Archived news and commentary: April 15 - 21, 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 21, 2002

News and commentary:

"Dennis Ross on Fox News Sunday" (Fox News, 2002/04/21)
Andrew Sullivan points to this revealing interview with president Clinton's chief Arab-Israeli negotiator Dennis Ross about the accords presented at Camp David and later at Taba:
"ROSS: Number one, at Camp David we did not put a comprehensive set of ideas on the table. We put ideas on the table that would have affected the borders and would have affected Jerusalem. Arafat could not accept any of that. In fact, during the 15 days there, he never himself raised a single idea. His negotiators did, to be fair to them, but he didn't. The only new idea he raised at Camp David was that the temple didn't exist in Jerusalem, it existed in Nablus.
HUME: This is the temple where Ariel Sharon paid a visit, which was used as a kind of a pre-text for the beginning of the new intifada, correct?
ROSS: This is the core of the Jewish faith.
HUME: Right.
ROSS: So he was denying the core of the Jewish faith there. ...
HUME: What, in your view, was the reason that Arafat, in effect, said no?
ROSS: Because fundamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict. We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that clause was, this is the end of the conflict. Arafat's whole life has been governed by struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open, never close a door. He was being asked here, you've got to close the door. For him to end the conflict is to end himself."

"Philippine bomb blast kills 14 - Extremist group claims responsibility" (CNN.com, 2002/04/21)
"At least 14 people were killed and 48 injured when a small homemade bomb exploded outside a department store near city hall Sunday afternoon in the southern Philippine city of General Santos, local police said. A man claiming to be a member of the extremist Philippine Muslim group Abu Sayyaf told a radio station the group was responsible for the explosion. Abu Sayyaf has been linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist organzation. Another explosion went off minutes later in a residential part of the city, about a kilometer away. So far, there are no reports of injuries in that blast."

"Israel 'completes' military stage" (BBC News, 2002/04/21)
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said the first stage of Israel's offensive in the West Bank is over, but vowed that the campaign against militants would continue. Mr Sharon's comments came hours after Israeli tanks and troops pulled out of the city of Nablus and most of Ramallah. They have now redeployed around West Bank cities. Israel has said troops will continue to surround Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem until wanted militants are handed over."

"Brutal, yes. Massacre, no" (Peter Beaumont, The Observer, 2002/04/21)
"But a massacre - in the sense it is usually understood - did not take place in Jenin's refugee camp. Whatever crimes were committed here - and it appears there were many - a deliberate and calculated massacre of civilians by the Israeli army was not among them. ... For even as the hunt for the bodies goes on, it is increasingly clear from evidence collected by this paper and other journalists, that the majority of those so far recovered have been Palestinian fighters from Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the al-Aqsa Brigades. Certainly, civilians died. But so far they are in the minority of those who perished. ... The true crime of Jenin camp is this act of physical erasure. It is covered by Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention in its prohibition on 'the extensive destruction or unlawful appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity committed either unlawfully or wantonly.' Article 147 mentions other crimes that may be applicable to Jenin: the alleged taking of hostages for human shields by the Israelis; the same army's refusal of access for humanitarian and emergency medical assistance and the deliberate targeting of civilians, particularly by Israeli snipers. But it is the sheer scale of the destruction that Israel will most likely have to answer for."

"It's a War. Now, to What End?" (Eliot A. Cohen, The Washington Post, 2002/04/21)
"This war will continue and probably worsen. The Palestinians, it would appear, have delegated (or have no choice but to delegate) their decisions to a machine-gun toting old man trapped in his headquarters in Ramallah. They have no means other than putsch of picking a successor when, sooner or later, Arafat passes from the scene. For his part, Arafat is incapable of making the transition from insurgent nationalist calling for martyrdom and jihad to the president of a small, underdeveloped and overpopulated state worrying about unemployment, street crime and building codes. Even those who sympathize deeply with the Palestinian people now recognize in him the leadership traits not of Nelson Mandela, but of Robert Mugabe. Only a reshuffling of the deck - through the disappearance of Arafat, or an event (such as the overthrow of Saddam Hussein) that profoundly changes the mood in the Arab world - will make something approaching truce, let alone peace, possible."

Saturday, April 20, 2002

News and commentary:

"'Terrorists used women and children to get close to us'" (Stephen Farrell, The Times, 2002/04/20)
"Rafi Laderman's account of Jenin is a soldier’s story, of streets filled with hostile Palestinian fighters and booby-trapped bodies, in which even the children held wires ready to trigger bombs. ... Civilians died, he conceded, but he said that the vast majority of the dead were Palestinian fighters who endangered others by using them as human shields. 'Terrorists used groups of civilians, women and children to get close to our troops. In one case a man with an explosive belt on him was inside a group. He was separated from the group and refused to undress himself and was shot dead.'"

"In Rubble of a Refugee Camp, Bitter Lessons for 2 Enemies" (James Bennet and David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"But dozens of interviews with residents of the camp, hospital officials, Israeli soldiers and officials, and Palestinian fighters produced no solid evidence of large-scale, deliberate killing of civilians in the camp. Palestinian claims of hundreds of dead appear to be exaggerated. The interviews also left little doubt that Israeli soldiers killed civilians - Israel said accidentally - with gunfire, missile fire from helicopters, and armored D-9 bulldozers sent crashing into homes. ... The furor over a possible massacre has obscured other troubling questions about the violence: whether Israeli soldiers used excessive force in the presence of civilians; whether Palestinian fighters deliberately endangered civilians by hiding among them; whether the operation, in the end, achieved its stated objectives, of eliminating terrorism and making Israelis more secure."

"'What kind of war is this?'" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/04/20)
"J.Z., two of whose nephews were among the armed men who were killed, estimates that they numbered no more than 70. "But everyone who helped them saw himself as active in the resistance: those who signaled from afar that soldiers were approaching, those who hid them, those who made tea for them." According to him, no door in the camp was closed to them when they fled from the soldiers who were looking for them, the people of the camp, he said, decided not to abandon him, not to leave the fighters to their own devices. This was the decision of the majority, taken individually by each person. ... J. tells another story that is going around the camp, about soldiers who were attacked from inside a house they had taken over earlier, from which they fled, leaving their weapons behind. It is said in the camp that one of them cried: 'Mother, mother, what kind of war is this?'"

"The Faces of Martyrs as a Calling in Demand" (Joel Brinkley, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"Mr. Abu Ghosh is a printer, but not just any printer. He holds the Ramallah concession from the Palestinian Authority to print what are known as martyr posters, which line almost every wall here. ... By his estimation, he said today, 30 Palestinians from Ramallah have died in fighting or carrying out attacks since the Israeli occupation began on March 29. That means 30,000 new posters, because each person who dies, by government fiat, warrants a print run of 1,000 posters. The posters honor Palestinians killed in fighting Israeli troops, as well as suicide bombers and other attackers who kill Israeli citizens. They are also intended, Mr. Abu Ghosh acknowledged, to encourage others to follow the same path."

"The Fate of Palestinian Moderates - Arafat's thugs don't murder only Jews" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/20)
Since March 12 at least 24 Palestinians have been executed or sentenced to death as "collaborators": "After the 1993 Oslo accords gave him a statelet, Mr. Arafat quickly set about criminalizing "collaboration" - most famously with a law making the sale of land to Jews punishable by death. But those who get a trial are the lucky ones. Seven decades of "collaborator" killings have silenced or driven out many who would be open to coexistence with Israel. It's yet one more reason to believe there will never be peace so along as the dictator and his brownshirts run Gaza and the West Bank."

"The UN is running out of blind eyes to turn" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/20)
"So you can understand why the UN's head man, Mr Roed-Larsen, would rather talk about "unacceptable" Israeli conduct than why his "refugee" camp (funded by British taxpayers) is, in fact, a bomb factory with on-site demonstration facilities. Mr Roed-Larsen's operation is a large part of the problem in the region. ... But it beggars belief that officials on the ground in the UN-managed camp weren't aware of the scale of terrorist activities: there are only so many blind eyes you can turn. That's what's "horrific beyond belief": that the UN is complicit in terrorism. ... In Jenin, it's the UN that breeds "hopelessness" and "frustration", and enables and shelters terrorism. There was no massacre, just the natural consequence of the UN's foetid administration: if you let your charges build a bomb factory, don't be surprised if it blows up."

"The Return of an Ancient Hatred" (The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"Israelis have been too quick, over the years, to view criticism of their government as motivated by anti-Semitism. But it is hard to think of another word for the way some critics of Israel's policy toward the Palestinians are expressing their opposition. The dark shadow of Europe's past seemed to be reappearing when the liberal Italian daily La Stampa depicted a baby Jesus looking up from the manger at an Israeli tank, saying, "Don't tell me they want to kill me again." Or when a Lutheran bishop in Denmark delivered a sermon in the Copenhagen Cathedral comparing Ariel Sharon's policies toward the Palestinians to those of King Herod, who ordered the slaughter of all male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem."

"Better to Be Feared Than Loved, cont." (Reuel Marc Gerecht, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/04/29 issue)
"With his decisive victory on the West Bank - and it is decisive just because Sharon did it and everyone in Israel and the Arab world knows that he will do it again - Sharon is in the process of pushing the Arab idea of coercing and dominating Israel into the distant future, beyond the immediate passions of young Palestinian men and women, who live for the present. Probably far sooner than most people imagine possible - a few years, not decades - the defeat of Israel through terrorism will become for most Palestinians what the conquest of Constantinople was for the medieval Arab world, an appealing image that no longer sufficiently inspires. When that happens, some kind of peace process between the Israelis and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza will become possible."

"A Sanctuary Under Siege - Palestinian Fighters Were Not Unexpected at Nativity Church" (Craig Whitlock, The Washington Post, 2002/04/20)
"The sudden appearance of a small army of guerrilla fighters in one of the holiest sites in Christianity did not, however, come as a complete surprise to most of the clergy members inside. Many of them had been expecting the visit. They welcomed the Palestinians, asked them to please shoulder their weapons and offered them tea. ... The decision by the Palestinians to seek refuge there was part of a calculated strategy, planned days in advance, to map out an escape route from their street battles with the advancing Israeli army, according to interviews with more than a dozen Palestinian officials and church leaders in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. ... Many clergy members in Bethlehem openly support the Palestinian cause. ... Although official church positions vary, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, who is the head of the Roman Catholic Church in the region, is a longtime ally of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat. ... "No, no, no," said the Rev. Amjad Sabbara, a parish priest in the Roman Catholic compound. "We are not hostages. We share everything we have with these people, and pray that they will be able to leave peacefully and go back to their homes." ... The Israelis have said that most of the Palestinians are innocent of crimes and that only 30 to 40 are wanted for specific crimes. They have identified 10 of the Palestinians by name as suspected terrorists, including two men wanted for the slaying of Avi Boaz, a U.S. citizen and longtime resident of Israel who was dragged from his car and killed in the West Bank in January."

"Violence in Gaza as Israel Reduces West Bank Forces" (C. J. Chivers, The New York Times, 2002/04/20)
"After a lull in fighting while Israel's military withdrew many of its soldiers from the West Bank, violence shifted to Gaza today, with Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen skirmishing and a Palestinian suicide bomber striking at a military checkpoint. ... The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved a resolution supporting a mission to gather information on the Israeli military action in Jenin. The troops there have come under bitter criticism for leveling wide swaths of a refugee camp that was home to some 13,000 Palestinians. The resolution was approved after the Israeli foreign minister, Shimon Peres, told Secretary General Kofi Annan that Israel would welcome the arrival of a representative 'to clarify the facts.'"

Friday, April 19, 2002

News and commentary:

"The 'engineer'" (Jonathan Cook, Al-Ahram Weekly, from the 2002/04/18-24 issue)
"Omar sits restlessly on his chair in the safe-house. He is an "engineer" from Jenin refugee camp: one of the revered bomb-makers from the City of the Bombers. ... "Of all the fighters in the West Bank we were the best prepared," he says. "We started working on our plan: to trap the invading soldiers and blow them up from the moment the Israeli tanks pulled out of Jenin last month." Omar and other "engineers" made hundreds of explosive devices and carefully chose their locations. "We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the camp. We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them," he said. "We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four metres apart throughout the houses - in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas." The fighters hoped to disable the Israeli army's tanks with much more powerful bombs placed inside rubbish bins on the street. More explosives were hidden inside the cars of Jenin's most wanted men."

"The Last Negotiation" (Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, Foreign Affairs, from the May/June 2002 issue)
"The time for negotiations has therefore ended. Instead, the parties must be presented with a full-fledged, non-negotiable final agreement. ... Israel believes it cannot negotiate under fire, and the Palestinians fear that, absent fire, the Israelis will have no incentive to negotiate. The violence so inconsistent with the spirit of Oslo thus became its natural successor. The only certain way to stop the killing is to offer the parties a tangible and fair way to end the underlying conflict. ... The forceful presentation by a U.S.-led international coalition of a deal...would oblige the leaderships of both sides to either sign on or defy the world - along with large segments of their own publics. Indeed, even an immediate negative reply from one or both sides would neither erase the initiative nor rob it of its importance, for the very proposal would marginalize those reluctant to espouse it and set in motion a new political dynamic that, in due course, would force a change of heart among the leaders - or else a change of leaders." (See also: "Special Report: Crises in the Middle East" (Foreign Affairs) - A selection of articles on the conflict.)

"The return of Vichyism" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/19)
"It may seem strange that roughly the same people for whom consciousness of the Holocaust remains the great informing value would seek to castigate Israel at every turn and appease those who would destroy it. But this merely points out the incoherence of European policy, both toward Israel as well as the rest of the world. For the lesson that much of Europe - especially the European Left - has taken away from the Second World War is not that power must be exercised sensibly and morally, but that power must not really be exercised at all. ... Yet the essence of Vichy was not capitulation, even if capitulation is what led to Vichy's creation. The essence of Vichy was its complicity in evil. ... Today, Europe follows the path of accommodation to terrorism, to the anti-Israel fashions of the Left, to the demands of its Arab street. It does so out of convenience and cowardice, but also because it believes that there is virtue in weakness and retreat. Yet a Europe that has voluntarily renounced the exercise of power and given in to the demands of its "street" is a complicitous Europe. This may be different from an anti-Semitic Europe, but it is no less disgraceful."

"U.N. vote undermines 'human rights'" (Jonah Goldberg, The Washington Times, 2002/04/19)
"On Monday, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights voted to condemn Israel. This is hardly news. The United Nations has been condemning Israel with the regularity of a metronome for decades. But even for the United Nations this was a particularly scandalous vote, since language in the resolution was widely perceived to be condoning terrorism. Even more outrageous, several European nations, including France and Belgium, supported the measure. ... There are close to 60 Muslim nations represented in the United Nations. With the exception of Turkey, there's not a real democracy in the bunch. And yet, they've all mastered the language of the West, calling for self-determination, human rights and describing Yasser Arafat as an elected leader while calling Israel a terrorist regime. And they all get votes in the United Nations. If Israel's defenders are right when they say it is on the frontlines in the war on terrorism – and I think they are – then Israel's experience with the U.N. should concern us all."

"A New Low for The Nation: The Left and the Mid-East Crisis" (Ronald Radosh, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/04/19)
Radosh takes on Peter Falk's "Ending the Death Dance" (The Nation, from the 2002/04/29 issue): "Look carefully at Richard Falk's words. He is saying, in no uncertain terms, that suicide bombing was a just response reluctantly taken by Palestinian militants to Israeli terrorism - part of the "struggle" that has to continue. ... In other words - Richard Falk is calling upon the Western Left to support the continued terrorism of Arafat and the PLO. It is, he says, simply a matter of "self-help." ... One country proposes major sacrifices for peace; those it negotiates with turn down its offers and opt for terrorism on behalf of their final goal - the destruction of Israel. ... The point is that the Nation Left believes they are the aggressors, and the actual terrorists are the victims. It is a topsy-turvy world, and a confused and dangerous world-view that guides their analysis. ... In that manner, with its editorial and the Falk article, America's once most distinguished voice of liberalism joins the lynch mob against Israel."

"Europe's Inverted Morality" (David Harsanyi, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/04/19)
"When the Italian weekly Panorama features a political cartoon of the Pope crucified against flames at the Church of the Nativity saying to the Jews: "You fire on the house where my God was born, you shoot at his tomb, you target the statue of his mother, you terrorize my priests and my nuns" realizing full-well that terrorists have, as usual, employed religious places, and civilians as shields - that is anti-Semitism. ... Norbert Bluem, the former labor minister of Germany accused Israel of waging "a war of extermination." Despite their detailed familiarity with genocide, the thought of Germans lecturing Jews on morality is a nauseating hypocrisy."

"The Root Cause of Terrorism - It's tyranny" (Benjamin Netanyahu, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/19)
"Do not be fooled by the apologists of terror. These apologists tell us that the root cause of terrorism is the deprivation of national and civic rights, and that the way to stop terror is to redress the supposed grievances that arise from this deprivation. But the root cause of terrorism, the deliberate targeting of civilians, is not the deprivation of rights. ...those who practice terrorism do not believe in these things. In fact, they believe in the very opposite. For them, the cause they espouse is so all-encompassing, so total, that it justifies anything. It allows them to break any law, discard any moral code and trample all human rights in the dust. ... There is a name for the doctrine that produces this evil. It is called totalitarianism. Indeed, the root cause of terrorism is totalitarianism. Only a totalitarian regime, by systemically brainwashing its subjects, can indoctrinate hordes of killers to suspend all moral constraints for the sake of a twisted cause. ... Those who fight as terrorists rule as terrorists. People who deliberately target the innocent never become leaders who protect freedom and human rights. When terrorists seize power, they invariably set up the darkest of dictatorships - whether in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Arafatistan."

"Why the Jews are always to blame" (Melanie Phillips, The Spectator, from the 2002/04/20 issue)
"But Israel has committed a heinous crime. That crime is to seek to defend itself against the attempt to annihilate it. For this effrontery, a torrent of lies, distortions, libels, abandonment of objectivity and the substitution of malice and hatred for truth is pouring out of the British and European media and Establishment. ... Israel, for all its faults, is a democracy and an open society. The Palestinian Authority is a corrupt despotism which has brainwashed its people into believing mediaeval blood libels against the Jews. ... [Palestinians] view Israeli self-defence as an unjustified assault. The response of Britain and Europe is not to acknowledge that this is a monstrous inversion of moral reasoning but to agree that such self-defence is an act of brutality. This is in part because the mind-twisting of the terrorist feeds the moral confusion of the West’s corrupted liberal orthodoxy. This sees a moral equivalence between terror and measures to protect against it. Believing there is no such thing as truth, it embraces lies instead and cannot distinguish victims from their victimisers."

"In Jenin, U.N. Envoy Witnesses 'Horrifying' Scene" (John Lancaster, The Washington Post, 2002/04/19)
"Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nations' Middle East envoy, stood on a pile of rubble and surveyed a landscape of wretchedness and destruction. Just a few feet away, two middle-aged brothers used plastic buckets to excavate the ruins of their former home, unearthing a partial human torso. It was all that remained of their elderly father. "What we are seeing here is horrifying – horrifying scenes of human suffering," said Larsen, who helped shepherd Palestinians and Israelis toward the 1993 Oslo peace accords. "Israel has lost all moral ground in this conflict." ... Palestinian officials have backed away from earlier charges of a massacre in Jenin. But much about the battle remains a mystery. ... "It's very hard to determine" the number of combatants and civilians killed in the fighting, said Dr. Tim Keenan, an orthopedic surgeon from Perth, Australia, who is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross at the hospital. "A lot of it's sort of anecdotal." ..."It's been incredibly difficult to tell the difference between fighters and civilians," said Peter Bouckaert, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch in New York, who evaded Israeli checkpoints to sneak into the camp. 'I think it's clear that in the end what actually happened in Jenin will fall somewhere in between what the Palestinians are alleging and what [the Israeli army] claims. But only an independent authority can establish what actually happened.'"

Thursday, April 18, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Anti-American" (Ian Buruma, The New Republic, from the 2002/04/29 issue)
A review of Arundhati Roy's "Power Politics" and "The Algebra of Infinite Justice": "But when Roy attempts to tackle a wider world, fulminating against the American intervention in Afghanistan, or against "globalization," her tone and her stylistic tics become more than irritating. Her demonology of the United States takes on the foaming-at-the-mouth, eye-rolling quality of the mad evangelist. ... The moral-equivalence argument is crudely employed. Terrorism, Roy writes, is "as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike." Terrorists move their "factories" from country to country "in search of a better deal. Just like the multinationals." This is true, as far as it goes, but the business of Pepsi is not exactly mass murder. The terrorists, Roy goes on to say, are "the ghosts of the victims of America's old wars." ... Arundhati Roy's overheated prose gives criticism a bad name. She makes it too easy for unthinking patriots to dismiss any foreign skepticism toward American policy as mere envy or prejudice. And the effect of her voice in the non-Western world might be worse. The Iraqi intellectual dissident Kanan Makiya observed in his book Cruelty and Silence that Edward Said's Orientalism contributed to a pervasive lack of a sense of responsibility among young Arab intellectuals for the problems of the Middle East. If everything is the fault of a supposedly omnipotent America, or of ingrained Western colonial attitudes, then there is nothing to be done at home, except lash out in a rage." (See also: "The algebra of infinite justice" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2001/09/29) and "'Brutality smeared in peanut butter'" (Arundhati Roy, The Guardian, 2001/10/23))

"Norwegian Unions Boycott Israel" (Fredrik K.R. Norman, 2002/04/18)
Yellow stars perhaps?: "Norway's largest labour organization, the Norwegian Federation of Trade Unions (LO), is calling for a boycott of all Israeli products, according to newspaper Aftenposten. LO officials want all Israeli products in Norwegian stores to be clearly marked. A local grocery store chain urged a similar boycott a few weeks ago, but it wasn't carried out.
According to a statement in Norwegian on LO's own homepage, all organized workers in Norway are also being urged to use arrangements and parades on May 1 (observed as Labour Day in Norway) to show "solidarity" with their 'Palestinian counterparts.'"

"Israel captures top official of Hamas military operations" (CNN.com, 2002/04/18)
"Israeli forces arrested a man Thursday they said was a top official in the military wing of Hamas and responsible for a series of deadly terror attacks against Israeli civilians in recent years, including last month's Passover bombing in Netanya. Both the Israel Defense Forces and Palestinian security forces said the captured man, identified as Hossam Atef Ali Badram, was the head of the military wing of Hamas, Izzedine al Qassam. ... Badram is "responsible for all the most difficult attacks carried out against Israel by the Hamas during the past few years," according to a written statement from the IDF. Those attacks, the IDF said, killed more than 100 people."

"Diplomat censured over bomb poem" (BBC News, 2002/04/18)
"The Saudi Arabian ambassador to the UK faces censure from the British government after writing a poem in praise of Palestinian suicide bombers. Ambassador Dr Ghazi Algosaibi, a well-known poet in the Arab world, wrote that suicide bombers "died to honour God's word" in a short verse published in the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat last week. The poem, entitled The Martyrs, praised Ayat Akhras, an 18-year-old Palestinian who blew herself up in a Jerusalem supermarket on 29 March, killing two Israelis and wounding 25. "Doors of heaven are opened for her," wrote Dr Algosaibi, who has been Saudi Arabia's ambassador in London for more than a decade. ... Dr Algosaibi's poem also criticised the United States, referring to 'a White House whose heart is filled with darkness.'"

"Al-Qaeda suspected over Tunisia blast" (BBC News, 2002/04/18)
"The German Interior Minister, Otto Schily, has said al-Qaeda might be linked to last week's explosion which killed 16 people at a Tunisian synagogue. Speaking on German television, Mr Schily said there were "more and more indications" that the blast was a deliberate act. ... German prosecutors believe a fuel truck parked in front of the synagogue was deliberately detonated by its driver. ... The driver is said to have lived in the French city of Lyon. French and German officials identified him as 24-year-old Nizar Ben Mohamed Nasr Nawar. ... French police sources say the driver's name is identical to that published in a letter sent to the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.The writer of the letter admitted responsibility for the explosion on behalf of al-Qaeda."

"It's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/04/18)
"But the last eight years should have taught Israel that it cannot live within its 1967 borders next to a thug statelet whose sole purpose is to liquidate it. The Arabs have succeeded in luring the West into their bizarro alternative universe, where land lost by a foolish king is mysteriously transformed into the personal property of a terrorist organization, where the "armed struggle" of wired schoolgirls is UN-approved, and where the "right to exist" is something to be negotiated. Fantasy land is fun, but we've encouraged the Arabs in their peculiar dementias for too long. It's time to get real."

"Media Is Drawn Into West Bank Propaganda War" (Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post, 2002/04/18)
"The Israeli assault on the West Bank town of Jenin has produced dramatically different media accounts. The British press is playing it as a massacre, while American newspapers say there's no such evidence. ... At the moment, there is no hard evidence of deliberate mass killings, as some Palestinians have alleged. ... Some of the British press reports seethe with anger toward Israel. The Brits also are willing to make sensational charges based on thin evidence. ... The Independent runs this no-doubt-about-it headline: "Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime." Writes reporter Phil Reeves: "A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed." ... The Times of London has this report by Janine di Giovanni: 'The refugees I had interviewed in recent days while trying to enter the camp were not lying. If anything, they underestimated the carnage and the horror. Rarely, in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life.'" (See also: "Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime" (Phil Reeves, Independent, 2002/04/16) and "Inside the camp of the dead" (Janine di Giovanni, The Times, 2002/04/16))

"The case for humility" (Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian, 2002/04/18)
Ash writes about the European stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: "Of course Europe should speak its mind, but I believe it would be disastrous if Europe chose this issue on which to assert its independence. One reason is moral and historical. Europe used to be home to most of the world's Jews. Europeans murdered them or drove them out. Without Europe's holocaust there would probably be no state of Israel. Even if today's native European or imported anti-semitism has nothing at all to do with our current Middle Eastern policy, that history should still dictate a basic humility in reading high moral lessons to Americans over Israel. It doesn't disqualify us, but it should restrain us."

"As Palestinians Look for Dead, Israel Begins Pullback in Jenin" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/18)
"Surveying the camp here today, Terje Roed-Larsen, the United Nation's special envoy to the Middle East called the scene "horrifying beyond belief." "Combating terrorism does not give a blank check to kill civilians," he said. He said people might still be alive under the bulldozed ruins, among the buried bodies. "You can yourself smell the stench of death all over the place," he said. "No doubt about it, there are bodies all over the place." He accused Israel of blocking access to the camp for United Nations and humanitarian worker for 11 days. Israeli officials were furious over Mr. Larsen's remarks, accusing him of ignoring the fact that 23 soldiers died in the combat here and that in attacking the camp Israel was reacting to Palestinian violence. "Larsen is not telling the whole truth," said Gideon Meir, a spokesman for the foreign ministry. 'He is totally ignoring what Israel went through. He is ignoring what Jenin was - the capital of Palestinian terror.'"

"Visiting day in the Jenin refugee camp" (Margot Dudkevitch, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/18)
"'We had received intelligence reports prior to our entry and knew there were hundreds of kilograms of explosives. Some we managed to defuse and others were detonated against our soldiers,' said Lederman. ... Another soldier standing nearby surveying the rubble says, "We uncovered dozens of bomb workshops, and on the streets and in the buildings there were more bombs than dogs turds." Capt. (res.) Uzi Maor said that "almost every house was boobytrapped and there were explosive devices in the streets. We made every effort to minimize damage to the civilian population. We used only precise weapons and ammunition and did not use artillery. Missiles were fired from helicopters at specific targets and bulldozers were used to damage specific buildings where gunmen were shooting at troops. Buildings or homes which were not used by terrorists were left alone."

"The U.N.'s Refugees - The international body gives aid and comfort to terrorists" (Michael Rubin, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/18)
"On Monday, France, Belgium and four other European Union members endorsed a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution condoning "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Hence, six EU members and the commission now join the 57 nations of the Islamic Conference in legitimizing suicide bombers. ... UNRWA operates 27 refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and another 32 camps in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. ... Confronted with evidence of illegal Palestinian mines, mortars and missiles, no U.N. official questioned how it was that bomb factories could exist in U.N.-managed refugee camps. Either the U.N. officials were unaware of the bomb factories - which would suggest utter incompetence - or, more likely, the U.N. employees simply turned a blind eye. ... Perhaps Mr. Annan can be forgiven for not being aware that U.N.-funded refugee camps housed arms factories, or for allowing U.N. complicity in terror cover-ups in Lebanon and Iraq. But in a Middle East where perception is more important than reality, Mr. Annan's silence is deafening and his moral equivalency is interpreted as a green light for terror. The main casualty is U.N. credibility."

"The media and 'the massacre'" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/18)
"For, ever since the start of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield, the self-appointed guardians of truth have been all too quick to report fantasy as fact, but far less swift to correct the errors they have helped to spread. ... The evidence that's come to light [in Jenin], however, has thus far failed to corroborate Palestinian allegations. According to both the IDF and independent aid groups, the total number of Palestinian dead found in the town is 40 - a far cry from the 500 casualties which Palestinian spokesmen had asserted at one point - and nearly all of them are male combatants bearing ammunition belts or other signs of having engaged in combat with Israeli forces. ... Objectivity and even-handedness are about more than just airing both sides of a story. When one side is caught in a lie, it is the duty of responsible media to say so. So far, too much of the Western media have failed in that most basic task."

"The new blood libel" (The Washington Times, 2002/04/18)
"The accusations, now being made by Yasser Arafat and his apologists, that Israel has committed Kosovo-style "massacres" in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank town of Jenin are simply the latest version of centuries-old slander. ... ...Much of the terrorist infrastructure responsible for 18 months' worth of bombings directed at Israel has operated out of that densely populated West Bank city, effectively using Palestinian civilians as human shields. At least 23 of the Palestinian suicide bombers who have targeted Israel during this period have come from the Jenin area; Jenin's epicenter of terror is a Palestinian refugee camp with a population of 13,000. ... One man, Mr. Arafat, bears responsibility above all for the Israeli and Palestinian casualties in Jenin. Had he not decided to use Palestinians as cannon fodder for a barbaric war of terror against Israel, the tragedy there would never have occurred."

Wednesday, April 17, 2002

News and commentary:

"Arab Governments No Strangers to Fiction" (Ken Adelman, Fox News, 2002/04/17)
"Among the more serious, yet least noticed, casualties in the war on terrorism now raging in Israel is basic truth. Along with attacking civilians, the Palestinians are attacking the truth and creating facts out of whole cloth. ... In a world where the "truth" is manufactured and not objectively observed and reported, Dr. Cheney insightfully explains, barbarism is sure to follow. We are witnessing this now as horrid homicide bombings follow horrid distortions of truth. Among the most outrageous distortions, some of which were subsequently broadcast by the Western press: ... On April 3, Chairman Arafat told Al Jazeera, the television network watched across the Arab world, that Israel had "burned the mosque" opposite Santa Maria Church in Bethlehem and "destroyed many churches and mosques." He called upon the Christian and Muslim world to take action. None of it happened. All of this was creating truth." (See also: "Lies and Disinformation as a Palestinian Weapon" (MFA, 2002/04/10): "Even more disturbing is the willingness of the international media to serve as the instrument for publicizing the Palestinian claims, without checking their veracity and knowing that in many cases they are without foundation. The denials, if they are published later, receive much less publicity; by then, the damage has been done.")

"President Outlines War Effort" (The White House, 2002/04/17)
A transcript of President George W. Bush's speech at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington: "And in the Middle East, where acts of terror have triggered mounting violence, all parties have a choice to make. Every leader, every state must choose between two separate paths: the path of peace or the path of terror. In the stricken faces of mothers, Palestinian mothers and Israeli mothers, the entire world is witnessing the agonizing cost of this conflict. Now, every nation and every leader in the region must work to end terror. ... The Egyptians and Jordanians and Saudis have helped in the wider war on terrorism. And they must help confront terrorism in the Middle East. All parties have a responsibility to stop funding or inciting terror. And all parties must say clearly that a murderer is not a martyr; he or she is just a murderer."

"Bin Laden hails U.S. Sept. 11 economic losses" (CNN.com, 2002/04/17)
"Osama bin Laden praises the economic fallout suffered in the United States after the September 11 attacks in part of an undated videotape aired Wednesday by the Middle East Broadcasting Center. "The whole damage, by the least accounts, is about $3 trillion, by God's will," bin Laden says, according to a CNN translation of the tape. "All these explosions have been blessed. We pray that may God accept those martyrs who were killed in those hits." ... "Some American studies have said that about 70 percent of the American people are suffering from depression and psychological diseases after the events of the collapsed two towers and the damage at the Pentagon," bin Laden says."

"Can Tom Paulin be serious?" (Rod Liddle, The Guardian, 2002/04/17)
Liddle on the Al-Ahram interview in which the poet Tom Paulin said that American-born settlers in Israel should be shot dead: "Still, the Paulin business shook me out of my Wasp-ish complacency. I'd been inclined to dismiss as paranoid repeated complaints from British Jews that there was a new mood of anti-semitism abroad: I was wrong. Paulin will undoubtedly claim that his remarks are not anti-semitic, but merely anti-Zionist. He may even believe that himself. So might the others, generally from the left, who, when cross-examined about their opposition to what they call Zionism, reveal a dark and visceral loathing of Jews. There is a theory, loosely based on Freud, that the left's demonisation of capitalists was simply a displaced anti-semitism; and it's true that the old communist caricatures of big businessmen were almost identical to the Nazi depiction of the "filthy Jew", with his business suit, venal expression and relentless appropriation of other people's money. But the whole thing seemed too neat, too glib a theory, to be convincing. But I can see the displaced anti-semitism at work in the catch-all, ill-defined term "anti-Zionism". And if you doubt it look at Paulin's words - not the stuff about the rights of Palestinians, which we might all agree with - but, quite simply, in this: "hatred" and 'shot dead'." (See also: "Oxford poet 'wants US Jews shot'" (Neil Tweedie, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/13))

"Amnesty From Absurdity" (Aaron Page, Cornell Daily Sun, 2002/04/17)
"Since the start of 2000, the United Kingdom has been criticized 45 times [by Amnesty International], Israel 68 times, and the United States a whooping 88 times. Though all countries have at some point exhibited morally deficient behavior, the relative attention paid to these nations is shocking and disturbing. Saudi Arabia, a monarchical state where women are not allowed to drive and where those who oppose government policies are summarily jailed, has only received 13 notes of criticism during that same time. Iran, a religious state that routinely sponsors acts of terrorism, made out even better, having only been mentioned on 11 occasions. And in what could only be considered a cruel joke, Iraq - a country which on several occasions used chemical weapons against its own population - escaped with a mere five notices."

"Powell Concludes Mideast Trip With No Firm Plan to End the Violence" (Todd S. Purdum and Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/04/17)
"Secretary of State Colin L. Powell headed home from Israel today with no concrete agreement on ending 18 months of bloody Israeli-Palestinian violence, only a pledge that the Bush administration would stay involved in pressing for peace in the Middle East. ... Palestinians bitterly denounced the end of the secretary's mission, with one lead negotiator, Saeb Erekat, saying: "The situation on the ground is that Secretary Powell leaves the situation much worse than he came." ... As for Mr. Arafat, Secretary Powell said he had to make "a strategic choice" on whether to renounce violence once and for all. "He and the Palestinian Authority can no longer equivocate," Secretary Powell said. 'They must decide, as the rest of the word has decided, that terror must end.'"

"Arabs seize 'Jenin' as rallying cry" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/04/17)
"The media barrage – through television, radio, and newspapers – is ceaseless. ... An editorial this week in the "Arab News," a moderate Saudi newspaper, suggested that Jenin conjures up the "the name Srebrenica" and "all the worst horrors of the Bosnian war; in 1995, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serbs. In the same way, the name Jenin looks set to go down in history as the place that encapsulates all the horror of the present phase of the long war for Palestinian freedom." ... In the "Arab street" Jenin is already viewed, almost across the board, as a "massacre" of several hundred people. Ahmed Sami, a Cairo University student who sports a money belt bearing a McDonald's logo, says he has no doubts about what "really happened" in Jenin. "The Israelis killed large groups of Palestinians and buried them all together," he says. A sense of biting cynicism dominates what many Arabs say they believe happened in Jenin. "The Israeli army killed between 3,000 and 4,000 Arabs," says Mohammed Khalil, a 33-year-old accountant."

"Escapee, 16, Tells of Stench and Cold in Besieged Church" (Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/04/17)
"Inside the Church of the Nativity, rations are meager and a smell of rotting bodies and gangrenous wounds pervades. Israeli loudspeakers blare through sleepless nights, but some 250 Palestinians remain determined not to surrender. ... Mr. Abdul Rahman said the men inside had organized themselves according to their militias or neighborhoods, each with one man in charge. There was no arguing, he said. In recent conversations he overheard, the men were hopeful that Secretary of State Colin L. Powell might negotiate their release. "If not, they said they'd stay," the youth said. "They said, 'Are we better than the martyrs in Jenin? Rather than surrender,' they said, 'we'll go out shooting.'"

"U.S. Concludes Bin Laden Escaped at Tora Bora Fight" (Barton Gellman and Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/04/17)
"The Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge. ... In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters."

"Israeli-Arab extremism" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/17)
"Israeli Arab activists called a press conference last Wednesday to protest the arrest of five members of their community on suspicion of incitement and sedition. The arrests stemmed from a demonstration two weeks earlier at which some participants called for "liberating Palestine with blood" and "blowing up Tel Aviv." ... That such violent statements came from respected community leaders rather than the lunatic fringe is deeply disturbing. That many other community leaders, though claiming to oppose such statements, nevertheless defended them at the press conference as legitimate political speech is even more so. ... For over the last few years, statements praising violence against Jews have become standard fare among these MKs. MK Abdul Malik Dahamshe (UAL), for instance, told the Or Commission of Inquiry in January that Israeli Arabs convicted of murdering Jews were "prisoners of conscience," because murder, even of noncombatants, is "something so noble and so right" if selflessly committed to further the Palestinian cause. Hashem Mahameed (UAL) told the same panel in November that throwing rocks at Jews is a legitimate form of democratic protest. ... A-Sanaa himself, in an interview with the Nazareth-based newspaper Kul al-Arab last year, described the head of Hamas - the organization that pioneered suicide bombings against women and children - as an "exalted" figure comparable to the Dalai Lama. He said that Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah - who continued military attacks against Israel even after it acceded to his demand for withdrawal from every last inch of Lebanese territory - "deserves the Nobel Peace Prize." And these statements are merely a representative sampling."

Note: Sorry for the downtime. Tripod have converted to a new platform. Meanwhile, I have continued the updates as usual. I've also checked a lot of links and done some other small changes. Also - one new theme, "Terror Documented", with news and commentary on the documents found during Operation Defensive Shield, linking Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to terrorism.

Tuesday, April 16, 2002

News and commentary:

"U.N. to Jews: Drop Dead" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/04/16)
"The United Nations Human Rights Commission has endorsed Palestinian terrorism and denounced Israel for defending itself, Canada's National Post reports. By a 40-5 vote, the commission approved a resolution approving of "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. The resolution makes no exception for terrorism. Only Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany and Guatemala voted against the resolution. Six European countries - Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden - endorsed the murder of Jews. Italy abstained. .... The Toronto Globe and Mail notes that the resolution condemned "mass killing" by Israel during Operation Defensive Shield - and never mind the lack of evidence that any such killing took place. ... It's possible that recovery efforts will uncover evidence of a massacre, but the U.N. commission vote makes clear the Austrians, Belgians, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedes regard Jews as guilty until proven innocent - if then." (See also: "UN backs Palestinian violence" (Steven Edwards, National Post, 2002/04/16): "Alfred Moses, a former United States ambassador to the commission and now chairman of UN Watch, a monitoring group, was more blunt. "A vote in favour of this resolution is a vote for Palestinian terrorism," he said. "An abstention suggests ambivalence toward terror. Any country that condones - or is indifferent to - the murder of Israeli civilians in markets, on buses and in cafés has lost any moral standing to criticize Israel's human rights record." And "Canada votes against UN resolution condemning 'mass killings' by Israel" (The Globe and Mail, 2002/04/16): "The resolution "strongly condemns the war launched by the Israeli army against Palestinian towns and (refugee) camps, which has resulted so far in the death of hundreds of Palestinian civilians, including women and children.")

"The Morality of Terror" (Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal, 2002/04/16)
"At the recent meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Malaysia, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mohammed Mahathir, said "the causes of bitterness and anger . . . of terrorists should be identified and removed." He added that people would not be willing to blow themselves up and kill others if they did not have a reason. ... ...Mahathir implied that anyone prepared to use himself as a human detonator must have a very good reason, or he wouldn’t go to those lengths. This is not a case of the end justifying the means, but of the means justifying the end. You know your cause is good - and other people must admit it too - if you are prepared to murder innocent people at random in order to further it. ... Mahathir’s remarks also suggested that there is a simple mathematical correlation between fanatical terrorism and oppression suffered: that not only does the rage justify the act, but the act justifies the rage. A remarkably obtuse remark by Peter FitzSimons of the Sydney Morning Herald makes this correlation even clearer: "We accept that such hate as drove the planes into the World Trade Center can only have come from incredible suffering." The circle is closed, and all compassion, all sympathy for others, and all genuine moral thought, is rigorously excluded. And chaos ensues."

"British Atrocities in Jenin" (HonestReporting.com, 2002/04/16)
A survey of the coverage in British and American press about the battle in Jenin: "One of the hallmarks of journalism is to independently verify info before printing a "fact." Otherwise, readers are only being treated to rumors, accusations and even propaganda. The aftermath of the fighting in the Jenin refugee camp has dominated media reports. Though not independently verified, many media outlets devoted huge amounts of ink to unverified Palestinian tales of conspiracies, mass murders, common graves, and war crimes. The worst journalistic atrocities occurred in the British Press."

"Sermon on Palestinian Authority TV" (MEMRI, SD# 370, 2002/04/16)
"The following are excerpts from a Friday sermon delivered by Palestinian Authority Imam Sheikh Ibrahim Madhi at the Sheikh 'Ijlin Mosque in Gaza City, broadcast live on April 12, 2002 by Palestinian Authority television": "We are convinced of the [future] victory of Allah; we believe that one of these days, we will enter Jerusalem as conquerors, enter Jaffa as conquerors, enter Haifa as conquerors, enter Ramle and Lod as conquerors, the [villages of] Hirbiya and Dir Jerjis and all of Palestine as conquerors, as Allah has decreed… Anyone who does not attain martyrdom in these days should wake in the middle of the night and say: 'My God, why have you deprived me of martyrdom for your sake? For the martyr lives next to Allah'…"

"Saudi: Suicide Bombings Not Terrorism" (AP/ABC News, 2002/04/16)
"A Saudi official said Tuesday he told President Bush and Congress in a letter that Palestinian suicide bombers are not terrorists and are instead sacrificing "their souls for freedom." ... Ahmed al-Tuwaijri said in his letter that U.S. policy has "destroyed our dreams and the dreams of peace-lovers around the world." ... Tuwaijri's comments came after the Saudi ambassador to Britain, Ghazi Algosaibi, wrote a poem in the Arab daily Al-Hayat over the weekend praising a female suicide bomber. ... Iraqi President Saddam Hussein also said suicide bombings are a "legitimate means used by a people whose land is being occupied," state-run media reported Tuesday. Saddam has been making payments of up to $25,000 to families of Palestinian suicide bombers since the Israeli-Palestinian clashes began in September 2000."

"Muslims rampage through Amsterdam - 75 Swastika's and 'the Jews are dogs'" (Ronald Eissens, Magenta/IMRI, 2002/04/16)
A report from Amsterdam about the demonstration "Stop the war against the Palestinians" on April the 13:th: "About 15.000 people took part, which made it one of the biggest demonstrations in Amsterdam of the last 8 years. Never since 1945 were so many swastika's shown in public. The procession counted some 75. But there was a lot more of dreadful stuff. A photo of Hitler, strangling Sharon. People chanting "Jews into the sea!". ... "The Arab army will slaughter you all", "Stop the Zionist genocide", "Hamas-Jihad-Hezbollah", "El Yahud kalbulah" (the Jews are Dogs)... ... Little boys sitting on their father's shoulders, proudly waving toy machine guns... ... "USA you will pay", "Stop Holocaust in Palestine", Sharon & Bush = Swastika, "USA=Star of David"... During the demonstration, groups of participants shouted "Sieg Heil!" on at least two occasions. The whole thing can at best be described as discriminatory, distasteful and hurtful. ... What we would never tolerate in Amsterdam from extreme-right wing protesters, that is carrying and shouting discriminatory and antisemitic expressions, is tolerated from these protesters."

"Lives Reduced to Rubble - Jenin Camp Is a Scene of Devastation But Yields No Evidence of a Massacre" (Molly Moore, The Washington Post, 2002/04/16)
"The heart of this battered Palestinian shantytown of 13,000 inhabitants has been erased from the face of the earth, its maze of apartment houses and twisting streets bulldozed by the Israeli military into a vast crater of broken concrete. ... Interviews with residents inside the camp and international aid workers who were allowed here for the first time today indicated that no evidence has surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions by Israeli troops. Thus far, about 40 bodies have been recovered, according to the Israeli military and aid groups."

"Behind the Rage" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2002/04/16)
"It's a measure of the rage spreading across the Middle East that even in this dusty capital, almost at the edge of the world, several hundred thousand people have marched through the streets denouncing Israel and America - and in some cases cheering Osama bin Laden. ... This frenzy in the Arab world is fascinating, because while the Israeli brutality in the occupied territories is real, it is small potatoes by Arab standards. Some 1,600 Palestinians have been killed since the latest round of violence erupted in the fall of 2000. In contrast, two million Sudanese have died in the ongoing civil war here, with barely anyone noticing. ... First, there is a double standard; the Arab world is outraged in large part because it is Israel that is killing Arabs this time. ... Another reason for the double standard in the Middle East is that Arab countries are shame-based societies, and Israeli repression of Arabs is seen not just as brutal, but also as humiliating. ... "The Israeli occupation represents a total humiliation of all the Arab regimes," says Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian activist in Florida. 'It's a continuous reminder of the weakness of the Arabs as people, of their society and political system, as well as an indication of the impotence and corruption of their regimes.'"

"Israelis Capture Arafat Deputy in the West Bank" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/16)
"In the biggest catch of its West Bank offensive, Israel arrested a top leader of Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank today, accusing him of planning and financing terrorist attacks while masquerading as a politician without a military role. ... Once popular with Israeli officials, Mr. Barghouti is largely regarded in Israel now simply as a terrorist. Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the defense minister, accused Mr. Barghouti of turning Fatah's militia into "the most murderous of the terrorist organizations, committing most of the recent attacks against Israel." ... For Palestinians, Mr. Barghouti, 41, a canny, charismatic man with a compact build and an easy smile, has become a popular leader of a fight for freedom, and even a potential successor to Mr. Arafat."

Monday, April 15, 2002

News and commentary:

"New bin Laden tape surfaces - Separate video apparently shows September 11 hijacker" (CNN.com, 2002/04/15)
"An Arabic-language television network has aired a previously unseen videotape of Osama bin Laden showing the accused terrorist mastermind sitting with [Ayman Al-Zawahiri] who claims credit for the September 11 attacks in the United States. ... "This great victory that has been accomplished can only be attributed to God alone," Al-Zawahiri says on the tape. "It is not because of our skill ... but thanks to God it was possible. ... Those 19 brothers who went out and gave their souls to Allah almighty, God almighty has granted them this victory we are enjoying now." ... Al-Jazeera said the tape was part of a documentary that it received from a pro-al Qaeda production company. That documentary also included a separate videotaped will and testament prepared by one of the 19 September 11 hijackers, according to the network. In that tape, a man identified as Ahmed Ibrahim Al Haznawi talks about his plans for attacks in the heartland of the United States." (See also transcript: "Al Qaeda claims responsibility for September 11" (CNN.com, 2002/04/15))

"'Second Holocaust,' Roth's Invention, Isn't Novelistic" (Ron Rosenbaum, The New York Observer, 2002/04/15)
"This is the way it is likely to happen: Sooner or later, a nuclear weapon is detonated in Tel Aviv, and sooner, not later, there is nuclear retaliation - Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran, perhaps all three. Someone once said that while Jesus called on Christians to "turn the other cheek," it's the Jews who have been the only ones who have actually practiced that. Not this time. The unspoken corollary of the slogan "Never again" is: "And if again, not us alone." So the time has come to think about the Second Holocaust. It's coming sooner or later; it's not "whether," but when. I hope I don't live to see it. It will be unbearable for those who do. That is, for all but the Europeans - whose consciences, as always, will be clear and untroubled."

"The Oslo Plague" (Steven Plaut, National Review, 2002/04/15)
"The most Orwellian spin of all is the Palestinian howling about the "massacre" in Jenin. These are the same people who have perpetrated thousands of atrocities and committed hundreds of murders in just this past year. They have committed countless massacres with sincere pride and near-universal public support. Yet when Israel is finally driven to take some mild military action against the killers, it shoots a bunch of terrorists and a handful of civilians who get in the way — and that's considered a massacre. This is the same world that has never gotten around to noticing the 100,000 murdered by Islamist fascists in Algeria, and has long ago forgotten the many massacres of Arabs by Arab regimes. So much for the theory that Arab terror has something to do with Arabs being mistreated. But no one cares about those victims, because they cannot be used as bludgeons against the Jews."

"The God Squad" (Christopher Hitchens, The Nation, 2002/04/15)
"So there you have it: The country's senior Protestant is a gaping and mendacious anti-Jewish peasant; the leaders of official Jewry are cringingly yoked with him for the purpose of a disastrous crusade and meanwhile the cardinals are running a rape fiesta for twitchy "celibates." All official attention turns, meanwhile, upon the weird beliefs to be found in the Koran, which may be partly because the Attorney General himself is a tuneless, clueless, evangelical Confederate dunce. The struggle against theocratic fascism should, therefore, be inseparable from the struggle for a truly secular state. This need not mean an atheist state; the religious impulse itself seems to be partly innate at our present stage of evolution. But it need not necessarily take the extremely backward form that it assumes in our society, nor need its recognition eventuate in the present sickly "multiculturalism," whereby all forms of religious stupidity are granted equal "respect" while challenges to, say, scientific teaching are greeted with nervous tolerance."

"Arafat's letter of incitement" (Bret Stephens and Lamia Lahoud, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/15)
"A letter seized by the IDF from Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Ramallah office suggests a concerted effort by the PA to incite Israeli Arabs against Israel. ... However, PA security sources have said in the past there were connections between the Islamic Movement in Israel and Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The PA has also recruited some Israeli Arabs, they added. Palestinians have warned in the past that the conflict may spread into Israel creating a confrontation between Israeli Arabs and Jews if the political process does not resume." (See also: "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))

"No substitute for victory" (Newt Gingrich, The Washington Times, 2002/04/15)
"For Israel to survive, the forces of terrorism and hatred must be totally defeated. Therefore, a campaign must be undertaken to eliminate them from the Palestinian territories, break their financial ties from Arab states, and eliminate the propaganda that grows new generations of terrorists. ... There can be no improvement in Israeli-Palestinian relations and no hope of a Palestinian state willing to live peacefully with Israel without defeating the terrorists. So long they exist any Palestinian leader willing to publicly work with Israel for peace will be extinguished and the propaganda of hatred will continue. This is a historic moment when the choice is clear and unavoidable. After September 11, the United States committed itself to defeating terrorism. This is terrorism and it needs to be defeated."

"Truth about Israeli casualties is being ignored in this war" (Barbara Amiel, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/04/15)
"The media seem to have taken the vocabulary of a "theatre" of war literally, as George Jonas points out in his Ottawa Citizen column, and believe this is a production in which they should have a lead role. Never mind that many of them have been doing the work of Goebbels without bothering to wear the brown uniform identifying their agenda. In that vein, the prize of the week is split between the former Foreign Office adviser David Clark writing in the Guardian about the Camp David deal offered to Arafat, and the poet and Oxford professor Tom Paulin, interviewed in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. Paulin is quoted describing Israeli settlers as "Nazis" and calling for them to be "shot dead". ... Everything in the history of Israel pivots around the Arab leader's rejection of a Jewish state in the Middle East. Clark's piece, which he winningly describes as "constructive revisionism", is an insight into the insane logic, to say nothing of the accuracy, of British Foreign Office information."

"Tenet's Palestinian" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2002/04/15)
"This year's entrapper of our C.I.A. chief is Jabril Rajoub. This aide to Yasir Arafat has been, and still is, head of the Palestinians' deceptively named "Office of Preventive Security." As such, Rajoub has been in direct touch with Tenet as well as his Israeli counterpart, ostensibly to arrest Arabs identified as planning to kill civilians in Israel and to shut off terrorist purchases and smuggling of arms into the West Bank. ... Evidence has just surfaced from an Israeli search of Palestinian offices indicating that Rajoub's "preventive security" force was not only failing to prevent murder, but was also helping to supply and disguise the murderers. According to a front-page story by Michael R. Gordon of The Times, documents and other intelligence delivered to the U.S. showed what Israeli officials said was evidence that "elements of the Palestinian office of preventive security, which the United States has backed as a way to enhance the authority of moderate Palestinians and head off terrorist attacks, are also linked to suicide bombings." Found in Rajoub's headquarters were mortars and heavy machine guns, as well as skullcaps and other garb to disguise suicide bombers. (See www.idf.il for the Israel military's outline of evidence found.)"

"Abolish UNRWA" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/15)
"As if this weren't bad enough, UNRWA has now become a de facto accomplice in terrorism. Food storage areas have been allowed to become munitions' depots and weapons' factories, as the incursion last month into the Balata refugee camp showed. And UN administrators have ceded effective control of the camps to Palestinian gunmen - a fact not lost on the IDF as it attempts to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Operation Defensive Shield."

"Return to the Camp David principles . . . and put a fence round the Palestinians" (Ehud Barak, The Times, 2002/04/15)
"International intervention was successful in the Balkans due to a readiness clearly to identify the "bad guy" and to act. I do not see this clarity in Europe concerning Arafat’s behaviour. With all the reservations that someone can have about Ariel Sharon’s Government, there is no moral equivalence between the victims of terror and its perpetrators. ... Personally, I found that Arafat is a terrorist thug and does not have the character to make peace, but even for those who think differently, it should be clear that as long as he sees a crack in the international community, with some Europeans ready to give him more than the US, he would never move towards negotiations."

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



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