Archived news and commentary: April 1 - 7, 2002

2002/06/24 - 2002/06/30
2002/06/17 - 2002/06/23
2002/06/10 - 2002/06/16
2002/06/03 - 2002/06/09
2002/05/27 - 2002/06/02
2002/05/20 - 2002/05/26
2002/05/13 - 2002/05/19
2002/05/06 - 2002/05/12
2002/04/29 - 2002/05/05
2002/04/22 - 2002/04/28
2002/04/15 - 2002/04/21
2002/04/08 - 2002/04/14
2002/04/01 - 2002/04/07

Sunday, April 7, 2002

News and commentary:

"Arafat 'teams up with Saddam to plot attacks'" (Charles Laurence et al., The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/07)
"Colin Powell, the US secretary of state, left Washington on his Middle East mission last night amid reports that Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat were planning to stage joint terrorist attacks in the region. Senior officials of Saddam's General Intelligence Agency (GIA) are reported to have held talks with Mr Arafat's Palestinian Authority to identify potential targets, according to Western intelligence experts. They have been passed details of a meeting in Baghdad at the end of last month when an Arafat aide is said to have provided a list of strategic sites in Israel and Saudi Arabia that might be attacked in the event of American air strikes on Baghdad."

"Official Palestine News Agency threatens USA with "rage" of world, warns that USA can't prevent repeat 11th of September" (IMRA, 2002/04/07)
From an editorial published by Palestine News Agency: "Despite everything, there is an essential question: who is going to pay? And from which account? ... We have said that the Arabs have means that can be used to make a remarkable impact, if used properly... ... The Islamic and the Arab countries should abandon an issue, they are not responsible for, we mean the attack against the World Trade Center in New York and in the Pentagon in Washington, two monuments considered symbols of the USA power. Nor the current Administration neither the coming ones can impose their will and desires on the rest of the earth nations, it was tried before, not only proving its failure but bringing disasters back like a boomerang. ... By this stupid action, Israel has implicated the USA placing it in the midst of not only the Palestinian rage, but also the entire Arab nations' rage, and the rest of the world's rage." (See also: "The USA intellectual and mental terror" (WAFA, 2002/04/07))

"Anti-Israeli protests spread" (BBC News, 2002/04/07)
"Protests have been held across the world demanding the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the West Bank and pledging support to the Palestinian people. ... In Morocco, an estimated one million people gathered in the capital Rabat in an officially-sanctioned demonstration on Sunday. ... The largest protests in Europe took place in Rome on Saturday where about 20,000 protesters marched through the centre of the city before swelling their ranks to around 50,000 in the Piazza del Popolo, the Associated Press news agency reported. ... In Paris, more than 20,000 people marched to the Place de la Bastille in a protest organised by anti-racism, communist and pro-Palestinians support groups. ... And in the US, thousands marched demanding that Washington intervene in the Middle East crisis, with protesters walking across the Brooklyn Bridge carrying placards equating Mr Sharon with Hitler."

"Militants Envision Wave of Success" (Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post, 2002/04/07)
"'It is clear they are failing and losing,' said Abdullah Shami, a cleric who is political leader of Islamic Jihad, a militant group that has launched numerous suicide bombings in the past and has a stronghold here. He added of the Israelis: "They are soft and not used to this. They are afraid to leave their houses, to ride the bus or go to school. We have thoroughly destroyed the security of the Jews and made them scared to live their wealthy lives." Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, the largest of the militant Islamic movements in Gaza, noted that Palestinians celebrate their casualties as martyrs while the Jews cry "every time a drop of their blood is spilled." ... It was clear from their comments that the militants believe the suicide attacks are a strategy for which Israel has no answer. ... Ismail Abu Shanab, a leader of Hamas's political wing and an engineering professor at the Islamic University in Gaza, said that "all the Palestinians agree that this is a very effective way of sending the Israelis a message." "It's all psychological," he said. 'Even though we are under their control, we are winning big victories. All Israelis are afraid to go to public places. Their economy is suffering big damages, and tourists are afraid to go there. It has been more successful than anyone could have imagined.'"

"The new liberal imperialism" (Robert Cooper, The Observer, 2002/04/07)
Senior British diplomat Robert Cooper has "helped to shape British Prime Minister Tony Blair's calls for a new internationalism and a new doctrine of humanitarian intervention which would place limits on state sovereignty.": "The main characteristics of the postmodern world are as follows:
· The breaking down of the distinction between domestic and foreign affairs.
· Mutual interference in (traditional) domestic affairs and mutual surveillance.
· The rejection of force for resolving disputes and the consequent codification of self-enforced rules of behaviour.
· The growing irrelevance of borders: this has come about both through the changing role of the state, but also through missiles, motor cars and satellites.
· Security is based on transparency, mutual openness, interdependence and mutual vulnerability. ...
The challenge posed by the pre-modern world is a new one. The pre-modern world is a world of failed states. Here the state no longer fulfils Weber's criterion of having the monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Either it has lost the legitimacy or it has lost the monopoly of the use of force; often the two go together. Examples of total collapse are relatively rare, but the number of countries at risk grows all the time. ... How should we deal with the pre-modern chaos? To become involved in a zone of chaos is risky; if the intervention is prolonged it may become unsustainable in public opinion; if the intervention is unsuccessful it may be damaging to the government that ordered it. But the risks of letting countries rot, as the West did Afghanistan, may be even greater. ... What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and cosmopolitan values. We can already discern its outline: an imperialism which, like all imperialism, aims to bring order and organisation but which rests today on the voluntary principle."

"Sacred Cruelties" (Maureen Dowd, The New York Times, 2002/04/07)
"Not long after Sept. 11, somebody scribbled these chillingly profound words on a wall in Washington: "Dear God, save us from the people who believe in you." ... Abraham was the patriarch of three great monotheisms: Islam, Christianity and Judaism. But now all of Abraham's faiths and Abraham's children are roiling. The most grotesque example is the politicization of religion in Islam. ... Islam seems to be appropriated and eaten away by parasites: the terrorists, who cite Islamic teachings that violence is obligatory in the defense of the faith, and the Muslim clerics who preach a radical purity, an intolerant, messianic vision of a jihad to destroy the infidels. ... And some Jews are also displaying the deranging effects of extreme religion. The Israeli settlers' movement and many people on the Israeli right are prepared to go to terrible lengths in the name of God's promise of the land to the chosen people. They, too, treat scripture as a warrant for political aggression and outright militancy. ... It is not news that religion has its ugly, tribalist and bellicose sides. What is news is that those sides are having a field day. Just when we wish to flee to religion for sanctuary, we find ourselves fleeing from religion for sanctuary."

"Israel accelerates military offensive" (BBC News, 2002/04/07)
"Israel appears to have intensified its military offensive in the West Bank after US President Bush demanded that it withdraw from Palestinian areas "without delay". ... The Israeli army's chief spokesman, Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, said no new orders had been received and the operation was "going ahead as planned". ... It is not known how many people have been killed in the Israeli offensive, but correspondents say Israeli gunships have been firing into crowded refugee camps where there are no means of escape. There are reports of heavy and continuous shelling of the town of Nablus in the northern West Bank, where the historic old city is surrounded by Israeli troops and gunman are dug in in the dense maze of streets and alleyways."

"Arab Ministers Urge Action Against Israel" (Howard Schneider, The Washington Post, 2002/04/07)
"Arab foreign ministers called today for international economic sanctions to be imposed on Israel unless it follows U.N. resolutions to withdraw from Palestinian areas. They also said Palestinians were entitled to use violence in their efforts to end Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. ... The Arab foreign ministers said that what Bush considers terrorism is justified resistance against an occupying army. "The continuation of the Israeli occupation necessitates the continuation of the resistance as a legitimate, expected and necessary reaction," the ministers' statement said."

Note: I've noticed that a lot of searches are for two of the most popular hoaxes after September 11 - that the coverage of Palestinians celebrating after the attacks was faked and that no Boeing was involved in the attack on Pentagon. Therefore, I've collected articles on these matters in two Themes:
"'Hunt the Boeing' Answers" - Articles on the notion that no Boeing was involved in the Pentagon attack on September 11.
"Rejoicing in the streets of Jenin" - Articles on the celebrations by Palestinians after the September 11 attacks and the hoax that the coverage was faked.

Saturday, April 6, 2002

News and commentary:

"Sharon says Israel will end offensive soon" (AP/The Washington Post, 2002/04/06)
"Israeli leader Ariel Sharon spoke with President Bush by phone Saturday and told the American leader that Israel will expedite its offensive in the West Bank. In a brief statement, Sharon's office also said the prime minister told Bush that Israel "is conscious of the American desire to see the operation end quickly." Although Sharon said that Israel would expedite the operation, his statement did not say when the offensive would end."

"President Urges Pullout With No Delay" (David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2002/04/06)
"President Bush, vigorously responding to Israel's expansion of military actions in the West Bank in defiance of his wishes, said today for the first time that Israel must withdraw its forces "without delay." ... Mr. Bush's demand was immediately echoed by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who is visiting the president's ranch outside this town of 700 in the central Texas prairie. ... In their half-hour appearance here, Mr. Bush also said in the bluntest way possible that he sought to oust Saddam Hussein of Iraq from power, saying that in conversations since Mr. Blair arrived last night he explained 'that the policy of my government is the removal of Saddam and that all options are on the table.'" (See also: "Text of Bush - Blair News Conference" (AP/The New York Times, 2002/04/06))

"Fighting Spreads Through West Bank" (Mohammed Daraghme, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/04/06)
"Fighting spread Saturday through the alleys of densely populated West Bank refugee camps, where Palestinian militants reportedly were handing out explosives-packed belts to residents willing to strap them on and challenge Israeli soldiers. Israeli forces continued to surround Balata refugee camp in Nablus, and at a camp in Jenin, another northern West Bank city, residents said Israeli helicopter gunships targeting anything that moved were keeping people inside. Israeli army Capt. Jacob Dallal described "very close combat" in the Jenin area and said bomb traps had been set for Israeli soldiers. At least 15 Palestinians and an Israeli soldier died in violence in the West Bank and Gaza on Saturday."

"Among the Bourgeoisophobes" (David Brooks, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/15 issue)
"In fact, bourgeoisophobia, which has flowered variously and spread to places as diverse as Baghdad, Ramallah, and Beijing, is the major reactionary creed of our age. ... Americans and Israelis, in this view, are the money-mad molochs of the earth, the vulgarizers of morals, corrupters of culture, and proselytizers of idolatrous values. These two nations, it is said, practice conquest capitalism, overrunning poorer nations and exploiting weaker neighbors in their endless desire for more and more. ... Today the battle lines are forming. The dispute over Palestine, which was once a local conflict about land, has been transformed into a great cultural showdown. The vast array of bourgeoisophobes - Yasser Arafat's guerrilla socialists, Hamas's Islamic fundamentalists, Jose Bove's anti-globalist leftists, America's anti-colonial multiculturalists, and the BBC's Oxbridge mediacrats - focus their diverse rages and resentments on this one conflict. ... They have only their nihilistic rage, their envy mixed with snobbery, their snide remarks, their newspaper distortions, their conspiracy theories, their suicide bombs and terror attacks - and above all, a burning sense that the rising, vibrant, and powerful peoples of America and Israel must be humiliated and brought low."

"Evil's Advantage Over Conscience" (Norman Doidge, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/15 issue)
"It would be easy to attribute Arafat's endless second chances simply to a deluded left, since the left favors dealing with Arafat not as a criminal but as an equal. But now, the right and not the left holds power in Israel and the United States. Besides, historically, those who have revived Arafat have not all been leftists or ideological enemies of Israel. Many of them have known that Arafat is a liar and a terrorist. Arafat's psychological magic is most evident when he casts his spell on such men. ... Arafat has discovered, as Shakespeare understood, that the more brazen and relentless one's acts of brutality, the more likely it is that one will be allowed a second chance, and find even powerful men of conscience coming to one's door offering to forget, to forgive, and to give forgiveness a bad name."

"Deluded Bombers" (Ellen Goodman, The Washington Post, 2002/04/06)
"We are witnessing a parade of young people who finally figured out what they want to be when they grow up: dead. And we are witnessing a culture that cheers and glorifies this ghoulish march. ... Nevertheless, any culture that takes pride in having the next generation as a ready supply of cheap weapons has already lost its future. Any leader who cultivates or condones suicide as its war plan has lost all moral standing. What do we say about societies that practice human sacrifice?"

"Israel given new pullout warning" (BBC News, 2002/04/06)
"Mr Powell, who is due to set out on a visit to the region on Sunday, warned Israel that it should not wait until then to instigate a withdrawal. "The president's expectation is that the incursions will stop and the withdrawal process will begin as soon as possible or without delay," he said. ... On Friday, paving the way for Mr Powell's visit, US envoy Anthony Zinni was allowed to meet Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his besieged Ramallah headquarters. ... White House spokesman Ari Fleischer described General Zinni's message as "direct and impatient". ... And President Bush renewed his criticism of the Palestinian leader. "My worry is that Yasser Arafat can't perform. He's been given plenty of opportunities," he said in an interview with British television company ITN. 'He has let his people down, and there are others in the region who can lead.'"

Friday, April 5, 2002

News and commentary:

"Israeli Strike Kills Six Hamas Militants in W. Bank" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/05)
"An Israeli strike killed six Palestinian militants on Friday, including a man Israel said masterminded a suicide bombing that killed 26 people, Palestinian and Israeli sources said. Israeli forces, which have waged a week-long offensive against Palestinian-ruled cities, used helicopter gunships and tanks to attack a house in Toubas village, near the West Bank city of Jenin, Palestinian sources said. Palestinian medics and witnesses said six people were killed, including Qais Idwan, head of the military wing of the Islamic group Hamas in Jenin. ... An Israeli security source said Israel believed Idwan had masterminded last week's suicide bombing in the Israeli city of Netanya at the start of the Jewish Passover holiday."

"Sweet tea and dreams of butchery" (Jan Cienski, National Post, 2002/04/05)
"For Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, a surgeon and a leading member of Hamas, the Islamic terrorist movement, the arithmetic of murder is simple. "Even if one Israeli dies for every 10 Palestinians, then the three million Palestinians can kill 300,000 Israelis," said the neatly bearded surgeon, sipping sweetened tea yesterday in his large Gaza house. ... There can be no peace until every Palestinian displaced by Israel's creation in 1948 is allowed to go home, he said, a demographic wave that would spell doom for the Jewish state. Other Palestinians were even more direct. "The bombers should kill every Israeli," said a Palestinian wearing a straw cowboy hat as he stood in the mud of the Gaza souk, surrounded by tables of fish, shrunken vegetables and cheap Chinese clothes. 'If every Israeli goes back to his own land, only then will we have peace. The final step is to have all of our Palestine.'"

"Kingdom Come" (Forward, 2002/04/05)
"What all these bombers had in common, besides their passion for murdering Jews, was that they all hailed from the West Bank. None of them have come from Gaza. By all accounts, Gaza harbors the angriest and most militant Palestinian population under Israeli rule. But Gaza has one thing the West Bank does not have: a fence. ... Because the West Bank doesn't have a fence, any would-be martyr from Tulkarm or Nablus can strap a bomb around his or her waist, hop a taxi to Netanya and blow himself to Kingdom Come. Chic liberals in Berkeley and Paris examine these facts and conclude that the settlers are responsible for all those Israeli deaths. That is a grotesque perversion. The responsibility for those murders lies with the murderers and those who arm and send them. There were Palestinian terrorists killing Israeli Jews before the settlers set foot in Hebron, and there will likely be terrorists trying to kill Israelis long after the West Bank is handed over to Palestinian sovereignty. But if Israel ever does manage to hand over the West Bank, those terrorists will have to negotiate a fortified border."

"Those Phony "Peace Advocates'" (Ronald Radosh, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/04/05)
"More egregious are the stories in the past few days about those who have been described as "peace advocates," the term being used to refer to the European and American "internationalists," as they call themselves, who showed up in Yasser Arafat’s compound with food, medicine and expressions of support for his campaign against Israel. ... One can easily find out what they are about by going to the group’s own website, www.palsolidarity.org. ... Here they are completely honest about their goal - that of a mouthpiece for the PLO-Hamas-Hezbollah and company’s war against Israel. ... The ridiculous nature of the ISM protesters is most clearly revealed in a photo appearing on their website of one of the protesters - who is holding a sign reading "Ethnic Cleansing in Progress." These internationalists, in other words, are actually accusing the Israeli response to terrorism as being the equivalent of Slobodan Milosevic’s actions in Bosnia! Such a comparison, we might say, is just a slight bit of a stretch. Indeed, what it really shows is the sheer self-delusion of these Western supporters of terrorism, who seek to gain support posing as humanitarian workers and peace advocates."

"Nobel's regrets on Peres award" (BBC News, 2002/04/05)
"Members of the Norwegian committee that awards the annual Nobel Peace Prize have launched an unprecedented verbal assault on Israeli Foreign Minister and Nobel peace laureate Shimon Peres. Mr Peres accepted the peace prize jointly with the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israel's late prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, in 1994. In an interview with a Norwegian newspaper, committee members said they regretted that Mr Peres' prize could not be recalled because, as a member of the Israeli cabinet, he had not acted to prevent Israel's re-occupation of Palestinian territory. One member said Mr Peres had not lived up to the ideals he expressed when he accepted the prize. "What is happening today in Palestine is grotesque and unbelievable," said Hanna Kvanmo." (See also Glenn Reynold's comments on InstaPundit (2002/04/05): "The 1994 Nobel Peace Prize was a mistake, the Nobel Committee says. At last, I thought, they're coming to their senses. But nooo. ... It's not the award to Arafat they regret. It's the award to Peres. ... Words fail me. These guys aren't just idiots. They don't just lack moral judgment. They have negative moral judgment. I believe the traditional term for that characteristic is 'evil.'")

"Why We Blow Ourselves Up" (Eyad Sarraj, TIME, from the 2002/04/08 issue)
A bizarre explanation of suicide bombing, by a "psychiatrist and founder of the Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizens' Rights":
"A few weeks ago, my sister, a professional and a mother of four, was visibly shaken as she watched, on television, Israeli tanks torturing the streets of a refugee camp and soldiers raping its homes. ... Ours is a nation of anger and defiance. The struggle today is how not to become a suicide bomber. ... What propels people into such action is a long history of humiliation and a desire for revenge that every Arab harbors. ... For the extremist militant, there is no difference between Israelis. They are the enemy; they are all the same. ... In the holy book, God promised Muslims who sacrificed themselves for the sake of Islam that they would not die. They would live on in paradise. Muslims, men and women, even secularists, hold to the promise literally. Heaven is then the ultimate reward of the devout who have the courage to take the ultimate test of faith." (See also: "After Peace" (Leon Wieseltier, The New Republic, 2002/04/04): "It is one of the most twisted things that I have ever read. The doctor wishes to show why the collapse of reason is reasonable. ... His explanation is itself a clinical document. Anger is not a great human accomplishment, even when it is a condign response to events. All Muslims do not take the fairy tales of religion literally. Does every Arab harbor a desire for revenge? Then the Israeli right is right and there is no hope.")

"Radical Jewish Left reaches new low in morality - adopts 'traffic accident' standard - murder of 149 termed 'almost nonexistent terror'" (IMRA, 2002/04/05)
"Excerpt from: Civil disobedience for Middle East Peace - an Invitation From: 'rabbilerner'": "Though we at The Tikkun Community oppose the outrageous and disgusting acts of terror against Israelis, we know that the actual level of violence is small compared to the number of Israelis who die each year in automobile accidents. ... And we know that those acts of terror were almost non-existent when the Oslo Accord was being implemented 1993-1995." [IMRA: According to Rabbi Lerner, the murder of 149 Israelis in terror attacks from September 9 through the end of 1995 is "almost non-existent terror"]" (See also: "It's Time To Put Our Bodies On the Line to Stop the Killing in the Middle East" (Rabbi Michael Lerner, Common Dreams, 2002/04/03))

"Banish Arafat Now" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/04/05)
"It was also Israel's Sept. 11, a time when sporadic terrorism reaches a critical mass of malevolence such that war is the only possible response. And as with the American attack on Afghanistan, Israel is going into Palestinian territory to destroy the terrorists and the regime that sponsors them. American critics, beginning with the secretary of state, object to this goal of destroying Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority. As The Washington Post explained in an editorial, we need the continued presence of "the leadership of the Palestinian Authority as well as its principal security services," because they have been "the only available instruments for stopping Palestinian terrorism." Good God. Instruments for stopping terrorism? They are instruments for aiding and abetting, equipping and financing, supporting and glorifying terrorism, which they call "martyrdom operations." The question of capabilities is irrelevant. Of course they have the capability. But they have no intention of exercising it."

"Bush Bends" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/05)
"President Bush bowed to pressure from Europe, the Arab world and most of the U.S. media yesterday by urging Israel to end its siege against Palestinian terrorists. This strikes us as a mistake, maybe even a large one, though it all might be redeemed if this helps Mr. Bush refocus the war on terror back on Iraq. The immediate concern is that the President's renewed pressure on Israel will be perceived as rewarding terror. ... In effect the U.S. once again rode to Mr. Arafat's political rescue. ... Mr. Arafat has never confronted terror, not even when he promised after Oslo, but we are supposed to believe that he will now that world pressure has forced Israel to back down one more time. ... The only terms Mr. Sharon has set for resuming negotiations with Mr. Arafat is an end to the violence - hardly unreasonable. If Mr. Powell now waters even that basic demand down, as European elites and the State bureaucracy will insist, then the U.S. will truly be rewarding terror."

"Bush must face truth about Arab terror against Israel" (Norman Podhoretz, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/05)
"A linguistic child of the concept of moral equivalence, the words "cycle of violence" allow of no distinction between terrorist attacks and retaliation against them. They allow of no distinction between the deliberate murder of civilians and the inadvertent harm done to civilians in a military action. This maneuver is calculated to conceal the crucial fact that Palestinian terrorism is neither a random nor an uncontrollable nor a "senseless" phenomenon. On the contrary: it is a tactic carefully designed to advance a precise objective. And that objective is to wipe the Jewish state physically off the map, just as Israel is erased from the maps of the region printed in the textbooks given to Palestinian and other Arab schoolchildren."

Thursday, April 4, 2002

News and commentary:

"Surely they don't want to kill me again?"
(La Stampa, 2002/04/03)

"Between Rome and Jerusalem" (Francis X. Rocca, The American Prowler, 2002/04/04)
"On Easter Sunday, the Milan newspaper Corriere Della Sera ran a front-page editorial cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, rifle in hand, sitting on a sarcophagus. The lid of the coffin is partially open and the fingers of a hand can be seen emerging from inside, trying to lift it further. In the background stands an angel, complete with wings and halo, looking on in bemusement. The caption reads: "Non resurrexit." ... Surely the cartoonist who cast Sharon in this role intended to portray him as a metaphorical Christ-killer. ... Yesterday the Turin paper La Stampa, another ultra-respectable establishment organ, ran a front-page cartoon showing a tank emblazoned with the Star of David pointing its gun straight at the baby Jesus, who tells the attackers: "Surely they don't want to kill me again?" ... While anti-Semitic imagery is still rare enough in the mainstream Italian press to make it worth remarking on, the conventional wisdom is overwhelmingly and aggressively anti-Israeli. ... In fact, no group is more one-sidedly pro-Arafat than the anti-clerical Italian left, which continues to send representatives (including the Nobel prize-winning writer Dario Fo) to stand by the Palestinian leader's side. Their ultimate motivation, like that of the other European leftists who have flocked to Ramallah recently, is hatred of a global economic system dominated by Israel's ally the United States. To them, the Star of David stands for the Stars and Stripes, and dead Palestinians are more worth mourning because they die at the hands of the superpower's proxy state."

"Bush intervenes in Mid-East crisis" (BBC News, 2002/04/04)
"US President George W Bush has issued a powerful statement calling for action from both Israel and the Palestinians to halt the current conflict. He accused the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat of "betraying the hopes" of his own people by failing to stop suicide attacks by militants. ... At the same time, he demanded that Israel withdraw its troops immediately from Palestinian cities and implement a ceasefire. "America recognises Israel's right to defend itself from terror," he said outside the White House. "Yet to lay the foundations of future peace, I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied". Mr Bush announced that he was sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to the region next week to seek broad international support for his proposals." (See also: "Text: Bush Will Send Powell to Middle East" (The Washington Post, 2002/04/04): "I call on the Palestinian Authority and all governments in the region to do everything in their power to stop terrorist activities, to disrupt terrorist financing, and to stop inciting violence by glorifying terror in state-owned media or telling suicide bombers they are martyrs. They're not martyrs. They're murderers.")

"The peace process at work" (National Review/The Corner, 2002/04/04)
"'We hate you,' said Ahmed Abdel Rahman, a senior Arafat aide who addressed Israelis in an interview with Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television. 'You should take your tanks and your soldiers and your settlers and get out. The air hates you, the land hates you, the trees hate you, there is no purpose in you staying on this land.'"

"Bombers Gloating in Gaza as They See Goal Within Reach: No More Israel" (Joel Brinkley, The New York Times, 2002/04/04)
"The leaders of Hamas, the militant Islamic movement responsible for the most deadly suicide attacks in Israel in the last week, are pleased and satisfied just now. "Our spirit is high, our mood is good," said Ismail Abu Shanab, one of the organization's leaders. If Israel attacks Gaza, as it has areas of the West Bank, he and the other leaders would likely be principal targets. For now, they live and operate here openly. ... Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal from all of the West Bank and Gaza, the dismantling of all Israeli settlements and full right of return for the four million Palestinians who live in other states. After that, the Jews could remain, living "in an Islamic state with Islamic law," Dr. Zahar said. "From our ideological point of view, it is not allowed to recognize that Israel controls one square meter of historic Palestine." ... For them, the crowning achievement so far was the attack on Passover eve. "That was a great success," said Mr. Shenab."

"Israel Says Arafat Signed Pay Slip to 'Terrorists'" (Douglas Frantz, The New York Times, 2002/04/04)
"Israel made public several documents today that it says prove that Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat authorized cash payments as recently as January to members of his Fatah faction accused of terrorist acts against Israeli civilians. The documents were copies of facsimiles bearing what appeared to be Mr. Arafat's signature. They approved payments, ranging from $350 to $600 each, to 15 men identified by Israel as terrorists, including a leader of a Palestinian militant group who was killed by the Israelis with a concealed bomb on Jan. 14. ... Israeli government and military officials said the documents were the most compelling evidence yet of Mr. Arafat's role in the wave of bloody attacks and retaliations that have swept the region in recent months."

"Appeasing Arab hate puts the lie to 'Never Again'" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/04/04)
"All civilized people can agree that killing Jews is wrong. Well, killing six million of them 60 years ago is wrong. Killing a couple of dozen every 48 hours or so, that's a different matter. ... But, even if there are no longer enough European Jews for big-time genocide, one is struck by the similarities between then and now. In 1960, when the Israelis seized Adolf Eichmann, the government-controlled Saudi newspaper ran the story under the headline, "Arrest Of Eichmann, Who Had The Honour Of Killing Six Million Jews." Today, there are six million Jews in Israel, half of them expelled from Arab countries though one never hears anything about "displaced populations" on the Israeli side of the ledger. Then as now, great honour attaches to killing Jews: your face on posters all over town, a revered place in society for your family, 25,000 bucks from Saddam Hussein. Then as now, the old libels - the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Jews drink human blood - are peddled daily in government-approved publications - then in Germany, now in Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia. Then as now, the world's diplomats are determined to see no evil, hear no evil."

"Say goodbye, Yasser Arafat" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/04/06 issue)
"In the end, the Middle East has to be fixed. A few more synagogue burnings in France and Belgium might wake up even the Europeans, though I doubt it. At best, the large unassimilated Muslim populations will paralyse the Continent, at worst destabilise it. As for the Palestinians, they're a wrecked people. It's tragic, and, if you want to argue about who's to blame, we can bat dates around back to the Great War. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t even matter whether you regard, as the Europeans appear to, the Palestinians' descent into depravity as confirmation of their victim status: as Palestinian Authority spokesman Hasan Abdul Rahman said on CNN after a new pile of Jewish corpses, it's the fault of Israel for "turning our children into suicide bombers". Might be true, might be rubbish. Makes no difference. They can’t be allowed to succeed, because otherwise the next generation of suicide bombers will be in Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. That’s why Arafat will never be president of a Palestinian state, and has begun his countdown to oblivion. The unravelling of the Middle East has just begun."

"Uncertain Uncertainty - Postmodernism unravels" (Dave Kopel, National Review, 2002/04/04)
"A litany of the stars of post-modernism is mostly a litany for admirers of some form of totalitarianism. ... The intellectual founder of the 1979 Iranian revolution was Ali Shariat, who studied at the Sorbonne, and liked Fanon and Sartre so much that he translated them into Farsi. Another deconstructionist disciple of Heidegger's, Michel Foucault, swooned that Ayotollah Khomeini was "a kind of mystic saint." Foucault welcomed the Ayatollah's "political spirituality" which would take Iran back to its natural roots, overthrowing the modernizing forces of global capitalism. ... Indeed, postmodernism has been the intellectual Axis of Evil of many mass killers. ... September 11 showed us the face of pure evil. Our nation has seen the enemy plainly, and that vision may be the beginning of the end of postmodernism in America. It is no coincidence that the places in America which have been the most reluctant to call al Qaeda evil have been the places where postmodernism is strongest. The rest of America has, happily, finally mustered the self-confidence to stand up to this form of radical nihilism. ... Postmodernism is on its way to the ash heap of history."

"Burning Synagogues" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/04)
"French political leaders have been busy denouncing Israel for defending itself against suicide bombers, but perhaps they should save some of that Gallic moral temper for the worst outbreak of anti-Semitism in Europe in 60 years. France is home to 600,000 Jews, Europe's largest Jewish community, and in recent days many of them have been under assault. ... But opinion in Europe, especially official opinion, is now so one-sided against Israel that it's bound to have some public consequences. After Israel launched an attack late last week to isolate Yasser Arafat, without harming him, European governments rose in unison with condemnations. ... The speaker of the Greek parliament accused Israel of "genocide" against the Palestinians. ... Political leaders set a moral tone, as the French like to remind George W. Bush, and it's hard to believe all of this doesn't feed into latent anti-Semitic sentiment."

"Death Wish" (The Washington Post, 2002/04/04)
"Islamic nations held a conference in Malaysia this week in an effort to refute the connection between the Muslim world and terrorism. Sadly, they managed to accomplish the opposite. ... In effect, the Islamic conference sanctioned not only terrorism but also suicide as legitimate political instruments. ... ...It is hard to imagine any other grouping of the world's nations that could reach such a self-destructive and morally repugnant conclusion. ... And yet it should not be hard to agree that a person who detonates himself in a pizza parlor or a discotheque filled with children, spraying scrap metal and nails in an effort to kill and maim as many of them as possible, has done something evil that can only discredit and damage whatever cause he hopes to advance. That Muslim governments cannot agree on this is shameful evidence of their own moral and political corruption. ... The Palestinian national cause will never recover - nor should it - until its leadership is willing to break definitively with the bombers. And Muslim states that support such sickening carnage will risk not just stigma but also their own eventual self-destruction." (See also: "Islamic ministers endorse terror declaration" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/04/03))

"Israeli Armor Units Continue Sweeping Through West Bank" (Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/04/04)
"A force of Israeli tanks and armored vehicles rumbled tonight into Nablus, the second largest city in the West Bank, continuing a relentless sweep even as international criticism gathered force and some Israelis themselves began questioning the operation. ... Resistance abroad also swelled today. The European Union declared the fighting "the most dangerous conflict in the world." Pope John Paul II assailed Israel for "humiliating" the Palestinians. Egypt downgraded its relations with Israel."

Wednesday, April 3, 2002

News and commentary:

"Anger on the Arab Street Fails to Move Leadership" (Howard Schneider, The Washington Post, 2002/04/03)
"In the meantime, the images of Israeli troop movements, arrests and gun battles pouring in over several satellite channels, the incursion into Ramallah and Arafat's confinement remain all-consuming throughout the Arab world. In the popular mind here, the incursions are a turning point in the region's history, comparable to the 1967 war in which Israel overran land controlled by Syria, Jordan and Egypt. ... Over the weekend, one of Egypt's main government-controlled television channels overlaid the Star of David with a swastika and said that 'Zionism has opted for the final solution used by Hitlerite Germany to exterminate the Jews.'"

"Ex-smuggler describes Iraqi plot to blow up US warship" (Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/03)
"Iraq planned clandestine attacks against American warships in the Persian Gulf in early 2001, according to an operative of Iranian nationality who says he was given the assignment by ranking members of Saddam Hussein's inner circle. The alleged plan involved loading at least one trade ship with half a ton of explosives, and – sailing under an Iranian flag to disguise Iraq's role – using a crew of suicide bombers to blow up a US ship in the Gulf. The operative, who says he smuggled weapons for Iraq through Iran for Al Qaeda during the late 1990s, says he was told that $16 million had already been set aside for the assignment – the first of "nine new operations" he says the Iraqis wanted him to carry out, which were to include missions in Kuwait." (See also: "Iraqi funds, training fuel Islamic terror group" (Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/02))

"Stop the Dream of an 'Arab Bomb'" (Ranan L. Lurie, Los Angeles Times, 2002/04/03)
"We in the West are aware of Israel's "might" and its "victories," and we forget the insult these two words present to the proud Arab people. That is why the Arab nations hope that Saddam Hussein will create the long-awaited "Arab bomb." Vice President Dick Cheney is still unpacking his luggage from a tour that was supposed to persuade Arab nations to support the United States in an attack on Iraq - the only Arab nation that has a realistic chance of creating what seems to be the only way to bypass Israel's military superiority. So, because the only way the Arab nations can overcome Israel is to nuke it, and the only person who is close to this capacity is Hussein, our effort to get other Arab leaders to end his potential nuclear capacity is similar to training a camel to fly. ... Unfortunately, Hussein's Arab bomb will be their ticket to military equality with or even superiority over Israel. No Arab leader would dare dampen that Arab dream. We must get used to the idea that we are alone in this battle--and like it or not, the earlier we attack Iraq, the less the chance of Israel or the United States being nuked."

"Stupidity Watch" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/04/03)
"Someone called Clark Rieke has written an article arguing in favor of the killing of civilians: "This essay will make four points about the killing of innocent civilians: One, the conventional belief that civilians in a democracy are innocent is false. Two, the rule of war that civilians are not to be targets of military violence is inconsistent. Three, the rule of war that civilians are not to be targets of military violence is counterproductive. Four, this inconsistent rule of war is counterproductive because it is used to demonize the enemy and increase the emotions for war." Incredibly enough, this article, perhaps the only one we've seen that argues forthrightly in favor of terrorism, appears on a Web site called Nonviolence.org." (See also: "War, Reason, & Innocent Civilians" (Clark Rieke, Nonviolence.org, 2002/01/21 (?))

"Islamic ministers endorse terror declaration" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/04/03)
"Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) foreign ministers, who accused Israel of state terrorism earlier in their three-day meeting, rejected any attempt to equate the Palestinian fight for a homeland with terrorism. ... "We reject any attempt to link terrorism to the struggle of the Palestinian people in the exercise of their inalienable right to establish their independent state with Al-Quds Al-Shrif (Jerusalem) as its capital," the declaration said. ... An Arab delegate who helped draft the declaration said early efforts to single out Palestinian militant groups in the text had been knocked back. "There have been some attempts to single out resistance groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad for committing suicide bombers against civilians as acts of terror. But those attempts were quickly rejected," he said."

"French lap up Pentagon crash 'fraud'" (BBC News, 2002/04/03)
"A book which argues that American Airlines flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon on 11 September has become an immediate bestseller in France. Thierry Meyssan's book L'Effroyable Imposture (The Appalling Fraud) alleges the attack on the building, which houses the US defence department, was staged by none other than the American Government. "No plane crashed into the Pentagon," he said in a recent interview on France 2 television. "I believe the government is lying." ... The book is currently the top of Amazon France's bestseller list and has made it to second place in the Livres Hebdo's list. ... News weekly Le Nouvel Observateur denounced the book as revisionism. 'This theory suits everyone - there are no Islamic extremists... everyone is happy. It eliminates reality.'" (See also: "Awake, Voltaire" (Libération, 2002/03/30) and '"Hunt the Boeing' Answers" (Paul Boutin & Patrick Di Justo, Paul Boutin Weblogger, 2002/03/14))

"The Hard Truth" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/04/03)
"A terrible disaster is in the making in the Middle East. What Osama bin Laden failed to achieve on Sept. 11 is now being unleashed by the Israeli-Palestinian war in the West Bank: a clash of civilizations. ... Either leaders of good will get together and acknowledge that Israel can't stay in the territories but can't just pick up and leave, without a U.S.-NATO force helping Palestinians oversee their state, or Osama wins - and the war of civilizations will be coming to a theater near you."

"War and Then a Wall" (George F. Will, The Washington Post, 2002/04/03)
"Israel made the worst diplomatic miscalculation since Munich when it resurrected Arafat's political life by bringing him back to Palestine from Tunisia a decade ago. The culture of death that he has assiduously cultivated has produced a Palestinian population intoxicated with a pogrom mentality, and convinced that the results of 1948, not just 1967, can be reversed. ... Sharon reportedly wants to exile Arafat, the chief fomentor of such fanaticism. If so, why the tentativeness? Sharon should ship Arafat to Europe, where there is much official sympathy for him. Arafat would like today's France, where he could place his phone calls by the light of burning synagogues."

"A democracy fights terror" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/03)
"That should be obvious to Western democracies, particularly after what happened on September 11. Yet, on the diplomatic front, the Palestinians have succeeded in presenting themselves as the victims of "Butcher Sharon". Only yesterday, Javier Solana, the EU's High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, suggested it would be best if both the Israeli prime minister and Mr Arafat stepped down. He thus equated the legitimate defence of a democratic state with the sponsorship of terrorism. Western leaders should not be neutral when Israel is under assault from suicide bombers and snipers. It is one thing to criticise Mr Sharon for his lack of strategy, quite another to suggest that his pursuit of would-be assassins is unjustified." (See also: "Solana: Sharon and Arafat both should go" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/02): "EU foreign minister Javier Solana said it wouldn't be a bad idea for both Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to step down. 'Neither is a saint and sometimes I'm inclined to think that perhaps a new generation of persons in Israel and Palestine could in the 21st century come (up) with a solution to the conflict,' he said. 'These two people have lived this conflict for a very long time - too long, if you ask me. It wouldn't be bad if they step down in favor of other people.'")

"Promises but Never Peace" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/04/03)
"This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism. There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals. There was never any real government. No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets. There were only security forces - many, many of these - and villas by the sea for Arafat's cronies, and millions of dollars in foreign aid that seemed to always turn up missing, and prisons and propaganda. And in the middle of it all: "President" Arafat sitting in a room - surrounded by waiting sycophants and toadies and respectful ladies and gentlemen of the press - and complaining."

"The Cancer of Suicide Bombing" (The New York Times, 2002/04/03)
"To allow young people to imagine that they are building their society's future on their own brutal deaths while murdering innocent civilians on the other side is an abdication of responsibility in the extreme. ... Meanwhile, Friday sermons at mosques in Gaza have called on worshipers to arm themselves or their children with explosive belts to pursue holy war against the Jews, drawing no open condemnation from the Palestinian Authority. ... Only the most bankrupt leadership - spiritually, intellectually and politically - allows this macabre, self-delusional act of ruin to pass without anguished condemnation."

"Israelis Move Into West Bank Towns; Arafat Rejects Exile Offer" (AP/The New York Times, 2002/04/03)
"Scores of Palestinian gunmen were hiding inside one of Christianity's holiest shrines - Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity - on Wednesday, seeking refuge from Israeli troops that invaded the city as part of an offensive aimed at crushing Palestinian militias in the West Bank. Israeli forces expanded their campaign early Wednesday, taking over the Palestinian towns of Jenin and Salfit, and surrounding the Jenin refugee camp, a militant stronghold. ... At the Church of the Nativity - built over the traditional birthplace of Jesus - priests were forced to give refuge to Palestinian police and militiamen, who, according to witnesses, shot their way in on Tuesday after running battles with Israeli troops firing from helicopter gunships and from tank-mounted machine guns."

Tuesday, April 2, 2002

News and commentary:

"Yasser Arafat's "Mukata" compound in Ramallah: A center for controlling and supporting terrorism" (IMRA, 2002/04/02)
"Arafat's compound in Ramallah houses the office of Fuad Shoubaki, the accounting administration of the Palestinian General Security Service. Shoubaki is the chief procurement and finance officer of the Palestinian Authority and was one of the key players involved in the "Karine A" arms smuggling affair. ... Inside Tiraawi and Shoubaki's office building, IDF forces found a large amount of weapons, including RPG launchers, which the PA is forbidden to possess according to its agreements with Israel. IDF forces also found counterfeit money as well as documents belonging to Fuad Shoubaki. ... Evidence found by IDF forces in the course of the present operation in Ramallah established a clear linkage between Shoubaki and the Al-Aksa Brigades. ... One document captured in Ramallah, for example, is a request from Al-Aksa officials, dated September 16th, asking Shoubaki for money to prepare bombs - "the costs of making one explosive charge is at least 700NIS. Each week, we require 5 to 9 charges for cells operating in the various regions". A handwritten document found in the same office, translates this request to monetary terms using a simple method of calculation: an average of 7 bombs a week = 5000NIS a week or 20,000NIS per month." (See also: "Yasser Arafat's "Mukata" compound in Ramallah: A center for controlling and supporting terrorism" (IDF, 2002/04/02) and "Israel: Documents link Al Aqsa to Palestinian finance official" (CNN.com, 2002/04/02), with facsimiles (here and here) as well as a "Translation of documents from Palestinian Authority office": "The documents captured in Ramallah showed the brigades were "an established organization, which holds official correspondence with Fouad al-Shoubaki's office in order for it to finance its planned operations," the IDF said. ... Hassan Abdel Rahman, the Palestinian representative to the United States, dismissed the documents as a forgery. "This is a fraud by Israeli intelligence," Rahman told CNN. 'There is an Israeli department that specializes in putting out lies.'" )

"Wahhabis in the Old Dominion - What the federal raids in Northern Virginia uncovered" (Stephen Schwartz, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/08 issue)
"Federal law enforcement has kicked over quite an anthill in Northern Virginia. A U.S. Treasury task force, Operation Green Quest, has been investigating the funding of Islamic terror. Raids on March 20 struck an extraordinary array of financial, charitable, and ostensibly religious entities identified with Muslim and Arab concerns in this country, most of them headquartered in Northern Virginia. ...
Operation Green Quest has drawn attention to a previously overlooked aspect of support for extremism in this country: The principal threat comes not from the thousands of working-class Arab immigrants in places like New Jersey and Michigan who contribute modest sums to the so-called Islamic charities, but from the Arab elite. The Saudis stand behind all of it. The kingdom pledged $400 million last year for the support of "martyrs' families," according to the Saudi Embassy website. At $5,300 per "martyr," that works out to about 75,000 martyrs, suggesting the Saudi princes anticipate a lot more suicide bombings than Israel has yet suffered."

"Agoraphobia" (Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic, 2002/04/02)
"And last week there was the seder massacre, which merged mass murder with myth. "in every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us," read one newspaper headline about the massacre, borrowing the Hagaddah's mythic rendition of Jewish history. Even those of us who despise the far right's comparison of Israel's predicament to the Holocaust recognized this moment: The Nazis, after all, selected seder night to begin the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto. Pragmatic Israelis, who usually avoid the grandiose language of good versus evil, have been forced by the seder massacre to concede that our conflict with the Palestinians isn't just a local squabble between competing nationalisms, but part of a global war against extremist Islamism - the latest totalitarian movement, after Nazism and Soviet communism - to "rise up against us" and target the Jews as its frontline enemy in a war for global domination."

"Iraqi funds, training fuel Islamic terror group" (Scott Peterson, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/02)
"Qassem Hussein Mohamed, a big-boned, mustachioed Saddam lookalike who says he worked for Baghdad's Mukhabarat intelligence for two decades, says that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has clandestinely supported Ansar al-Islam for several years. "[Ansar] and Al Qaeda groups were trained by graduates of the Mukhabarat's School 999 – military intelligence," says Mr. Mohamed, who agreed to be interviewed separately in the Sulaymaniyah interrogation room. ... 'My information is that the Iraqi government was directly supporting [Al Qaeda] with weapons and explosives,' he says. '[Ansar] was part of Al Qaeda, and given support with training and money.'"

"A Muslim plea for introspection" (Irshad Manji, Jewish World Review, 2002/04/02)
"But instead of acknowledging that there's a serious problem with the way our religion is practiced, even in cosmopolitan Canada, we romanticize Islam. ... And there's much to change. Witness our profound anti-Semitism. ... I can't count the number of times I've been warned by relatives in the U.S. and Canada to serve Islam by leaving my work in the media, which - I should realize - is owned and thus manipulated by Jews. Earlier this year, employed at a channel owned by a nice white Anglo-Saxon family, I produced a special about gay and lesbian Muslims around the world. The most common complaint of Toronto-area Muslims who caught the show? That the homosexual "pigs" and "dogs" whom I featured must have been Jews off-camera. Damn those Zionist plants! ... This is a watershed moment for North America's Muslims. Will we remain spiritually infantile, shackled by cultural expectations to clam up and conform, or will we mature into citizens, defending the very pluralism of interpretations and values that makes it possible for us to be here in the first place?"

"The Media's Giant Error - It's tiny Israel that faces a pitiless Goliath" (Thomas J. Bray, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/02)
"The American media's story line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is clear. As "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl put it to Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Sunday evening, it's "David vs. Goliath" - Israel being the Goliath, of course, and the Palestinians the underdogs, up against a pitiless giant. ... And then there is the simple fact that today's contest pits not only Jews against Palestinians, but fewer than five million Israelis against several hundred million Arabs. Who is the Goliath here? ... Repeatedly, Ms. Stahl asked Mr. Sharon why he "hated" Mr. Arafat so intensely. And when the prime minister, elected only a year ago in the wake of the Palestinian rejection of the best peace offer since 1947, averred that he didn't hate Mr. Arafat but felt strongly about the slaughter of innocents in Israel, she demanded to know if he felt nothing for the killing of Palestinian civilians as well. It was, in other words, a breathtaking display of the moral equivalence that so deeply infects the media."

"Our latest traitor must live with his vile choice" (Andrea Peyser, New York Post, 2002/04/02)
"I was on the air with Bob Grant on WOR, 710 AM, yesterday. All of a sudden, the electronic gods and a mischievous producer conjured up the man I'd referred to in my column as the "Jewish Taliban." Adam Shapiro. The kid from Brooklyn who spent Saturday night holed up in Yasser Arafat's compound as Israeli troops attacked, then ate breakfast with the terror-monger in the morning. ... I confronted Shapiro with his own words: Israeli President Ariel Sharon's government "does not apologize for raping the [Palestinian] cities and for going in and carrying out terrorist action, going house to house, much like the Nazis did in World War II." Well? "I have seen them go house to house, in camps, here in Ramallah," he said, before slipping in the "fact" that Israelis carried out "summary executions." Like Nazis. Whoa. Executions? "A British observer working with CNN saw . . ." Have you ever seen an Israeli execute an individual? "I have seen the dead bodies," he tried."

"Spare us from any more Middle East peace plans" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2002/04/02)
"The lesson of Czechoslovakia was a simple one: evil must not prosper by violence if yet greater violence is to be averted. ... Now history asks us again, like a Sibyl come for payment, what we have learnt. Painfully little it seems. For in Israel evil rolls the dice, and the West hands over the chips. ... Any "diplomatic settlement" wrung out of Israel as a consequence of the current terror campaign will only guarantee further terror, for it will have delivered a political yield for an investment in violence, secured a better forward base for the terrorists’ stated goal of exterminating Israel, and indicated to tyrants from Baghdad to Damascus that the West was unwilling to hold the line. Worse, it would advertise to the world what al-Qaeda hoped to establish on September 11: it would show that suicide bombing, if prosecuted for long enough, will work. Yesterday Haifa, tomorrow who knows?"

"Cleric Lauds Bombings by Women" (Reuters/The Washington Post, 2002/04/02)
"One of Lebanon's most prominent Shiite Muslim cleric has given his blessing to female suicide bombers like one who struck in Jerusalem on Friday, calling them authors of a "new, glorious history for Arab and Muslim women." ... In Friday's attack in Jerusalem, an 18-year-old Palestinian woman killed herself and two other people in a supermarket. She was the second female Palestinian suicide bomber in the 18-month-old uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

"Israelis Broaden West Bank Raids as Arabs Protest" (John Kifner & James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/02)
"Early this morning, the Israeli Army attacked the headquarters of Jibril Rajoub, the powerful Palestinian security chief in the West Bank, who had been a crucial ally of the United States after the 1993 Oslo peace talks, and jailed scores of Islamic militants. The building was set on fire. ... The compound had been surrounded by tanks for several days, and the Israeli Army had been putting out word that about 50 wanted men were inside. There were said to be about 400 people in the compound, although Mr. Rajoub himself was not there. ... As passions and bloodshed mounted, so did protests against Israel - and America, seen as its backer - with tens of thousands massing in Cairo and clashing with the police, and with similar scenes at Jordan University in Jordan, which is usually tightly ordered. ... Israeli military commanders vowed that in their campaign, called "Operation Protective Wall," all the West Bank cities would be "taken care of," Israeli newspapers reported this morning."

Added one new section and 14 new links in Links:
The Middle East Conflict. Background, news coverage, resolutions, peace plans and more.

Monday, April 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"Rumors of War - The damage to the Pentagon on September 11 was caused by something other than a hijacked Boeing 757's being crashed into its side" (Urban Legends Reference Pages, 2002/04/01)
A debunking of the myth that no Boeing was involved in the Pentagon attack on September 11: "The notion that the Pentagon was not damaged by terrorists who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) and crashed it into the military office complex, but that the whole affair was staged by the U.S. government, has been promulgated by French author Thierry Meyssan in his book, The Frightening Fraud. Meyssan offers no real explanation for what did cause the extensive damage to the Pentagon, asserting only that Flight 77 did not exist, no plane crashed into the Pentagon, and that "the American government is lying." Unfortunately, the appeal of conspiracy theories has resulted in widespread dissemination of Meyssan's "theory" in France and the USA, particularly in web sites that mirror his work." (See also: "Awake, Voltaire" (Libération, 2002/03/30) and '"Hunt the Boeing' Answers" (Paul Boutin & Patrick Di Justo, Paul Boutin Weblogger, 2002/03/14))

"Rumsfeld Accuses Syria, Iran and Iraq of Backing Terrorism" (David Stout, The New York Times, 2002/04/01)
"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld accused three Middle Eastern countries today of allowing terrorism to flourish, and he implicitly backed Israel's military operations in the West Bank. Mr. Rumsfeld singled out Syria, Iran and Iraq. "Murderers are not martyrs," he said at an afternoon news briefing. 'Targeting civilians is immoral, whatever the excuse. Terrorists have declared war on civilization, and states like Iran, Iraq and Syria are inspiring and financing a culture of political murder and suicide bombing.'"

"President Discusses Middle East with Reporters" (The White House, 2002/02/01)
"Under your doctrine, a terrorist or someone who aids a terrorist is the equivalent of a terrorist. So what's keeping Chairman Arafat - what's keeping you from labeling Chairman Arafat a terrorist?
The President: Chairman Arafat has agreed to a peace process. He's agreed to the Tenet plan. He's agreed to the Mitchell plan. He has negotiated with parties as to how to achieve peace. And, of course, our hope is that he accepts the Tenet plan."

"Source: Senior al Qaeda leader in U.S. custody" (CNN.com, 2002/04/01)
"The Pakistani government has turned the most senior al Qaeda member captured since September 11 over to the United States, a high-level U.S. government source said. The Pakistani Foreign Ministry said it had not determined if the man is Abu Zubaydah, a top al Qaeda leader, but the U.S. official said the suspect is, and other American and Pakistani sources said they were all but certain. ... Zubaydah is considered the operational coordinator of the al Qaeda terrorist network. For years, he has been in charge of recruiting, training and travel for al Qaeda and is seen as one of Osama bin Laden's key lieutenants."

"French, Belgian synagogues burned" (CNN.com, 2002/04/01)
"A fire destroyed a synagogue in southern France during a weekend that saw a rash of attacks targeting Jews in France and Belgium, police say. No injuries were reported at the 20-year-old Marseille synagogue, which also had been the target of a gasoline bomb last October. ... Meanwhile in Belgium, unknown attackers hurled firebombs at a synagogue in Brussels, damaging its interior. ... Late Saturday, a gunman opened fire on a kosher butcher's shop near Toulouse. The owner was in the shop at the time but was unharmed. ... In the Rhone region town of Villeurbanne, a Jewish couple in their 20s were injured in an attack Saturday, according to Le Journal du Dimanche. The woman, who is pregnant, was reportedly hospitalised overnight."

"Israel tightens grip on West Bank" (BBC News, 2002/04/01)
"The city of Ramallah, under siege for four days, is now a closed military zone, with troops ensuring Mr Arafat's headquarters are off-limits to journalists. ... Soldiers have been sweeping through Ramallah to search for suspected militants and have so far detained 700 people, an Israeli army spokesman said. ... As Israel tightens its grip on Palestinian areas, those accused of collaborating are in increasing danger. Masked Palestinian gunmen have shot dead 11 suspected collaborators to prevent their escape as the Israeli army rolls in."

"A Talk With Sharon" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2002/04/01)
An interview with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: "Purpose of Israel's military action after the Passover massacre? 'The goal of our operation is to uproot terrorist activity throughout the territories. We have no intention to stay, only to stop these terrible things. In the past month, we have 115 Israelis killed, 1,656 injured; in the past year, 401 killed, 3,538 injured. We are creating a buffer zone, of some depth, along what used to be the green line. We are acting in this buffer zone already. In the past two weeks, we managed to stop, arrest or get rid of 25 suicide bombers or shooters on their way to kill our people.'"

"Sharon Says Israel in War With Arafat" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/01)
"Marwan Barghouti, the West Bank leader of Yasir Arafat's Fatah faction, said the recent attacks demonstrated that, 'If your tanks are able to impose siege on President Yasir Arafat, our heroes succeeded in storming the Israeli cities. ... Our heroes will penetrate your streets, your cities. You will not enjoy security and peace unless our people enjoy peace and freedom. ... This aggression is by an American decision, and American weapons. America now is the one providing cover for terrorism and supporting terrorism.'"

"A Season of Cynicism" (David Brooks, The Weekly Standard, 2002/04/01)
"The basic problem here is that U.S. policy is still based on the Oslo mindset. It is still based on the land for peace formula - that if the Israelis just give up enough territory then the Arabs will declare peace. That formula seemed realistic a few years ago. It's why Israel gave the Palestinian Authority so much land, allowed the PLO terrorists back into Palestine, supplied them with rifles and other weapons, and finally at Camp David offered them 97 percent of the West Bank and parts of Jerusalem. ... Most Israelis now know deep in their bones that they were suckered during Oslo - they were tricked into supplying the guns that would be used to kill them. This is not about land for peace. It is a war against modernity and the democratic capitalism of the West. Israel and the Jews are just the forward projection of this global force."

"The Gods of War" (Paul Johnson, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/01)
"That the murder of 22 Jews by a suicide bomber last week took place on one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar was certainly part of the terrorist calculation. So was the Yom Kippur War launched without warning by Egypt. ... We are right to be shocked. It shows we have not yet become totally hardened to the brutal logic of terror. But we would be foolish not to assume it will happen again, and again. One man's Truce of God is another man's opportunity for devilment."

"Friends like these" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/01)
"Yasser Arafat may be holed up in dimly lit quarters, but it's not as if he lacks for photo-op flash. Last month we watched as a claque of literary and Hollywood heavies - Nobelist Jose Saramago and mega-director Oliver Stone among them - tramped through Arafat's offices, lending moral and emotional support. Now the Palestinian leader has been joined by French antiglobalization leader Jose Bove, several members of the European Parliament, and about 600 Italian and French "peace activists," who have volunteered their services as human shields. Arafat, an expert in putting innocent people in harm's way, has been happy to oblige. Meanwhile, here in Israel, we have.... Not Steven Spielberg. Not Barbra Streisand. Not Philip Roth. Not Daniel Libeskind. Not the March of the Living. We do have Karrin Wheeler, an American Jew who's here 'to tell the Israeli government... that the source of terror and violence is the Israeli government and racism.'"

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

Copyright © Watch 2001-2006. Copyrights of quoted materials belong to their respective owners.

"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

› AOTW Archive



From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

Weekly archive

2006/12/04 - 2006/12/10
2006/11/27 - 2006/12/03
2006/11/20 - 2006/11/26
2006/11/13 - 2006/11/19
2006/11/06 - 2006/11/12
2006/10/30 - 2006/11/05

› From 2001/09/11 -



Monthly index

December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006

› From September 2001 -



Author index

› Ajami, Fouad - Johnson, Paul
› Kagan, Robert - Ye'or, Bat



Support Watch

Please feel free to donate if you enjoy the daily content and links Watch provides:

Contact Watch

Email:
watch-at-windsofchange.net