved that any individual who is not of the American white race is considered by the American rulers and Hollywood producers as of backward culture and as a source of fear for Western society. Hollywood, ever since wealthy Jews had created it, has worked to cultivate this perception using its various films. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Guarantee Zionist Victory "'This is because it saw this perception as in total compliance with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and as a guarantee of the Zionist victory. With time, this perception created new sources of fear: beginning with Arabian Bedouin tribes and ending with alien creatures coming from outer space and always landing in American cities. "'Each time, their death was described in a more fanciful and gleeful way in accordance with the first and ninth protocols: "'The best results that can be achieved through our control of non-Jews are obtainable through violence and assassination, not through academic debates, because by nature, truth is with the mighty. We will resist any plot against us and kill mercilessly anyone who turns to armed struggle in an attempt destabilize our country." "The Arabs are portrayed in [Lawrence of Arabia] as inept, stupid, and illogical facing technology and new inventions. This ploy fits the content of the fourteenth protocol regarding the non-Jewish nations: "Non-Jewish nations must not forget that they are worthless and cannot understand the depth of issues. Only we, the Jews understand political issues. God prepared us for this through the torments our generations have been through." "In the film Lawrence of Arabia, an emphasis is put on one of the Zionist goals written in the first of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and that is the role the Zionists and their agents play in sparking riots or revolutions under the slogan of liberty around the world. "In this film, Lawrence was sent to the Arabs for that purpose: 'Political liberty is only an ideology that has no external existence. But every one of us must know how to derive benefits from this trap so they can draw the masses and thus wipe out the opposing ruling party.' "When the Zionists convened their special congress in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland, a group of Czarist Russian policemen set fire to the congress hall. The Jews taking part in the congress fled out of fear of the fire. The policemen collected the documents, lists and protocols of the meeting that were lying on the desks and transferred them to Moscow. They found among these writings what was later called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols were divided into 24 parts and included the satanic Jewish ideas of taking over the world using a Jewish government, after destroying all of Orthodox Russia, Catholic Europe, the pope's reign, and Islam." Endnote: (1) Al Alam (Iran), April 2004. IsrAlert, a Jewish advocacy network, is hosted by Harv Weiner. To subscribe to IsrAlert, send an email to isralert@aol.com To Go To Top

WHAT WOULD IBN KHALDUN SAY? Posted by Gerald A. Honigman, May 1, 2004.

Zionism has meant different things to different people over the millennia. The connecting thread woven throughout all variations, however, has always involved Jews being in their land and at least somewhat in control of their own destinies. Whether they were biblical tears shed by the rivers of Babylon some two thousand years earlier, or writings such as those of the medieval poet, Yehuda HaLevi, proclaiming a desire to be a pauper in Zion rather than a prince in Muslim Spain (where Jews had it relatively good), these ancient ties have bound Jews to Israel for most of man's recorded history. The animosity which often greeted them in the Diaspora helped to assure that those ties would not be forgotten. For religious Zionists of all degrees and persuasions, the Hand of G_d was at work in all of these events throughout the ages leading up to the rebirth of Israel in 1948. It took, after all, the rejection by the non-Jewish world of even the most assimilated of Jews -- men like Alfred Dreyfus -- before the rebirth of political Zionism could become a reality in the late 19th century. But not all were religious Zionists. Many Jews had indeed tried just about everything to gain acceptance in the non-Jewish world, but the Dreyfus Affair, pogroms, and numerous other problems culminating in the Holocaust kept on occurring in the "enlightened " and "modern" age anyway. It was as if G_d was sending a message: "You have no alternative...Israel must be reborn whether you Jews like it or not!" So Zionism came to have another meaning. It represented for many a chance for Jews to simply bring a semblance of normalcy into their lives. Since the fall of Judaea to Rome, too often bloodbaths, forced conversions, expulsions, inquisitions, blood libels, demonization (even Michelangelo's Moses was sculpted with Devil's horns), ghettoization, and every other imaginable humiliation was the plight of the Jew in the Diaspora. There are churches to this very day which have stained glass windows or murals depicting Jews stabbing the Host of the Christian Communion in order to supposedly kill Jesus yet again. And the Arab world provides widespread anti-Semitica to its people as well. They were G_d killers in the West and/or kelbi yahudi -- "Jew Dog" -- killers of prophets in the East. So not all who dreamt of a return to Zion did so out of an urge to become "a nation of priests" or a "light unto the nations." While the high ideals of religious Zionism still remained in many a Jewish heart and soul (even among the agnostics), the chance to change their age-old tenuous existence in both the Christian and Muslim halves of the Diaspora was also a major motivating factor. Besides wanting to escape forever the mandatory ghetto (and subconsciously the evolved ghetto mentality) of the former and the mellah of the latter -- and the negative effects and consequences such existence both produced on and brought out from themselves over the centuries -- Jews just wanted to have a nation like all others. Over three thousand years earlier, when most other folks were still worshipping stone idols and practicing fertility rites, the Jews' ancestors were pleading with the Prophet Samuel to intercede with G-d to allow them to have a worldly king -- for some different but yet also some similar reasons. Jews wanted to be farmers (they had largely not been allowed to own land), barbers, street cleaners, policemen, doctors, scholars, soldiers, statesmen...whatever...but masters of their own fate, not the perpetual stranger in someone else's land or pawn being played in someone else's games (with deadly consequences to themselves). Jews had often been allowed to settle in a land only after agreeing to take on unpopular tasks and jobs. Some, like Karl Marx, would seek solutions to these problems in a broader context, via political and socio-economic reform. Ironically, while Marx despised his Jewish roots, he sounded like a Hebrew Prophet in his demand for justice for the poor and the oppressed. Isaiah and others would have understood his passion well....Indeed, they were his teachers. Zionism meshed together all of these diverse fears, hopes, and dreams. And the key to its future had everything to do with transforming the powerless state of the Jews as a people. Enter "Abd-ar-Rahman Abu Zayd ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun was born in the early 14th century C.E. He was one of the most important philosophers, jurists, and scholars Islamic -- or any -- civilization would ever produce. His name surfaces even in the contemporary West every once in a while. On March 19, 2003, for example, an AP story mentioned the release of an Egyptian-American human rights activist, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, from a seven-year sentence in prison. He had founded the independent think tank, the Ibn Khaldun Center, and proved to be too independent for the Egyptian government's wishes (1). Ibn Khaldun had spent much of his later life in Cairo. Graduate students in Middle Eastern Affairs usually come to know Ibn Khaldun through his work, The Muqaddimah. It is actually the introduction to and Book I of his Kitab al-'Ibar, the History of the World. Besides simply giving an account of events, he offers a rational explanation of the "hows" and "whys" they occurred. He uses frequent historical illustrations to make his points. It is here that this great Muslim scholar, who died almost six hundred years ago, has some very important things to say about Jews and Israel. Among other things, he detailed the prolonged forced Arabization process of Berber North Africa as well (2). While he offers good critique and discussion about biblical and other accounts regarding Jews in general (i.e. he relates the Roman conquest of Jewish Jerusalem -- something Arafat & Co. deny ever even existed), it is his perspective on issues we have already covered above that is now of special concern (3). Before The Muqaddimah was introduced into this essay, we had reviewed the powerlessness of the Jewish experience and the negative consequences which had derived from this. Ibn Khaldun spoke to this matter as well. Let's listen: "Students, slaves, and servants brought up with injustice and tyrannical force are overcome by it...it makes them feel oppressed...induces them to lie, be insincere...their outward behavior differs from what they are thinking. Thus they are taught deceit and trickery...they become dependent on others...their souls become too indulent to acquire...good character qualities. Thus they fall short of their potentialities and do not reach the limit of their humanity. That is what happened to every nation which fell under the yoke of tyranny and learned the meaning of injustice. One may check this out by observing any person who is not in control of his own affairs and has no authority on his side to guarantee safety. One may look at the Jews (as an example)...The reason is what we have said (4)." However one chooses to respond to his assessment, Zionism's non-religious raison d'etre would have been obvious to Ibn Khaldun, one of the world's most important thinkers six centuries ago. He devoted much time and effort to the evolution and development of the Jewish nation, its early struggles with its adversaries, and its later fight for freedom with the mighty Roman Empire and its consequences. He then followed this with an analysis of the Jews' tragic condition of powerlessness throughout subsequent generations (5). Ibn Khaldun would have well understood the rebirth of Israel and the 'asabiyah -- group consciousness (emphasized throughout his writings) -- which made it possible...even if it was a consciousness born not only out of a "noble house" but also from the desperation of the Jews' perpetual victim, scapegoat, and whipping post status. While he commented that the Jews, who had one of the most "noble houses" in the world, had subsequently lost their 'asabiyah and for centuries suffered constant humiliations, he would have applauded and understood their desire to end this unfortunate turn of events (6). The Muqaddimah emphasizes that the Jews were forced to wander in the desert for forty years due to their "meekness." Ibn Khaldun stressed that this was necessary so that a new generation would arise with a new, more powerful 'asabiyah (7). At a time when Arabs are demanding their 22nd or 23rd state (most having been created by the conquest of non-Arab peoples and their lands), chances are more than good that this great Muslim scholar would have approved and viewed the resurrection of Israel as an answer to the unique plight of stateless Jews...the end of an even more tragic and extensive wandering and period of meekness and powerlessness in the desert. Footnotes 1. Nadia Abou El-Magd, "Egyptian Court Frees Rights Activist," Daytona Beach News-Journal, 3/19/03. 2. Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah - An Introduction To History, edited by N.J.Dawood, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), p.30. 3. Ibid, pp. 184-185. 4. Ibid, p..425. 5. Ibid, pp. 184-185. 6. Ibid, pp. 94, 102-103, 135. 7. Ibid, p.110. Gerald A. Honigman is a Florida educator who has created and conducted counter-Arab propaganda programs for college youth, has lectured on numerous campuses and other platforms, and has publicly debated many Arab spokesmen. His articles and op-eds have been published in newspapers, magazines, academic journals and websites around the world. To Go To Top

A KOHEN'S BRACHA AND A CALL FOR HELP FROM NON-LIKUD MEMBERS EREV-REFERENDUM DAY. Posted by Moshe Burt, May 1, 2004.

I called Moshe Feiglin this Motzei Shabbat. Just as I had conveyed to one of my fellow Likud/ManhigutYehudit members in Shul just after Ma'ariv, I gave a Kohen's Bracha that Moshe, Manhigut Yehudit and all opponents of the Referendum in a position to observe or monitor the Referendum proceedings be embued with the same wisdom and cunning which Torah tells that Ya'akov Avinu employed when he dealt and overcame the machinations of Lavan with his pay, the sheep, etc. I expressed the wish that those of our side observing and monitoring the vote and vote tallies have the cunning and positioning to confront, expose and negate any cheating, manipulation, voter-fraud, or other slick, slimey, White House Plumber-type "stinking manuevers" that may be employed by the Sharon forces in Likud (i.e., an alleged connection between a Security Company employed for the election and Omri Sharon). This message is geared not just directed toward Likud voters and the importance of their voting against this horrendous Gizeirah -- The Referendum for the disengagement, abandonment and expulsion of Jews from Gaza, a chunk of the Shomron, and indeed 20 Yishuvim throughout Yehudah and Shomron (abandonment and expulsion of some 100,000 plus Jews). This message is directed towards Referendum opponents of ALL political parties, of all walks of life in Israel -- Datim, Chareidim, Chilonim, Ashkenazim, S'fardim, etc. Tommorrow, the day of the vote. Non-Likud people too can have an impact on the final result. Get on the phone and call your Likud member relative, friend, neighbor, acquaintance, business associate, fellow employee, etc. Ascertain if they need a baby sitter, a ride to and from the polls. Perhaps his auto is in the shop being serviced and he needs a lift. Perhaps his wife has tiny infants which need watching in order for her to vote. Perhaps any number of things. We are all in this together. Whether we like or understand it, we sink or swim together. It takes a B'nai Yisrael to defeat this Gizeirah -- the Likud members to vote down and our friends, neighbors and acquaintances to free us up to cast our Neged votes. Together, B'Ezrat Hashem, we will crush this vile Gizeirah and bring about the waves of change in Israeli governance toward real Jewish leadership, Jewish seichel, toward Jewish unity and toward the Ge'ula Shlaima. How far you -- Moshe Feiglin, Shmuel Sackett, Zu Artzeinu, Manhigut Yehudit; how far we have come in 10 years, and more precisely, in the last 3 1/2 years. From settlement-doubling, to blocking traffic, to political activism, to linking up with the Likud to bring Torah derech to Israel via the largest Right-Wing party in an effort to bring about a real Medinat Israel. Your story started with the few, the brave Men and Women - Religious and Secular, the Chareidi, Dati, and Chiloni - who, despite their differences, came together and put it "on the line" for G'd and for the Land against the wide array of weapons available to the Regime of the time. They articulated what many thousands more felt in their hearts and in the pits of their stomachs. These Zu Artzeinu Activists galvanized tens of thousands, lo hundreds of thousands of Jews to demonstrate, in a non-violent way, their assertiveness, self-pride, self-worth and dignity against the defeatists -- those devoid of principles who held (and still hold) positions of leadership and political power and who have lost touch with what a Jewish State means (the fulfillment of what Jews have prayed 3 times a day and more for nearly 2,000 years). The union of groups such as Zo Artzeinu, Women-In-Green and others stood/stand rock-solid against powerful political forces -- the morally bankrupt Socialist/Post-Zionists and Likudniks-turned-Leftists who rush headlong towards both Middle East Regionalization, and successive governments which have abrogated their leadership responsibilities and those who seek detachment of the people Israel from their Jewish roots, history and historical proofs. I recall reading back in Philadelphia, in the "old country" about Moshe and Shmuel [Moshe Feiglin and Shmuel Sackett, cofounders of Manhigut Yehudit], the settlement doubling, the blocking of traffic at major junctions throughout Israel, the police brutality committed upon citizens for protesting the mal-feasance and dereliction of duty of their government, the arrests, the sedition trials. Then Manhigut Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) emerged from within Zu Artzeinu and began to build a movement which 3 - 4 years later was called upon to join forces with those in the Likud who sought to bring the party back to its ideological roots rather than to move ever further to the left. I met Moshe and Shmuel back in Philly. I once even broke bread together with Shmuel and his family at Northeast Philadelphia's Kosher Chinese restaurant, The Dragon Inn. And I also attended a couple of Parlor Parties given for Moshe Feiglin some 6 months before my Aliyah in March, 1999. Once have made Aliyah, I remember the Kidron Valley Rally where Moshe led the way in publicizing the Arab desecrations of our Holy Places as the Israeli government stood silently by. And I remember that first Kan'ess where Manhigut Yehudit began signing up Likud members at Binyanei Homa, opposite the large Aryeh Deri Rally which took place the same day and at the same location. And I watched how methodically, how workman-like Moshe and the Manhigut Yehudit people within Likud built an organization which, upon the Primary for the Central Committe of Likud in fall 2002, won approximately 135 spots on the Likud Central Committee. Since then, Manhigut Yehudit has built the most cohesive, united segment of the Likud Central Committee. It was Manhigut Yehudit which was at the forefront of the Likud Convention when the party voted not to support Prime Minister Sharon's advocacy of a "palestinian state." And it was Manhigut Yehudit who attempted to force a vote in the Central Committee on Sharon's Gaza abandonment, as well as for amendments to Likud bylaws including one compelling politicians to adhere to the will of the Central Committee. And now, thanks to PM Sharon's side-stepping the Likud Central Committee regarding his planned Gaza abandonment, we stand mere hours away from a referendum vote on the abandonment of Gaza and a chunk of the Shomron and more. The polls indicate a big win for the forces of Jewish Leadership. I've had this recurring dream, ala Robin Williams in the movie, "Good Morning Vietnam." My dream is of an announcement over the radio, "Boker Tov, Eretz Yisrael." With the referendum vote slated for Sunday morning, 2 May, my 56th birthday, that moment "Boker Tov, Eretz Yisrael", the beginning of a new day, a new era, seems at hand. To Moshe, Shmuel, Motti, Adir Zik, to Manhigut Yehudit and all of those in Likud who have been profiles in courage in standing up to verbal attacks, threats, brutality, intimidations and blackmail from Prime Minister Sharon, Ehud Olmert, Tommy Lapid and those forces seeking the dismemberment of Eretz Yisrael; I wish all of my brothers my Kohan's Bracha of only success now and in all future endeavors. If we, the Likud members, with the support of our non-Likud brothers and sisters, vote on Sunday, both with our Tefillah and with our feet (walking to the Voting place) and casting our vote of "Neged" regarding Sharon's referendum on abandoning Gush Katif, then IY'H, we'll be zocha to have our Tefillah reach Shemayim, unimpeded, ungarbled, that the dream expressed in the Manhigut Yehudit CD movie would become reality. As Rabbi Moshe Ungar would say each Thursday evening at his Gemara Shuir back in Phildelphia, in "the old country", that then we'll be zocha to demand, compel Hashem to do "what he wants to do, to bring us the Moshiach and the Ge'ula Shlaima, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v'yameinu -- speedily, in our time", like Achshav -- IMMEDIATELY, Chik Chuk, Meiyad, Etmol!!! No more Oslos, Roadmaps or territorial dismantlements. Kol Ha'aretz Shelanu!! Moshe Burt is a commentator on News and Events in Israel as well as Founder and Director of the "Sefer Torah Recycling Network." (http://www.sefer-torah.com). He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh. To Go To Top

SHIBLEY TELHAMI'S ILL-FOUNDED ANALYSIS OF ARAB RAGE Posted by Leo Rennert, May 1, 2004.

I sent this rebuttal to the Washington Post about an article by Shibley Telhami. Prof. Shibley Telhami confuses surface symptoms with real causes when he blames the United States and Israel for growing Arab rage and opposition to democratic reforms ("Double Blow To Mideast Democracy" op-ed May 1). While there may be reason to fault U.S. performance in Iraq and Israeli dealings with Palestinians, the depth of anti-Western and anti-Jewish hatred is rooted in decades of venomous incitement by government propaganda, state-controlled media, schools, textbooks and mosques. The result: Any U.S. or Israeli missteps are instantly blown up into monstrous crimes and vile conspiracies by people who have been systematically taught to demonize Uncle Sam and Jews. It should not be surprising that rage roils the Mideast when millions of Muslims have been conditioned to regard the United States as the "Great Satan" and Jews are described by clerics as "pigs" and "apes" who must be destroyed. Prof. Telhami argues that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict inflicts as much pain to Arabs as 9/11 did to Americans. What he overlooks is that fanatical terrorism, nurtured and glorified over many years, perpetuates the former and engendered the latter. To point a finger instead at President Bush's support for Israel's plan to actually withdraw from some Palestinian lands serves only to justify passions that bode ill for all people in the region. [Editor's note: Shibley Telhami often writes propagandistic essays, disguised as analysis. Telhami is a professor at the University of Maryland and a pet of pro-Arab T.V. programs.] To Go To Top

QUISLING-OSCOPY Posted by Steven Plaut, May 1, 2004.

Some news about Israel's most anti-Israel leftist extremists: An Israeli academic employed by the University of Haifa, Illan Pappe, recently published a book "A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples". The dedication at the front of the book is to Pappe's two sons as reads follows: "Ido and Yonatan, my two lovely boys. May they live not only in a modern Palestine, but also in a peaceful one". I wonder how Pappe's apologists will explain the use of the term "Palestine" instead of "Israel"? Here is an Israeli academic, employed by an Israeli university, wishing the demise of Israel and its replacement by Palestine. If this is not a treasonous position, I wonder what would be? Another Israeli academic, Ran HaCohen from Tel Aviv University, writes articles for the extremist anti-Israel Antiwar.com web site. His articles carry a small logo depicting the map of Israel. One can sea the areas occupied by Israel in 1967, and the area in Southern Lebanon that was occupied by Israel, and one can see Israel within the green line, labeled as "occupied by Israel in 1948". Here is an Israeli academic, employed by an Israeli university, who believes that ALL of Israel is occupied territory (http://list.haifa.ac.il/pipermail/alef/2004-May/005010.html). A newcomer to the ranks of the Israeli (or ex-Israeli) Jews for the Liquidation of Israel is one Haim Bresheeth, who teaches "film" at the University of East London, a fourth rate college in the UK. A PLO stooge and active in "Jews against Zionism" - (which has Neturei Karta ties), he actually has the nerve to claim to be some sort of "maven" regarding the Holocaust, although his main mission is to prove that the Zionists are responsible for it (http://www.aldeilis.net/zion/zionhol01.html). Here he is in his sparkling brilliance: http://www.inminds.co.uk/jews-against-zionism.html#t3 He is currently writing Bash-Israel pieces for the anti-Semitic Egyptian daily Al Ahram (take a look at http://www.mindspring.com/~fontenelles/bresheeth/bresheeth1.htm and http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/599/op2.htm, best known for its promotion of "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and theories about what Jews put in Passover matzos. In his recent al-Ahram piece, he writes that Bush and Blair will share in the historic guilt Israel will bear for the crimes of Sharon. (Haim Bresheeth, "Sharon's willing accomplices", Al-Ahram Weekly, 29 April - 5 May 2004, http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2004/688/op8.htm, distributed by the Islamic Association For Palestine, P O Box 1163 BrIdgeview, IL 60455.) He says: "Like a ventriloquist dummy speaking the words of its master, we heard the world's most powerful man reciting a script written in Jerusalem by one responsible for bathing the Middle East in blood for decades." His web page is http://www.uel.ac.uk/cultural-innovation/about/staff/haim-bresheeth.htm and his personal email addres is haimb@blueyonder.co.uk Want to write to the "Governors" of the college about him? They are listed at http://www.uel.ac.uk/governors/membership.htm Steven Plaut is an American-trained economist, a professor of business administration at Haifa University and author of "The Scout." He frequently comments - both seriously and satirically - on Israeli politics and the left wing academic community. His website address is http://www.stevenplaut.blogspot.com. To Go To Top