Archived news and commentary: April 8 - 14, 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 14, 2002

News and commentary:

"Powell Calls Talks With Arafat 'Useful and Constructive'" (Barry Schweid, AP/The Washington Post, 2002/04/14)
"Secretary of State Colin Powell, meeting with Palestinian Yasser Arafat under high security in his rocket-scarred headquarters where the Palestinian leader is under Israeli confinement, called his meeting "useful and constructive." Palestinian negotiators said Arafat would carry through with a pledge curb violence against Israelis only after the Israeli military ends the 17-day-old incursion in Palestinian cities and villages."

"Official Palestine News Agency: Israel worse than Nazis, Arafat could control situation if wanted to" (IMRA, 2002/04/14)
Note the odd definition of gunmen and terrorists "determent [sic] to struggle at all costs for their freedom" as "civilians": "One day the Jews will judge Sharon, not only for his crimes, but also because he has subjected them to another wave of international hatred, this is the first time since WWII when Europe awakens from its feeling of guilt towards the Jews, because the victims of the Nazis have impersonalized [sic] their executioner and exceeded their executioner in practicing racism and war crimes. ... After all this is not a war at all, it is merely a wide military operation, against civilians that possess some rifles at the most and much rocks, civilians that are determent [sic] to struggle at all costs for their freedom, some aspects of the struggle methods consist of violence, and some of terror, but only to match and respond to the state organized terror."

"Captured Documents from Arafat's Compound: Inciting Israeli Arabs to join the Intifada, Arafat unwilling to recognize Israel's right to exist" (IMRA, 2002/04/14)
"Among the documents captured by the IDF during Operation Defensive Wall is a statement of policy sent to Arab notables in Israel through the "Liaison Committee" with Israeli Arabs, which operates from Arafat's bureau.": "The ties have interlaced, that connect the sons of Jerusalem and the West Bank with those of the Gaza Strip and those of the cities occupied since 1948 [i.e. the Israeli Arab citizens], who have always been and forever will be the natural depth and fortified wall of our Palestinian people and its just cause. The [Palestinian] people has indeed started its Intifada in order to pave, with its pure and stainless blood, the pavements and alleys and squares of the holiest of holy places, the capital of the independent Palestinian state. ... Yes, we will draw up with blood the map of the one homeland ["al watan al wahad"] and the one people ["al shaab al wahad"]."

"Eye on the Media: Depending on your 'point of view'" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/14)
"Moral clarity is a term that doesn't get much traction these days, least of all among journalists, who prefer "objectivity" and "balance." Yet good journalism is more than about separating fact from opinion and being fair. Good journalism is about fine analysis and making distinctions, and this applies as much to moral distinctions as to any others. Because too many reporters today refuse to make moral distinctions, we are left with a journalism whose narrative and analytical failings have become ever more glaring."

"This war tells us more about Europe than the Middle East" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/14)
"Meanwhile, what have we learned from this last extraordinary month? Not much about the Middle East, but quite a lot about Europe. What happens when Palestinian civilians strap on plastic explosives and head for Israeli pizza parlours? Europe says Israeli checkpoints for Palestinians are "humiliating". Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances permit themselves to be used as transportation for bombs and explosives - and Europe attacks Israel for refusing them free movement. Documents are found authorising Palestinian Authority funding for a suicide bombing on a young girl's bar mitzvah, signed by Arafat himself - and members of the Nobel committee publicly call for taking back the 1994 Peace Prize, from Shimon Peres. Synagogues are firebombed in France, Belgium and Finland - and the EU deplores the wanton destruction of property, in Ramallah."

Saturday, April 13, 2002

News and commentary:

"Oxford poet 'wants US Jews shot'" (Neil Tweedie, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/13)
"The Board of Deputies of British Jews is considering making a complaint to the police over a newspaper interview with the poet Tom Paulin in which he is reported as saying that American-born settlers in Israel should be shot dead. Paulin, who appears regularly on the panel of the BBC2 arts programme Newsnight Review (formerly Late Review), allegedly made the comment in an interview with the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. The interviewer wrote that Paulin, a consistent critic of Israeli conduct towards the Palestinians, clearly abhorred "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers. Paulin, a lecturer at Hertford College, Oxford, was then quoted as saying: "They should be shot dead. "I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them." Earlier in the interview, he was quoted as saying: "I never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all." ... He has locked horns with the leaders of Britain's Jewish community before. Last year he published a poem, Killed in Crossfire, in which he likened the Israeli army to a 'Zionist SS'." (See also: "'That weasel word'" (Omayma Abdel-Latif, Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 4 -10 April 2002 issue), for the interview.)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)
"I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swastika, incite people to hate the Jews. ... I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries. ... I find it shameful and see in all this the rise of a new fascism, a new nazism. A fascism, a nazism, that much more grim and revolting because it is conducted and nourished by those who hypocritically pose as do-gooders, progressives, communists, pacifists, Catholics or rather Christians, and who have the gall to label a warmonger anyone like me who screams the truth." (UPDATE: The article can also be found here.)

"Live and let die" (Spengler, Asia Times, 2002/04/13)
"Spokesmen for the Palestinian Authority claim that Israel drove the suicide bombers to undertake acts of desperation. It is quite unfair to blame the Israelis, whatever one thinks of them. Blaming Islam is a cheap way to deflect the dissonance; supposedly the bombers die for a heavenly reward. Yet many other religions offered a heavenly reward long before the birth of Mohammed without encouraging suicide warriors. The only large-scale deployment of suicide warriors in the past century was, of course, the kamikaze of World War II.
On the contrary, political suicide is commonplace, indeed endemic, among populations who fail to adapt to changing circumstances. The popularity of suicide bombing among young Palestinians has much in common with other instances of large-scale suicide in recent years. ...
The Palestinian Arabs fight to the death while the Guarani of the Amazon politely hang themselves. Europe, whose fertility rate is barely half of replacement, is committing suicide as well - perhaps one should call it suicide by vacation. In 200 years German, French and Italian will be spoken only in hell."

"Powell to Meet With Arafat Sunday in Ramallah" (Barry Schweid,
AP/The Washington Post, 2002/04/13)
"Struggling to salvage his peace mission, Secretary of State Colin Powell will press Yasser Arafat when they meet Sunday to take "effective action" to end Palestinian attacks against Israel. Powell also is calling for restraint by Israeli forces on the West Bank. Acting on the Palestinian leader's denunciation of terror in a statement the White House demanded, Powell rescheduled Saturday's postponed meeting with Arafat and other senior Palestinians in Ramallah."

"Arafat Condemns Jerusalem Suicide Bombing" (Reuters.com, 2002/04/13)
"Palestinian President Yasser Arafat issued a statement on Saturday condemning a suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed six people. ... We strongly condemn the violent operations directed at Israeli civilians, especially the latest operation in Jerusalem," Arafat said in a statement carried in Arabic by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA. He also condemned 'the massacres and slaughters committed by the Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian civilians and refugees in the city of Nablus, the Jenin camp and against the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.'"

"The Bush Doctrine, R.I.P." (Frank Rich, The New York Times, 2002/04/13)
"As a statement of principle set forth by an American chief executive, the now defunct Bush Doctrine may have had a shelf life even shorter than Kenny Boy's Enron code of ethics. As a statement of presidential intent, it may land in the history books alongside such magisterial moments as Lyndon Johnson's 1964 pledge not to send American boys to Vietnam and Richard Nixon's 1968 promise to "bring us together." ... It was in September that the president told Congress that "from this day forward any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. ... As Tina Fey explained with only faint comic exaggeration on "Saturday Night Live" last weekend, the U.S. also does business of state with nations that both "fund all the terrorism in the world" (Saudi Arabia, where the royal family on Thursday joined in a telethon supporting Palestinian "martyrs") and are "100 percent with the terrorists except for one little guy in charge" (Pakistan)."

"Saudi telethon raises SR210m for Palestinians" (Abdul Wahab Bashir, Arab News, 2002/04/13)
"Viewers from inside Saudi Arabia and abroad strongly responded to last night’s national telethon for the Palestinian people giving millions of dollars in donations. The donations include gold, cars and even slingshots sent by Saudi children to help their Palestinian brethren fight Israeli occupation. By the time this paper went to press, an hour before the early morning deadline for the end of the telethon, the amount had reached SR210 million ($56 million). ... Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Fahd, who donated SR10 million, ordered the11-hour telethon. Generous donations also came from Crown Prince Abdullah, deputy premier and commander of the National Guard, and Prince Sultan, second deputy premier and minister of defense and aviation, and other members of the royal family. A unified bank account was set for the event by the Saudi Committee for the Support of the Intifada headed by Interior Minister Prince Naif. The committee coordinates assistance to the Palestinians."

Friday, April 12, 2002

News and commentary:

"Mystery surrounds synagogue blast" (BBC News, 2002/04/12)
"Mystery surrounds the nature of an explosion outside an ancient Jewish synagogue in southern Tunisia that killed ten people. On Friday, the death toll in Thursday's blast rose from the previously reported seven, as officials sought to deflect a growing chorus of questions about how it could have been an accident. Six Germans, including an 11-year-old boy, and four Tunisians were killed in the explosion on the island of Djerba. ... Eyewitnesses quoted by the Tunisian News Agency (TAP) said the driver appeared to ignore a security officer's order to stop. It sped up and hit the synagogue, TAP said. A coach filled with mainly German tourists was caught up in the explosion."

"Lost in the Wilderness" (William Kristol & Robert Kagan, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/22 issue)
"Right now the Bush administration seems to be lost in the wilderness without a moral or strategic compass. This is a stunning development, for less than three months ago the president set forth a grand and clear vision for American foreign policy. We would fight terrorism and the regimes that support and harbor terrorists. We would press for freedom and democracy around the world, but especially in the Muslim world. Above all, when we saw evil, we would call it by its name. Now look how far we have moved away from those noble aspirations. ... Does President Bush still believe Yasser Arafat is a man with whom we can do business? Can we fight a war on terrorism while we seek to appease this proven sponsor of terrorism? The president will not find a way out of the wilderness until he finally realizes that the answer is no. ... It's time to let Israel take decisive action against terrorism, which would be consistent with the Bush Doctrine and would help clear the decks for us to go after Saddam. After three weeks of letting the Arabs shape the agenda, it is time for Bush to take charge again of his own destiny, and ours."

"Why Israel Must Not Withdraw" (Robert W. Tracinski, The Intellectual Activist, 2002/04/12)
"The conventional wisdom is that the Israeli occupation and resulting Palestinian "resentment" is the cause of the current conflict. This is the exact opposite of the truth. The massive escalation of the Palestinians' terrorist war actually coincides with the withdrawal of Israel's occupation. Under the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel has spent most of the last decade pulling out of Palestinian territories and transferring control to Yasser Arafat. The result was not peace, but the creation of a Palestinian regime based on anti-Jewish terrorism. ... There has been a lot of talk about the "legitimate aspirations" of the Palestinian people for an independent state. But people who embrace suicide bombings and choose career killers as their leaders - as the Palestinians have done - have no legitimate political aspirations. They will be "ready for democracy" only when they stop worshipping murderers. Israel needs to replace the Palestinian Authority with a permanent occupation, an Israeli colonial administration charged with the task of civilizing a people made barbarous by decades of terrorist leadership. This occupation should remove terror indoctrination from Palestinian schools, make life safer for civilized Palestinian leaders, and make terrorism a road to prison or death, not popular adulation. Most important, the occupation must seal off Palestinian territories from the real instigators of terrorism."

"PA intelligence chief implicated in terrorism" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/12)
"Information gleaned from terrorists who were arrested and documents confiscated by the IDF during Operation Defensive Shield indicate that Palestinian Authority West Bank General Intelligence chief Tawfik Tirawi assisted in recruiting, arming, and dispatching terrorists to perpetrate attacks in Israel. Lists of names of potential suicide bombers that Israel handed over to Tirawi, demanding they be arrested by the PA, were instead used by Tirawi to warn the terrorists to evade arrest." (See also: "U.S. Is Given Papers That Israelis Assert Tie Arafat to Terror" (Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times, 2002/04/12) and "Seized Orient House documents link Arafat to terrorism" (Etgar Lefkovits, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/12): "Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat authorized funding to a Palestinian who was on Israel's most wanted list and to two dozen other activists in his Fatah faction who carried out terrorist attacks against Israel, according to Palestinian documents. ... The documents were confiscated last August when Israel seized and closed down Orient House, the east Jerusalem building that served as the PLO's headquarters in the city for nearly a decade.")

"As Sure as Night Follows Day" (The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/04/12)
"No sooner had the treaty establishing an new International Criminal Court taken effect than "Palestinian sympathizers in Europe and the Arab world called yesterday for the Israeli government to be investigated for war crimes." Americans can be proud that their country was not among those that ratified the treaty creating the court." (See also: "Calls begin for war crimes trial for Israelis" (Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times, 2002/04/12))

"White House Calls on Arafat to Denounce Attack" (Barry Schweid, AP/The Washington Post, 2002/04/12)
"Just hours after a suicide bomber struck near a Jerusalem marketplace Friday, the White House called on Arafat to publicly denounce the terrorist act and the State Department said Secretary of State Colin Powell would decide later whether to see Arafat as planned."

"Arafat's organization proudly embraces woman bomber who murders six in Jerusalem" (Michael Widlanski, IMRA, 2002/04/12)
"'We have to continue these attacks,' asserted Muhammad Dahlan, the head of the Palestinian Authority's counter-espionage forces in Gaza, and his words were echoed by many Palestinians. "I send my blessings to this heroic martyr," asserted Leilah Khaled, a veteran Palestinian woman terrorist who hijacked planes during the 1970s, during an interview on Abu Dhabi satellite television. Palestinian officials not only did not condemn the attack but actually applauded it. "Sharon is sending the Israeli people to calamity," said PA cabinet minister Hassan Asfour, warning that the Palestinians would continue fighting what he called "Sharon's terror." ... Almost every Arab satellite television channel was flooded by Arab spokesmen excitedly boasting about the "heroic operation" (Arabic: Amaliyya fida'iyya) that left body parts strewn along Jaffa road near Jerusalem's largest market area."

"At least five dead, 90 wounded in Jerusalem suicide bombing" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/12)
"A woman suicide bomber detonated a powerful charge at 4:15 p.m. on Jaffa road near Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open-air market. There are at least five dead, and some 90 wounded, eight critically and 11 seriously, in the wake of the blast, according to Magen David Adom officials. The Aksa wing of Fatah, one of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's PLO factions, has reportedly taken responsibility for the attack, according to an anomymous caller to Hizbullah's Al Manar TV in Lebanon."

"Democrat Implies Sept. 11 Administration Plot" (Juliet Eilperin, The Washington Post, 2002/04/12)
InstaPundit appropriately files this one under "Bizarro Conspiracy Theories": "Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) is calling for an investigation into whether President Bush and other government officials had advance notice of terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 but did nothing to prevent them. She added that "persons close to this administration are poised to make huge profits off America's new war." ...
"What did this administration know and when did it know it, about the events of September 11th? Who else knew, and why did they not warn the innocent people of New York who were needlessly murdered? . . . What do they have to hide?" ...
Bush spokesman Scott McLellan dismissed McKinney's comments. "The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views," he said. 'The fact that she questions the president's legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason.'" (See also: "Cynthia McKinney: Today's Hanoi Jane" (Debbie Schlussel, WorldNetDaily, 2001/10/19))

"The Real Agenda of the New Student Left" (Ronald Radosh, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/04/12)
"The demonstrations this week at our nation's major campuses, described in The New York Times on April 8, mark the emergence of a new and dangerous student anti-war movement, one that seeks to confuse its audience by the rhetoric of peace and human rights, while in fact seeking to organize a new anti-capitalist and anti-Israel campus activism. ... The participating anti-Israel coalition at the March is being organized by a group calling itself SUSTAIN - which stands for "Stop US Tax-funded Aid to Israel." ... And the highlight of their event will be what they call "creative actions" against Ariel Sharon, who will be the featured speaker at the AIPAC conference. As they write: "Just when we thought there couldn't possibly be any more reasons to take part in the …Washington, DC protests against the War - be it the war on "terrorism" in Afghanistan, the drug war in Colombia, or the war on the poor being waged by the IMF and World Bank - AIPAC gave us another reason: they invited the war criminal Ariel Sharon to town." In case we don’t get the point, they add: 'AIPAC's annual conference brings together all the main forces of reaction and war…To have so many war criminals together at one event is too good an opportunity to pass up.'"

"Sharon's Contribution" (William F. Buckley Jr., National Review, 2002/04/12)
"My vote is that General Sharon's offensive is the stupidest campaign in recent memory. Defined here as a campaign that has: solved nothing, increased Israel's problems, intensified Palestinian hatred of Israel, estranged many Europeans and Americans, and fanned Islamic hostility. ... Sharon's policy is scorched-earth. Under his command, the Israeli army has engaged not in isolating the infrastructure of the suicide terrorists. What he is engaged in is wanton damage. ... What has been done is to enhance and even legitimize Palestinian grievances. "After four days of heavy fighting," the Times dispatch goes on, "the Casbah, as the centuries-old warren of shops and homes at the center of this city (Nablus) is known, has been utterly destroyed." ... Sharon has wounded the State of Israel incalculably, causing ache and pain not only to Palestinians, but to his people, and to friends of Israel everywhere."

"IDF bulldozers buried Jenin dead, Palestinians claim" (Anat Cygielman et al., Haaretz, 2002/04/12)
"The IDF buried the bodies of dozens of Palestinians killed in fighting in the Jenin refugee camp in a huge mass grave and used bulldozers to cover them up, Palestinian sources said yesterday. The army vehemently denied the allegations. The IDF intends to bury today Palestinians killed in the West Bank camp. Around 200 Palestinians are believed to have been killed in clashes with Israeli soldiers since the start of the operation last week, although it is unclear how many of the bodies can be buried. ... The IDF claimed a couple of times this week that repeated calls to groups such as the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to clear the dead and injured went unanswered. Israeli public relations officials expressed concern that the Palestinians wanted to leave the bodies in the camp and use the images for their own purposes. The humanitarian organizations said the IDF had not allowed them into the camp."

"The Number of Dead Is in Dispute, but the Destruction in Jenin Is Clear" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/12)
"Toward dusk today, black smoke rose from the ruins of Jenin's refugee camp, a fortress of Palestinian resistance that has crumbled before overwhelming Israeli force. ... This city, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says, has been a major source of Palestinian terrorism for decades. The refugee camp has spawned many suicide bombers. Israel's hope is that it has now tamed Jenin. ... Some Palestinians here seemed stunned by the onslaught. "You collapse when you see them bombing and destroying the camp," Mufida Sabaani, 35, said outside her home late this afternoon. "We see missiles falling on the camp. We see shells falling. We see fire." Others sounded simply furious."

Thursday, April 11, 2002

News and commentary:

"Don't Let Arafat Distract Us" (Fouad Ajami, FrontPageMagazine/The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/11 [2002/04/10])
"Care should be exercised as we rush in to broker cease-fires: There is a whole Arab and Islamic world beyond Nablus and Arafat's compound in Ramallah. Primacy must still belong to the larger struggle to rid the Arab world of its malignancies, to thwart the jihadists and those who would cede them political ground. ... In vast swaths of the Arab world, people know the truth of their condition but cannot utter it. Terror silences them. There is no deliverance, they know, if the cult of "martyrdom" is sanctified. There are embattled people who are eager for their world to be done with the furies of Islamism. ... In the aftermath of victory in Afghanistan, these people saw prospects of deliverance. We owe them and ourselves fidelity to this new campaign. We need to reiterate to them that the truth of this campaign against terror holds in Netanya and Kabul, and that the way out of political ruin is an Arab break, once and for all, with the false consolations of terror."

"Saudi Government - Controlled Daily Praises Passover and Jerusalem Supermarket Suicide Bombers" (Special Dispatch No. 367, MEMRI, 2002/04/11)
"In a recent article for the Saudi government-controlled daily Al-Jazirah, columnist Dr. Khalil Ibrahim Al-Sa'adat applauded the actions of 'Abd Al-Baset 'Oudeh, the Palestinian who detonated himself at a Passover 'Seder' in a Netanya hotel, and Ayat Al-Akhras, who carried out a suicide attack in a Jerusalem supermarket.": "'May Allah have mercy upon you, oh 'Abd Al-Baset 'Oudeh, mujaheed and martyr, the quiet hero who infiltrated so elegantly and spoke so gaily. ... Despite all the obstacles, fortifications, and security measures, you reached [the appointed place], sat down at one of the tables, talked, told a few jokes, and laughed with them, and then Allah decreed for you a martyr's death. What heroism, courage, and strength -almost unmatched on the face of the earth!'"

"Halftime" (Joshua Hammer & Elizabeth Rubin, The New Republic, 2002/04/11)
"The battle of Nablus has been going on for nearly one week, and Israeli soldiers have steadily driven back Palestinian guerrillas from the alleyways of the old casbah. As they have, the strategy behind Ariel Sharon's Operation Defensive Shield - Israel's largest military operation since the Six Day War - has come into view. It looks increasingly like a premeditated strategy aimed at wiping out the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Yasir Arafat's Fatah organization. And in large measure it is succeeding. ... Tanks, armored personnel carriers, snipers, and infantrymen have caged the guerrillas into each of these sites - Manger Square in Bethlehem, the casbah in Nablus, and Al Manara Square in Ramallah. "The Israelis played it smart," says one Palestinian journalist. "All the gunmen from Fatah fell into the trap. They have killed many of the leaders, and many of the rest are surrounded." ... Among the key Al Aqsa leaders to fall was Nasser Awais, from the Balata Camp near Nablus, a charismatic commander in the P.A.'s security force who trained as a policeman in Iraq and returned to live in the West Bank after the 1994 Oslo peace accords. ... Ebayat, meanwhile, is trapped inside the Church of Nativity, surrounded by Israeli tanks and snipers."

"Hundreds of gunmen surrender in Jenin" (Arieh O'Sullivan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/11)
"The Jenin refugee camp has virtually fallen, after hundreds of Palestinian gunmen surrendered to IDF troops yesterday. ... In Nablus, the army carried out final sweeps after pulling out of the casbah, where it demolished five bomb factories, encountering sporadic opposition. ... Leading Fatah member Abdel Karis Awais of the Jenin refugee camp told Israeli security forces that Tawfik Tirawi, the PA's West Bank General Intelligence chief, was involved in the recruitment of terrorists, the preparation of arms for them, and sending them to carry out attacks against Israeli targets."

"Arafatuous" (Claudia Rosett, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/11)
"What does that flabby abstraction, "peace process," mean? Israel has come under terrorist attack as surely as did America on Sept. 11, the main difference being that in Israel's case the terror recurs almost daily. And whether you believe that Arafat does or does not control these terrorists, either way there is no point in negotiating with him. If he's not in charge, then all the Arafat-centric "process" in the world won't stop the terror. If he is in charge, then sending Mr. Powell to see him makes no more sense than if last September we had dispatched Mr. Powell to have a chat with Mullah Omar or Osama bin Laden. Instead, we chose the true route to peace: winning the war. Negotiating with terrorists, or, in President Bush's excellent formulation, "those who harbor them," amounts to capitulation. Maybe we should call the current route we've mapped out for Israel "the capitulation process," or, since "process" is a windy word, just get rid of it and talk in terms of straight "capitulation." At least then it would be harder to fool ourselves about the nature of this mission."

"Powell's moral paradox" (Uri Dan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/11)
"On the one hand Bush, with great courage and integrity, publicly charged Arafat with responsibility for the terror and for "betraying his people's hopes." In contrast, Powell, under the influence of his Arabists in the State Department, who have on more than one occasion been wrong and have misled others, persists in his desire to meet with Arafat. This moral paradox originates in the false belief that Powell will succeed this time, where all his American envoys have failed, in persuading Arafat to halt his terrorist offensive. In this manner Powell has made a great moral error, that is contrary to the principles laid down by President Bush. As Arafat, the commander of the terror, and his supporters see it, the Powell-Arafat meeting will demonstrate that suicide terrorism pays off."

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Day of Infamy - April 10, 2002" (Steven Plaut, Arutz Sheva, 2002/04/10)
"Today is also a different kind of day, a historic day. A special day. A day of unique infamy. Today it is official. As of today, the Oslo “process” imposed upon Israel by its Left has killed more Israelis than the Six Day War. ... We will never know whose death it was that tipped the scale officially. It was one of those murdered on the bus exploded by Colin Powell´s dear friend and partner in negotiations, Yasser Arafat, at the Yagur junction next to Haifa this morning. These deaths, like all those before then, are the direct result of the suicidal mega-stupidity of the Israeli Left. ... If the Israeli Left had sat down in 1990 and planned a campaign that was designed to engineer the greatest increase possible in Arab violence, they could not have come up with a better plan than Oslo. In fairness, the Likud, the same Likud that failed to respond militarily to the SCUD attacks on Israel by Iraq, the same Likud that laminated Oslo under Netanyahu, shares the blame. ... I have not the slightest doubt in the world that, in the long run, the history books will record Oslo as one of the stupidest ideas ever to be formulated in human history, quite possibly the very stupidest. It is only a matter of time before it is so recognized. In the long run, there is no question of how Oslo will be viewed. The only serious question is whether Israel and Jewish history will end before that happens."

"Turning Point" (Seth Gitell, The New Republic, 2002/04/10)
"Although press accounts of the Battle of Jenin still remain vague, a few facts are clear. Yesterday, highly trained Israeli troops were fighting door-to-door. Resistance on the part of Hamas was furious. ... Today's dispatch in Haaretz reports that the fighting in Jenin, a key center in the construction of suicide bombs and bombers, has ended - with the Israelis emerging victorious. ... Israel did not achieve this victory with high-altitude bombing. It put the lives of its own soldiers on the line; literally speaking, it spilled its own blood. In so doing, Israel demonstrated that if its very existence is in jeopardy, as it is now, it is willing to fight man-to-man. In doing so, Israel took direct aim at a key precept of its enemies: that the Israelis are so weak and materialistic that they are unwilling to put soldiers at risk. ... Still, the forces of Hamas, who also lost a military commander in battle today, suffered a mighty blow. And it is bound to reverberate throughout the Arab world. As less an expert in Arab public opinion than Osama bin Laden once said, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse." Israel showed its enemies a strong horse. And they know it."

"Netanyahu speech before the US Senate" (Benjamin Netanyahu, netanyahu.org, 2002/04/10)
"Soon after the war began, the American victory over the forces of terror in Afghanistan brought to light the third principle in the war on terror - namely, that the best way to defeat terror is to defeat it. At first, this seemingly trite observation was not fully understood. Contrary to popular belief, the motivating force behind terror is neither desperation nor destitution. It is hope - the hope of terrorists systematically brainwashed by the ideologues who manipulate them that their savagery will break the will of their enemies and help them achieve their objectives - political, religious, or otherwise. Defeat this hope and you defeat terrorism. ... Until last week, I was certain that the United States would adhere to its principles and lead the free world to a decisive victory. Today, I too have my concerns. I am concerned that when it comes to terror directed against Israel, the moral and strategic clarity that is so crucial for victory is being twisted beyond recognition. ... am concerned that the State of Israel, that has for decades bravely manned the front lines against terror, is being pressed to back down just when it is on the verge of uprooting Palestinian terror."

"Palestinian Schools: Breeding Grounds for Hate" (John Perazzo, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/04/10)
"The propaganda campaign is relentless. ... According to an eighth-grade text, "Mankind has suffered from the yoke of racism at all times, because Satan has made their evil deeds seem beautiful...Such people are the Jews." In a book used by sixteen-year-olds, the Nazi Holocaust is depicted as a response to the Jewish people’s "greed and religious fanaticism." Still another volume suggests, "Perhaps Allah brought the Jews to our land, so their death would take place here, as it did in their wars with the Romans." ... These anti-Jewish attitudes filter down from the very highest level of the Palestinian Authority. During a recent visit to a school for Palestinian girls, Yasser Arafat himself told the students of the glorious exploits of two female terrorists, Abir Wahidi and Dalal Magrabi; the latter not only participated in a deadly bus attack against Israelis, but further distinguished herself by snatching a Jewish baby from its mother and hurling it into the already burning bus. ... All in all, Palestinian leadership has done a remarkably thorough job of violating its pledge to promote tolerance and respect. Thus it is no surprise that a seemingly endless parade of young people can hardly wait for the day when they, too, can walk into a crowded Jewish shop or café and blow themselves to smithereens."

"13 Slain by Boy Bomber - He lured Israeli soldiers to their deaths, says ex-PM" (Corky Siemazko, New York Daily News, 2002/04/10)
"Thirteen Israeli soldiers were killed yesterday when they were lured into an ambush by a baby suicide bomber, former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last night. "You know how they were killed?" he told Fox News Channel. "A 10-year-old boy was strapped with explosives and sent by [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat's goons to explode. This is the kind of monstrosity we're dealing with." Netanyahu said that when the soldiers spotted the boy in the ruins of a Jenin refugee camp, they chased him into an alley but did not shoot at him. Once in the alley, the boy detonated a bomb that killed three soldiers and sparked a series of explosions that sent a building crashing down on them, he said. ... Netanyahu later backed off on the boy's age in an interview on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes" show. ... "I don't know, frankly, because I inquired as well whether it was a 10-year-old or a 14-year-old or a 13-year-old." ... Other Israeli sources with close ties to the military confirmed that a boy lured the soldiers to their deaths."

"Arab leaders rebuff plea from Powell" (John Donnelly, Boston Globe, 2002/04/10)
"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is confronting a wall of defiance in his Middle East peace mission this week - a wall thrown up by Arab leaders. The leaders of Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in the past two days have refused Powell's call for them to speak out against suicide bombers and other forms of violence against Israel, and have declined to embrace any new peace plan without the active involvement of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, US officials said yesterday. ... In Washington, two influential Republican opinion-makers, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, sent a memo to the White House and to reporters saying Powell's trip ''was shaping up to be a disaster.'' The two said the United States was now pressuring Sharon to end the offensive, while 'giving a free ride to Arafat and the terrorists he directs.''' (See also: "Powell's Disastrous Trip" (William Kristol & Robert Kagan, The Weekly Standard, 2002/04/10))

"Terror Documented" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/04/10)
Kelly points to the Karine A and documents found in the Ramallah compound as evidence that the terrorist infrastructure has been supported and protected by Arafat's Palestinian Authority: "But during the current crisis, it has become impossible to maintain the fiction of Arafat as a pursuer of peace (impossible, that is, except for certain members of the news media and the Nobel Peace Prize committee). It has become impossible to deny that he is anything other than, as Sharon said, the architect of the Palestinian war and the dispatcher of Palestinian mass murder. ... Neither Israel nor America can any longer pretend Arafat is anything but the overall director of the war against Israel. It is possible, of course, to make peace with him still. But only by defeating him, and the forces under his command, and negotiating from the point of their surrender. And surrender stems from victory in war."

"The Danger in Lebanon" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/04/10)
"Not only, therefore, is Lebanon the most dangerous piece of tinder in the region. It is the most instructive. The Arabs claim that their grievance is Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Give it back and you'll have land for peace. Like the Lebanon peace? Western observers totally missed the irony of the Arab summit whose "Saudi peace plan" ostensibly offered Israel peace in return for full territorial withdrawal. The offer was made in Beirut, capital of a country from which Israel had done precisely that - fully withdraw - and received in return a more entrenched, emboldened, heavily armed enemy ready to trigger a general war. ... Few Western observers actually read the Saudi peace plan adopted by the Arab League. If they had, they would have seen that the plan demands not just the usual withdrawal from Palestinian and Syrian territory but also from "remaining occupied Lebanese territories." ... Why? Because it serves as an excuse for continuing the war against Israel. Just end the occupation of the West Bank, say the Arabs, and we will guarantee Israel peace. Do you want to see Israel's future if it caves in to that demand? Look at Lebanon, where Israel gave up a defensive occupation and is now looking squarely in the face of Armageddon."

"An Advocate for Radicals Whom Most Lawyers Spurn" (Michael Powell, The Washington Post, 2002/04/10)
"Short and roundish, a grandmother who often has a New York Mets cap perched atop her head, Lynne Stewart does not fit the stereotype of a radical attorney. ...
Now Stewart, 62, stands accused of taking the role of terrorist's accomplice. The U.S. attorney in Manhattan indicted her and three other people today on charges of helping Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a 63-year-old cleric and convicted terrorist, pass messages from prison to his fundamentalist followers. ...
Kuby and other colleagues speculated that her clients might have used Stewart, who does not speak Arabic.
"Little did she realize," Kuby said, "that when she was saying, 'So tell me, Sheik Omar, should I file the papers', her interpreter was saying: 'So tell me, Sheik Omar, when should we smite the infidel?'"
That said, Stewart is a committed radical, and has rarely shied from defending even violent acts of resistance to what she sees as oppressive state power. She has defended several radicals convicted of murdering police officers; took on the case of the Warriors Society, a Mohawk Indian group accused of imposing a reign of terror on upstate New York reservations, and successfully defended Larry Davis, a drug dealer who shot six police officers. ...
She spoke of her personal politics in an interview seven years ago with the New York Times. "I don't believe in anarchistic violence but in directed violence," she said. "That would be violence directed at the institutions which perpetuate capitalism, racism and sexism, and at the people who are the appointed guardians of those institutions, and accompanied by popular support."

"Eight dead, 14 wounded in bus bombing southeast of Haifa" (Jalal Bana et al., Haaretz, 2002/04/10)
"At least eight people were killed and 14 wounded, one seriously, after a suicide bomber set off a powerful explosion that ripped through and demolished a Haifa-Jerusalem bus near Yagur Junction east of Haifa early Monday. Israeli security officials believe that Hamas militants based in Tul Karm carried out the attack."

Tuesday, April 9, 2002

News and commentary:

"From Fascism to Jihadism" (Yehuda Mirsky, The New Republic, 2002/04/09)
"A fanatical belief system stitched together from religious traditions, romantic cults of violence, and modern ideologies, then fanned by fire-breathing, charismatic leaders and propped up by timid plutocrats terrified of the masses. Genuinely well-intentioned progressives finding themselves the unwitting supporters of murderous fanatics. America and the Jews savagely attacked as the hated representatives of all that is wrong with the modern world. ... Comparing now and then, uncanny similarities abound. .... The new ideology of "jihadism" consists, partly, of the detritus of the worst European ideologies. Jihadism, like fascism and communism, has itself arisen in response to powerful currents - of modernization then, and globalization now. ... An ideology of hatred that forecloses meaningful policy options, based on romantic flights from reality into fantasies of self-glorification, sends droves of young people to their deaths - at the behest of cynical leaders never asked to bear the costs of suffering themselves. ... The Arab Middle East has brought forth a movement whose full-fledged worldview seeks the destruction of Western society, beginning with its foremost representative in the Middle East."

"The 9th of April" (Fredrik K. R. Norman, 2002/04/09)
Norman writes on the anniversal of Nazi Germany's attack on Norway 1940, but also notes this: "Hanna Kvanmo, recently famous in the blog world for her asinine comment that she wished the Nobel committee could recall the Peace prize it gave to Shimon Peres of Israel (but not the one they gave to Arafat, a terrorist!), joined the German Red Cross at the eastern front during World War II, and stayed there until the end of the war. For this, she was sentenced to 5 years imprisonment. Then she joined the Socialist Left party, and became a major political figure in Norway, consistently serving "gems" such as the one mentioned above..." (See also: "Nobel's regrets on Peres award" (BBC News, 2002/04/05))

"Israeli soldiers die in Jenin ambush" (BBC News, 2002/04/09)
"Thirteen Israeli reservists have been killed and seven wounded in an ambush during a day of fierce fighting with Palestinian gunmen in a refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin. The army said the Palestinians had detonated a number of bombs as the soldiers entered the courtyard of a building in the centre of the camp and gunmen fired from surrounding rooftops. The number of Palestinian casualties was not immediately known, with Israeli sources saying it could be as many as 150 and the Palestinians suggesting it might be more."

"Why Suicide Bombing Is Now All The Rage" (Amanda Ripley, TIME, from the 2002/04/15 issue)
"Among Palestinians, it has become normal - noble, even - for promising men and women to slaughter themselves in pursuit of revenge and the dignity it is thought to bring. "What was once more of an individual decision by a small group is becoming much more mainstream," says Jerrold Post, an American psychiatrist who has studied suicide bombings in the West Bank. ... Says Bruce Hoffman, terrorism specialist at the Rand Corp: "Groups there succeeded in what terrorist organizations have rarely been able to do, and that's transform their campaigns into almost mass movements, not dependent on a hard-core cadre of fighters but rather with people from the population readily stepping forward to replenish the terrorist ranks." ... Certainly, the bombing networks have learned that their actions, together with Israel's retaliatory measures, bring enormous attention to the Palestinian cause. "You have heard the U.N. - after these operations began - speaking about a Palestinian state, Israeli withdrawal and the right of repatriation for refugees," says [the Damascus-based No. 2 leader of Hamas, Mousa Abu] Marzouk."

"Moral Styrofoam" (Jonah Goldberg, National Review, 2002/04/09)
"Meanwhile, Israel - a staunch ally of the United States, and the only democracy in the region - is besieged by suicide bombers who have been brainwashed by fanatical cults. These terrorist groups load up glassy-eyed teenagers with explosives, nails, and bullets and convince them to seek out large clusters of women and children. This is all permitted - and sometimes orchestrated - by a veteran terrorist strongman who had in the past helped to orchestrate the murder and kidnapping of Israelis and Americans, including the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. ... So, here we are, halfway into what on paper sounds like a predictable Jerry Bruckheimer flick. ... However, the Europeans and our own lefties have been shifting in their seats uncomfortably and shaking their heads. They don't like some of the "simplistic" messages in the film. ... In their version, the terrorists have "reasons" for what they do. ... In this new version the villains - like other European icons such as Che Guevara or Fidel Castro - are actually heroes. These heroes challenge the dominant paradigm. They make America look bad. And they trade in the true coin of the realm in the EU - white, post-colonial guilt - and with it buy an unending supply of sympathy."

"9/11 Denial" (James S. Robbins, National Review, 2002/04/09)
An article on Meyssan's book "L'Effroyable Imposture", which maintains that no Boeing 757 was involved in the September 11 Pentagon attack: "Meyssan's purpose is to uncover a much deeper plot of the United States against the world. He reveals other interesting facts, like bin Laden was an agent of the U.S. who was used by President Bush to destroy secret CIA offices in the World Trade Towers. ... Today is Yom Hashoah, the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust, and Meyssan's theory fits neatly with those of the Holocaust deniers. In both cases, the premises of their originators are indefensible, which forces them into a position where they have to throw the facts overboard to sustain their arguments. But notions like this are kept alive by people who have a predisposition to believe them, those who have pre-existing grudges and will engage in whatever reality-denying behavior justifies their baseline prejudices."

"The Peril of Too Much Power" (Timothy Garton Ash, The New York Times, 2002/04/09)
"The fundamental problem is that America today has too much power for anyone's good, including its own. It has that matchless, global soft power in all of our heads. In economic power its only rival is the European Union. In military power it has no rival. ... Contrary to what many Europeans think, the problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power. The writers of the American Constitution wisely determined that no single locus of power, however benign, should predominate; for even the best could be led into temptation. Every power should therefore be checked by at least one other. That also applies in world politics. ... Who, then, should check and complement American power? International agencies, starting with the United Nations, and transnational nongovernmental organizations are a place to start. But they alone are not enough. My answer is Europe - Europe as an economic equal to the United States and Europe as a close-knit group of states with long diplomatic and military experience. The European Union is already a major force in trade and foreign aid, and it is slowly acquiring more diplomatic coherence. But the gulf between its military capacity and that of the United States grows ever wider. The complicated double task for us pro-American Europeans is to strengthen Europe's capacity to act outside its own borders while disentangling the idea of a stronger Europe from its sticky anti-American integument. We need to build a Europe that sees itself not as a rival superpower to the United States, but as America's most important partner in a world community of liberal democracies. Americans, in their own enlightened self-interest, should want Europe to succeed. Otherwise they will be left to cope alone with the loneliness of the long-distance hyperpower."

"More floggings and inflation - the fruits of reform in Iran" (Michael Rubin, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/09)
"So Jack Straw went to Teheran, and numerous other European leaders have hosted the Iranian president. But can engagement work? Is the reform versus hardline dichotomy within the Islamic Republic real, or merely a creation of the Western media? ... The only things that have increased under Khatami are floggings, executions and inflation. In 1977, Iran's per capita income was equivalent to Spain's. Now it is equivalent to that of the Gaza Strip. ... Khatami's reformism is more illusion than reality. Iranians find it ironic that Western diplomats, journalists and commentators still judge their president by his rhetoric, even as Khatami's supporters acknowledge that he is hardly different from Rafsanjani or Khamenei."

"Don't Hold Israel Back" (Michael B. Oren, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/09)
"Since its creation in 1948, Israel has been the target of Arab terror. In the 1950s and '60s, "armed infiltration," as it was then called, caused hundreds of casualties and made life on Israeli streets and border settlements nearly as precarious as it is today. Yet, in spite of these losses and Israel's clear-cut case for avenging them, the U.S. denied Israel's right to retaliate. ... ...rather than peace, America's policy helped produce the very wars it sought to preclude. ... Once war broke out, America repeatedly pressured Israel to cease firing before it could achieve its objectives. The results were disastrous. By forcing Israel to relinquish its gains in Sinai in 1948 and 1956, for example, the U.S. aided Egypt's ability to threaten Israel's existence again in 1967. ... For over half a century, U.S. attempts to rein in Israel militarily have encouraged Arab aggression and contributed to a series of inconclusive wars, setting the stage for even bloodier clashes. By submitting to restrictions, Israel has compromised, not enhanced, its security."

"The Palestinian Culture of Death" (Terry Eastland, The Weekly Standard, 2002/04/09)
"A fundamental question in the Middle East conflict is whether the Palestinians can be saved, not from Israel, as many of them would have it, but from themselves. Consider that the Palestinians want their own state. But to achieve that end, which, depending on the Palestinian you talk to, may or may not entail the destruction of Israel, the Palestinians have relied on a grossly immoral means, the suicide bomb, used to kill not only Israeli soldiers but also civilians, including women and children. How can a people who sanction such an abomination achieve statehood? ... The culture of suicide bombing in the West Bank and Gaza has been shaping hearts and minds in ways not quickly or easily changed. ... What the Palestinians badly need is to be saved from themselves. That has no chance of happening until, finally, the Palestinians quit their passion for killing others by killing themselves."

"Kristallnacht it is not" (Robert Rozett, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/09)
"Enemies and critics of the Jewish people commonly use words from the lexicon of Nazi instigated murder and suffering as a weapon. Fully aware of the potency of the terms they employ, they seek to garner political and rhetorical gains against the Jews by turning the former victims of the Nazis into a reincarnation or a transmutation of that immoral gang of murderers. Among the most recent episodes are those of Nobel Prize laureate Jose Saramago's glib and ugly comparison of the situation in Ramallah to Auschwitz, and the broadcast by official Egyptian television that termed the IDF's war on Palestinian terrorism a "Final Solution." ... Any objective and reasonable observer can point out immediately that Ramallah is not an extermination camp or part of a larger policy of systematic mass murder of an entire people. ... Likening Israel's fight against terror to Nazi crimes is not only repulsive, but also completely illogical. It cannot be supported at all by a thoughtful comparison of the history of the Holocaust to current events."

"Israeli troops begin withdrawal" (BBC News, 2002/04/09)
"Israel began to withdraw troops from the towns of Qalqilya and Tulkarm in the northern West Bank early on Tuesday. The decision followed intense US pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to pull troops out of Palestinian areas. ... But fighting continues in several other towns in the West Bank, with Israeli troops taking up strategic positions in the southern town of Dora, as the pullout in nothern towns was going on."

Monday, April 8, 2002

News and commentary:

"The war that Arafat called forth" (Fouad Ajami, usnews.com, 2002/04/08)
"We have come to the inevitable conclusion that the peace of Oslo that plucked Yasser Arafat from his exile in Tunisia nearly a decade ago and brought him to the Palestinian territories is now a thing of the past. From the moment he arrived up till last week's Passover massacre in Netanya, the Palestinian leader aided, abetted, and led the forces of radicalism and terror. ... Over 18 months, Arafat came to present Israel with a sadistic challenge: With indiscriminate terror his instrument of war, he set out to wreck the nation's peace of mind, taunt its liberal culture, and destroy its modern economy. ... The young Palestinian men and women, cruel and betrayed at the same time, who embrace death and destruction and spread it in their wake, would have had a different history had the man in the Ramallah compound been made of different stuff." (UPDATE: The original link is down, but the article can be found at Israel Advocacy Network.)

"Egypt's unrest a two-edged sword" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/08)
"As the latest wave of anti-Israel protesters poured into the streets of capitals across the Arab world, observers are saying that a backlash against the Arab regimes themselves is closer than ever before. ... The same Egyptian analysts, however, say that the moves may not save his regime and that the current wave of massive street protests are bound to change the political dynamic across the Middle East for decades to come. They say that the Egyptian government, like some of its Arab neighbors on the Arabian Peninsula, is trying desperately to ride the growing wave of anger, but may, in the end, be crushed by it. ... Ms. Mustafa, senior editor and commentator with the Al Ahram daily newspaper group, warns of a possible "transformation towards fanaticism." She says that the growing popular support for suicidal strikes against enemy targets could spread well beyond Israel and the West Bank if violence continues to spiral out of control in Israel."

"Official Palestine News Agency: The USA and the British responsibility to the Palestinian Holocaust" (IMRA, 2002/04/08)
From an editorial published by Palestine News Agency: "So Arafat will not surrender and will not give up, the USA scheme will never achieve its destination, but will boomerang back baring blood and the responsibility of the killing, and filling the Arab and the Moslem nation with hate and rage towards the USA. Bush has proven that he became a puppet not only in the hands of the USA various institutes, but in the Jewish and Israeli hands also, yesterday he reached another hypocrisy climax when he said that the USA is the most loyal friend to Israel, burdening the USA with the Palestinian shed blood in the Jenin Refugee Camp while the cameras were prevented from recording the Holocaust is taking place... President Bush, and the British Prime minister the heir of the Palestinian historical "Nakba" (Holocaust), are both responsible for every Palestinian drop of blood that has been shed in the Palestinian occupied lands by the Israeli criminal forces..." (See also: "The USA and the British responsibility to the Palestinian Holocaust" (WAFA, 2002/04/08))

"Polling Israel Out of Existence" (Ronni Gordon Stillman & Alexander T. Stillman, National Review, 2002/04/08)
"When surveyed in December 2001, 81.8 percent of the Palestinian respondents supported or strongly supported armed attacks against Israeli targets, and 92.3 percent supported or strongly supported armed attacks against Israeli soldiers in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the same poll, 82.3 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed with defining the suicide bombing at the Dolphinarium discotheque that murdered 23 mostly teenage Israelis (and wounded 100 more) as a terrorist attack. 69.4 percent of the respondents questioned would not consider the use of chemical or biological weapons against Israel an act of terror. Thus, a significant number of Palestinians not only favors violent attacks on Israelis, but would support the use of weapons of mass destruction against Israeli civilians. ... What emerges from a reading of the polls is that the conflict is not about land or settlements or holy sites or water. The plain truth is that Yasser Arafat's war, instigated and funded by the Arab world, is about Israel's very right to exist."

"Offensive Won't Stop, Sharon Says" (Mohammed Daraghmeh, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/04/08)
"Israel's offensive in the West Bank will continue, despite U.S. demands for an immediate withdrawal of troops, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told parliament Monday, as helicopter gunships pounded a Palestinian refugee camp and a fire broke out during fighting near Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity. ... Turning to the Arab world, Sharon said he was willing to meet with Arab leaders without preconditions to discuss a comprehensive peace agreement. Sharon branded Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat the head of a "regime of terror." ... The heaviest fighting raged in the West Bank city of Nablus and the Jenin refugee camp where hundreds of gunmen have been battling Israeli soldiers." (See also: "Text of Speech by Sharon to Israeli Parliament" (The New York Times, 2002/04/08))

"Christian Bias Against Israel Has a Resurgence" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2002/04/08)
"The outrageous invasion of the Church of the Nativity by several hundred Palestinian gunmen and wanted terrorists is a desecration of our collective sense of the sacred, similar to Taliban gunmen taking up positions inside mosques. But with increasing frequency it is Israel, rather than Yasser Arafat's regime, that Christians choose to blame. ... Christian sympathy for Arafat - who told Al Jazeera TV that he hopes to die a martyr like the suicide bomber at the Passover massacre - is not only morally perverse but self-defeating. Even as Arafat presents himself as defender of the Holy Land's Christians, he presides over the erosion of the Christian presence in the West Bank. Palestinian police routinely ignore extremist Muslim attacks on Christians. Meanwhile, police have jailed and tortured more than two dozen Palestinian Pentecostals who distributed New Testaments in West Bank villages. Scandalously, their fate has been ignored by church leaders, who reserve their outrage for Israel alone." (See also: "Vatican outrage over church siege" (BBC News, 2002/04/08): "A spokesman for Catholic monks in the Holy Land said earlier that Israeli soldiers were guilty of an "indescribable act of barbarity". Israel had broken its international obligations and risked "long-term and incalculable" consequences, Father David Jaeger said.")

"Saddam's Offensive" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2002/04/08)
"Sixty Islamic terrorists, trained in Afghanistan by Osama bin Laden, are holed up in the town of Biyara in northern Iraq, guests of Saddam Hussein. Their assignment is to infiltrate the no-flight zone and to kill the Kurdish leaders, who Saddam assumes will be allied with the U.S. in his overthrow. ... If Bush is serious about overthrowing Saddam before that avatar of arrogance gets the power to obliterate Washington, he cannot count on a colonels' coup or a coat-holding coalition of craven caliphs. We have already had to begin abandoning our bases in Saudi Arabia. Joining us in liberating Iraq will be Brits, Turks and Kurds. The Kurds, though fierce fighters, cannot be provided with modern arms and trained to use them overnight. Saddam, allied with bin Ladenesque cadres, has begun his offensive - diplomatic at the U.N., economic with oil-embargo threats, terrorist to his north. Time is short for our counterattack."

"They Live to Die" (Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/08)
"Does the administration really believe that if all the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza were removed - they occupy less than 1.5% of these territories - and East Jerusalem became Palestinian, the kamikazes would stop? ... The Bush administration seems to believe that there is some rational switch inside the Palestinian national movement, which has now elevated holy-war kamikazes to iconic status, that if flipped would make it a committed convert to the sober Western gradualism inherit in the Tenet, Mitchell and Oslo peace plans. ... Following this reasoning, the Bush administration's policy can ultimately lead only one way: Israel must unilaterally withdraw from all the land that it gained in the 1967 war, including all of East Jerusalem. ... And with such a success, again, why would the Palestinian suicide bombers stop? If they blew their way into East Jerusalem, why not West? ... If the administration tries to "negotiate" with this syndrome, it will only fuel the fire and make America, not just Israel, look weak."

"Domino democracy" (Saul Singer, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/08)
An interview with Bernard Lewis: "Lewis seems to be a proponent of what was derided as the "domino theory" when applied to southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. Despite the ridicule heaped upon it then, the idea that both positive and negative developments can prove contagious throughout a region has been strengthened by subsequent history. In southeast Asia, the fall of South Vietnam did lead to totalitarian dictatorships in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The collapse of the Soviet Union certainly triggered the wave of freedom that swept Central Europe. If anything deserves ridicule, then it is the view that systematic change can be wrought without toppling the first domino of Arab tyrannies - Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The likely alternative to the West playing this game in earnest is not the status quo, but dominoes toppling the other direction."

"Legitimacy And Labels" (William Raspberry, The Washington Post, 2002/04/08)
According to Raspberry "it does no good to try to separate" terrorism from military defence against terrorism. Change "Palestinian suicide bombers" to "September 11 hijackers" and "Ariel Sharon" to "George W. Bush" and Raspberry's exercise in moral equivalence is hard to separate from the Chomskyite apologetics for the September 11 attacks: "I certainly do not intend to praise the Palestinian suicide bombers who were, for a while during Passover, blowing themselves up on a daily basis. But to think of them as violence-prone cowards - even to call them terrorists - is to miss the most salient fact of their behavior: utter desperation. ... What seems obvious to me is that every act of violence, by both sides, is both aggression and retaliation - and that it does no good to try to separate one from the other. ... Are they terrorists? Certainly. But is Israeli President Ariel Sharon any less a terrorist because he does his thing through a uniformed military, with tanks and machine guns? There's terror - and intransigence and duplicity - on both sides, and precious little value in trying to determine which side owns the preponderance of guilt."

"Brooklyn's 'Arab Street' - A hate rally, just minutes from Ground Zero" (Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/08)
"A few minutes from Ground Zero, the Arab street came out on Friday. A few hundred Muslims marched up Atlantic Avenue and rallied in front of Borough Hall. They said they meant to pressure President Bush and other officials to force Israel to stand down. But it looked more like a pro-terror hate rally. Protesters held signs reading "Israel Occupation = Terrorism," "Occupation = Violence" and "Declare Jahad [sic]," among others. More than one held a sign with the Star of David, an equal sign and a swastika. Yasser Arafat, their signs made clear, is their "hero." ... The second sheet was even more bizarre. ... It claimed Israel is engaging in a comprehensive conspiracy that involves listening to nearly every phone call made inside the U.S. The Israelis, it explains, are using this information to blackmail all federal officials in high office and the national media. ... In short, because Americans are so depraved, the Jews are able to control them."

"Tensions rise on Lebanon border" (BBC News, 2002/04/08)
"Tensions have escalated on the Lebanese border with Israel after a series of cross-border attacks on Sunday. Six Israeli soldiers were wounded when guerrillas across the border in Lebanon fired rockets, mortars and bullets at three different places close to the border. Israeli warplanes were quick to retaliate - firing a series of missiles at suspected hide-outs of Hezbollah guerrillas. For the first time in two years, the Israeli army briefly ordered all civilians living close to the border to evacuate into bomb shelters. Military sources in Israel described the attacks as a major escalation."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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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)

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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)

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