Archived news and commentary: May 6 - 12, 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, May 12, 2002

News and commentary:

"Likud Central Committee rejects Palestinian state" (Yossi Verter, Haaretz, 2002/05/12)
"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered a political setback Sunday night at the hands of his rival, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when the Likud Central Committee adopted a resolution calling for the complete rejection of a Palestinian state. ... Adoption of the resolution by the committee is in direct contradiction to the position expressed several times by the prime minister. On two separate occasions last year, Sharon publicly expressed readiness to back the creation of a Palestinian state. ... "We have no choice but to exile Arafat," Netanyahu told those gathered. He also referred to the Palestinian leader as "the engine that runs terror" and "the cause of one million shahids." ... Netanyahu said that he supported an entity that allowed the Palestinians to govern themselves, but opposed granting them all of the rights that come with statehood - such as maintaining an army and acquiring weapons - because such a state would threaten Israel. "Sovereign rule - 'Yes'; state - 'No,'" Netanyahu said."

"The Palestinian Authority Financed "Fatah" Branch Activities from its Official Budget" (IDF, 2002/05/12 [?])
"1. Documents captured in Ramallah clearly indicate that the Palestinian Authority funneled money from its official budget, which is financed mainly by Arab and European states, to Fatah and Tanzim branches in the West Bank. In this manner, the PA created an infrastructure of terror activists in dozens of local branches. 2.The money was drawn from the PA's salaries account and transferred via Marwan Barghouti's office to tens of provincial Fatah branches and sub-branches in the West Bank. 3. A section on financing Fatah activities is not stipulated in the PA's official budget, which is supposed to be transparent vis-a-vis the European Union and the IMF .The implication is that there are surpluses in the PA's salaries budget and some of the funds are directed to other purposes."

"A question of faith" (Nick Cohen, The Observer, 2002/05/12)
An article on Kanan Makiya, who "has a good claim to be the Solzhenitsyn of Saddam's Iraq": "To simplify, as journalists must, the scholars have found that apart from the Koran, almost nothing is known about the life of the Prophet. The first biography did not appear until 800AD, 150 years after the beginnings of what became Islam. The earliest quotes from the Koran are not found from surviving copies from the seventh century - there aren't any, and the Koran may well have been complied long after Mohammed's death - but in the inscriptions from 692 in the Dome on the Rock. They, the accounts of contemporaries who witnessed the explosion of Islam and the internal evidence in the Koran itself, suggest that early Islam was a messianic alliance between Arabs and Jews against the Christian Byzantine Empire which held the Holy Land. These conclusions are, to put it mildly, unpopular in many quarters. To fundamentalist Jews and Christians, the Dome is a desecration of the site of the old Jewish temple. To fundamentalist Muslims, it commemorates the Prophet's night journey to Heaven. The idea that it may celebrate an alliance between Muslims and Jews from a time when the distinctions between the two were fluid offends just about everyone. Makiya is happy to do just that."

"Global Village Idiocy" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/05/12)
"On my way to Jakarta I stopped in Dubai, where I watched the Arab News Network at 2 a.m. ANN broadcasts from Europe, outside the control of any Arab government, but is seen all over the Middle East. It was running what I'd call the "greatest hits" from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: nonstop film of Israelis hitting, beating, dragging, clubbing and shooting Palestinians. I would like to say the footage was out of context, but there was no context. There were no words. It was just pictures and martial music designed to inflame passions. ... If there's one thing I learned from this trip to Israel, Jordan, Dubai and Indonesia, it's this: thanks to the Internet and satellite TV, the world is being wired together technologically, but not socially, politically or culturally. ... At its best, the Internet can educate more people faster than any media tool we've ever had. At its worst, it can make people dumber faster than any media tool we've ever had. ... The lie that 4,000 Jews were warned not to go into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was spread entirely over the Internet and is now thoroughly believed in the Muslim world. ... I call it the "I Hate You" virus. It's spread on the Internet and by satellite TV. It infects people's minds with the most vile ideas, and it can't be combated by just downloading a software program. It can be reversed only with education, exchanges, diplomacy and human interaction - stuff you have to upload the old-fashioned way, one on one. Let's hope it's not too late."

"An Impossible Occupation" (Scott Anderson, The New York Times Magazine, 2002/05/12)
Anderson followed a Palsar Tzanhanim unit during Operation Defensive Shield: "Entering the Palestinian Authority school in the early days of the offensive, a group of Palsars found the classroom walls papered with posters of Palestinian suicide-bomber shahids, or ''martyrs,'' a pantheon of heroes for the 5- and 6-year-olds to look up to. Days later, they can't stop talking about it. I've heard about the primary school from at least a half-dozen platoon members, and always in tones of angry disbelief. To Yaniv Sagee, the Tulkarm schoolhouse carries a lesson - and a warning. 'I think what it shows,'' he explains, 'is that there's no way to break the system of terror in the West Bank, because the system is now in the minds of the people, in the minds of the teenagers, and what we're doing by this operation is giving them more reasons to build that system. The government talks about how many guns and bomb factories and suicide belts it's capturing in the offensive, of how we are going to break the terrorist infrastructure. But what infrastructure? I think the most terrifying thing here - and maybe it's something that a lot of people don't want to see - is that there's very little of an infrastructure to break.'"

Added one new theme in Themes:
"Global Village Idiocy" - News and commentary on the use of the Internet and satellite TV for spreading hoaxes and incitement of hatred.

Saturday, May 11, 2002

News and commentary:

"Arab leaders denounce violence" (BBC News, 2002/05/11)
"The leaders of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia have "rejected all forms of violence" and expressed "sincere" Arab determination to forge peace with Israel. ... The leaders did not refer to terrorism or to Palestinian suicide bombings in their communique, but they did specifically denounce alleged Israeli "war crimes" against the Palestinians and made specific reference to Israeli actions in the West Bank town of Jenin."

"Diplomats Say EU Knew Palestinians Misappropriated Cash To Finance Terrorism" (IMRA/Rotterdam NRC Handelsblad, 2002/05/11 [2002/05/08])
"The EU has deliberately refrained from monitoring the misappropriation of European money by the Palestinian Authority over the past few years. EU diplomats said this on the occasion of new Israeli accusations published earlier this week in Jerusalem. The EU has deliberately never raised the issue of the diversion of European relief money to finance terrorism and corruption because it feared that this would jeopardize the resumption of the Middle East peace process, according to the diplomats. One EU diplomat also said that the monitoring of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat's budget by the IMF could not prevent European money from being used for terrorist purposes either. "Everybody has known for quite some time now that money ended up in the wrong hands. Officially, however, they feigned ignorance so as not to jeopardize attempts to revive the peace process. The IMF, too, did not want this to happen," he said." (See also:"Government's 'Arafat File' shows how EU money was used for terror" (Etgar Lefkovits, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/06))

"Two Paths for Khost: Warlord or Professor" (Barry Bearak, The New York Times, 2002/05/11)
"The warlord Padsha Khan Zadran is a beefy, gun-toting, illiterate man. Among other crimes, he is accused of killing 36 people in late April, randomly lobbing rockets into the city of Gardez in an act of spite. To confront this troublemaker, who claims control over three provinces in a vital southeastern border region where Western forces are pursuing remnants of Al Qaeda, Afghanistan's interim government has chosen an unlikely champion - Hakim Taniwal, a slightly built, bespectacled sociology professor. ... What has ensued is a battle of will between two determined men and an early test of this country's nationhood. Will Afghanistan be a centrally run state with the seat of power in Kabul? Or will it remain largely a tenuous federation of warlords whose main allegiance is to themselves? For several days, 3,000 troops near Kabul have been on alert, poised for a show of force against Mr. Zadran. It would be the first time the interim government has used military muscle against a warlord."

"The 'Fascist' and the 'Activist'" (David Brooks, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/05/20 issue)
"In the parlors of polite society, social tolerance sits side by side with multiculturalism. They are two pastries on the platter of polite opinion. But Fortuyn was socially tolerant, even libertine, and it was for that reason he felt he could not be a multiculturalist. The Victorian gent does have a strategy when confronted with this clash of Good Opinions. Insulation. Retreat to the high-minded tolerance of your suburb and social circle, and leave it to other poor buggers to actually live with the intolerant extremists. That is to say, champion multiculturalism from the enlightened venue of leafy London or Cambridge, and force the bastards in Israel or the neighborhoods to actually confront the practical consequences of your ideas. ... But what is interesting from our point of view is that the Victorian gent that is the Western press corps could not even allow Pim Fortuyn to exist. ... To acknowledge the existence of the real Fortuyn would be to acknowledge the rift between tolerance and multiculturalism. To do that would be to explore what this rift means - what it means in the Middle East and at home. That exploration is impermissible. It is beyond the bounds of polite discussion. Hence, it does not exist. Pim Fortuyn is dead. In fact, he never existed."

"'Gay professors on the march across Europe'" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/11)
"'Gotcha,' I said. "So this guy, Pim, is another charismatic, hateful Right-winger like Le Pen, who believes in." I reached under the desk and pulled out the BBC's handy How to Spot a Right-Wing Madman chart. "So, like Le Pen, he believes in Right-wing policies like economic protectionism, minimum wage, massive subsidies to inefficient industries. He's opposed to globalisation, fiercely anti-American."
"No, no," said Ron. "Pim doesn't believe any of that conventional Right-wing stuff. He's the other kind of Right-winger."
"What other kind?"
'The kind that's a sociology professor who believes in promiscuous gay sex and recreational drugs.'"

Friday, May 10, 2002

News and commentary:

"What about anti-Semitism?" (Anne Bayefsky, The Washington Times, 2002/05/10)
"Yasser Arafat wasn't out on the streets courting the sympathy of the world's media for five minutes before he violated international law. "Israelis are Nazis and racists," he said. Incitement to racial hatred is a violation of the world's first major human rights treaty - the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It is contrary to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the most basic standards of human dignity. For Mr. Arafat and his Middle East agenda, however, racism is a central weapon of war. ... Mr. Arafat, his agents and soul-mates, whether it be Fatah, Hamas, or Islamic Jihad, operate a two-part strategy. First, demonize the enemy as a racist. Second, advocate and justify eliminating that enemy by armed struggle, including suicide bombing. The United Nations has proved to be the ideal breeding ground for this one-two punch. At the U.N. World Conference "Against" Racism in Durban last August, Palestinian and Arab participants succeeded in including in the final declaration the conclusion that Palestinians were victims of Israeli racism. Jewish delegates to the Durban non-governmental forum, of which I was one, saw our voices silenced and replaced by the condemnation of Israel as an apartheid state. ... The United Nations is a propaganda machine for the Palestinian cause, as any reading of the voluminous material produced by the U.N. Division for Palestinian Rights will reveal. The EU readily sacrificed Israel in Durban after the United States walked out."

"IDF exits Bethlehem; Peres: We can extradite militants" (Anat Cygielman and Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz, 2002/05/10)
"CIA agents entered the Church shortly after it was evacuated, in order to inspect and confiscate the weapons left behind by Palestinian gunman. ... "We have found 40 explosive devices and five rifles hidden there and the IDF is dismantling them now," an IDF spokeswoman said. ... Twenty-six Palestinian militiamen released from the Church of the Nativity were given a raucous welcome in Gaza City Friday and fired assault rifles in the air to acknowledge cheers from the crowds in the streets. The gunmen from the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade militia and the Islamic militant group Hamas had emerged several hours earlier from the church in Bethlehem, as part of a deal that ended a 39-day Israeli siege of one of Christianity's holiest shrines. ... "They are heroes. I hope that together, we can celebrate our victory," said Ibrahim Hassouna, a bystander who had come to greet the militiamen. Israel accuses the 26 of involvement in repeated shooting attacks on Israeli civilians." (See also: "Results of IDF Searches in the Church of Nativity and the IDF Departure from Bethlehem" (IDF, 2002/05/10): "During the search weapons were found, and 40 explosive charges that were hidden within walls and in corners of rooms. Several improvised explosives were found hidden behind closets. During the limited time given to IDF to execute the searches, 25 explosive devices were neutralized, the remaining devices were marked by IDF.")

"Nativity Terrorists Murdered Americans" (Debbie Schlussel, TownHall, 2002/05/10)
And perhaps this is an example of the "poetry of resistance" mentioned below?: "Question: What's scarier than having your young son stoned to death? Answer: Having your President negotiate for his murderers' freedom. That’s the insult added to injury that the families of three American citizens experienced, Thursday, as 26 Palestinian terrorists were led to freedom from their captivity inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. One of those families was the American Mandell family. American citizen Koby Mandell was barely thirteen years old, a year ago, when he and his friend Yosef Ish-Ran, also thirteen, were stoned to death in a cave in what was supposed to be a friendly hike in the hills for two young boys. ... Barely men, these two young kids were tortured for almost two hours by Mahmoud Hamdan - one of the terrorists holed up, until Thursday, in Jesus' church. ... When Israeli authorities found Mandell's and Ish-Ran’s bodies, they were so badly smashed and bloodied against the walls of the cave that they were identifiable only through dental records. The entire cave was red, as these terrorist murderers smeared anti-Semitic graffiti all over the walls with the two young boys' blood."

"Pro-Palestinian Class Proposal Under Review" (Millie Lapadirio
and Wendy Lee, The Daily Californian, 2002/05/10)
Not even Arafat would define the very existence of Israel as an "occupation" - at least not publicly. But perhaps it's just an example of Berkeley "poetics"?: "UC Berkeley administrators are reviewing how an English course focusing on the plight of Palestinians received approval for next fall even though it discourages conservative students from enrolling. The English R1A reading and comprehension course, titled "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance," states in its course description that "conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections" - a violation of the university's Faculty Code of Conduct. According to the course description, the class "takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination." "The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine, an occupation that has been ongoing since 1948, has systematically displaced, killed and maimed millions of Palestinian people," the course description reads. 'And yet from under the brutal weight of the occupation, Palestinians have produced their own culture and poetry of resistance.'"

"The unbearable truth" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/10)
"The truth is, of course, highly inconvenient. Accepting the fact that the Israeli-Arab conflict is in fact the Arab conflict with Israel means facing up to Saudi lies and changing the way Saudi Arabia is treated in spite of its oil wealth. Understanding that the Palestinian Authority and the regimes that support it fight Israel not to build a Palestinian state but to destroy the Jewish state, means that one needs to think long and hard about the nature of Palestinian nationalism. It is so much easier and quicker to speak of the "hopelessness" of mass murderers. ... This is a sustained, coordinated, pre-planned war and Israel is forced to fight it with both hands strapped behind its back, because the international community refuses to acknowledge reality."

"Large Sums of Money Transferred by Saudi Arabia to the Palestinians are Used for Financing Terror Organizations (particulary the Hamas) and Terrorist Activities (including Suicide Attacks inside Israel)" (IDF, 2002/05/10 [?])
"The captured documents demonstrate that the Saudi support was not only of a humanitarian religious nature, as Saudi spokesmen in the U.S. claim. The documents clearly reveal that Saudi Arabia transferred, inter alia, large sums of money in a systematic and ongoing manner to families of suicide terrorists, to the Hamas Organization (on the U.S. list of terror organizations) and to persons and entities identified with the Hamas."

"The Kashmir Time Bomb" (David Ignatius, The Washington Post, 2002/05/10)
"What would Pakistan, a state with nuclear weapons and sophisticated missiles to deliver them, do in response to an Indian military move? Pakistan is vague about its nuclear doctrine, so it's hard to be sure. But many analysts fear Pakistan's missiles are targeted against Indian cities, and that facing an Indian conventional onslaught, it would launch a retaliatory nuclear attack on, say, New Delhi, that would leave millions dead. India would probably retaliate with its own nuclear weapons, probably dropped from bombers - killing many millions more. Welcome to what a senior State Department official calls "the other crisis." It's difficult these days to focus on anything other than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with its grisly daily death toll. But in this case it's essential. Because if the India-Pakistan situation gets out of hand, the death toll could run, not to dozens, but to tens of millions."

"Palestine and the Geocentric Left" (Bruce S. Thornton, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/05/10)
"Decades of such propaganda and clichés have transformed the Palestinian Arabs into anti-colonial resistors of a Western imperialism embodied in Israel. Supporting the Palestinians, then, is part of supporting the fight against the neo-imperialism of the global economic order, which now colonizes through Coca-Cola and Hollywood rather than through physical occupation and force. ... Israel is reduced to being an actor in the simplistic melodrama of Western oppressor and non-Western exotic victim, even though by any calculation the Israelis - outnumbered 100-1, surrounded by virulent enemies, and assaulted since the nation's birth by guerilla and terrorist attacks, not to mention four wars - are the victims of what could more accurately be considered an Arab attempt to reassert an "imperialist" hegemony over lands it conquered and stripped from their original Greek, Jewish, and Hellenic possessors."

"Deadly Tolerance" (Jonathan Foreman, New York Post, 2002/05/10)
"For an illustration of the absurdities of political correctness and the dishonesty of multiculturalism you can't do much better than the reaction of much of the world's press to the killing of the Dutch politician and supposed "extremist" Pim Fortuyn - by a genuinely extremist ecofanatic. ... That Fortuyn's condemnation of Islamic fundamentalist sexism and homophobia was itself attacked as "intolerant" is an example of cultural relativism at its most bizarre and counterintuitive. Fortuyn's reservations about multiculturalism, failed assimilation and Islam's political effects on his country were not only not fascist, they could well have been shared by Thomas Jefferson. His opponents, on the other hand - beginning with his assassin, but including those who demonized and delegitimized him as a beyond-the-pale extremist - demonstrated a close acquaintance with truly fascist means, if not ends."

"Palestinian Gunmen Emerge From Church; Israelis Advancing on Gaza" (Alan Cowell with Joel Greenberg, The New York Times, 2002/05/10)
"Israel had tanks moving toward the Gaza Strip today as it prepared to retaliate for a Palestinian suicide attack that killed 15 Israelis south of Tel Aviv three days ago. In Bethlehem, after several false starts and last-minute delays, Palestinians began to file out of the besieged Church of the Nativity one by one as the church bells tolled 7 a.m. ... Cyprus said it would "keep for a few days" the 13 Palestinian gunmen wanted by Israel who are inside the church before they are dispersed in at least seven other countries. ... In Gaza, Mr. Arafat sought Thursday to display his resolve to curb terrorism by ordering the arrests of the Hamas members. But Hamas said the detainees were low-ranking, and the arrests elicited not only Israel's dismissive reaction but also a skeptical response from the White House."

Thursday, May 9, 2002

News and commentary:

"How the West was lost" (Melanie Phillips, The Spectator, from the 2002/05/11 issue)
"The question the multiculturalists have to answer is this: are we a Western culture, or are we to become something else? If the latter, who is making the decision to wipe out our national identity? Because if we take in enough people who refuse to assimilate to Western values, this belief system will not survive. Liberalism will then have disappeared up its own fundament. When Fortuyn identified the threat, those liberals who have helped create it merely screamed "racist". So great is the hysteria about "xenophobia" and cultural difference, they cannot admit that their liberal values are indeed superior to the alternatives and that they have to be fought for. ... The mark of true decadence in the West is the fact that it is not prepared to fight for its own values but is falling over itself to appease both terrorist violence and cultural aggression. Even today, the West does not grasp the nature of the threat from militant Islam, the latest chapter in an age-old struggle. But as Samuel Huntington observes in his seminal The Clash of Civilisations and the Remaking of World Order, Islam is again on the march; and the threat it poses is hugely enhanced by the decay of the West from within through moral decline, political disunity and cultural suicide. ... Liberalism has to be rescued from the clutches of the libertarians, in order to defend liberal democracy from militant Islam on the one hand and the racist Right on the other. Fortuyn was never going to be the answer. He was part of the problem. But in exposing the hypocrisy and confusion of false liberalism, he did us all a service."

"Muslim cleric says intifadah is contrary to Islam" (Janice Arnold, Canadian Jewish News, 2002/05/09)
An interview with Abdul Hadi Palazzi, a Sufi, who is the chief imam of Italy's approximately 500,000 Muslims:
"During his recent visit to Canada, Sheikh Abdul Hadi Palazzi said in an interview with The CJN that the Qu'uran recognizes the Land of Israel as the heritage of the Jews and that the modern State of Israel is the fulfillment of the prophecy that, before the Last Judgment, the Jewish people will return to dwell there. ...
He is a harsh critic of Palestinian suicide bombers and what he sees as the sacrifice of children in the current intifadah. No "paradise" awaits those who die this way, Palazzi said. "Islam forbids suicide for any reason." ...
Palazzi says there is no need for a Palestinian state and that a nationality known as "Palestinian" never existed before 1967. "A Palestinian state is inconceivable. It would simply be a time bomb under Israel, Jordan and the whole Middle East," he said. "In two to five years, it would become a basis for terrorism like Afghanistan under the Taliban." ...
Palazzi said a "Palestinian" people has never existed in history. Before 1967, the Arabs in the West Bank were Jordanians and those in Gaza were Egyptians, he said." (See also: "The Islamists Have it Wrong" (Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Middle East Forum, Summer 2001))

"Deadly blast hits Russian parade" (BBC News, 2002/05/09)
"Russian officials say 34 people, including 12 children, have been killed in an explosion in a southern Russian town during a parade for the country's Victory Day. The blast ripped through the main street of the town of Kaspiysk in the southern Russian republic of Dagestan as soldiers and civilians marched to commemorate the 57th anniversary of Russian victory in World War II. Security officials say a mine hidden in shrubbery on the side of the town's Lenin Street blew up as a military band passed. ... "I think that few people can have any doubt about this being an act of terrorism," said Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was addressing a rally in Moscow's Red Square at the time of the blast. He said the act on "the most dear of all holidays... was committed by scum who hold nothing sacred," comparing those behind the suspected attack to Nazis."

"The paper on sale in London that wants all Jews killed" (Alan Judd, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/09)
"This is race-hate at its purest, the denial of the other's right to exist. It may be that, by stoking hysteria in their peoples, normally pragmatic Arab leaders are making it not only more difficult for any peace process to work but perhaps - at least for the lifetime of anyone now living - impossible. ... The danger is that those who encourage or permit it may have unleashed a force that is already beyond their future control, and spreads beyond their borders. The increase in anti-Semitic acts on the Continent (already running at 300 a year in Marseilles alone, where it is likely that some of Jean-Marie Le Pen's supporters have been encouraged to take action) shows how the expression of something can bring into being the thing itself. The anti-Semitic mania that flourished in Germany during the 1930s was latent in European cultural soil, but many who participated might never have permitted it to flower in themselves without a climate that encouraged expression. That is what is happening in the Middle East - and beyond."

"The Modern Use of Ancient Lies" (David I. Kertzer, The New York Times, 2002/05/09)
"For Israeli Jews, who recall all too well the role that these images played in paving the road to the Holocaust, the reappearance of these same images in the Arab population around them is obviously frightening. But the tepid response of the Christian world has also been disturbing, because what is going on in the Muslim world today has its roots in the Christian past. Might this be the reason why Europeans, in particular, seem so reluctant to face the threat posed to Jews by this new wave of anti-Semitism? Are Europeans in a state of denial? ... Given the historical role of Christianity in promulgating such hatred, it is not unreasonable to hope that church leaders will face their own past with clear eyes. They should be among the first to call attention to these lies, and they should be among the loudest in their condemnation of them."

Wednesday, May 8, 2002

News and commentary:

"How Arafat blew it" (Thomas H. Lipscomb, UPI, 2002/05/09)
"Surprisingly, observers still fail to understand the magnitude of the success of Sharon's military and political assault on Arafat's PA. While international observers continued to wring their hands over alleged "war crimes" in Jenin they missed the point - again. What was really remarkable was how, once Arafat had been engaged and isolated in Ramallah, his forces were defeated in detail by the IDF with both efficiency and a minimal loss of life. How that happened is worth examining. ... And unfortunately for Arafat, the PA "civil authority" centers he thought untouchable, like his headquarters at Ramallah where he stockpiled some of his most sophisticated weapons, such as rockets, mines, and heavy weapons, were carefully cleared out by the IDF amid the twittering of Europeaceniks for Israeli desecration of these shrines of democratic government. Arafat's Palestinians no doubt have still cached some light weapons and ammunition, they can use for hit-and-run raiding and the occasional funeral fusillade. But the days of a significant threat from the PA are over for now. It will take them years to get back to the supply levels they had before Sharon's troops moved in on them."

"PM will not advocate severe military response to suicide bomb" (Aluf Benn, Haaretz, 2002/05/08)
"Earlier Wednesday, sources in Sharon's entourage to Washington said that U.S. President George Bush had agreed that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians must wait until internal reforms within the PA have brought about a governing body that "would be headed by a different person or different people" than the current leader, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. ... According to the sources, Bush and his advisors have proposed the establishment of a temporary government within the PA until a constitution is drawn up and elections are held. The sources said that Bush also agreed that Israel would not hold talks with the PA until it has completed its internal reforms." (See also: "Powell: Palestinian reforms 'essential'" (CNN.com, 2002/05/08): "Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in one of the strongest statements he has ever made, condemned the bombing in a taped broadcast on Palestinian television and said he was ordering Palestinian security forces 'to confront and prevent any terror attack against Israeli civilians from any Palestinian side.'")

"14 Dead in Pakistan Suicide Bombing" (Nadeem Afzal, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/08)
"A suicide bomber blew up a shuttle bus parked outside a Karachi hotel Wednesday in a thunderous explosion that killed 11 French engineers, their Pakistani driver and a passer-by. Twenty-three people were wounded. Pakistan's government denounced the blast as an act of terrorism aimed at foreigners, and suspicion fell on militant Islamic groups angered by Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's support for the U.S.-led coalition's war in neighboring Afghanistan."

"Tales of the Tyrant" (Mark Bowden, The Atlantic, from the May 2002 issue)
Bowden's ambitious portrait of Saddam Hussein is finally available online: "Everyone knew that the United States had more soldiers, more supplies, and better weapons. Surely Saddam would reach an agreement to save face, and his troops would be able to withdraw peacefully. ... Yet Saddam refused to be intimidated. He had a plan, which he outlined to Samarai and his other generals in a meeting in Basra weeks before the American offensive started. He proposed capturing U.S. soldiers and tying them up around Iraqi tanks, using them as human shields. "The Americans will never fire on their own soldiers," he said triumphantly, as if such squeamishness was a fatal flaw. It was understood that he would have no such compunction. In the fighting, he vowed, thousands of enemy prisoners would be taken for this purpose. Then his troops would roll unopposed into eastern Saudi Arabia, forcing the allies to back down. ... Saddam's plan was preposterous. But none of the generals, including Samarai, said a word. They all nodded dutifully and took notes. To question the Great Uncle's grand strategy would have meant to admit doubt, timidity, and cowardice. It might also have meant demotion or death."

"The Involvement of Arafat, PA Senior Officials and Apparatuses in Terrorism against Israel, Corruption and Crime" (Dani Naveh et al., M.F.A, 2002/05/08 [?])
The so-called 'Arafat file' is available online: "The main findings of this report are:
1. Yasser Arafat was personally involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks. He encouraged them ideologically, authorized them financially and personally headed the Fatah Al Aqsa Brigades organization.
2. The closest aides to Arafat responsible for terrorist activity are head of General Intelligence Tawfik Tirawi and financier Fouad Shubaki, who operated the ongoing logistics of financial aide and support of terrorism actions.
3. The Al Aqsa Brigades organization, headed by Arafat, was put under the direct authority of Marawan Barghouti, who had no compunction in using women and even children to execute terrorist activity, which killed hundreds of Israelis."

"Special Report: Inciting and Educating Children Towards Hate, Anti-Semitism and Violence in the Palestinain Authority" (Dani Naveh, PM's Office, 2002/05/08 [?])
"The Palestinian Ministry of Education is providing clear direction to its high school history teachers to inculcate the view among the students that Zionism is a racist movement similar to Fascism and Nazism. ... In Chapter 14 called "Zionism" in the instruction book for high school teachers, the Palestinian Ministry of Education defines for its teaching staff the required objectives in teaching this chapter, among which are: "Objective 5 - The student will understand the reasons why the peoples of the world hate the Jews". ... In the introductory chapter to the textbook, the following goals are defined for Palestinian history teachers: "The student will compare the foundations of Fascism and Nazism to those of Zionism. The student will acquire the following (learning) directives: Zionism is an aggressive, racist movement; the sense of racial superiority is the essence of Zionism, Fascism, and Nazism."

"Fortuyn told of Europe's future" (Jonah Goldberg, The Washington Times, 2002/05/08)
"The assassination of someone few of us ever heard of until this week may be the most portentous event in European politics since the fall of the Berlin Wall. ... The overplaying of Le Pen and the underplaying of Fortuyn stem from the same elite ignorance about what is going on in Europe, and to a certain extent, in America. Mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries, is dividing Western societies across the ideological spectrum. ... Fortuyn believed that poor immigrants, primarily from Muslim countries, were a threat to the qualities that made Holland earn its reputation for liberalism. So in a sense, Fortuyn was denounced as "ultra-conservative" solely because he was such a devoted defender of liberalism. ... Though he never said anything derogatory about any racial or ethnic group, he argued that contemporary Islam is grossly intolerant of women, gays and cultural liberalism in general. One can disagree with Fortuyn's view of Islam or Muslim immigrants or the threat either pose to Dutch culture. But you can't say that he was an enemy of tolerance; instead, he was a martyr to it."

"In Saudi Arabia, an Extreme Problem" (Sulaiman Al-Hattlan, The Washington Post, 2002/05/08)
Al-Hattlan on the Saudi reaction to the Islamist occupation of the Grand Mosque of Mecca in 1979: "But the end of the story had a twist: Though the government killed the extremists, it then essentially adopted their ideology. ... The result has been all sorts of restrictions that have created notions of fanaticism in the kingdom, and a society with a constant undercurrent of a "witch hunt." ... None of us dared to say it loudly then, and some still cannot say it. But our reaction to the 1979 Mecca tragedy has created a generation of angry, confused young people, many of whom have become fanatics, including those 15 Saudis among the 19 suspects in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the 100 - or more - Saudi prisoners in Guantanamo. How many other confused young Saudis are still out there? ... This extremist mentality becomes so entrenched and pervasive that its endurance is not dependent upon the life or death of one persuasive leader. Therefore, whether bin Laden eventually is killed or survives the current war is a temporary concern; in the long term, the real issue is the endurance or destruction of his rabid philosophy."

"Israel's Phony 'Partner'" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/05/08)
"Our secretary of state can afford to pretend, as our media pretend, that it is still possible to believe the man in the keffiyeh remains our own little peace partner even though, noted the ever-mild Powell, "we all may disagree with what Mr. Arafat had done over time." Indeed. We may, for instance, disagree with the murder of six people and the wounding of 30 others on Jan. 17 at an Israeli girl's bat mitzvah in the town of Hadera. That is one of the many acts of terrorism directly linked to Arafat's control in documents found by Israeli forces in Palestinian Authority offices. ... Imagine that the government of the United States believed, on evidence, that a certain Islamic leader was responsible for directing a campaign of murder against Americans. To ask Abba Eban's question, what would we do? Actually, the answer doesn't require much imagination, does it? We would mount an army against that leader and all his followers, and we would bomb them and shoot them and chase them and arrest them and ship them to Guantanamo Bay. If we had the leader in question trapped in a room, we would not let him out and set him up again as a partner for peace."

"Semantics of Murder" (Amir Taheri, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/05/08)
"Some, like Iran's President Mohammad Khatami, present suicide bombings as acts of individual desperation. This is disingenuous. One of the girls who blew herself up, murdering almost a dozen Israelis, had been recruited at 14 and brainwashed for two years. Mounting a suicide operation needs planning, logistics, surveillance, equipment, money and postoperation publicity - in short, an organization. But then, the recruiters never use their own children. No one related by blood to the leaders of Hamas or Islamic Jihad has died in suicide bombings. Arafat's wife, Suha, says she would offer her son for suicide attacks. Mrs. Arafat, however, has no son, only a daughter, living with her in Paris. It is always someone else's child who must die."

"Sharon anger over suicide bombing" (BBC News, 2002/05/08)
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has cut short a visit to the United States after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 16 people near the Israeli city of Tel Aviv. ... Mr Sharon said he was returning to Israel with a heavy heart, and full of rage. "He who rises up to kill us, we will pre-empt it and kill him first," he said. ... "The battle continues and will continue until all those who believe that they can make gains through the use of terror will cease to exist." The Israeli leader said there would be no peace with a "terrorist and corrupt entity" - a reference to the Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat."

Tuesday, May 7, 2002

News and commentary:

"At least 15 killed in Rishon Lezion billiard club terror attack" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/07)
"A Palestinian suicide bomber exploded at 11:03 p.m. in a billiard club south of Tel Aviv, killing at least 15 people and wounding of at least 60 others. Reports indicate nearly the entire building in Rishon Lezion's new industrial area - located at 17 Lishinsky Street - has collapsed as a result of the blast. ... Additional people are reportedly trapped in the ruins of the collapsed structure but authorities say it remains too dangerous at this time to rescue them from the rubble. ... A woman identified on Israel Radio as Hanit Azulai said she was on her way home when she heard 'a huge explosion ... I turned the corner and I saw the whole building go up before my eyes.'" (See also: "Leader of Arafat's Fatah Tanzim praises Rishon Lezion Attack" (IMRA, 2002/05/07): "Husam Kadar, one of the senior members of the Fatah Tanzim in the territories, said in response to the attack in Rishon Lezion that "the operation proves the nobility of the Palestinian People and its irrepressible willingness to carry out sacrifice and persist with the struggle against the occupation.")

"Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger" (Robert S. Wistrich, The American Jewish Committe, April 2002)
A must-read report on Muslim anti-Semitism: "Moreover, the present tidal wave of anti-Semitism has for a number of years been crystallizing into a genuinely mass phenomenon. ... The Jews are portrayed in Arab cartoons as demons and murderers, as a hateful, loathsome people to be feared and avoided. They are invariably seen as the origin of all evil and corruption, authors of a dark, unrelenting conspiracy to infiltrate and destroy Muslim society in order eventually to take over the world. ... Anti-Semitism has indeed become an integral and organic part of this Arab-Muslim culture of hatred - a potent instrument of incitement, terror, and political manipulation. ... The Western media, as is its custom, has been extremely reluctant to relate the current terrorist war against Israel and the West to its ideological roots in Islam or to the sources and meaning of jihad. It is equally averse to connecting terrorism with the anti-Jewish obsessions that currently animate millions of Muslims. Amazingly little attention has been paid to the sheer abundance, energy, and viciousness of contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism from Cairo and Gaza to Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Lahore. The seemingly endless parade of grotesque falsehoods exhibited in Arab and Muslim defamation of Jews and the Jewish state scarcely seems to impinge on Western consciousness. At most it is perceived as a footnote to the raging storm of anti-Americanism or as a form of "political opposition" to Israeli actions."

"Why bashing the US is chic... in America" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2002/05/07)
"'Me, anti-American?' said Tariq Ali to a hall packed with book-loving Californians at the Los Angeles Times book fair the other day. "Not at all. I am against the rulers of America and the people who elect them, but not against the dissenters." It was a slightly odd thing to say about a democracy but still, no doubt flattered to be included with the dissidents, the audience expressed its approval in loud applause. This was a distinctly Tariq-friendly audience, attending a panel discussion on the uses of American power. They didn't like their government either, or the people who elected it. When Chalmers Johnson, a lugubrious professor dressed in black, recited a list of all the bad things US governments had done since the beginning of the 20th century, I could hear people around me going "Yess! Yess!", in the rapturous, almost voluptuous manner of true believers at an evangelical meeting. ... But this resentment can also become a self-regarding mark of superior status, of a kind of upper class, if you like. Money, as everyone knows, is vulgar. Dissent is smart. It lifts you above the vulgar masses who like Jerry Springer and vote for George Bush. Opinion, in a highly commercialised society, becomes a sign of class. It is chic to disapprove of America, not only of its rulers or those who elect them, but of the idea of America itself. What Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, and Tariq Ali have in common, then, is snobbery apart from anything else."

"Pim's Lessons" (Steve Miller, Independent Gay Forum, 2002/05/07)
"Coverage in the conservative Washington Times notes that last year Fortuyn was thrown out of a left-wing party for condemning a Rotterdam Muslim cleric who had called homosexuals "worse than pigs." Again, criticizing Islamic fundamentalism – even for its virulent homophobia - is deemed out of bounds, even after Sept. 11. Clearly, the liberal-left demonization of this man stemmed from his insisting that a point is reached when multiculturalism threatens the basic values of liberal Western culture. If it's true that a leftist environmentalist shot him, then at least it may reveal the extent to which the radical left has truly become a totalitarian anti-Western cult that can’t countenance any deviation from its politically correct party line, and the extent to which elite liberalism backs up the leftist worldview..."

"A New Dutch Gay Politician: Pim Fortuyn" (Paul Varnell, Independent Gay Forum, 2002/04/27)
Best of the Web Today also links to this article, about the "character assassination" which presumably set the atmosphere for the very real assassination: "But his detractors, mostly on the political left, frequently denounce him as racist, fascist and other terms of abusive. But judging from a New York Times article, those claims seem counter-intuitive, slanderous, even crazed. ... There is a fascinating phenomenon here. A man who urges immigrants to embrace their adopted nation's liberal values of political tolerance, women's equality and respect for gays is the one denounced as a racist and fascist. Yet insofar as immigrants suppress women, denounce the very existence of gays, and, we may reasonably suppose, are hostile to Jews, the immigrants seem far closer to those who originally bore the labels now being applied to Fortuyn. At this point we can begin to suspect that terms like "racist" and "fascist" are just empty rhetoric, swear words, with no cognitive content. They are designed merely to delegitimize someone without taking the trouble to provide evidence or argue against their ideas."

"Post, News flay reputations of 2" (Dave Koppel, Rocky Mountains News, 2002/05/05)
Best of the Web Today points out this "eerily foreshadowing" column: "Can we have a serious, respectful debate about immigration? Not if we depend on the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post to provide information or set the tone for dialogue. Let's start with the featured Special Report on Page 2 of the April 29 Post, an Associated Press article on Dutch political leader Pim Fortuyn, who is leading a right-wing party expected to do well in the May 13 elections. The article compares Fortuyn to French presidential candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen. This is a repulsive example of character assassination. ... In contrast [to Le Pen], Fortuyn has never expressed the slightest admiration for fascism, or proposed any restrictions on religious or other freedoms. Yet the AP article, and the Post headline accuse Fortuyn of arousing Dutch "demons." ... Fortuyn's sin? The article writes that Fortuyn "calls Islam anti-secular and backward." ... In other words, the gay Dutch sociology professor offered complaints about Islam which are quite similar to complaints that some gay American sociology professors (and other American gays) offer about Christianity: anti-gay, sexist, morally imperialist, and premised on the belief that one religion is superior to all others. Now, when American gay activists make such remarks, the AP doesn't work itself into a lather and claim that the remarks reveal "demons" in the American character, because a lot of Americans agree with the criticism of religion."

"Extremes now meet in our common EU home" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2002/05/07)
"Yesterday two varieties of contemporary extremism met in an horrific collision. Pim Fortuyn, the most silkily charismatic and plausible of Europe's new breed of populist politicians, was killed in an act of political violence as typical of the new terrorism as it was alien to the old Holland. Fortuyn’s assassination marks more than the death of a maverick soul poised to unravel the comfortable consensus of Dutch politics. It is a bleak snapshot of dark dramas to come. ... For intemperate and simplistic as his rhetoric was, its success reflected a widespread concern. Why is it the most horrific acts of politically motivated violence committed against the West have come from Muslims, in the grip of a twisted fundamentalist version of their faith, who have enjoyed the freedoms, welfare benefits, educational opportunities and wealth Europe has to offer? And why do Western establishments temporise in the face of fundamentalist violence, from the EU's funding of the infrastructure of terror in the Palestinian Authority to the lack of prosecutions against those who preach hate and recruit for jihads? A failure by European elites to tackle these questions allows both extremes, the far Right and Islamic terror, to flourish. Where do extremes now meet? In the house that Jacques built."

"On Hating Israel" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/05/07)
"A constant charge - most recently and repugnantly made by a freed Mr. Arafat - is that the Israelis bear a racial grudge against the Palestinians. He has alleged that, like Nazis, Israelis seek to cleanse non-Jews from the West Bank. ... Yet by any fair measure the Israeli government is light-years ahead of the Arab world in terms of racial and religious tolerance. ... We do not read in the Jerusalem Post, as we do in the Arab dailies, that Palestinians are "monkeys" and "vampires." Nor is there a sizable literature in Israel - as there is in the Arab world - devoted to proving their enemies are subhuman. Real racism and hatred exist in this present conflict, but they are expressed almost entirely by Arabs, not Jews. Had a paper in Tel Aviv alleged that Arabs drink blood and are related to primates, the world's outrage would be second only to the moral indignation in Israel itself."

"Martyrdom Day Celebrated" (SANA, 2002/05/07)
The official Syrian news agency reports on the celebration of "Martyrdom Day": "President Bashar Assad lauded highly Monday the heroic operations of the Palestinian resistance men against the Israeli occupation, which shook the Israeli occupation and the sacrifices of the Syrian forces in the battles waged in defense of the homeland and the nation. ... "One [sic] the Palestinian decided to be a martyr in Jenin, the Israeli troops waited for 9 days till they were able to enter this tiny camp after they killed the civilians there and destroyed their houses over their heads,'' the President noted. Other words delivered at the luncheon in honor of the martyrs sons and daughters, spoke of the sublime and noble meanings of martyrdom in defense of the homeland and Arabs' just causes."

"Stop Blaming Europe" (Chris Patten, The Washington Post, 2002/05/07)
The European commissioner for external relations has suddenly noticed that American press is highly critical of European policies regarding the Middle East conflict and the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. For Patten the most ominous factor seems to be the "hijacking" of the war on terror by Likud: "Anti-American prejudice in Europe is repugnant. It comes as a shock to me to find in a country I love and admire the mirror-image of this - a visceral contempt for Europe. Hunting for reasons for this, do we have to come back to poor Israel? ... There will be no settlement in the Middle East without the creation of a viable Palestinian state and an Israel that can live secure within recognized borders. ... It is not anti-Semitic to say that, any more than it is to suggest that we will do our common campaign against terrorism irreparable damage if we allow it to be hijacked by Likud. Heaven help Israel, heaven help Palestine, heaven help all of us, if this mad and grotesque assault on reasoned debate continues. But heaven, I fear, will have its work cut out." (Note: Patten acknowledges that the "terrible suicide bombings must end; they are wicked acts, and it is a disgrace that they have not been more strongly condemned by Arab leaders.", but fails to mention the disgraceful fact that six European countries - Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden - recently in essence endorsed suicide bombings by approving a U.N. resolution approving the use of "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. (See: "U.N. to Jews: Drop Dead" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/04/16))

"Behind the Terrorists" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2002/05/07)
"From President Bush to bleeding hearts on the left, there's agreement that to combat terrorism, we must attack root causes like third-world poverty and illiteracy. But as often happens when wisdom becomes conventional, it's wrong. In fact, it would be easier to make the case that to fight terrorism, we should promote destitution and bomb universities around the world. I'm not urging that, of course. It's just that while there are many good reasons to favor foreign aid and better schools abroad, fighting terrorism probably isn't one. ... The most rigorous analysis is in a new paper by Alan Krueger of Princeton University and Jitka Maleckova of Charles University, and they find no correlation between involvement in terrorism and either poverty or illiteracy. For example, they looked at the backgrounds of Lebanese Hezbollah militants killed in action, and they found that they were better off and better educated than the general population. Likewise, they examined public opinion polls in the West Bank and Gaza and found that better-educated Palestinians were more likely than others to approve of violence."

"Havana pursues biological warfare" (Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times, 2002/05/07)
"The Bush administration said yesterday that it has "broad and deep" evidence that Cuba is developing offensive biological warfare capabilities and sharing them with "other rogue states." In a speech titled "Beyond the Axis of Evil," John Bolton, undersecretary of state for international security and arms control, named Cuba, Libya and Syria as "states intent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction" against which the United States would take action to prevent such arms from reaching terrorists." (See also: "Beyond the Axis of Evil: Additional Threats from Weapons of Mass Destruction", John R. Bolton, U.S. Department of State, 2002/05/06))

Monday, May 6, 2002

News and commentary:

"Dutch Anti-Immigrant Politician Fortuyn Shot Dead" (Melanie Cheary and Jana Sanchez, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/06)
"Maverick Dutch anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn, a flamboyant populist bidding to be the Netherlands' first gay prime minister, was shot dead Monday, nine days before a general election. The shaven-headed former professor, who sent shock waves through the cozy consensual world of Dutch politics, was gunned down outside a radio station after giving an interview there. ... Police said they had arrested a Dutch national suspected of the murder, but said his identity and motive were still unknown. ... Fortuyn, who said Dutch borders should be shut and proclaimed Islam a backward civilization, shocked the liberal political establishment by winning the balance of power in the Netherlands' second city, Rotterdam, earlier this year."

"How Jenin battle became a 'massacre'" (Sharon Sadeh, The Guardian, 2002/05/08)
"But while the British papers, almost unanimously, presented it from the outset as a "massacre" or at least as an intentional "war crime" of the worst kind, the US and Israeli papers - Haaretz included - were far more reserved and cautious, saying that there was no evidence to back such claims. The left-liberal press in Britain thought differently. The Independent, the Guardian and the Times, in particular, were quick to denounce Israel and made sensational accusations based on thin evidence, fitting a widely held stereotype of a defiant, brutal and don't-give-a-damn Israel. ... In British broadsheets, the style of reporting is such that the distinction between commentary and news reporting is blurred. More often than not, this comes at the expense of accuracy, depth and perspective. Israel - which perceives the liberal European press as manifestly hostile and systematically biased - is entitled to be concerned about the effects of this approach, but it should also worry the UK audience. ... Selective use of details or information and occasional reliance on unsubstantiated accounts inflict considerable damage on the reputation of the entire British press, and more importantly, do a disservice to its readers."

"The Battle of Jenin" (Matt Rees, TIME, 2002/05/06)
"The Palestinian fighters had made their own preparations. Booby traps had been laid in the streets of both the camp and the town, ready to be triggered if an Israeli foot or vehicle snagged a tripwire. Some of the bombs were huge - as much as 250 lbs. of explosives, compared with the 25 lbs. a typical suicide bomber uses. On Day 2 of the battle, when the town had been secured but the fight in the camp was just beginning, a huge Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer rolled along a three-quarter-mile stretch of the main street to clear booby traps. An Israeli engineering-corps officer logged 124 separate explosions set off by the vehicle. ... A senior Palestinian military officer tells Time it was probably the gunmen's own booby traps that buried some civilians and fighters alive. There were bombs that were certainly big enough to wreck a cinder-block refugee house more devastatingly than a D-9 ever could."

"United Nation's War Against Israel" (David Harsanyi, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/05/06)
"Prior to the Madrid Conference in 1991, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir commissioned an analysis of U.N. voting towards Israel. The results are not surprising. From 1967 to 1988 the security passed 88 resolutions directly against Israel, zero resolutions criticized or opposed the actions or perceived interests of an Arab state or body, including the PLO. During that span, Israel was "condemned" 49 times, Arab countries not once. In the General Assembly, 429 anti-Israel resolutions were passed in that span. Israel was "condemned" 321 times. Arab nations? Not once. The U.N. Human Rights Commission (it really takes a lot of self-control not to put facetious quotation marks around all U.N. titles) now includes Zimbabwe, China, Ukraine, Algeria, Bahrain, Congo, Libya, Sudan, Russia, Syria, Uganda and Vietnam – all strongholds of civil liberty. This April, the commission passed a pro-terrorist resolution condoning "all available means, including armed struggle" to establish a Palestinian state. Six European Union members joined the 57 nations of the Islamic Conference in legitimizing suicide bombers. ... Of all condemnations by the commission, 26 percent single out Israel. Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia evidently possess spotless human rights records, as they have been immune to denunciation." (The original link is down, but the article can be found here: "United Nation's War Against Israel" (David Harsanyi, Capitalism Magazine, 2002/05/27))

"Israelis foiled bombing of tallest edifice" (Paul Martin, The Washington Times, 2002/05/06)
"Members of an elite Israeli commando squad say they helped foil an attack on Israel's tallest building, prompting security chiefs to warn that the Palestinians may be planning a new round of attacks more destructive than anything seen to date. The would-be attack, with obvious similarities to the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center towers, was headed off shortly before a truckload of high explosives was to be driven to its target, commandos told The Washington Times yesterday. ... Papers found inside the truck reportedly showed that the target was the 50-story Azrieli Towers, the tallest commercial building in the Middle East. "There was enough high explosives there to blow up several twin towers," said one Israel military source. 'The plan was to drive the truck into the underground parking - just as they did in the first World Trade Center plot of 1993.'"

"Government's 'Arafat File' shows how EU money was used for terror" (Etgar Lefkovits, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/06)
"The Palestinian Authority has used tens of millions of dollars it received from donors such as the European Union to finance terrorism, while Saudi Arabia has given a total of $550,000 in the last year to more than 100 families of Palestinian terrorists, according to a government report released yesterday. The 103-page report entitled, "The Involvement of Arafat, PA Senior Officials and Apparatuses in Terrorism against Israel, Corruption, and Crime," which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon plans to give US President George W. Bush in their meeting tomorrow, also labels the Palestinian Authority "a supporting, encouraging, and actively operating body of terrorism" whose chairman, Yasser Arafat, was 'directly involved in the planning and execution of terrorist attacks.'"

"The Independent's 'reporting'" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2002/05/06)
"Phil Reeves, a Fisk wannabe, sent home this despatch upon arriving in Jenin: "A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed. ...The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people, who spent days hiding in basements crowded into single rooms as the rockets pounded in, say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust... ... This was a mass grave, [Kamal Anis] said, pointing... A few days ago, we might not have believed Kamal Anis. But the descriptions given by the many other refugees who escaped from Jenin camp were understated, not, as many feared and Israel encouraged us to believe, exaggerations. Their stories had not prepared me for what I saw yesterday. I believe them now." What a difference a week or so makes. In a subsequent piece in which Reeves details the lamentable attempt by the Israelis to defend their actions in Jenin, he bemoans the fact that the Israelis' p.r. "efforts have been greatly helped by the Palestinian leadership, who instantly, and without proof, declared that a massacre had occurred in which as many as 500 died. Palestinian human-rights groups made matters worse by churning out wild, and clearly untrue, stories." And the Independent made matters even still worse by uncritically reprinting such stories as news." (See also: "Amid the ruins of Jenin, the grisly evidence of a war crime" (Phil Reeves, Independent, 2002/04/16) and "Once upon a time in Jenin" (Phil Reeves, Independent, 2002/04/25))

"Lost diplomats just step on the gas" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/05/06)
"The premise behind these statements is that diplomacy plus compromises can end the Arab-Israeli conflict. This might be plausible - if we had not just watched since 1993 how just such too-clever diplomacy had the effect of turning a bad situation into a crisis. Must the U.S. government repeat its mistaken policy of the past decade? ... If the Bush administration wishes to make itself useful, let it address the reality of Arab rejectionism. That would imply not slight adjustments to the present policies but adopting a wholly different outlook: Stand unequivocally by Israel to signal the Arabs that their dream of destroying Israel is futile. Take steps to prevent Arab violence against Israel. Discourage Arab-Israeli negotiations until the Arabs clearly and consistently show they have fully come to terms with Israel's existence."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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Articles of the week

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

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

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

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

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

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