Archived news and commentary: April 22 - 28, 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 28, 2002

News and commentary:

"The U.N. won't investigate the real tragedy" (Yossi Klein Halevi, Los Angeles Times, 2002/04/28)
"The commission won't be investigating how the Palestinian Authority, established and lavishly funded by the international community, abused its sponsors' trust by turning Jenin and other West Bank towns into centers for suicide bomb factories. ... The commission won't be investigating how donor nations, especially those of the European Union, allowed the Palestinian Authority to sustain a terrorist war for the last 19 months, lavishing funds on a corrupt regime that devotes its budget to building bomb factories rather than hospitals and schools. ... The commission won't be investigating why much of the world's media rushed to proclaim a massacre in Jenin without evidence, and then appeared disappointed not to find mass graves beneath Jenin's rubble. Neither will the commission be investigating itself to expose how the U.N. has been hijacked by a coalition of international dictatorships that have singled out Israel, which struggles to maintain democratic norms under permanent siege, as the world body's symbol of evil. ... The commission won't be investigating the real tragedy: how the U.N. squandered the dream of a united humanity animated by justice - a dream first offered by the prophets of ancient Israel - and instead joined the unholy coalition of Islamic fundamentalists, far-left moralizers and far-right neofascists in again targeting the Jewish people."

"Israel blocks UN Jenin inquiry" (BBC News, 2002/04/28)
"The Israeli cabinet has told the United Nations not to send a team to investigate what happened during an Israeli military assault on the Palestinian refugee camp of Jenin earlier this month. Israeli spokesman Reuven Rivlin accused the UN of retreating on agreements, and suggested its inquiry would be biased against Israel. The cabinet, meanwhile, approved a US plan which could pave the way for the lifting of the siege of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in Ramallah."

"14 Christians Killed in Indonesia" (AP/The New York Times, 2002/04/28)
"Black-masked assailants armed with guns, grenades and daggers stormed a village in Indonesia's religiously divided Maluku province Sunday, killing 14 Christians in a brutal pre-dawn attack that threatened a fragile peace pact. Shoutings "kill them all,'' a dozen men entered the mostly Christian village of Soya on the outskirts of Ambon, the provincial capital and the focus of three years of sectarian violence that killed 9,000 people, witnesses said. The attackers went from house to house, shooting residents and setting fire to 30 homes and a Protestant church, witnesses said. They said six people were stabbed to death, including a 6-month-old child, six died in fires and two were believed to have been shot. ... The attack came two days after a militant Islamic group, Laskar Jihad, rejected a February peace deal meant to end the fighting between Muslims and Christians in Maluku, a region known as the Spice Islands during Dutch colonial rule."

"U.S. Envisions Blueprint on Iraq Including Big Invasion Next Year" (Thom Shankar and David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 2002/04/28)
An article Saddam Hussein might want to read after celebrating his 65:th birthday today: "The Bush administration, in developing a potential approach for toppling President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, is concentrating its attention on a major air campaign and ground invasion, with initial estimates contemplating the use of 70,000 to 250,000 troops. ... Until recently, the administration had contemplated a possible confrontation with Mr. Hussein this fall... Now that schedule seems less realistic. Conflict in the Middle East has widened a rift within the administration over whether military action can be undertaken without inflaming Arab states and prompting anti-American violence throughout the region." (See also: "Show of Popular Support in Saddam Birthday Climax" (Andrew Hammond, Reuters/Yahoo! News, (2002/04/28))

"A wave of Jew-bashing in Europe" (Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe, 2002/04/28)
"Anti-Semitism, wrote a columnist in The Spectator, ''has become respectable ... at London dinner tables.'' She quoted one member of the House of Lords: ''The Jews have been asking for it and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.'' ... The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women, so that their relatives will kill them to preserve ''family honor.'' ... Jews, it is often said, are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon to come. If Europeans don't rise up and turn against the Jew-haters, the Jew-haters will rise up and turn against them."

"Saudi Government TV broadcasts sermon calling to annihilate the Jews - 'annihilate them soon'" (IMRA, 2002/04/28)
"Shaykh Salah Bin-Muhammad al-Budayr, preacher and imam of the holy mosque in Medina, delivers the sermon... "O God, O revealer of the Book, mover of clouds, and vanquisher of infidels, defeat the usurper Jews. ... O God, destroy them. O God, scatter them. O God, annihilate them soon." ... Dr. Abd-al-Rahman al-Sudays, preacher and imam of the mosque [in Mecca], delivers the sermon... "Read history," he adds, 'to know that yesterday's Jews were bad predecessors and today's Jews are worse successors. They are killers of prophets and the scum of the earth. God hurled his curses and indignation on them and made them monkeys and pigs and worshippers of tyrants. These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, evil, and corruption. ... The land is drenched with the pure blood of our brothers and sisters in struggler Palestine. They were killed like sheep. Scores of mosques were destroyed, hundreds of houses were demolished, and thousands of souls were killed. How many women have been widowed, children orphaned, and mass graves dug?'"

"The UN and terrorism" (Shlomo Avineri, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/28)
"The United Nation group should investigate something else as well - the UN complicity in the way terrorism developed at the Jenin refugee camp and at other Palestinian refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza. Because, what has been forgotten in the barrage of accusations and counter-claims is that the Jenin refugee camp is run - as are all Palestinian refugee camps - by UNWRA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees. It has been a long-standing scandal that this UN agency has toed the Arab line that the refugees camps should remain temporary shelters, so as not to undermine the claims of the 1948 refugees to refugee status and to their demand to return to Israel proper. ... But there is a deeper issue: all refugee camp officials - from directors of the camps, through the camp bureaucracy and down to teachers in the schools - are UN employees. Most of them are Palestinians. Is it possible for a camp like Jenin to become a center for terrorists and suicide bombers without the knowledge, connivance or even active participation of the UN-employed camp bureaucracy - Palestinians or expatriates? ... Unless the UN takes some robust action to distance itself, its agencies and its employees from involvement in terrorism, it is indeed in a morally ambiguous and unacceptable position. In Bosnia it was complicit in mass murder; in the Palestinian camps it has, for years, at least been passively acquiescing in its employees' involvement in terrorism."

Saturday, April 27, 2002

News and commentary:

"Palestinians in Disguise Kill Four Jewish Settlers in the West Bank" (James Bennet, The New York Times, 2002/04/27)
"Three Palestinian gunmen dressed like Israeli soldiers cut through the fence surrounding this small Jewish settlement today and attacked the residents while they were relaxing on a Sabbath morning, killing four, including a 5-year-old girl, the Israeli Army said. ... As Israeli forces rushed to the scene, the men escaped back through their hole in the fence and vanished into the deep valleys surrounding Adora's isolated hilltop. Soldiers later found and killed one of them, the army said. It was the deadliest assault on a settlement since Israel began its sweep in the West Bank on March 29, and another blow to the fragile diplomacy seeking to contain the violence in the Middle East." (Note: In the upside-down world of Palestinian propagandists the 5-year-old girl was a "terrorist" - "Palestinian freedom fighter, four terrorists, killed in ambush near Hebron" (The Palestinian Information Center, 2002/04/27): "A Palestinian freedom fighter and four Jewish terrorists were killed and 7 others injured in an armed clash west of Hebron Saturday. The resistance fighter reportedly attacked a Jewish terrorist outpost at the settlement of Adora, built on confiscated Arab land, killing four of them.")

"Some of Israel's critics are more equal than others" (Rex Murphy, The Globe and Mail, 2002/04/27)
"The real conundrum for those agonizing over their criticism of Israel and whether this might be construed as anti-Semitism is a question that, so far as I can tell, no one wants to ask: Is it possible to be anti-American and not criticize Israel? Professional anti-Americans really don't have much field of manoeuvre when it comes to Israel. America is Israel's sponsor, its friend and ally, so obviously Israel cannot be right, ever. If Israel is under the protection of the imperialist, globalist, capitalist hegemon, why then - pass me the old res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself - Israel must always be wrong. ... They are prejudiced against Israel by the logic of their movement. They are, as it were, pro-Palestinian by default. They take sides and wake up to find themselves sharing parts of the landscape with some very scary people who really are anti-Semitic."

"Liberte, Egalite, Judeophobie - Why Le Pen is the least of France's problems" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/05/06 issue)
"But while crime was what brought voters to the polls, France has an even more ominous problem: a wave of attacks and threats against the country's 700,000 Jews that is unprecedented in the last half century of European history. ... What is surprising and confusing in all of this is that the "new anti-Semitism" in France is a phenomenon of the left. It has practically nothing to do with Le Pen. In fact, its most dangerous practitioners are to be found among the very crowds thronging the streets to protest him. ... In particular danger of embracing this Manichaean view of the Arab-Israel conflict are those who support Third-Worldism, neo-communism, and neo-leftism, whom Taguieff lumps together as the "anti-globalization movement." ... Bove, who rose to fame for vandalizing a McDonald's in southern France as a protest against American influence, is not merely the informal leader of the younger French left, the "hero" of the Seattle riots, and the guiding spirit of many of the anti-Le Pen protests that are now raging in Paris; he is also the most charismatic leader of the anti-globalization movement in the world. It was thus alarming to see Bove, after a pro forma denunciation of anti-Jewish violence, informing viewers of the TV channel Canal Plus that the attacks on French synagogues were being either arranged or fabricated by Mossad. "Who profits from the crime?" Bove asked. 'The Israeli government and its secret services have an interest in creating a certain psychosis, in making believe that there is a climate of anti-Semitism in France, in order to distract attention from what they are doing.'"

"The U.N.'s Israel Obsession" (David Tell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/05/06 issue)
"UNRWA funds and staffs the schools of Jenin, where, from fall through spring each year, children are taught that all of "Palestine," from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, belongs to them. ... UNRWA allows its food warehouses in Jenin to do double duty as munitions dumps. UNRWA pretends not to know that explosives and counterfeit currency factories are housed in the public shelters it has constructed in Jenin. UNRWA cannot understand how it might be that its own administrative offices in Jenin are festooned with graffiti celebrating some of the world's most notorious terrorist organizations. Or how some of the world's most notorious terrorists might have found their way onto the agency's payroll - to the point where the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, extreme even in the context of Palestinian extremism, now openly controls the UNRWA workers' union. This same United Nations, the blood of Israeli civilians still wet on its hands, now dares to question the morality of a modest, defensive, and long-overdue Israeli reprisal? In curricular materials published by the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Education, "Objective Five" for high school history teachers reads as follows: "The student will understand why the people of the world hate the Jews." It is a question for the ages. Zionism may no longer be racism at the United Nations. But anti-Semitism is forever."

Friday, April 26, 2002

News and commentary:

"Why we shouldn't trust the UN" (Anne Bayefsky, The Globe and Mail, 2002/04/26)
"Almost 30 per cent of UN Human Rights Commission resolutions on specific states over a 35-year period are on Israel alone. Of 10 emergency special sessions in the history of the General Assembly, six have concerned Israel. The UN currently operates three mechanisms focused only on Israel: a Special Rapporteur since 1993, a Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting Human Rights since 1968 that issues three reports a year, and a Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, established in 1975 on the same day the General Assembly passed the Zionism-is-racism resolution and still producing annual reports. Each one of these UN bodies refuses to document the range of human-rights abuses by the Palestinian Authority. ... Israel is the only UN member not permitted to stand for election to the full range of UN bodies. So while membership of the UN Human Rights Commission now includes Cuba, Libya, Sudan and Syria - four of the seven states designated as state sponsors of international terrorism by the U.S. State Department - Israel cannot even be a candidate. ... At the 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, "anti-Semitism" was omitted from the final declaration because the chair of the drafting committee said it was too controversial. ... The subsequent racism discussion at the General Assembly in February deleted reference to "anti-Semitism" as a specific concern of the UN Third Decade to Combat Racism."

"The New Fascism" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/04/26)
"Watching televised clips from a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, along with other such demonstrations over the last few weeks, can be a chilling experience. One woman chanted, "Israel will be no more" - apparently a call for the abject and utter destruction of the Jewish state. On posters the Star of David was juxtaposed to a swastika - the sick subtext of that message lost on no one. Many openly condemned the "Jews" and "Zionists" in a manner reminiscent of Nuremberg circa 1936. ... Despite the carnival atmosphere, this new virulent form of anti-Americanism has also an old and disturbing fascist ring to it. The subtext of the entire rally was really anti-Semitism and tacit support for suicide bombing as a means to attack Israel. ... But this time the racists, fascists, and faux-victims are from the purported Left and not the Right. ... They are not progressives, not even socialists, communists, or anarchists. Rather, their language is pure hatred - as well as anti-Semitic and fascistic. ... The only way to confront the new fascists is to speak honestly about them and not remain silent. Each time a Palestinian extremist uses the word "Jew," each time an activist praises Libya, Iraq, or Iran and either condones or praises suicide murderers, each time a screaming protestor slanders the present president of the United States as a killer, terrorist, and war criminal, each time we hear of conspiracies that explain our aid to Jewish Israel, we must all simply remonstrate, "Hitler would smile at every thing you say." And, of course, he would."

"Moshe Chertoff : Message From An Israeli On The Front Lines" (IMRA, 2002/04/26)
An account of the battle in Jenin by an Israeli soldier: "The whole place was one big booby trap with secret tunnels and enough explosives to blow up all of Israel twice. ... One time, and I saw this right before my eyes, a couple of families came out. There was a man, a woman, some boys, girls and even babies. Another family of more or less the same makeup also emerged. Now, we're in our armoured vehicles. We couldn't open the hatches or step out cause every time we tried, we'd be shot in the first second. We called for them to raise their shirts so that we could be sure that they weren't "wearing" any explosives. Only the men raised their shirts. When we called for everyone to do the same, the second the women raised their garments... B O O M. Everybody standing there was blown all over the place. They exploded themselves - entire families! It was horrific. It was also obvious that we would be blamed for having slaughtered them. It was insane. ... Too many soldiers were injured or killed when they tried to enter a house, only to find it booby trapped or see the fighters firing from behind the family who lived in the house. Many died because they wouldn't fire into innocent civilian shields."

"Saudi Telethon Host Calls for Enslaving Jewish Women" (National Review, 2002/04/26)
"The Saudi Information Agency has obtained a tape by prominent government official cleric Shaikh Saad Al-Buraik calling for enslaving Jewish women. The tape is called "A Monkey Desecrates Mosque," and was delivered in a Riyadh government mosque. The monkey refers to Jews. Al-Buraik, a Wahhabi cleric, is closely tied to Prince AbdulAziz Ben Fahd, the king’s youngest son, and member of the Saudi delegation accompanying Crown Prince Abdullah on his current visit. ... The following are excerpts of the tape: ... 'I am against America until this life ends, until the Day of Judgment; I am against America even if the stone liquefies. My hatred of America, if part of it was contained in the universe, it would collapse. She is the root of all evils, and wickedness on earth. ... Muslim Brothers in Palestine, do not have any mercy neither compassion on the Jews, their blood, their money, their flesh. Their women are yours to take, legitimately. God made them yours. Why don't you enslave their women? Why don’t you wage jihad? Why don’t you pillage them?'"

"The Saudi-Iranian Alliance" (Martin Sieff, National Review, 2002/04/26)
"Saudi Arabia and Iran are regional rivals whose traditional approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict has been diametrically opposite. But now they are moving closer together on that and other issues, with probable immense consequences for the United States and the entire world. ... First, the ailing King Fahd, effective ruler of the Desert Kingdom for nearly a quarter of a century as crown prince under King Khaled and then as monarch in his own right finally had to relinquish the reins of power because of his failing health. His half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, took over and has cautiously but steadily followed a policy of strengthening ties to powerful, potentially hostile neighbors like Iraq and Iran while distancing himself from the United States. ... The global oil crisis of the 1970s was only possible because Saudi Arabia and Iran, the two greatest oil producers in the world, teamed up to enforce their mutual colossal energy clout. The 1979 Iranian Revolution had the paradoxical effect of ensuring 20 years of global economic growth based on cheap oil supplies because the new Iranian rulers were so hostile to the Saudis. But now, for the first time in almost a quarter of a century, Saudi and Iranian policies are converging again."

"Holy site a living hell for hostages" (Stewart Bell, National Post, 2002/04/26)
"The church built where Christians believe Jesus was born has been reduced to a bullet-pocked hell for Palestinian gunmen and their hostages, permeated by the smell of rotting corpses and filled with hunger, thuggery and fear, according to those who have recently escaped. ... The armed fighters are mostly Palestinian Authority security officers but there are also members of the militant groups Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah and Tanzim, [Jihad Youssef] said. ... Among those inside are three high-ranking members of the terrorist group Hamas, including Ibrahim Muhammed Salem Abyat, a senior Hamas operative in charge of orchestrating attacks, Israeli defence officials said. ... In addition, there are at least seven senior members of Fatah and Tanzim. ... Also inside is Jihad Ja'ara, a Palestinian Authority security forces officer who doubles as a Tanzim operative and regularly fires at Israeli troops. ... "They stole everything," said Narkiss Korasian, one of three Armenian clerics who fled with the help of Israeli forces. 'They opened the doors one by one and stole everything.... They stole our prayer books and four crosses.... They didn't leave anything.'"

"A War of Resolve" (Bernard Lewis, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/26)
"It was the shock of America's rapid and sharp reaction that made bin Laden blink. After the U.S.'s initial response, he halted his campaign and adopted a more cautious attitude. But some recent American actions and utterances may bring a reconsideration of this judgement and the halt to which it gave rise. Our anxious pleading with the fragile and frightened regimes of the region to join - or at least to tolerate - a campaign against terrorism and its sponsors has put the U.S. in a corner where it seems to be asking permission for actions that are its own prerogative to take. Likewise, the exemptions accorded to some terrorist leaders, movements and actions not immediately directed against us have undermined the strong moral position which must be the foundation of our global war on terrorism. The submission to being scolded and slighted, as Secretary of State Colin Powell did in his recent meeting with the king of Morocco, and his failure to meet with the president of Egypt, make the U.S. seem it is reverting to bad habits. That only further contributes to a perceived posture of irresolution and uncertainty on the part of the U.S. administration. ... The leaders of al Qaeda launched their war against the U.S. in the belief that they were attacking a soft and demoralized enemy. They thought they could proceed with impunity. It would be wise not to let that misapprehension creep back."

"Europe and 'Those People' - Anti-Semitism arises again" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/04/26)
"What we are seeing is pent-up anti-Semitism, the release - with Israel as the trigger - of a millennium-old urge that powerfully infected and shaped European history. What is odd is not the anti-Semitism of today but its relative absence during the past half-century. That was the historical anomaly. Holocaust shame kept the demon corked for that half-century. But now the atonement is passed. The genie is out again. ... What so offends Europeans is the armed Jew, the Jew who refuses to sustain seven suicide bombings in the seven days of Passover and strikes back. ... The French were the vanguard of this modern anti-Semitism that can tolerate the Jew as victim but not as historical actor. It was 35 years ago at the outbreak of the Six Day War that Charles de Gaulle cut off French support for Israel, denouncing its audacity in fighting for its life over his objections. But he did not stop there. He later went on to famously denounce the Jews as "an elite people, sure of itself and domineering." The rejection of docility - "sure of itself" - was Israel's real crime 35 years ago. It remains Israel's crime today. Israel's recent three-week Operation Defensive Shield, the boldest and most justified Israeli military offensive since the Six Day War, provokes precisely the same reaction, though not always expressed with de Gaulle's candor."

"Europe vs. America on the Middle East" (Steve Chapman, TownHall, 2002/04/26)
"When it comes to this conflict, America and Europe simply don't speak the same language. The gulf is undeniable. A Spanish magazine carried a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with the caption "Nazi Pig." A former foreign minister of Denmark declared, "It's a lie of historic dimensions when Sharon claims he is fighting terrorism." ... Walter Russell Mead, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of the illuminating recent book "Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How it Changed the World" (Knopf), regards the disagreement as a product of fundamentally opposing worldviews, based on historical memory and bone-deep instincts. Europeans, he said in a telephone interview, "are much less confident than we are that war works - very rationally, based on their experience. A lot of Europeans think there are no winners in war, only losers." That perception was embedded by two world wars, which killed millions of people, demolished economies and left bitter divisions on the continent. ... But as Mead points out, Europe's allergy to force is more a good thing than a bad thing. "Would we rather have a Germany that's too pacifist or too warlike?" he asks. "I'd rather live with a lot of stern, finger-wagging lectures by Swedish moralists than fight Nazi storm troopers." Europeans did everyone a great favor when they learned to stop settling their arguments by killing each other. Europe has been an exceptionally peaceful place in recent decades. Europeans think the world would be better off if other countries behaved the way they do, and they're right. But until the world becomes a replica of Europe, countries with enemies will have to rely on methods that Europeans can do without."

"Back to abnormal" (Diana West, The Washington Times, 2002/04/26)
"For decades now, the relativist school of thought known as multiculturalism has been pushing Western civilization into disrepute. Maybe it has finally fallen. Something has shifted, certainly, reshaping the global topography to the point where most of what counts as the free world now gravitates toward the repressive forces of terror that surround a vibrant democratic society engaging, however fiercely, in self-defense. That just might make this, then, the penultimate triumph of multiculturalism. In other words, don't count on the battle ending at Israel's borders, wherever they ultimately lie. "A global consensus against Israel has taken shape among all those who hate the values of Western society," Mr. Hume writes. What we didn't fully realize in September was how much of Western society that also includes. Which doesn't, needless to say, bode too well for the rest of us."

"Polls to Be Proud Of - On the Mideast, America is right and the rest of the world is wrong" (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/04/26)
"The people of the United States should take solace, even pride, in the fact that their views on the violence in the Middle East are completely at odds with the opinions of the United Nations, the continent of Europe and most of their own media. ... Sitting home at night, watching the news on U.S. television or C-SPAN's airing of the BBC, Americans who hold these views of the events in Israel must wonder if they're living in some alternative reality. ... In the otherwordly moral calculus of post World War II Europe and much media - which these polls suggest is beyond the ken of most Americans - self-evident atrocities such as the Passover suicide bombing are mere stories in the wreckage of the news. But a military counter-strike is a human rights abuse. We have arrived at a point in international affairs at which the degraded concept of moral equivalence would be a step toward the sunshine."

Thursday, April 25, 2002

News and commentary:

"All they are teaching gives peace no chance - At a few Gaza schools, children get an education in hate" (Anna Badkhen, San Francisco Chronicle, 2002/04/25)
"Six days a week, kindergarten teacher Samira Ali El Hassain tells her class of 30 5-year-old boys and girls what makes the world go round. "Here is how an egg becomes a chicken," she says to a student. "Here is how to draw a circle," she tells another. Hassain then quizzes the class about a previous, more serious lesson. "Who are the Jews?" she asks. The children know the answer by heart: "The enemy!" they reply in unison. "And what should we do to them?" Hassain asks in a voice that is as casual as when she discussed chickens and eggs. "Kill them!" the children cry out."

"Saudi prince has stern words for Bush on Mideast" (CNN.com, 2002/04/25)
"Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah delivered a stern warning to President Bush on Thursday about the risks the United States faces if it continues with a Middle East policy widely perceived in the Arab world as favoring Israel. ... Adel Al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to the Saudi government, told reporters Abdullah had warned Bush about the direction of U.S. policy in the Middle East. ... "The message is, if the violence does not diminish, there will be grave consequences for the U.S. and its interests in the region." ... He said the fundamental difference between the two nations is that 'the U.S. thinks Arafat is the problem, and we think Sharon is the problem.'"

"Saudi to Warn Bush of Rupture Over Israel Policy" (Patrick E. Tyler, The New York Times, 2002/04/25)
"But the Saudi delegation also brought a strong sense of the alarm and crisis that have been heard in Arab capitals. "It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive," the person close to the crown prince said, 'and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship [with America] to our people.'"

"Egypt's PM says will wage war on Israel if $100 billion raised" (Haaretz, 2002/04/25)
"Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Ebeid hinted to a Persian Gulf newspaper Wednesday that his country would be ready to wage war on Israel if the Arab states were to send $100 billion to fund it. "If you want to take action, if you are ready to rise to the challenge, you must send $100 billion," the prime minister told Al Itiihad when asked why Egypt, which is "the largest Arab state," had not responded to Israel's offensive against the Palestinians."

"Arafat, Elected? - The sham 1996 vote" (Joel Mowbray, National Review, 2002/04/25)
"In a New York Times earlier this week, former President Jimmy Carter casually remarked that the 1996 Palestinian elections were "open and fair." Carter, of all people, knows better - Yasser Arafat has never been fairly elected the leader of anything, let alone the Palestinian people. ... Former CIA director Jim Woolsey dismisses claims that Arafat was democratically elected, quipping, "Arafat was essentially elected the same way Stalin was, but not nearly as democratically as Hitler, who at least had actual opponents." Given that potential opponents were intimidated or bribed to drop out of races, Arafat dominated television airtime, and there was only token opposition in the campaign for chairman, the natural assumption would be that the international observers would expose the election for the sham that it was. That assumption would be sadly mistaken."

"The Inversion Syndrome" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/25)
"Scanning TV coverage of the latest round of anti-Israel protests in Europe and the US, the slogan that catches the eye is: Zionism = Nazism. It's a radical equation, but not that far off from the current media take on events Israeli. "The truth is that Sharon's war is not a war," writes Joseph Wakim in the Australian Financial Review. "Genocide would be a more accurate description." "The scenes at Jenin last week looked uncannily like the attack on the Warsaw Jewish ghetto in 1944," adds Tom McGurk in the Irish Times. ... And they do so because, when it comes to Israel, commentators and reporters alike have succumbed to what can only be described as the Inversion Syndrome. ... The upshot, then, is this: According to the conventional view, Israel is a country that, out of the blue, conquered a country called Palestine, now comprising the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It has held on to that land in flagrant contravention of international law, chiefly for religiously inspired reasons, creating economic conditions among Palestinians that - regretably perhaps, inevitably for sure - breed terrorism. Israelis are led by a man who acts without counsel or restraint, who seeks to crush an emerging democracy, run by democrats. This is, of course, the opposite of the truth, and the logical culmination of the Inversion Syndrome. It is also what the media reports, what the average, semi-trusting viewer of CNN or the BBC believes, and what the typical American, European, or Japanese diplomat writes in his communiques."

"Gaza Palestinians denounce use of children in suicide attacks" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/04/25)
"Parents and Palestinian politicians in Gaza yesterday expressed shock and dismay over certain political groups sending children to infiltrate settlements, which usually ends in the children being killed. ... Yesterday, three pupils from schools in the Sheikh Radwan refugee camp, killed by IDF troops while they tried to infiltrate Netzarim, were buried. ... A Gazan source told Haaretz that Islamic Jihad had sent the three, but the radical group has not claimed responsibility, nor has any other group. Last week, another child, Hitham Abu Shaka, was killed in a similar infiltration attempt. ... Hamas issued a statement and spoke directly to children, asking them to cease such activities and to wait until they have grown up and have been trained. It also called on teachers and preachers to make clear that children should be taught not to go to their deaths on the settlements' fences, "but to grow up and study, so that one day they can fulfill their roles properly."But the Hamas campaign against child fighters also took pains 'not to harm the spirit of jihad and resistance in the children.'"

"Passions Inflamed, Gaza Teenagers Die in Suicidal Attacks" (David Rohde, The New York Times, 2002/04/25)
"Palestinians said the attack on Tuesday night was the second in a week by boys 15 or younger, marking a pitiless new dynamic in 18 months of retaliation and retribution between Israelis and Palestinians. ... But others suggested that a more fervent brand of nationalism and Islamic militancy was making this intifada, or uprising, far deadlier to younger Palestinians than the first one in the late 1980's. Suicide attacks are incessantly hailed on posters, in mosques and at rallies in the occupied territories. These days, unlike in the past, satellite television images here routinely barrages frustrated Palestinians with accounts of Israeli attacks and unconfirmed allegations of Israeli massacres against Palestinian civilians. Israeli officials have said their recent offensive in the West Bank was intended to destroy an "infrastructure of terror" that included recruiters and bomb factories. But something far more difficult to eradicate - a culture of martyrdom - is thriving here. Palestinians parents expressed bewilderment tonight at the number of young boys saying they were eager to become martyrs in recent weeks."

"Myths of the Intifada" (Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, 2002/04/25)
Barnes argues that Dennis Ross "has set the record straight" about the deals at Camp David and Taba: "Palestinian and other apologists for Yasser Arafat have propagated three myths about his failure to reach peace with Israel. And only now - two years after Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed because of Arafat's intransigence - is the truth becoming known. ... What's important about the history of peace talks in the Middle East is what it tells us about Arafat. The inescapable conclusion is that he will never reach a settlement with Israelis leading to two countries, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. The Israelis? An honest recounting of the Clinton-led peace talks shows they were willing, though hardly eager, to make substantial concessions to reach a settlement. Had Arafat gone along, Ross believes Barak could have sold the deal to the Israeli people, even as Palestinian terrorism continued and Sharon's election victory loomed. Maybe so, but that was a moment in time that, because of Arafat, has now passed away." (See also: "Dennis Ross on Fox News Sunday" (Fox News, 2002/04/21))

Wednesday, April 24, 2002

News and commentary:

"Israel on the Edge" (Paul Johnson, National Review, 2002/04/24)
"First, there is no symmetry in the Arab-Israeli conflict. If the Israelis score a military victory, or a diplomatic one for that matter, the Arabs live to fight another day. Israel, by contrast, cannot afford one serious mistake. If Israel lost control of the air, and her army were overrun, there can be absolutely no doubt that the entire Jewish-Israeli nation would be exterminated. It would be Hitler's holocaust all over again, conducted not in secrecy and shame but in the open, in a spirit of triumphant exultation as the successful climax of a jihad. ... There is, indeed, something Hitlerian about the implacable hatred Israel faces on its own borders. It should come as no surprise that Arabic translations both of Mein Kampf and of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, that diabolic forgery, are best-sellers in the Arab world. We in the West would be well advised to appreciate the strength of the hatred the Israelis face, for it may soon be turned against us too. (We received a foretaste on September 11.) However, for the moment, the world is unconscious of these deep underlying forces, and tends in its ignorance to see the Arab-Israel conflict as a war like any other, with the faults 50-50. From this perspective it is therefore the Israelis who appear to be guilty of a disproportionate use of force, an impression the nightly TV images seem to confirm. Thus the Jews, not for the first time in their long and tragic history, are blamed for the persecution they suffer."

"Shifting Blame" (Robert N. Hochman, The New Republic, 2002/04/24)
"But we already know enough about what happened in Jenin to establish a few facts and render some preliminary moral judgments. And by the very moral standards the Palestinians themselves are now setting, it's clear that the Palestinians were the ones sacrificing the lives of innocent civilians - while the Israelis, by all appearances, went out of their way to avoid such losses. ... It is wrong, even during a war, to target civilians intentionally. But this is an odd principle for terrorists, and those who harbor them, to preach. After all, terrorists seek to obliterate the distinction between civilian and combatant. ... If targeting civilians is a crime, as the Palestinian leadership now suggests, then the Palestinian terrorists and their supporters have been guilty of it for years. And they were guilty of it at Jenin, too - only in an even more twisted sense. The large loss of life in Jenin is a tragedy, no doubt. But against whom should we direct our moral outrage? In Jenin, terrorists sprinkled bomb-making factories, storehouses of weapons, and combatants throughout the civilian population. And when the Israelis came in to find the terrorists, the Palestinians didn't hesitate to use civilians as human shields. ... A moral outrage? Yes. But not the one you've been hearing about."

"The Palestinian Account of the Battle of Jenin" (MEMRI, IA# 90, 2002/04/24)
"The Islamic Jihad commander in the Jenin refugee camp, Abu Jandal, was interviewed several times by Al-Jazeera during the fighting. ... "I, the commander of the battle of the Jenin camp, have chosen for myself the name 'The Martyr Abu Jandal,' because all the fighters around me are martyrs. Believe me, there are children stationed in the houses with explosive belts at their sides… Today, one of the children came to me with his school bag. I asked him what he wanted, and he replied, "Instead of books, I want an explosive device, in order to attack…" ... In contrast, the Islamic Jihad announced that its commander in Jenin, Muhammad Tawalbeh, had prevented civilians from leaving the camp. The Islamic Jihad website announced that Tawalbeh died in his booby-trapped home when he blew it up on the Israeli soldiers inside it on April 6. The announcement went on to say that Tawalbeh 'had thwarted all attempts by the occupation to evacuate the camp residents to make it easier for the Israelis to destroy [the camp] on the heads of the fighters.'"

"Witness to Jenin justice" (Robert Plotkin, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/24)
Plotkin was a witness to the killing of three "collaborators" posted yesterday: "Camp residents spotted me running towards the shots with my camera, and tried to pull me away screaming out, "No pictures! No pictures!" Struggling free of the crowd, I continued up the alley. ... As the victim himself passed me, he was conscious but mute. Like a hunted animal, he looked toward me with a wide-eyed stare and reached his arms toward me. After he was carried away, a tall gunman dangling a black revolver in his hand slowly approached me. As I raised my camera to photograph him, several men grabbed my arms and yelled in broken English that he would shoot me. ... In another instance, however, one camp resident wanted me to stage a photograph. He pulled me into a home on the perimeter of the destruction. The front of the house was peeled away like a thin veneer. The floor was buckled, and the few pictures that remained on the walls were tilted at a distressing angle. But then the man lay face down on a mattress, splayed out his arms, and closed his eyes. When I didn't take his picture he looked up at me and said, "You take picture now." I declined."

"Where Rage Resides - For the Ordinary People Of Gaza City, Death Is a Way of Life" (Richard Leiby, The Washington Post, 2002/04/24)
"'A woman's role in society is important,' says Abu Marzoug, 60, a sturdy, mustachioed figure who has come to the all-girls high school to announce an eight-day emergency-preparedness course. ... "Surely you have heard of your sisters who blow themselves up to defend the dignity of Palestine," he says. The fresh-faced teenagers nod beneath their head scarves. "Anyone who kills and struggles for the sake of their land, and dies doing so, they are not dead," he assures them. "They are alive, with a new life. Because as a martyr you will be alive in Heaven." He launches into a history lesson on centuries of Islamic struggle, a narrative that ends with bloody details of the recent purported massacres by Israeli soldiers who besieged the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank: "bodies in pieces, a body in a bucket, 15 or 16 people buried in the same area." He calls the aftermath more horrifying than anything the world witnessed during the Vietnam War or, for that matter, the Holocaust. ... "Not only boys and young men can make the operations," says Heba Abu Schammala, a statuesque 16-year-old. "We can, too!" "Of course," says her classmate Lana Hejazy, 15. 'There is no future for us. It's beautiful to want to sacrifice yourself for God.'"

"How in a Little British Town Jihad Found Young Converts" (Amy Waldman, The New York Times, 2002/04/24)
"Britain has during the last two decades become a refuge unmatched in Europe for Muslim activists, scholars and clerics fleeing repressive governments in the Arab world or North Africa, and thus a center of Islamist influence. ... Mr. Bakri heads Al Muhajiroun, or The Emigrants, which he calls an Islamic ideological party. Some say he is all bombast and bluff, others that he manipulates young men into jihad. Whatever the truth, he indisputably transforms anomic young Muslims into Islamists. ... His followers see recreating the caliphate - the era of Islam's ascendancy after the death of Muhammad in the eighth century - as the answer to Muslims', and the world's, problems. They often sound like nothing so much as young Marxists of another era. ... Mr. Faisal sketched a world of conspiracies, of cabals of Jews and Freemasons plotting to take over the world. It was more exciting than Bollywood and Hollywood combined. It was real. On some of his tapes, he speaks of why Muslims can never have peace with the "filthy Jews," and of Muslims' right to kill a Hindu if they encounter one in the road."

"Operation Destroy the Data" (Amira Hass, Haaretz, 2002/04/24)
"It's a scene that is repeating itself in hundreds of Palestinian offices taken over by IDF troops for a few hours or days in the West Bank: smashed, burned and broken computer terminals heaped in piles and thrown into yards; server cabling cut, hard disks missing, disks and diskettes scattered and broken, printers and scanners broken or missing, laptops gone, telephone exchanges that disappeared or were vandalized, and paper files burned, torn, scattered, or defaced - if not taken. ... Either way, the scenes of systematic destruction show how the IDF translated into the field the instructions inherent in the political echelon's policies: Israel must destroy Palestinian civil institutions, sabotaging for years to come the Palestinian goal for independence, sending all of Palestinian society backward."

"Israelis to Delay U.N. Fact-Finders" (Serge Schmemann, The New York Times, 2002/04/24)
"Alarmed that the composition and mandate of a United Nations fact-finding team were stacking it against Israel, the government announced tonight that it would delay the arrival of the team until Israel agreed to its members and precise assignment. ... A senior government official said the decision reflected "deep concern" that the preparations for the fact-finding team, including statements made by Secretary General Kofi Annan and the fact that two of the three members were veterans of humanitarian work, amounted to a "setup to accuse Israel of war crimes." Mr. Annan brushed aside the Israeli objections tonight and said the team was expected to begin work by Saturday."

Tuesday, April 23, 2002

News and commentary:

"Informer killings raises fears of Wild West Bank" (Greg Myre, AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/23)
"Palestinian militiamen killed three suspected collaborators today, raising concern of lawlessness in the West Bank. A mob strung up two of the battered, bullet-punctured bodies, and some brought their children to see the gruesome act of revenge. ... In Hebron, a large crowd quickly gathered around the corpses lying in Salam Street. One of the bodies was strung up by one leg from an electricity pylon and stripped by the crowd down to his green underwear, his blood-soaked shirt pulled over his head to reveal deep cuts and bruises. Another body was strung up from a lamppost. People stuffed burning cigarettes in the bullet holes in the torso. Some kicked, spat and threw rocks at the corpses."

"Palestinian fighter describes 'hard fight' in Jenin" (CNN.com, 2002/04/23)
CNN:s interview with Tabaat Mardawi: "He estimated 1,000 to 2,000 bombs and booby traps were spread through the camp. "It was a very hard fight. We fought at close quarters," he said, "sometimes just a matter of a few meters between us, sometimes even in the same house." He said there were about 100 Palestinians in the battle - 60 to 70 fighters from the camp and 20-30 members of the Palestinian security forces. That figure is not so different from what Israel has said. ... Asked about the allegations of a massacre, Mardawi said, 'By my own standard, what happened there was a massacre. But if you are asking, 'Did I see tens of people killed?' Frankly, no. In my group, we were in an area with no other people. Three fighters with me were killed. Later when we started to move from place to place, we saw destroyed houses and could smell bodies.'"

"Portrait of the terrorist as a young man" (Amos Harel and Omer Barak, Haaretz, 2002/04/23)
"Apathetic, almost laid-back, sometimes even entertaining, is how Thabet Mardawi yesterday described his time as a senior Islamic Jihad member. The terrorist from Jenin, who dispatched nine suicide bombers to fatal attacks inside Israel, is not ashamed of anything he has done. "I am proud," he says, "I did something for my people, for Allah." ... He says mines were planted to hit soldiers and tanks (during questioning he also admitted booby trapping houses with gas canisters). ... Mardawi admits he never saw an Israeli soldier take aim or fire at women or children. "I saw a couple of dead women and a wounded child. Your helicopters shot at houses where there were civilians." Was there a massacre? "This whole war is a massacre," he retorts, 'what's a couple of dozen people against tanks and bulldozers?'"

"Three monks escape from Nativity Church in Bethlehem" (Anat Cygielman/AP, Haaretz, 2002/04/23)
"Two monks managed to climb onto one of the roofs inside the church compound Tuesday, and raised a sign saying "Please Save Us". IDF sources said three Armenian monks who escaped the compound described "shocking scenes" from within the church. They said that Palestinian gunmen had begun beating some of the monks Monday night and had stolen a number of gold artifacts from the church."

"Cornelio Sommaruga [Kofi Annan's "fact-finder"] compared Shield of David to swastika" (IMRA, 2002/04/23)
The former head of the International Red Cross, Cornelio Sommaruga, is appointed to the UN inquiry team which will probe events at the refugee camp in Jenin. Here's an indication of how "objective" he will be, taken from a column by Charles Krauthammer: "[The International Red Cross] grants full and honored membership to everyone, including such benefactors of humanity as North Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq. But it deliberately excludes Israel's MDA which, for example, sent emergency workers to our bombed-out embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Why? ... The reasons are obvious, crass and political. The Arab states don't want it and the rest of the world is too craven to cross them. Excluding the MDA is part of their larger campaign to ostracize Israel worldwide. ... But [Healy] is trying to do something about the outrageous exclusion of Israel from the community of Red Cross federations. And she has met with the usual reaction: hostility and anger from a cozy club not accustomed to having its mendacity and cynicism challenged. Particularly upset was Cornelio Sommaruga, then president of the ICRC. In a private meeting after her speech, and in the presence of several witnesses, he said to Healy: 'If we're going to have the Shield of David, why would we not have to accept the swastika?'" (See also: "Red Cross Snub" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2000/03/24))

"Tracing the real 'root cause'" (Frank J. Gaffney Jr., The Washington Times, 2002/04/23)
Gaffney Jr. quotes a speech made by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith: "Perhaps the most trenchant aspect of Mr. Feith's analysis is his insight that "what characterizes the suicide bombers - and especially the old men who send them off on their missions - is rather hope than despair." Such hopes are fed by "the recent outpouring of open support in the Arab world for homicide bombers - from Mrs. Arafat, from a senior Arab diplomat, from clerics associated with prestigious universities - [which] reflects excitement at the thought that bombings are producing success. It is the kind of triumphalism characteristic of a mentality that believes in 'the worse the better.'" ... By conceptualizing the "root cause of terrorism" not as poverty but as "the incitement to hatred that creates the intellectual atmosphere in which terrorism can flourish," he has helped to fashion a strategy for restoring coherence and success to the administration's global campaign."

"Terror Suspect Says He Wants U.S. Destroyed" (Philip Shenon, The New York Times, 2002/04/23)
"Zacarias Moussaoui, charged with conspiring in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, called today for the destruction of the United States and Israel in his first extensive public comments since his arrest. ... "America, I am ready to fight," said Mr. Moussaoui, 33, a French citizen who was arrested last August and has been accused by federal authorities of being the "20th hijacker" in the attacks. ... As his court-appointed lawyers looked on, occasionally shaking their heads, Mr. Moussaoui also spoke out against several countries, including the United States, Israel and Russia, saying he prayed to Allah for "the destruction of the United States of America" and for the 'destruction of the Jewish people and state.'"

"Bin Laden said to be hiding in Pakistan" (Arnaud de Borchgrave, The Washington Times, 2002/04/23)
"Osama bin Laden has been hidden by many sympathizers in this dusty slum city [Peshawar], a gigantic labyrinth of 3.5 million people, since early December. A major tribal leader - the same chieftain whose scouts in December said they knew "within 1 square kilometer" the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist in the Tora Bora mountain range - says that bin Laden crossed over into Pakistan on Dec. 9 as the Pakistani army began deploying a brigade of 4,500 troops along a 30-mile stretch of mountainous border. ... In the account of this tribal leader, who has been a reliable source on several occasions, bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora with about 50 of his fighters through the Tirah Valley, long reputed to be the most inaccessible part of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier province, populated by fiercely independent tribesmen traditionally hostile to the Pakistan government."

Note: The search function is useless right now, as the results are linked to the old url:s. It will be updated on May the 1:st.

Monday, April 22, 2002

News and commentary:

"UN names Jenin inquiry team" (BBC News, 2002/04/22)
"UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has appointed Finland's former President Martti Ahtisaari head of a team to probe events at the refugee camp in Jenin, where Palestinians say the Israeli army "massacred" civilians. The commission will investigate claims of human rights abuses during Israel's eight-day incursion into the camp. ... Hospital officials say that fewer than 50 bodies have been recovered, but the Palestinians say hundreds of people have been killed and may be buried under houses bulldozed by the Israeli army. Israel says 23 of its soldiers were killed in the refugee camp, including 13 in a single ambush, as its troops rooted out Palestinian militants. "The claim that only fighters were killed is simply not true - a mixture of bodies were clearly civilians and combatants," said Derrick Pounder, forensics expert from Dundee University in Scotland. ... "What was striking was what was absent. It was inconceivable that there were not large numbers of seriously injured," he said, concluding that they must have been left to bleed to death. "There must be many more (dead) because we could smell the corpses," Mr Pounder said."

"At the UN It’s Ok to Be Anti-Semitic" (Ruth Wisse, History News Network, 2002/04/22)
"What Annan should have been seeking to end is the pernicious role of the U.N. as instigator and abettor of a possible international conflagration. The U.N.'s assault on Israel, in direct violation of its Charter, now rivals even the Jew-hating indoctrination that preceded World War II. ... In allowing the Arab countries to internationalize their war against the Jewish State, the United Nations has endangered Jews in new ways. Whereas earlier anti-Semitism could be identified with its evil sponsors and morally, if not militarily, countered, the United Nations lends its presumed legitimacy and prestige to anti-Semitism. ... By allowing Arab countries to conscript the U.N. for their war against the Jewish state, the democracies advertised the weakness of their system. Every advantage that Arabs have gained over Israel at the U.N. proclaims the strength of autocracies and dictatorships over liberal democracy. This lesson is reinforced every time there is a condemnation of the Jewish state."

"The War Crimes Lie" (John Podhoretz, NY Post, 2002/04/22)
"The Palestinian big lie against Israel keeps shifting as the truth emerges. The first big lie was that the Israelis had perpetrated a massacre in Jenin, killing more than 500 people and then stashing them in mass graves. Then, as aid workers and journalists uncovered no evidence of mass graves, the lie was that the Israelis had secretly transported the dead bodies in refrigerated trucks. Now it's that the Israelis have violated international law relating to war. ... The simple truth is this: International law relating to the conduct of the incursion exculpates the Israelis and convicts the Palestinian Authority. ... What the leaders of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Hamas and Islamic Jihad do is hide among civilian populations to make it as difficult as possible for their enemies to attack them. The Geneva Convention denounces this as "perfidy." ... If a combatant uses the civilian population as a shield in this way, the deaths incurred are the moral and legal responsibility of those who are hidings out in this grotesquely cowardly fashion. ... The violators of international law - the criminals in this war - are the Palestinians who devised these shameful tactics."

"50 youths said prisoners in Bethlehem siege" (Ori Nir et al., Haaretz, 2002/04/22)
"The armed Palestinians holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem were keeping some 50 children and young men virtual prisoners in the church's cellar, a 20-year-old Palestinian who escaped related yesterday. The youths were permitted to go out only for short periods, one at a time, and were suffering from hunger and thirst, as well as fear and boredom, Taher Manasra said. "Our food was a pretzel apiece [per day]," he said. "Once, they also gave us a hot meal of rice." ... Five other Palestinian youths also left the church yesterday afternoon with the assistance of the Red Cross mediators, after IDF soldiers spied them standing at the church entrance waving a white flag. They said that priests inside the church had helped them to escape. The five, who are not on the IDF's wanted list themselves, told their interrogators that many of the wanted men in the church would also like to give themselves up, but are under pressure not to do so both from the leaders of the group and from senior Palestinian Authority officials."

"Arafat's Leninist Strategy" (Gerald M. Steinberg, National Review, 2002/04/22)
"[U.N. special Middle East envoy Terje Roed-]Larsen also attacked Israel for allegedly turning back "international search and rescue teams" that had lined up to find the bodies buried in the rubble. This is another example of blatant bias - in other words, a lie. The IDF did not turn back any teams, but insisted, for good reason, on checking each team after some terrorists were smuggled out in this way. Of course, due to bias or Palestinian threats, the international humanitarian groups refused these conditions. As a result, the failure to provide assistance was not due to the IDF, but rather another key dimension in Arafat's Leninist strategy. ... For the past 54 years, Palestinian suffering has been exploited by the politicized aid agencies and the governments that support them. Once again, it is not Israel that is blocking aid, but rather the members of these groups, who have exploited fundamental ethical principles to further the goals of destroying Israel and spreading anti-Semitism. The time for dismantling these U.N. groups and NGOs and creating new, apolitical and professional aid agencies is long overdue. This won't change Arafat's Leninist strategy, but it will limit the degree of assistance he gets under the guise of humanitarian aid."

"Synagogues burn as Europeans rage" (Al Webb, The Washington Times, 2002/04/22)
"A wave of anti-Jewish attacks - ranging from hate mail and graffiti to stonings, shotgun blasts, gasoline bombs and synagogue bombings - has swept Europe from Britain to Ukraine as the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians worsens in the Middle East. ...The French Interior Ministry has recorded nearly 360 crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions in April alone, coinciding with the escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The destruction of the synagogue at Marseille was the sixth attack on a Jewish religious site in France in less than a week. ... The war did not eliminate anti-Jewish sentiment. Less than a year ago, a survey showed that 24 percent of all Austrians would "prefer" to live in a country without Jews. And even in supposedly neutral Switzerland, a survey reported by the BBC 'indicates that 16 percent of Swiss people are fundamentally anti-Semitic, while 60 percent have anti-Semitic views.'"

"The West is turning on Israel today because it is losing confidence in itself" (Mick Hume, The Times, 2002/04/22)
"A few months ago Daniel Bernard, the French Ambassador to Britain, caused a storm when he was quoted as saying that the problems thrown up by the Middle East were the fault of “that shitty little country, Israel”. It now appears that his alleged opinion is shared by a global coalition incorporating governments, intellectuals and everybody else from Islamic fundamentalists to anti-capitalist protesters and poets. As one who has long sympathised with the Palestinian cause, I feel increasingly suspicious of what is behind the anti-Israeli turn in Western opinion. ... In the eyes of many today, Israel’s crime is to be the most forceful expression of Western values. The Israeli state is seen as a beachhead of Western civilisation in a hostile world. That used to be its greatest asset. Today, however, Western civilisation has fallen into disrepute even within its own heartlands, and Israel’s image has suffered accordingly. Israel has never been able to accept completely such trends as political correctness, relativism and self-doubt. If it did so, the Israeli state would be finished. ... A century ago the German socialist August Bebel denounced attacks on "Jewish capitalism" as "the socialism of fools". By the same token, many of the criticisms of Israel today look like the anti-imperialism of idiots."

"International hypocrisy" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/22)
"In response, Israel has stated that it will cooperate with a UN team because it has nothing to hide, but that the team should not include Larsen, UN Human Rights Commission chief Mary Robinson, or UN Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Peter Hansen. It should surprise no one that Israel singled out these three officials, because each has long ago given up any pretense of objectivity between Israel and the Palestinians. ... Not to be out done by his colleagues, Hansen did not bother restraining himself, "It was hell in the camp, and we will not exaggerate if we say that a massacre was carried out there... Having seen the reality with my own eyes, I cannot call what happened there by any other name." ... The miasma of international hypocrisy is running so thick that Israel should consider wearing its pariah status as a badge of honor."

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