Archived news and commentary: May 20 - 26, 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 26, 2002

News and commentary:

"Our enemies the Saudis" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, from the 2002/06/03 issue)
"Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. ... The Saudis are waging war against us, financing the spread of the idea that our free society must be overthrown and totalitarian Wahhabi Islam must be imposed by force. ... It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us. And they should know that we have the capacity to destroy their military, presumably in a matter of hours. The Saudis' eastern provinces, with their oil, could be given to their Shiite Muslim majority, now oppressed by the Sunni Muslim Saudi rulers. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina could be returned to the custody of the Hashemites (Jordan's King Abdullah's family), who unlike the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Let the Saudis have the sands of central Arabia and their bank accounts in Switzerland, hotel suites in London, and villas on the Riviera."

"Fighting to Live as the Towers Died" (Jim Dwyer et al., The New York Times, 2002/05/26)
A haunting and gripping chronicle of the final 102 minutes at the World Trade Center, built on phone conversations, e-mail, voice messages and recollections:
"9:02 South Tower, 81st Floor, Fuji Bank, 57 minutes to collapse.
Yes, Stanley Praimnath told the caller from Chicago, he was fine. He had actually evacuated to the lobby of the south tower, but a security guard told him to go back. Now, he was again at his desk at Fuji Bank. "I'm fine," he repeated. As he would later tell his story, those were his final words before he spotted it. A gray shape on the horizon. An airplane, flying past the Statue of Liberty. The body of the United Airlines jet grew larger until he could see a red stripe on the fuselage. Then it banked and headed directly toward him. Another one. "Lord, you take over!" he remembers yelling, dropping under his metal desk. At 9:02:54, the nose of the jetliner smashed directly into Mr. Praimnath's floor, about 130 feet from his desk. A fireball ignited. Steel furnishings and aluminum plane parts were torn into white-hot shrapnel. A blast wave hurled computers and desks through windows, and ripped out bundles of arcing electrical cables. Then the south tower seemed to stoop, swinging gradually toward the Hudson River, ferociously testing the steel skeleton before snapping back." (See also: "Accounts From the North Tower" and "Accounts From the South Tower" (The New York Times, 2002/05/26))

"The U.S.-Europe Divide" (Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 2002/05/26)
"Europeans believe they are moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. Europe itself has entered a post-historical paradise, the realization of Immanuel Kant's "Perpetual Peace." The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international rules are unreliable and where security and the promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might. This is why, on major strategic and international questions today, Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less. ... Even today Europe's rejection of power politics ultimately depends on America's willingness to use force around the world against those who still do believe in power politics. Europe's Kantian order depends on the United States using power according to the old Hobbesian rules. Most Europeans don't acknowledge the great paradox: that their passage into post-history has depended on the United States not making the same passage. Instead, they have come to view the United States simply as a rogue colossus, in many respects a bigger threat to the pacific ideals Europeans now cherish than Iraq or Iran. Americans, in turn, have come to view Europe as annoying, irrelevant, naive and ungrateful as it takes a free ride on American power. This is not just a family quarrel. If Americans and Europeans no longer agree on the utility and morality of power, then what remains to undergird their military alliance?"

"Nuclear Nightmares" (Bill Keller, The New York Times Magazine, 2002/05/26)
A report on the possibilities and probabilities of nuclear terrorism: "Everybody who spends much time thinking about nuclear terrorism can give you a scenario, something diabolical and, theoretically, doable. Michael A. Levi, a researcher at the Federation of American Scientists, imagines a homemade nuclear explosive device detonated inside a truck passing through one of the tunnels into Manhattan. The blast would crater portions of the New York skyline, barbecue thousands of people instantly, condemn thousands more to a horrible death from radiation sickness and - by virtue of being underground - would vaporize many tons of concrete and dirt and river water into an enduring cloud of lethal fallout."

 

Saturday, May 25, 2002

News and commentary:

"How the FBI Blew the Case" (Romesh Ratnesar and Michael Weisskopf, TIME, 2002/05/25)
"The product of months of gathering frustration, [Coleen] Rowley's memo - a full copy of which was obtained by Time - unspools in furious detail how, in the weeks leading up to the hijackings, officials at FBI headquarters systematically dismissed and undermined requests from Rowley's Minneapolis field office for permission to obtain a warrant to wiretap and search the computer and belongings of Zacarias Moussaoui, the French-Moroccan operative arrested in Minnesota last August and facing trial this fall as the sole person charged with conspiring in the attacks. Rowley asserts that the FBI didn't "do much" to share information about Moussaoui with other government agencies or to match the evidence that Moussaoui took pilot lessons with an earlier report from a Phoenix field agent raising suspicions about Middle Eastern men enrolled in flight school. In Rowley's view, bureaucratic incompetence stalled an investigation that may have led closer to the black heart of Osama bin Laden's plot. "It's at least possible we could have gotten lucky and uncovered one or two more of the terrorists in flight training prior to Sept. 11," Rowley writes. 'There is at least some chance that ... may have limited the Sept. 11th attacks and resulting loss of life.'" (See also: "Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller" (TIME, 2002/05/25))

"Ambush in Takur Ghar - A Wintry Ordeal at 10,000 Feet" (Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2002/05/25)
The second of two articles: "They faced a climb up a steep, forbidding slope, with upwards of 80 pounds of military gear, wearing inappropriate clothing and boots, and under sporadic enemy fire. They also were in a race against time. The other half of their unit was stranded at the top of the ridge, their helicopter shot down shortly after sunrise. They had flown in to rescue a Navy SEAL team, only to be ambushed by enemy fighters. Four of the quick-reaction force were dead, three aircrew members were seriously wounded and the rest of the contingent was pinned down. ... The Rangers at times got down on all fours – "kind of like a bear crawling up," in the words of the medic. Enemy mortar attacks punctuated the climb, although they were sporadic and poorly aimed. ... "You need to get to the top of the hill, where we'll be in a static position and can rest," Canon told them. 'We've got to go, our guys need us.'" (See also: "Ambush at Takur Ghar - Fighting for Survival in the Afghan Snow" (Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2002/05/24))

"Going Wobbly?" (William Kristol & Robert Kagan, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/06/03 issue)
"Is the president preparing to back off the bold pledges he made to the American people four months ago in his State of the Union address? The president warned us then that the clock was ticking in Iraq. ... Bush proclaimed that he was determined to confront and eliminate this threat, and he called on Americans to gird themselves for the difficult struggle that lay ahead. ... Was it all hot air? On Friday, the Washington Post published a credible report by the respected journalist Tom Ricks that the administration has put off the idea of an invasion of Iraq. Indeed, a military attack on Saddam may never happen at all. ... His presidency is on the line. As is the credibility of the United States and the whole security structure - or lack thereof - of the post-9/11 world. But time is not on the president's side. He has lost considerable momentum in the war against terror and weapons of mass destruction. More drift and indecision would be disastrous." (See also: "Military Sees Iraq Invasion Put on Hold" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/05/24))

 

Friday, May 24, 2002

News and commentary:

"Bigotry in Print. Crowds Chant Murder. Something's Changed." (Paul Berman, Forward, from the 2002/05/24 issue)
A must-read essay on the new anti-Semitism, in which Berman among other things analyses an article by José Saramago in El Pais: "Israel, in Saramago's view, has pursued immoral and hateful policies during its entire history. ... Saramago traced Israel's policies to biblical Judaism. He pointed to the story of David and Goliath, which, though commonly pictured as a tale of underdog triumph, is actually the story of a blond person (David's blond hair seemed to catch Saramago's attention) employing a superior technology to kill at a distance a helpless and presumably non-blond person, the unfortunate and oppressed Goliath. Today's events, in Saramago's fanciful interpretation, follow the biblical script precisely, as if in testimony to the Jews' fidelity to tradition. ... Saramago, shrewder and more sophisticated than the crowds in the Washington streets or the panelist at the Socialist Scholars Conference, did condemn the suicide bombers. He did so in two throwaway sentences at the end of his essay, sneeringly, with his own expressive ellipsis: "Ah, yes, the horrendous massacres of civilians caused by the so-called suicide terrorists.... Horrendous, yes, doubtless; condemnable, yes, doubtless, but Israel still has a lot to learn if it is not capable of understanding the reasons that can bring a human being to turn himself into a bomb." And so, the deliberate act of murdering random crowds turns out to be the fault of the murdered - or, rather, of the monstrous and racist doctrines of their religion, which is Judaism. ... Still, something was remarkable in seeing, in this day and age, a fulmination against Judaism for its intrinsic hatefulness, written with the savage energy of a Nobel Prize winner, published in one of the world's major newspapers." (See also: "De las piedras de David a los tanques de Goliat" (José Saramago, El Pais/saramago.iespana.es, 2002/04/21))

"Five Arab Israelis indicted for building bomb from TV instructions" (The Jordan Times/AP, 2002/05/24)
"Five Arab Israelis were indicted Thursday on charges they assembled bombs based on instructions taken from a Saudi TV programme. The indictment said the five planned to use bombs to fight Israeli police should protests erupt again as it did in October 2000 at the start of a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation. Thirteen Arab Israeli protesters were killed by the police at the time. Nader Ben Issam Salima, 26, told his wife to write down the instructions given by masked men on the television programme, who explained in detail how to build a bomb from readily available materials, the indictment said. Salima and a friend then purchased sulfur and built the explosive, the indictment said."

"Ambush at Takur Ghar - Fighting for Survival in the Afghan Snow" (Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2002/05/24)
The first of two articles: "What became a 17-hour ordeal atop a frigid, desolate and enemy-ridden mountain ridge cost seven American lives, more combat deaths than any U.S. unit had suffered in a single day since 1993, when 18 Rangers and Special Operations soldiers died in battle in Mogadishu, Somalia. How the operation was conducted revealed serious shortcomings in U.S. military coordination and communication in Afghanistan. How it unfolded highlighted the extraordinary commitment of American soldiers not to leave fallen comrades behind: The entire episode spiraled out of an attempt to rescue a single SEAL, who had fallen out of the initial helicopter and was quickly shot by the enemy."

"Military Sees Iraq Invasion Put on Hold" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/05/24)
"The uniformed leaders of the U.S. military believe they have persuaded the Pentagon's civilian leadership to put off an invasion of Iraq until next year at the earliest and perhaps not to do it at all, according to senior Pentagon officials. ... During the meeting, [Army Gen. Tommy R.] Franks told the president that invading Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein would require at least 200,000 troops, far more than some other military experts have calculated. ... The Bush administration still appears dedicated to the goal of removing the Iraqi leader from power, but partly in response to the military's advice, it is focusing more on undermining him through covert intelligence operations, two officials added."

"Re-Imagining NATO" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/05/24)
"NATO is dead. Long live NATO. ... The proximal cause of NATO's death was victory in Afghanistan - a swift and crushing U.S. victory that made clear America's military dominance and Europe's consequent military irrelevance. The gap in military capacity is so staggering that even professor Paul Kennedy, author of the highly influential "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," has now recanted the America-in-decline theory he fathered in the 1980s. Kennedy has been moved to express his awe at American resurgence: "Nothing has ever existed like this disparity of power; nothing." ... Europe, in particular, was reduced to the sidelines because its technology is so far behind America's that what little aircraft, munitions and transport it might have contributed would only have gotten in the way. For a continent that for 500 years ruled the world, this impotence is difficult to accept. It helps explain Europe's petulant complaints about American "arrogance" and "unilateralism." It also explains why NATO, as a military alliance, is dead."

"Bomber Killed in Foiled Attack on Israeli Club" (Matt Spetalnick, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/24)
"A suspected Palestinian militant tried to ram an explosives-laden car into a crowded Tel Aviv nightclub on Friday but was killed when an Israeli security guard opened fire. ... On Thursday, Israeli police said disaster was averted when suspected Palestinian militants tried to set ablaze a major fuel depot near Tel Aviv by detonating a bomb under a tanker truck. Workers put out a fire caused by the blast before it could spread. There were no casualties. The apparent sabotage attempt took place hours after a suicide bomber killed himself and two Israelis and wounded 27 in a public park in the town of Rishon Letzion, also near Tel Aviv." (See also: "Close Call - Israel narrowly avoids the worst attack yet" (Nissan Ratzlav-Katz, National Review, 2002/05/24), on the fuel depot bombs: "Apparently detonated by a cellular phone, the bombs were intended to cause the explosive destruction of the entire depot, killing anyone in the area, and raining death onto the nearby residential areas of Herzliya and northern Tel Aviv. ... Ninety percent of the people in proximity to the facility, including motorists on the major highways passing nearby, would have been killed immediately, and 50 percent of the residents of the neighboring residential areas would have died in the ensuing fires or from the poisoned air that would have blanketed the area. Ehud Yatom, a former General Security Services officer and one-time nominee to head the prime minister's antiterrorism task force, commented that a successful attack on the installation could have caused a chain reaction culminating in a full-scale regional war.")

 

Thursday, May 23, 2002

News and commentary:

"Arafat didn't negotiate - he just kept saying no" (Benny Morris, The Guardian, 2002/05/23)
An interview with Ehud Barak: "According to Barak, Clinton said: ... "The true story of Camp David was that for the first time in the history of the conflict the American president put on the table a proposal, based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian demands, and Arafat refused even to accept it as a basis for negotiations, walked out of the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism."
"He did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own," he says. Barak shifts between charging Arafat with "lacking the character or will" to make a historic compromise (as did the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1977-79, when he made peace with Israel) to accusing him of secretly planning Israel's demise while he strings along a succession of Israeli and Western leaders and, on the way, hoodwinks "naive journalists". ...
Repeatedly during our prolonged interview, which was conducted in his office in a Tel Aviv skyscraper, Barak shook his head - in bewilderment and sadness - at what he regards as Palestinian, and especially Arafat's, mendacity: 'They are products of a culture in which to tell a lie... creates no dissonance. They don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judaeo-Christian culture. Truth is seen as an irrelevant category. There is only that which serves your purpose and that which doesn't. They see themselves as emissaries of a national movement for whom everything is permissible. There is no such thing as 'the truth.''"

"Arab League Think Tank Hosts Event: U.S. Military behind September 11" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No.383, 2002/05/23)
Not surprisingly Meyssan's theories are taken seriously by the Arab League think tank: "On April 8, an Arab League think tank - The Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up (ZCCF) - hosted a lecture titled "Who masterminded the attacks of September 11th?" The guest speaker, Thierry Meyssan, was described by the center as "the famous French author and writer." The event served partly to promote Meyssan's book, "The Appalling Fraud," in which he accuses the U.S. military of being behind September 11. ... The Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow Up was established by the Arab League in 1999. Notable speakers at the center this year include former vice president Al Gore, former secretary of state James Baker, Professor Shebley Telhami of the University of Maryland and President George W. Bush's brother, Neil Bush. ... The ZCCF's summary detailed Meyssan's argument as follows: Both Congress and the U.S. media covered up the truth by not investigating events. ... Bin Laden’s involvement: 'this myth, also does not stand analysis," since he was a previous CIA agent who was visited by the head of the CIA in a Dubai hospital in July.'"

"This isn't war but 'politics as usual'" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/05/23)
"The "war on terror" is now merely this month's Enron, the latest thin straw with which the Democrats hope finally to break the Republican elephant's back. ... Sure, the country's at Code Yellow, and boring bureaucrats keep warning that something may be happening somewhere sometime, but at the moment nothing is happening nowhere, except for the odd discovery of an arms cache in Tora Bora, and even then it's some non-telegenic Brit Royal Marines who stumble on it. ... So the domestic agenda's dead, the home front's a joke, and anything overseas is fast receding beyond the far horizon. ... But, unless Bush II is as languid and purposeless as his dad, war with Iraq has to be coming, and coming soon. Ignore Colin Powell's recent assurances that the Administration has "no plans" to attack. That's the way he was talking in early October last year: Every time Bush made a speech deploring the "evildoers," Powell went on TV and said the Administration was interested in reaching out and working with moderate evildoers. Then the bombing started and that was the end of the outreach. ... If war isn't underway by the beginning of autumn, George W. Bush might as well nickname himself President Juan Term."

"Europeans should stop whining and pull their weight" (Roy Denman, International Herald Tribune, 2002/05/23)
"Tensions across the Atlantic are crackling like summer thunderstorms. Americans are seen in Europe as bellicose unilateralists, going it on their own in fighting terrorism, talking of launching a private war on Iraq, walking out of international agreements, and wrecking any possibility of a new trade round by new protective measures. ... But for the United States a foreign attack on its own soil was a virtually unprecedented affront. The nation united behind the president and vowed to get the perpetrators. It did not want to be encumbered with allies who would offer minimum aid and demand interminable consultation before agreeing to action. What Europe needs to do is to stop whining about U.S. unlilateralism and make itself a creditable heavyweight partner. When it speaks with one voice on foreign policy and puts its money where its mouth is on defense, America will take it seriously, not before."

"Bush says he doesn't want war with Saddam" (Tom Raum, IHT/AP, 2002/05/23)
"President Bush called Iraq's Saddam Hussein a threat to all civilization who must be confronted by all means available. Still, Bush assured the leader of Germany on Thursday, "I have no war plans on my desk." Bush also issued a warning to Moscow in advance of traveling there later Thursday, urging President Vladimir Putin to cease Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran. "If you arm Iran, you're liable to have the weapons pointed at you," Bush said he would tell Putin when they meet on Friday to sign a nuclear arms reduction treaty. ... At the Bundestag, Bush made the case for a more aggressive war against terrorism, saying the threat 'cannot be appeased, and it cannot be ignored.'" (See also: "President Bush Thanks Germany for Support Against Terror - Remarks by the President to a Special Session of the German Bundestag." (The White House, 2002/05/23): "The terrorists are defined by their hatreds: they hate democracy and tolerance and free expression and women and Jews and Christians and all Muslims who disagree with them. Others killed in the name of racial purity, or the class struggle. These enemies kill in the name of a false religious purity, perverting the faith they claim to hold. In this war we defend not just America or Europe; we are defending civilization, itself. ... Wishful thinking might bring comfort, but not security. Call this a strategic challenge; call it, as I do, axis of evil; call it by any name you choose, but let us speak the truth. If we ignore this threat, we invite certain blackmail, and place millions of our citizens in grave danger.")

"Arafat aided group that besieged church" (Sayed Anwar, The Washington Times, 2002/05/23)
"Palestinian documents seized by Israel show that Yasser Arafat financially supported Bethlehem's top gunman, who until his death last year was the leader of a clan that controlled the Church of the Nativity during the standoff with Israeli troops. ... A one-page document dated July 9, 2001, contained Mr. Arafat's handwritten confirmation of payment of $300 to Atef Abayat. The payment was authorized by Mr. Arafat at a time when Israel had requested that the Palestinian local leader be arrested on murder charges. Israeli agents killed him by blowing up a stolen car in which he was riding. ... Palestinian officials insist payments from Mr. Arafat's Palestinian Authority were used only for political and social programs. But another document, dated Nov. 7, 2001, indicates Mr. Arafat's approval for paying the families of "brother commander martyrs" killed fighting Israel. Topping the list is Atef Abayat, who had at the same time been publicly lionized as a "great martyr" in a speech by Mr. Arafat."

 

Wednesday, May 22, 2002

News and commentary:

"Ending Bias in the Human Rights System" (Anne Bayefsky, The New York Times, 2002/05/22)
"Each year more than 100,000 letters about human rights violations are addressed to the United Nations. ... In response, the annual Human Rights Commission session, which ended last month, was able to agree on resolutions concerning the conduct of just 11 of the 189 member states. This is not uncommon because in almost all cases commission members seek to avoid directly criticizing states with human rights problems, frequently by focusing on Israel, a state that, according to analysis of summary records, has for over 30 years occupied 15 percent of commission time and has been the subject of a third of country-specific resolutions. ... But there are fewer than 100 cases registered by this system annually. Not one has been registered from Chad or Somalia, for example, and just a couple from Algeria and Angola. The treaty body on women's rights, which has been empowered to receive complaints for the past year and a half, has still not registered a single case."

"A State Department Whitewash?" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/05/22)
"'Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001,' an annual report from the State Department, is out. As usual, the report names seven countries - Cuba, Libya, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan and Syria - as state sponsors of terrorism. But it whitewashes the Palestinian Authority and several nominal U.S. allies in the Arab world. The report actually blames Israel in part for Palestinian terrorism, saying that "Israel's destruction of the PA's security infrastructure contributed to the ineffectiveness of the PA" in combating terror groups. ... The report paints Yasser Arafat as an ally in the war on terror, mentioning him only to note that he "forcefully denounced the September 11 attacks" and that in December he "issued a public statement urging adherence to his call for a cease-fire." The Israeli group IMRA totes up a list of omissions: ... Not a word about PA security forces engaged in terror activities - part of the problem rather than the solution. ... Not a word about Arafat's "millions of martyrs marching on Jerusalem"/continuing praise for terror." (See also: "Say it Ain't So Part 2: Whitewash of PA in Department of State" (IMRA, 2002/05/22) and "US: Iran most active sponsor of terror" (Janine Zacharia, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/22))

"Report: Al Qaeda, Taliban Smuggled Into Europe" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/22)
"Taliban and al Qaeda guerrillas have been smuggled into Europe in the last few months and are on their way to Britain, a German newspaper reported Wednesday, quoting a letter from Interpol to the German police. "A warning letter ... based on information gathered two months ago by Interpol and Europol, says that more than 30 'important people from the Taliban and Al Qaeda' are in Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Austria on the way to Britain, where they want to regroup and plan possible action," the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said."

"Suicide bombers recruited on the Net" (Odile Nelson, National Post, 2002/05/22)
"Terrorist groups are using the Internet to recruit international suicide bombers, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said yesterday. The Los Angeles-based organization found two sites, one in Iran and the other in Gaza. With a few clicks of a mouse and the keying-in of basic contact information, volunteers can enlist for an attack on the United States or Israel. ... As well as the suicide enrollment sites, the report notes sites offering free, online video games where children can play at being a virtual suicide bomber or engage in ethnic cleansing as a KKK member or skinhead. It also discovered a growing number of sites propagating the theory that the United States itself commissioned the Sept. 11 attacks. ''Cyberspace is the new weapon of choice for terrorists and the promotion of the 'big lie' tactics,'' Rabbi Cooper said. 'The sites really run the spectrum from real recruitment and endorsement of suicide bombings to the desensitization of youth.'"

"How Europe's media lost out" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/22)
Part three of UPI's analysis of media coverage of the battle of Jenin: "A.N. Wilson's willingness in the London Evening Standard to accuse the Israelis, without any credible evidence, of poisoning Palestinian water supplies showed the way columnists could break every restraint of decency and common sense. Wilson's article would have been at home in the pages of the Nazi propaganda sheet "Der Sturmer." ... ...Western media coverage of Jenin, especially in Western European newspapers, stood out for its wild and remarkably uniform hysteria. An overwhelming number of reports were published or broadcast in outlets, more especially of the left but also of the right, appearing to document in great detail the massacre of hundreds, possibly thousands of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli Army. ... But the small scale in casualties in Jenin, ultimately confirmed by the PA itself, underlined the remarkable loss in perspective across the European media in both reporting what was happening and then analyzing it. The initial decision of the Israelis to keep the media out of Jenin while the fighting raged does not account for this. The most hysterical and inaccurate accounts and the wildest, unsubstantiated claims came not while the international media was barred from Jenin but after it was allowed in. ... Yet media reports teemed in those countries with - as it turned out - highly exaggerated or just plain wrong descriptions of the violence allegedly inflicted by the Israelis on the Palestinians in Jenin. And as these reports ran, they were quickly followed by attacks - largely, it appears, from young immigrant Muslim gangs - on easily identifiable Orthodox Jews in both Britain and France." (See also: "Analysis: Why Europeans bought Jenin myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/21) and "Part One: Documenting the Myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/20))

"US: Iran most active sponsor of terror" (Janine Zacharia, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/22)
"Iran re-mained the most active state sponsor of terrorism in 2001, according to the State Department's annual Patterns of Global Terrorism report, released yesterday. The thick document, a catalogue of terrorism over the past year, focuses as expected on September 11 described as "the worst international terrorist attack ever" and the US-led war on terrorism. The report was particularly tough on Iran and Syria. ... "Iran continued to provide Lebanese Hizbullah and the Palestinian rejectionist groups notably Hamas, the Palestine Islamic Jihad, and even the PFLP-GC with varying amounts of funding, safe haven, training, and weapons. It also encouraged Hizbullah and the rejectionist Palestinian groups to coordinate their planning and to escalate their activities," the report said." (See also: "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001" (U.S. Department of State, 2002/05/21))

"Democracy for Palestine" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/05/22)
"A new poll shows Mr. Arafat's popularity rating at a mere 35%, down from over 70% six years ago. Ninety-one percent of Palestinians say they favor "fundamental changes," while 48% favor (and 43% oppose) giving most powers to a prime minister and making Mr. Arafat's presidency a ceremonial post. ... Instead of pushing Palestinians behind their leader, Israel's invasion has forced them to start coming to terms with what that leader has done. ... The Bush Administration has been sending mixed signals in recent months, dismissing Mr. Arafat as untrustworthy only to resurrect him later. Lately it's been talking about "reform" of the Palestinian Authority, but that will mean little if it doesn't include a process for creating more than another Arab dictatorship. Now's the time to promote democracy in Palestine." (See also: "And the new leader: Arafat" (Zvi Bar'el, Haaretz, 2002/05/19), for a more pessimistic analysis: "The results, of course, can already be anticipated. The demand for reforms will lead to a new, strengthened Palestinian leader at the end of the elections: Yasser Arafat. No government in the world will then be able to question the validity of his status.")

 

Tuesday, May 21, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Abuse of History" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/05/21)
"We hear frequently of the "Holocaust" and "genocide" in association with the Israeli incursion into Jenin - especially in the European presses. The very mention of those charged words in reference to fewer than 70 dead in a war zone is blasphemous to the memory of 6 million butchered in a methodical state program of death. Auschwitz alone saw 10,000 gassed on some days. The Palestinians' historical analogies with the Holocaust and Nazis are completely false in order of magnitude, wicked in their shameless efforts to invoke the Nazis to denigrate Holocaust survivals, and spurious in their equation of industrial murder on a continental scale with the minimal collateral damage of war. The only possible affinity with Nazi atrocity in the Middle East could be a similarity in the technique of liquidation, albeit not of magnitude, of Saddam Hussein's gassing of innocent civilians - or perhaps Nasser's earlier use of such terror weapons against Yemeni villages. Indeed, the only gas masks that have ever been needed in the Middle East were employed by Israelis - against Nasser in 1967, and Saddam Hussein in 1991. Those who are now calling Israelis "Nazis" were a decade ago cheering on their rooftops at the news that guided missiles might be blanketing Israel with deadly toxins."

"Analysis: Why Europeans bought Jenin myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/21)
Part two of UPI's analysis of media coverage of the battle of Jenin: "Most of the major press and broadcasting outlets in Western Europe uncritically gobbled up the Jenin Massacre Myth with self-indulgent abandon. ... The reaction of the Western European media differed profoundly in its nature from that of U.S. newspapers and broadcasting news outlets. The allegations were equally widely reported in the United States. However, the U.S. broadcast media proved far more resistant to anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic hysteria than that in Western European. This appears to have been the case precisely because no single state-funded or state-approved corporation dominated broadcast news in the United States, as is the case in Britain and France. In those and other smaller countries, a well-entrenched left-wing media elite has been hostile to Israel and its policies for decades. And they have long enjoyed a cozy, unchallenged bureaucratic dominance in the state broadcasting news organizations that to a large degree set the braking news and analysis for the entire print press. Therefore, entire echelons of editors and executives in these organizations were willing to accept uncritically the fierce unsubstantiated and hysterical reports coming out of their correspondents in Jenin. ... The reasons for the European media's "rush to judgment" over Jenin were many, but one conclusion was inescapable: The "rush to judgment" was an 'hour of shame.'" (See also: "Part One: Documenting the Myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/20))

"To say that jihadis are a threat is not Islamophobic" (Ian Buruma, The Guardian, 2002/05/21)
"Still, Fortuyn was on to something that must be answered. Intolerant, politicised Islam is hard to reconcile with our liberal democracy. To dismiss this view as racism or rightwing demagoguery is to duck the issue. After all, at the height of the Salman Rushdie affair, plenty of people on the left made similar assertions. It was one of those rare moments when a social problem suddenly touched people who are normally insulated from such things: the mean streets of Bradford crashed into the green squares of Islington. ... Neither Jews nor Christians are torching mosques in European cities. Young Muslim Europeans, on the other hand, are vulnerable to particular strains in Islam, which are in direct opposition to the countries of which they are citizens. You cannot be a jihadi, at war against the wicked infidels, and a law-abiding citizen of a European nation. ... So to say that Islamist extremism is a threat to our societies is surely not wrong. There are various possible answers to this. Stopping all Muslim immigration would be unjust, as well as impossible. But more must be done to integrate Muslims into the cultural, political, and social life of our societies. Racial prejudice is one barrier. But to say that Islamism is another, more formidable obstacle is not a sign of Islamophobia. It is the only way to protect the freedom of Muslims as well that of as everybody else."

"Terror, Inc." (Niles Lathem and Vincent Morris, New York Post, 2002/05/21)
"Osama bin Laden's henchmen huddled with top Hamas and Hezbollah honchos less than two months ago in Beirut for a "terrorist convention" that U.S. officials fear laid the groundwork for a massive new attack. It is believed that the secret session March 23 launched the recent frightening flurry of "intelligence chatter" over the Internet and cell phones that U.S. security officials take as a deadly serious signal of another attack on American soil, sources told The Post last night. ... The March meeting that brought Hamas and Hezbollah leaders together with al Qaeda was the third in just over a year. ... Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is believed to have sent people to the meeting, as did Iran. Bin Laden is said to have sent key al Qaeda leaders."

"Washington meets the Great Wall of Brussels" (Michael Gove, The Times, 2002/05/21)
"Instead of being able to project power against threats to our interests and values, Europe’s leaders seek to manage conflict through the international therapy of peace processes, the buying off of aggression with the danegeld of aid or the erection of a paper palisade of global law which the unscrupulous always punch through. Europeans may convince themselves that these developments are the innovations of a continent in the van of progress, but they are really the withered autumn fruits of a civilisation in decline. ... The Middle Kingdom sought to convince itself that behind its ramparts a uniquely cultured mandarinate preserved values to which the West’s barbarians could never aspire. Now, behind the tariff walls of the common agricultural policy and the borders hostile to new immigrants, Europe’s elites tell themselves that their low-growth, low-birthrate, low-wattage home still has something to teach America. It does. The dangers of failing to keep your nation free, open, vigorous and proud."

"Bush will use Berlin stage to demand war on Saddam" (Roger Boyes and Richard Beeston, The Times, 2002/05/21)
"President Bush risks sparking a new row with Europe this week when he calls for Europe's support for expanding his War on Terror to include the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. ... Even before his speech, authorities in Berlin, Paris and Rome are preparing for the worst. Thousands of riot police have been mobilised to protect the US leader against expected demonstrations by leftwingers, environmentalists and other anti-American groups. ... According to a poll published by Der Spiegel magazine yesterday, 65 per cent of Germans believe that the United States is pursuing its own national interests by taking part in or planning wars around the world. 'America's right to self-defence, claimed after September 11, has become a pretext for making war,' says a leaflet circulated yesterday by the Axis of Peace, one of the left-wing groups organising the anti-Bush protests. ... George Bush's model will rather be that of Ronald Reagan who, shielded by bulletproof plexiglass, stood at the Berlin Wall in 1987 and appealed to Mikhail Gorbachev to rip it down. More than 50,000 demonstrated against him. Herr Fischer, then a Member of Parliament, denounced him as a 'gun-crazed celluloid cowboy'. Now, however, the Foreign Minister has been urging his colleagues in the Green Party not to take part in riots, although he says that they have a right to demonstrate."

"France still seethes over America's global empire" (Charles Bremner, The Times, 2002/05/21)
"For six weeks the French bestseller list has been topped by a book which says that no airliner struck the Pentagon last September. Entitled L'Effroyable Imposture, by Thierry Meyssan, it contends that the attacks of September 11 were staged by a faction of the United States military to justify the US conquest of Afghanistan. The book has been widely ridiculed but the fact that thousands of people are paying £12 each for such a dotty theory testifies to France's readiness to believe the worst of the US. George W. Bush will enter a parallel universe when he arrives in Paris next Sunday. He will find that in France he is abhorred by a section of the people as the Great Satan himself. Nine months after September 11, France, or at least its thinking class, is back revelling in the anti-Americanism that has underpinned Gallic self-esteem since the Second World War."

"A tireless quest for arms" (Ze'ev Schiff, Haaretz, 2002/05/21)
"When it comes to smuggling arms, Palestinian ingenuity takes on various forms, peaking in the request for aid recently submitted to the European Union. The German weekly, Die Welt, wrote that in one of the clauses, the Palestinian Authority asks for $20 million for the purchase of arms for the Palestinian police force. The weekly ironically notes that this request is prioritized higher than clauses dealing with health and education. ... This time, they are asking for arms for the Palestinian police force; but when they say "police," they could also mean Force 17 and its ilk. Israel must make it clear to the EU that it will not permit the transfer of arms at crossings under its supervision, even if the shipment bears the seal of the most respected of European leaders. A second audacious clause that appears on the list of aid requests concerns a sum of $15.5 million for the families of "the martyrs," the shaheeds. The request states that the Palestinians intend to raise $40.5 million for this cause, and that the EU's share will be $15.5 million. The German weekly bitingly notes that the term, "martyrs," usually refers to suicide terrorists. In total, the PA has presented the EU with a bill amounting to almost $2 billion ($1.944 billion)."

 

Monday, May 20, 2002

News and commentary:

"Part One: Documenting the Myth" (Martin Sieff, UPI, 2002/05/20)
UPI traces the course of the "media myth" of the "Jenin massacre": "The U.S. and Western European media coverage of the Battle of Jenin last month raises troubling and far-reaching questions about the reliability of the modern mass media and press in conflict situations. ... After the Israeli Army attacked the West Bank Palestinian city of Jenin on April 2, the Western European media fell for the "Massacre Myth" in Jenin in a big way. ... What made these unreliable and misleading reports all the more remarkable was that many of the worst of them emerged in the most respected and influential organizations in the British media. The British Broadcasting Corporation and three of the four so-called "quality" daily newspapers - The Times, The Independent and The Guardian - fell for the "Massacre Myth" hook, line and sinker. ... Phil Reeves in the London Independent compared Jenin to the Killing Fields of Pol Pot's Cambodia where between 1 million to 3 million people were slaughtered from 1975 to 1978. ... Other claims, such as the one that hundreds of Palestinian victims were buried by an Israeli bulldozer in mass grave, later proved to have no validity or verification whatsoever. ... The BBC uncritically swallowed the Massacre Myth. BBC News headlined a report on April 18 as "Jenin 'Massacre' Evidence Growing," and the Guardian newspaper's headline on a May 6 analysis piece as 'How Jenin Battle Became a Massacre.'"

"Israel: Tel Aviv Tower Attack Thwarted" (Greg Myre, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/20)
"Also, Israeli officials disclosed that a Palestinian plan to detonate a one-ton bomb in the parking lot beneath twin 50-story towers in Tel Aviv was thwarted three weeks ago. Troops raided a West Bank town, preventing the planned car bombing, according to an Israeli military officer and a government official. Last year, Israel arrested two Palestinians who had also planned to bomb the towers."

"'I Control America'" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/05/20)
"In her May 9 syndicated column, Georgie Anne Geyer makes the case that it is in America's interest to be less supportive of Israel in its war against Palestinian terrorists. ... But in the course of arguing her case, Geyer makes two exceedingly dubious statements that seem to perpetuate anti-Semitic myths. She writes: "Today, with Ariel Sharon and his far Israeli right in power, this uncritical and unthinking acquiescence and even encouragement of every Israeli tendency is disastrous for both countries. In fact, it led Prime Minister Sharon to tell his cabinet recently, 'I control America.'" ... We couldn't find any evidence anywhere that Sharon ever said "I control America." A Google search, however, turned up a similar quote attributed to Sharon, which seems to have originated in an Oct. 3, 2001, "report," datelined "Occupied Jerusalem," from an outfit called the Islamic Association for Palestine: ... "At this point, a furious Sharon reportedly turned toward Peres, saying "every time we do something you tell me Americans will do this and will do that. I want to tell you something very clear, don't worry about American pressure on Israel, we, the Jewish people control America, and the Americans know it." The Google search shows that this quote has spread widely on pro-Arab, Islamist, far-right and far-left Web sites, but it does not appear to have been reported by any legitimate news organization. ... And the pro-Israel media-watchdog group Camera flatly calls the quote a hoax and says 'Kol Yisrael confirmed that no such broadcast exists.'" (See also: "In eyes of world, U.S. is responsible for Israeli policies" (Georgie Ann Geyer, UExpress.com, 2002/05/09) and "Columnist Geyer Uses Sharon Quote Fabricated by Pro-Hamas Group" (Camera, 2002/05/20))

"Before dismissing the conspiracy theories" (Naseer Alomari, The Jordan Times, 2002/05/20)
A rather telling defence of Arab conspiracy theorizing, which is based on the belief in a conspiracy theory: "The conspiracy is in the way the major American media outlets pick and choose what the American public can hear. On May 13, Fox News reported that the police pulled over two Israeli nationals who were driving a truck "near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station and found to have traces of TNT on the gearshift and traces of RDX plastic explosive on the steering wheel". ... Could this be part of a bigger plot that aims to tarnish the image of the Arab and Muslim minorities in the United States and link Arab governments to terrorism? We will never know because the American media chose not to follow up. ... The most perceptive and open-minded Arab is left with no choice but to question the dubious relationship between the American media and the invisible hands of the Israeli government on what news items are reported to the American public. ... Israeli loyalists in the United States have tightened their grip on what the American people can hear. They strive to pit the American public against the Arabs, they aim to manufacture a military confrontation between America and the Arab world, and they spare no effort to keep the American public in darkness vis-ý-vis the suspicious activities of the Israeli government on American soil. Does that not make a conspiracy?"

"The Alliance Is Doomed" (Jeffrey Gedmin, The Washington Post, 2002/05/20)
"European Union trade commissioner Pascal Lamy concedes that the best way to get applause in the European parliament is to stand up and denounce America. Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain admitted recently that being down on America gets you points for being "simpatico" in the EU. Indeed, the relationship has changed. West Europeans grew tired of playing the role of deputy sheriff during the Cold War. Now, it seems, they have grown tired of the sheriff, too. ... For years now, "multilateralism" has become the word that fires the imagination of European elites. It's the code word for leveraging up the medium-sized EU and chaining down the mighty Americans. It's a European obsession that is unlikely to go away. Of course, Europeans can afford this game. They do not share America's global responsibilities. ... Since Sept. 11, West Europeans do not feel threatened as Americans do. You even get the feeling that many Europeans see George W. Bush as the danger and not Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. President Bush's visit will be greeted in Europe by fuming commentaries about the crude "axis of evil" speech, his dangerous rejection of Kyoto and the International Criminal Court, and his reckless approach to Iraq and Iran. It's hard to see where the basis for a functioning alliance remains."

"Cheney Warns Of Future Attacks" (Mike Allen, The Washington Post, 2002/05/20)
"Vice President Cheney starkly laid out the administration's fear about another terrorist attack yesterday, warning that a strike is "almost certain" and "could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week, it could happen next year." ... The vice president said the prospects of a future attack by the al Qaeda terrorist network are as real as they were right after the attacks, despite what he called "some success in disrupting the organization, and making it more difficult for them to carry out their operations." "The prospects of a future attack against the United States are almost certain," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press." 'Not a matter of if, but when.'" (See also:"FBI: Suicide Attacks Likely in U.S." (Ron Fournier, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/20): "It is inevitable that suicide bombers like those who have attacked Israeli restaurants and buses will strike the United States, FBI Director Robert Mueller said Monday as the White House answered criticism with fresh terrorism warnings. "There will be another terrorist attack. We will not be able to stop it," Mueller told the National Association of District Attorneys meeting in suburban Alexandria, Va. 'It's something we all live with.'")

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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