Archived news and commentary: May 27 - June 2, 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, June 2, 2002

News and commentary:

"Muslim children 'kill' Israelis on UK-made 'Islamic Fun' CD" (Robert Mendick. Independent, 2002/06/02)
"A British company is producing an educational CD-Rom that encourages Muslim children as young as five to "kill" Israelis. The CD, called Islamic Fun!, is being sold for £19.95 from a suburban home in Crawley, West Sussex. One of the games on the disc, obtained by The Independent on Sunday, is called The Resistance and tells children playing it: "You are a farmer in south Lebanon who has joined the Islamic Resistance to defend your land and family from the invading Zionists." ... There are three playing levels: for children aged between five and seven years, those aged eight to 10, and the hardest level for children aged 11 and over. Questions include "What was the crime of the Jews of Khayber?" and 'Who said: 'I know I have been elected thanks to the votes of US Jews. I owe my election to them. Tell me what I have to do for the Jewish people' to Ben Gurion?'"

"As Arab terror recovers, Palestinian media also return to old form, encouraging terror, Israeli Arab militancy and supporting Iraq" (Michael Widlanski, The Media Line, 2002/06/02)
A survey of Palestinian media the last two weeks: "Indoctrinating Palestinians to hate Israel starts early on Palestinian television. For the last two weeks, perhaps as a lead-up to the World Cup soccer tournament, Palestinian television has featured afternoon movies that include an Israeli atrocity committed against Palestinian children playing soccer. In the short film features, which air at two or three in the afternoon (for optimum viewing by children), a gang of Israeli soldiers (played by Egyptian and Palestinian actors) decides to use the ten-year-old Palestinian soccer kids as shooting targets. There is no reason for the attack by the Israeli soldiers, most of whom are pictured wearing kipot or yarmulkes - the Jewish skull caps worn by religious Jews. After killings several of the kids in the middle of the field, the Israeli soldiers are seen patting each other on the back laughingly while the camera moves in for a close-up shot of the dead Palestinian children."

"Report: Al Qaeda Tells U.S. to Get Ready for Attack" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/02)
"The pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published Sunday what it said was a statement from an al Qaeda spokesman warning the United States to get ready for another attack. "What is coming to the Americans will not, by the will of God, be less than what has come," the newspaper quoted al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman bu Ghaith as saying in a statement. ... Bu Ghaith, a Kuwaiti-born cleric who emerged as an al Qaeda spokesman after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, said al Qaeda would continue to hit Americans, Jews and their targets, either 'individuals or institutions.'"

"Report: Arafat Offers Posts to Hamas" (Greg Myre, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/02)
"Yasser Arafat has offered Cabinet posts to Hamas and other militant groups involved in suicide attacks against Israelis as part of a government reshuffle he plans to announce in coming days, Palestinians said Sunday. While three other radical groups have turned down the Palestinian leader's offer, saying they don't want to belong to a government that's willing to negotiate with Israel, Hamas is still weighing the proposal, the group said. It would mark the first time in his eight years as chairman of the Palestinian Authority that Arafat formally brought Hamas into government - a move likely to be strongly opposed by Israel and the United States, which both regard Hamas as a terrorist group." (See also: "Ehud Yaari: Arafat's goal: Palestinian state absorbing Israel and Jordan" (IMRA, 2002/06/02): "Yaari said that Arafat is purposefully collapsing the state organs of the Palestinian Authority, which Arafat himself heads, making room for the new, emerging power in the West Bank and Gaza - a coalition between Hamas and the Tanzim. "This is not only a partnership in terror, but a long term political coalition, with dangerous implications for Israel," said Yaari.")

"'The Americans ... They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave'" (David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times, 2002/06/02)
"The Times reviewed more than 2,000 reports of civilian casualties from U.S., British and Pakistani newspapers and international wire services. After eliminating duplicate accounts, the review identified 194 incidents of civilian casualties from the start of the bombing on Oct. 7 until Feb. 28, when the air campaign was largely completed. The reported death toll, including estimates in some cases, was between 1,067 and 1,201. The Times excluded 754 civilian deaths reported by the Taliban but not independently confirmed, as well as 497 deaths that were not identified as either civilian or military. Those numbers suggest a very low civilian casualty rate compared with earlier Afghan conflicts. During battles among warlords in Kabul during the early 1990s, more than 50,000 civilians were killed, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the western city of Herat, an estimated 20,000 civilians were killed in a matter of days by Soviet air raids in March 1979, just a fraction of the estimated 670,000 civilians who died during the 10-year Soviet occupation." (See also: "Annabel Croft can't take on Accrington Stanley" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/01/19), where Steyn takes on Marc Herold's inflated, but widely circulated, estimation that nearly 4,000 civilians have been killed in Afghanistan)

"War of Ideas" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/06/02)
"If we are intent on preventing the next 9/11, we need to do more than just spy on our enemies better in secret. We need to take on their ideas in public. ... In short, America and the West have potential partners in these countries who are eager for us to help move the struggle to where it belongs: to a war within Islam over its spiritual message and identity, not a war with Islam. And that war within Islam is not really a religious war. It is a war between the future and the past, between development and underdevelopment, between authors of crazy conspiracy theories versus those espousing rationality, between advocates of suicide bombing and those who know you can't build a society out of gravestones. Only Arabs and Muslims can win this war within, but we can openly encourage the progressives. ... Zacarias Moussaoui, accused of being the 20th hijacker, told a U.S. court that he "prayed to Allah for the destruction of the United States." That is an ugly idea - one many Muslims would not endorse. But until we and they team up to fight a war of ideas against those who do, there will be plenty more Moussaouis where he came from - and there will never be enough F.B.I. agents to find them."

"Eyeball to Eyeball, and Blinking in Denial" (Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times, 2002/06/02)
A report from New Delhi on "nuclear denial" in India and Pakistan: "While many Indians and Pakistanis say there will be no nuclear war, they often paradoxically acknowledge the possibility in the next breath, exhibiting also the unspoken assumption that these two hugely populous nations - India has a billion people and Pakistan 150 million - would survive. Mr. Santhanam, the Indian physicist, said his hunch is that a war would remain conventional, but he also said, "If we're hit, we'll know how to handle it. If there's a nuclear attack, India's policy is severe retaliation." Asked at a public meeting in Islamabad last week if there could be a nuclear catastrophe, General Beg, the former Pakistani army chief, said more people died in the Allied bombing of Dresden than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that millions have been killed by small arms fire. "Look," he said, 'I don't know what you're worried about. You can die crossing the street, hit by a car, or you could die in a nuclear war. You've got to die someday anyway.'"

"'They can't see that disaster would overwhelm them'" (Michael Evans, The Times, 2002/06/02)
"The British and American Governments are seriously contemplating a doomsday scenario in which there is an unstoppable momentum towards a nuclear war in India and Pakistan that would kill millions of people and make millions more homeless across the sub-continent. ... The sombre warning on travel from Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to all British citizens in India came after similar stark advice given last week to Britons in Pakistan. ... According to diplomatic and defence sources, the judgment made after Mr Straw's return to Britain from India and Pakistan was that neither President Musharraf of Pakistan nor Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Indian Prime Minister, appeared to be taking into account the sheer scale of the disaster that would follow if nuclear weapons were used, and that they seemed incapable of visualising the disaster that would overwhelm their countries as a result. It was even said that George Fernandes, the Indian Defence Minister, and his senior officials seemed to have made the cold calculation that in the event of a nuclear war, India would survive and could then march into Pakistan."

"Paving the way for anti-Semitism" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/06/02)
"Israel and anti-Semitism have in recent weeks become major issues in the German political establishment as it prepares for general elections on September 22. ... The current controversy began around a month ago when Jamal Karsli, a Syrian-born member of parliament, was ejected from the Green party after he claimed that Israel was using "Nazi methods" against the Palestinians and attacked the influence of the "Zionist lobby" in Germany. Karsli was, in contrast, warmly welcomed into the FDP by its deputy chairman, Jurgen Mollemann - himself a harsh critic of Israel, who heads the German-Arabic friendship association. ... "Recent events are more than the breaking of a taboo on anti-Semitic expressions," [the editor of the prestigious weekly Die Zeit, Josef] Joffe says, 'they are uprooting the most basic ethos of postwar Germany: the consensus that determined that this is a liberal democracy, without racism or anti-Semitism. There is also an attempt here to break the principle of Germany's special responsibility to the Jews and to Israel. The ultimate test for German society regarding this attempt will be on September 22 - election day. ... If they increase their power dramatically, it will really be problematic proof of the processes taking place in German society.'"

 

Saturday, June 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"The UN Human Rights Agenda: A Strategy of Diversion" (Anne Bayefsky, Justice, from the June 2002 issue)
"UN intergovernmental human rights machinery is not keen on specifics. Its members include some of the most notorious human rights violators in the world today: China, Cuba, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Those countries prefer devoting UN funds, (22% of which are from the United States), to criticizing Israel - lest attention wander too close to home. 11 The strategy of diversion has been wildly successful. Fifteen percent of Commission time and thirty percent of country-specific resolutions over thirty years are directed at this one state. ... The Asian group (including China and the bulk of Muslim states) has no regional human rights system. These states strenuously avoid international human rights scrutiny and are largely successful in their efforts. No resolution has ever been passed at the UN Human Rights Commission concerning China or Syria, for example." (Note: This article was orginally published in The New York Times ("Ending Bias in the Human Rights System" (Anne Bayefsky, The New York Times, 2002/05/22)), but "editorial demands resulted in the submission of six new drafts, four additional drafts with smaller changes and corrections, seven drafts from the editors and 6 hours of editing by telephone." Justice covers the changes made under the heading "All the news that's fit to print?")

"Bush says US will strike first" (BBC News, 2002/06/01)
"US President George W Bush has emphasised his commitment to taking pre-emptive action against potential threats - striking before suspected terrorists have the chance to do so themselves. In an address to graduating army officers at West Point, America's top military school, Mr Bush declared that if the United States waited for threats fully to materialise, it would have waited too long. ... On Saturday, the president said he would not leave the safety of the United States and of the planet to the mercy of a few "unbalanced dictators" who are suspected of working to develop weapons of mass destruction. "We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best," said the US leader. 'In the world we have entered, the only path to safety is the path of action, and this nation will act.'" (See also: "Remarks by the President at 2002 Graduation Exercise of the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York" (The White House, 2002/06/01): "Deterrence - the promise of massive retaliation against nations - means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend. Containment is not possible when unbalanced dictators with weapons of mass destruction can deliver those weapons on missiles or secretly provide them to terrorist allies. We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. We cannot put our faith in the word of tyrants, who solemnly sign non-proliferation treaties, and then systemically break them. If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long.")

"How did the infidels win?" (Bernard Lewis, National Post, 2002/06/01)
"Among Muslims, the debate began at the beginning of the 18th century, and has been going on ever since. The main question: What went wrong? ... When you become aware that things are going wrong, there are two ways you can approach the problem. First, you can ask "What are they doing right?" There were many Muslims who followed this line of inquiry, and experimented with Western forms of warfare and weaponry, Western-style factories, parliaments and the like. The second approach is to say "Who did this to us?" This of course leads into a twilight world of anti-Western conspiracy theories and neurotic fantasies. Unfortunately, this approach has prevailed in many parts of the Muslim world to the present day. In answering the question, "Who did this to us?" Muslims have often blamed "Imperialists." (Of course, when Muslims were invading Europe, imperialist expansionism was seen as natural and good because the invaders were bringing the word of God to the heathens. When the Europeans, after centuries of Muslim domination, counterattacked on the other hand, this was wicked.) In this regard, the United States has now inherited the role of its Christian predecessors. As many Muslims see it, the world continues to be divided between the Islamic world and its age-old imperialist rival, the Christian world." (Note: The original link is down, but the essay which the article is based on can be found here - "How did the infidels win?" (Bernard Lewis, The Cooper Union, June 2002))

"Israel and the Anti-Semites" (Gabriel Schoenfeld, Commentary, from the June 2002 issue)
"But one salient fact about the picture I have been painting is this: there is a clear fit between anti-Israel or anti-Jewish hatred and the general ideological predispositions of the contemporary European Left. As historical trends go, this is relatively new. ... There are, to be sure, neo-Nazis to be found among those burning the star of David and chanting obscene slogans against the Jewish state in the streets of Europe; but the ranks are more heavily composed of environmentalists, pacifists, anarchists, anti-globalists, and socialists. "I have difficulties with the swastika," said a member of Belgium's Flemish-Palestine Committee at an April demonstration, registering by his perturbance the anomaly of that Nazi symbol amid the placards of his ideological comrades. The pattern continues in the upper reaches of European politics. ... It was Germany's Social Democratic-Green coalition government that this past April, in the midst of Israel’s battle for survival, and despite its much vaunted "special relationship" with the Jewish state, opted to halt further exports of spare parts for the Merkava tank. It was France's socialist foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, who in April publicly castigated American Jews for being so "intransigent" as to fail to make "the switch toward peace." When the European Parliament passed a resolution on April 10 calling for trade sanctions against Israel, it was propelled forward by Europe's Liberal Democrat and Green parties, with the Socialists denouncing Israel in the most perfervid tones of all."

"From Camp X-Ray to Eggshell City" (The Washington Times, 2002/06/01)
"According to a former interpreter named William Tierney, the [Times of London] reports, the interrogation center at Guantanamo Bay has become "a politically correct regime that puts prisoners' complaints ahead of intelligence gathering." Washington, it seems, is less afraid of al Qaeda and the next attack than the human-rights lobby and the next report. So goodbye Gitmo, hello Eggshell City — the ultra-sensitive, politically correct (dare we say Clintonesque?) center for suspected terrorists, where only the guards have to suffer in silence, and a Marine can get himself transferred for being too tough. ... "Suspected terrorists are allowed to treat their captors with derision," the newspaper reports, "lying, chanting the Koran in unison, mocking and threatening guards and throwing water at them. Americans are under orders not to react roughly." ... "Prisoners were being treated so carefully, for fear of accusations of torture, that no serious pressure was being put on them to cooperate," the newspaper reports. Mr. Tierney says he doesn't believe in resorting to torture. "But we can't have it both ways," he explains. "We can't obtain the information we need without offending anyone." But how to do it when self-defense seems to mean never being offensive?"

"India and Pakistan on the Brink" (George Perkovich, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/06/01)
"Nuclear war is a real prospect in South Asia; to prevent it, the U.S. must relentlessly press and encourage Gen. Musharraf to act decisively against jihadi organizations and rogue elements in Pakistan's intelligence service. These elements threaten the future of Pakistan, the Indian subcontinent, and the U.S. campaign against terrorism. The stakes are so high that the uppermost levels of the U.S. government need to clarify that the war on terrorism in Kashmir is its top priority in relations with Pakistan. ... As unthinkable as it seems, Washington must reprioritize its battles in the war on terrorism. Failure to combat terrorism in Kashmir can lead to nuclear war, the collapse of Pakistan and the rupture of U.S.-Indian relations. These threats pose deeper and more lasting danger to the U.S. than the possible loss of Pakistani help in hunting al Qaeda remnants."

"Pakistani President at the Fulcrum of Crisis" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2002/06/01)
"Just how much the Pakistan government helps the Muslim guerrillas is at the heart of the current standoff along the border, where a million Indian and Pakistani troops are facing off in a confrontation made all the more dangerous by the nuclear weapons each side possesses. In his remarks this week, Mr. Bush suggested endorsement of the long-held Indian view of the Kashmir conflict: that the insurgency in India's only Muslim-majority state is not a homegrown uprising against Indian rule, but a guerrilla war orchestrated and controlled by the Pakistani government. ... By many accounts, American and Indian, General Musharraf's attempts to rein in the militants have been either futile or cosmetic. The infiltration persists, and most of the 2,000 or so militants detained late last year and early this year are now back on the streets."

"U.S. citizens urged to leave India" (Nicholas Kralev, The Washington Times, 2002/06/01)
"The State Department, citing the rising risk of war between India and Pakistan, yesterday urged 60,000 Americans in India to leave the country and authorized the departure of nonessential diplomatic staff and all dependents. The U.S. move was followed by other Western nations, including Britain, Canada and Germany, which, like the United States, had already significantly reduced their embassy and consulate personnel in Pakistan because of militant attacks against Westerners."

Added one theme in Themes:
"The Kashmir Time Bomb" - News and commentary on the ominous conflict between India and Pakistan.

Added one new section and six links in Links:
The Kashmir Dispute.

 

Friday, May 31, 2002

News and commentary:

"Does political correctness kill?" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/05/31)
"In August, 2001, no one at the FBI or FAA or anywhere else wanted to be seen to be noticing funny behaviour by Arabs. Thousands of Americans died, at least in part, because of ethnic squeamishness by federal agencies. ... So it's not oil, but rather that even targeting so obvious an enemy as the Saudis is simply not politically possible. Cries of "Islamophobia" and "racism" would rend the air. The Saudis discriminate against Americans all the time: American Jews are not allowed to enter the "Kingdom," nor are American Episcopalians who happen to have an Israeli stamp in their passports. But even after September 11th the West can't revoke the fluffy myth that all cultures are equally nice and so we must be equally nice to them, even if they slaughter large numbers of us and announce repeatedly their intention to slaughter more. Last October, urging Congress to get tough on the obvious suspects, the leggy blonde commentatrix Ann Coulter declared: "Americans aren't going to die for political correctness." They already have."

"Liberal Reality Check" (Nicholas D. Kristof, The New York Times, 2002/05/31)
"As we gather around F.B.I. headquarters sharpening our machetes and watching the buzzards circle overhead, let's be frank: There's a whiff of hypocrisy in the air. One reason aggressive agents were restrained as they tried to go after Zacarias Moussaoui is that liberals like myself - and the news media caldron in which I toil and trouble - have regularly excoriated law enforcement authorities for taking shortcuts and engaging in racial profiling. As long as we're pointing fingers, we should peer into the mirror. The timidity of bureau headquarters is indefensible. But it reflected not just myopic careerism but also an environment (that we who care about civil liberties helped create) in which officials were afraid of being assailed as insensitive storm troopers. So it's time for civil libertarians to examine themselves with the same rigor with which we are prone to examine others. ... But let's be realistic: Young Arab men are more likely to ram planes into nuclear power plants than are little old ladies, and as such they should be more vigorously searched - though with no less courtesy."

"The Tragic Demise of DIDO" (Steven Plaut, National Review, 2002/05/31)
"It is time to return from the Oslo parallel universe - in which being nice to the PLO could produce a peaceful settlement of the Middle East conflict - to Planet Earth. In fact, there is no effective way for resolving the Middle East war and reducing the carnage other than R&D: Reoccupation and DeNazification. Israel will have to reimpose its military control on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip indefinitely, for decades. ... Jews will continue being massacred for the Oslo pagan goddess until the country awakens from its Oslo delusions. The carnage will continue until Israelis are willing to fight, rather than appease."

"This isn't posturing - we're on the brink of a nuclear war" (Ahmed Rashid, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/31)
"The world is changed after September 11 and the international war against terrorism. India is furious that the world has ignored Pakistan-based Islamic extremists, who continued with their bloody terrorism in India and Kashmir even after September 11. India says it cannot join the world in fighting al-Qa'eda when the world ignores these attacks on its own soil. ... The Pakistani militant groups that fight in Kashmir also fought for the Taliban and al-Qa'eda in Afghanistan. The 29 Arab al-Qa'eda operatives arrested in Pakistani cities last month were being given sanctuary and safe houses by the largest Pakistani group fighting in Kashmir. All these groups are now closely interlinked, no matter how the Pakistani state tries to differentiate between them. ... So all these factors have come together to produce a crisis which is unprecedented, even in the constantly crisis ridden sub-continent. The danger of war is greater than it has ever been. No one side is seeing the logic of a climb-down. ... The need for international intervention has never been greater, not just to prevent a war but to force the two sides finally to resolve the Kashmir dispute."

"How the world could end" (M.J. Akbar, The Spectator, from the 2002/06/1 issue)
"The conflict between the two is a war between frustration and hypocrisy. India is frustrated by its inability to settle its longest and most cancerous problem - the status of Kashmir, which has an independence movement; and Pakistan has spent more than 50 years using this problem to spread the cancer across the region. Given the values of our age, it is perfectly in order that hypocrisy should have the edge."

"Missiles smuggled into U.S." (Bill Gertz, The Washington Times, 2002/05/31)
"The U.S. government has alerted airlines and law enforcement agencies that new intelligence indicates that Islamic terrorists have smuggled shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles into the United States. Classified intelligence reports circulated among top Bush administration policymakers during the past two weeks identified the missiles as Russian-made SA-7 surface-to-air missiles or U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles obtained covertly in Afghanistan, said intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ... The SA-7s have a range of more than 3 miles and can hit aircraft flying at 13,500 feet. Stinger missiles can hit aircraft flying at 10,000 feet and 5 miles away."

"U.S. Tells Pakistan To Stop Militants" (Alan Sipress and Bradley Graham, The Washington Post, 2002/05/31)
"President Bush used his toughest language yet yesterday in demanding that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf choke off the incursions of Muslim militants into Indian-held territory that are threatening to trigger open warfare between the nuclear-armed rivals. Bush announced that he was dispatching Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to India and Pakistan next week, underscoring the administration's deepening concern that the military standoff is on the brink of war and diverting Pakistani troops required for flushing out fugitive al Qaeda fighters."

"Farewell at Ground Zero" (Lynne Duke, The Washington Post, 2002/05/31)
"They carried pictures. That is all they have - pictures, memories, heavy hearts and lives rendered rudderless in the blink of an eye. They walked the streets of Lower Manhattan with those pictures today, much as they did months ago, when they traveled from hospital to hospital looking for their loved ones. Today they carried bouquets of white roses and lilies to lay at the place they call hallowed ground. ... And down in the 70-foot-deep crater where the World Trade Center towers once stood, firefighters and police snapped to attention for the playing of taps and the mournful roll of the drums as their comrades carried out the last stretcher - empty, but for the neatly folded Stars and Stripes; empty, because well over half of the 2,823 dead still are unaccounted for, even as the recovery operation at Ground Zero today came to its official and symbolic end."

 

Thursday, May 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"The September 11 X-Files" (David Corn, The Nation, 2002/05/30)
Corn on conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks. More specifically he debunks Michael Ruppert and Delmart "Mike" Vreeland, who "runs a website that has cornered a large piece of the alternative-9/11 market" and the book "Bin Laden; the Forbidden Truth", by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, "in which they maintain that the 9/11 attacks were the 'outcome' of 'private and risky discussions' between the United States and the Taliban 'concerning geostrategic oil interests.'": "An American who was jailed in Canada, Vreeland claims to be a US naval intelligence officer who tried to warn the authorities before the attacks. Ruppert cites Vreeland to back up his allegation that the CIA had "foreknowledge" of the 9/11 attacks and that there is a strong case for "criminal complicity on the part of the U.S. government in their execution." ... To believe Vreeland's scribbles mean anything, one must believe his claim to be a veteran intelligence operative sent to Moscow on an improbable top-secret, high-tech mission (change design documents to neutralize an entire technology) during which he stumbled upon documents (which he has not revealed) showing that 9/11 was going to happen. To believe that, one must believe he is a victim of a massive disinformation campaign, involving his family, law enforcement officers and defense lawyers across the country, two state corrections departments, county clerk offices in ten or so counties, the Canadian justice system and various parts of the US government. And one must believe that hundreds, if not thousands, of detailed court, county, prison and state records have been forged." (See also: and From the Wilderness, a site which focuses on Vreeland and Ruppert.)

"The Ideological War Within the West" (John Fonte, Foreign Policy Research Institute, May 2002)
Fonte takes on Fukyama's thesis that Western-style liberal democracy has no serious ideological competitor, by identifying "transnational progressivism" as an ideology which challenges the liberal nation-states from within: "This alternative ideology, "transnational progressivism," constitutes a universal and modern worldview that challenges both the liberal democratic nation-state in general and the American regime in particular. ...
The key concepts of transnational progressivism could be described as follows:
The ascribed group over the individual citizen. The key political unit is not the individual citizen, who forms voluntary associations and works with fellow citizens regardless of race, sex, or national origin, but the ascriptive group (racial, ethnic, or gender) into which one is born.
A dichotomy of groups: Oppressor vs. victim groups, with immigrant groups designated as victims. Transnational ideologists have incorporated the essentially Hegelian Marxist "privileged vs. marginalized" dichotomy. ...
The same scholars who touted multiculturalism now herald the coming transnational age. Thus, Alejandro Portes of Princeton University argues that transnationalism, combined with large-scale immigration, will redefine the meaning of American citizenship. ... This intracivilizational Western conflict between liberal democracy and transnational progressivism accelerated after the Cold War and should continue well into the twenty-first century." (See also: "Liberal Democracy vs. Transnational Progressivism - The Future of the Ideological Civil War Within the West" (John Fonte, Hudson Institute, 2001/10/26))

"Egyptian Opposition Weekly: Condoleezza Rice "Has Damaged the World of the Blacks," and 'She Is Suited Only to Work at a Nightclub or to Make Her Bed in the Heart of the Jungles'" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch No.385, 2002/05/30)
"In an article titled "The American Snake," Kamal Sa'ad, a columnist for the Egyptian opposition weekly Al-Usbu', attacked U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, writing: 'Within a few days, Condoleezza Rice, the black woman, became the most famous woman in the world when American president George Bush appointed her his top advisor. She does not flinch from calling the Palestinian president Yasser Arafat a leader of terror. By the same token, she has shown her great hatred of the Islamic world by declaring her full support for the Zionist terror entity. ... Some have called her an insolent woman, like the dangerous anaconda snake that attacks anyone in its path. She is suited only to work at a nightclub or to make her bed in the heart of the jungles and forests of Brazil, as a predatory woman! ... We thank Allah that there are no similar [women] in our Arab world, otherwise our lives – we men – would be absolute hell and we would become prisoners to the declarations of Condoleezza Rice and the other vulgar women!'"

"The Most Dangerous Place in the World" (Salman Rushdie, The New York Times, 2002/05/30)
"Like two aged wrestlers fighting on a cliff, India and Pakistan are locked together, rolling ever closer to the edge. But their ancient hatred is no longer a matter only for them. The risk of a nuclear battle, however improbable, makes Kashmir everybody's problem. Right now it's the most dangerous place in the world. These pathetic old fighters must be pulled apart, and soon. Yes, that probably does mean intervention by the West, though Russia seems eager to help as well, which is useful. ... But who in the West wants that - it's just the old colonialist-imperialist power trip, isn't it? And who's supposed to pay for all this peacekeeping, anyway? The answers to those questions are also questions: What's the alternative? Do you have a better idea? Or shall we just stand back and keep our postcolonial, nonimperialist fingers crossed? Will it take mushroom clouds over Delhi and Islamabad to make us give up our ingrained prejudices and try something that might actually work? In the immortal words of the Spice Girls, 'Will this déjà vu never end?'"

"High Noon in Paris" (Suzanne Fields, The Washington Times, 2002/05/30)
"In Berlin, the image of President Bush, the defender of the West against an "axis of evil," is depicted with two six-shooters, the tough guy quick on the draw. The cartoon is pasted all over lamp posts that line Unter den Linden, the grand boulevard that Hitler widened for marchers celebrating the Third Reich. Before I knew it, I found myself in the middle of one of the Berlin marches before the president arrived, and a demonstrator tried to shove a poster on a stick into my hand, reading: "Achtung. Bush Kommt." This was decorated with a caricature of the president with a thick black line drawn diagonally across his face. ... Europeans, having lost real political importance, fall back on moral posturing, the notion that they are the "better people" because they keep international agreements. This leads to notions of false superiority. The Washington correspondent for the Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel compares the Europeans to the ascetic who claims to be acting on discipline and character in abstaining from alcohol when he's merely rationalizing his inability to hold his liquor."

"In the mind of a would-be suicide bomber" (David Rudge, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/30)
"[Thauriya] Hamamreh, a fervently religious Muslim with an engaging and almost impish smile, volunteered to be a suicide bomber and offered her services to someone with whom she was acquainted from the Aksa Martyrs Brigades. She had an explosive belt, packed with nails and other metal objects stitched into the lining, strapped around her body during a 45-minute training session in Nablus two days before the scheduled attack. Hamamreh was arrested at her aunt's home in Tulkarm on May 20, the day of the planned attack. She said doubts had begun to gnaw at her mind, along with seeds of disillusionment regarding her handlers and their motives, during the 24 hours between the dry run and the intended bombing. ... "I also began to imagine the people I would be killing, whether they would be women and children, families sitting down at a cafe. I became a bit disillusioned, because I had been told to blow myself up in any event," she said. 'This meant to me that what was important for them was to succeed in perpetrating an attack, whether there were casualties or not, and then they would be able to pat themselves on the back. I felt like they were playing a game with the blood of the martyrs.'"

"Mueller: Clues Might Have Led To Sept. 11 Plot" (Dan Eggen and Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2002/05/30)
"The FBI's embattled director acknowledged for the first time yesterday that investigators might have been able to uncover part of the Sept. 11 plot if the FBI had properly put together all the clues in the possession of the bureau and other agencies. FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III told reporters that the Minnesota arrest of alleged Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui and warnings from a Phoenix FBI agent about terrorists at aviation schools would not, on their own, have led investigators to the Sept. 11 plot. But if the FBI had connected those two cases with other evidence that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network was keenly interested in aviation, Mueller said, "who is to say" what could have been discovered. "I can't say for sure that there wasn't the possibility that we would have come across some lead that would have led us to the hijackers," he said."

 

Wednesday, May 29, 2002

News and commentary:

"Letting Saddam Be" (Laurie Mylroie, National Review, 2002/05/29)
"The New York FBI office, however, strongly believed Iraq was behind the 1993 Trade Center attack. The Clinton White House did not want to hear that and FBI Headquarters accommodated the president — echo of the charge made by Coleen Rowley, Minneapolis FBI counsel and agent, of rampant careerism there. And thus was born the notion that major terrorist strikes against the U.S. were carried out by individuals, or "networks," without the support of states. The predictable happened. Terrorism continued. In fact, it grew far worse because the state sponsor of the terrorism was never properly identified and punished. ... George Bush evidently seeks to finesse the problem of the bureaucracies' commitment to their Clinton-era positions by ousting Saddam on the basis of Iraq's flagrant and undeniable breach of the U.N. sponsored cease-fire: Its retention of proscribed weapons of mass destruction. That may work, if we're lucky. But it also leaves the country vulnerable to more terrorism. Saddam may calculate that another major attack will divert the U.S. back to hunting out al Qaeda "cells" and postpone his own day of reckoning. It is also deeply disturbing to give a pass to those who acted - and continue to act - so irresponsibly. The American people deserve better." (See also: "Familiar Rogue" (Laurie Mylroie, National Review, 2001/09/17))

"Charitable Front" (Anes Alic and Jen Tracy, Time Europe, 2002/05/29)
"Thanks to the evidence collected in part by Bosnian investigators, U.S. authorities arrested on 30 April a longtime terrorist suspect who they believe has close ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. The man arrested, Enaam Mahmoud Arnaout, is a Syrian-born U.S. citizen and the director of the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF) Islamic charity. ... On 19 March, the federation police - monitored by the U.N. Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina and FBI agents - raided the Sarajevo and Zenica offices of the Islamic charity Bosanska idealna futura, also called BIF, and the home of organization's director in Sarajevo, Munib Zahiragic. Bosanska idealna futura was only recently registered as a charity and inherited of all the assets of the Bosnian branch of the U.S.-based Benevolence International Foundation. Police discovered a large cache of weapons and explosives, terrorist guides and manifestos, fake passports and other top-secret documents. An official statement said that 'members of federal police found many top-secret documents ... which contain what we believe to be plans for global terrorist operations.'"

"Palestinian Leader: Number of Jewish Victims in the Holocaust Might be "Even Less Than a Million..." Zionist Movement Collaborated with Nazis to "Expand the Mass Extermination" of the Jews" (MEMRI, Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 95, 2002/05/29)
"A 1982 doctoral dissertation by Secretary-General of the PLO Executive Committee Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, who is considered second to Yasser Arafat, discussed "the secret ties between the Nazis and the Zionist movement leadership." Two years later, a study by Abu Mazen based on his dissertation for Moscow's Oriental College was published in Arabic by Dar Ibn Rushd publishers in Amman, Jordan. In the introduction to his 1984 study, Abu Mazen referred to well-known Holocaust deniers, raised doubts that gas chambers were used for extermination of Jews, and claimed that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust might be "even less than a million." ... The central claim Abu Mazen sought to prove is that the Zionist movement, with all its factions, conspired against the Jewish people and collaborated with the Nazis to annihilate it, because the movement considered "Palestine" the only appropriate destination for Jewish emigration. ... Abu Mazen added, 'the Zionist movement led a broad campaign of incitement against the Jews living under Nazi rule, in order to arouse the government's hatred of them, to fuel vengeance against them, and to expand the mass extermination.'"

"Taliban, al-Qaeda linked to Kashmir" (John Diamond, USA Today, 2002/05/29)
"Al-Qaeda and Taliban members are helping organize a terror campaign in Kashmir to foment conflict between India and Pakistan, U.S. intelligence officials and foreign diplomats say. The strategy of the terrorist network and its allies in the ousted Afghan government: Relieve pressure on al-Qaeda members hiding in western Pakistan by forcing the Pakistani government to move troops searching for the terrorists to the eastern border with India. Destabilize the government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf by raising tensions with India and pushing Musharraf to crack down on domestic Islamic militants who support al-Qaeda." (See also: "Pakistani Intelligence Officials See Qaeda Peril in Their Cities" (Howard W. French, The New York Times, 2002/05/29): "Senior Pakistani intelligence officials said today that recent terror attacks pointed to worrisome links between local extremists and fugitive Qaeda leaders who - far from being concentrated along the Afghan border as American officials contend - have filtered across the country into major cities. Rather than Afghanistan, these officials warned in a rare interview, the battle at hand may be one for Pakistan itself, a nuclear-armed and traditionally unstable Muslim nation of 145 million people that has become a pivotal ally in America's campaign against terrorism.")

"How Harvard and M.I.T. professors are planting a seed of malevolence" (Ruth Wisse, Jewish World Review, 2002/05/29)
"Yet the divestment petition is corrupt and cowardly in ways that a mob assault is not. ... How very clever to call upon Israel to obey this or that resolution of the United Nations when Arabs states remain in perpetual defiance of the entire UN Charter! The Charter is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all members; members are to practice tolerance and live together in peace and settle their disputes by peaceful means. Yet when flouting the UN voted the partition of Palestine in 1947 by a two-thirds majority of the General Assembly, laying the ground for the establishment of Israel, the Arabs attacked the new state, flouting the resolution - and therefore the very basis of participation in the UN. ... The failure of the UN to expel the Arab countries until they accepted its basic principles turned the potential Family of Nations into a Roman coliseum with Israel in the pit. Now comes a team of faculty from Harvard-MIT to join the circus, attempting to make Israel pay, literally, for the aggression against it."

"Camp David and After: An Exchange (1. An Interview with Ehud Barak)" (Benny Morris, The New York Review of Books, from the 2002/06/13 issue)
An interview with Israel's former prime minister Ehud Barak: "What they [Arafat and his colleagues] want is a Palestinian state in all of Palestine. What we see as self-evident, [the need for] two states for two peoples, they reject. ... They will exploit the tolerance and democracy of Israel first to turn it into "a state for all its citizens," as demanded by the extreme nationalist wing of Israel's Arabs and extremist left-wing Jewish Israelis. Then they will push for a binational state and then, demography and attrition will lead to a state with a Muslim majority and a Jewish minority. ... This, I believe, is their vision. They may not talk about it often, openly, but this is their vision. Arafat sees himself as a reborn Saladin - the Kurdish Muslim general who defeated the Crusaders in the twelfth century - and Israel as just another, ephemeral Crusader state. ... Repeatedly during our prolonged interview, 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. ... 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.'"

"Why I won't talk to the BBC" (Douglas Davis, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/29)
"Even as the Twin Towers came crashing down, the BBC was interviewing Arab studio analysts who solemnly intoned that it was racist to assume that Arabs or even Muslims were responsible. More likely, they said, it was the Mossad, because such an event "played into Israeli hands." But, even if Arabs and Muslims had flown those planes, they said, was it not obvious that the United States itself was the real culprit? After all, it was the US that was pursuing a pro-Israel foreign policy, dictated by the Jewish lobby; it was the US that was ignoring the occupation and turning a blind eye to the settlements; it was the US that was contemptuous of Arab sensibilities. Could anyone blame the Arabs for wanting to vent their humiliation, frustration, and rage at this one-sided American foreign policy? Apparently not. At least not at the BBC, which could not get enough of it. ... Since September 11, however, I have refused all invitations to appear on BBC radio or television. The reason is not that I wish to avoid a debate, but rather that I believe that the BBC has crossed a dangerous threshold. In my judgement, the volume and intensity of this unchallenged diatribe has now transcended mere criticism of Israel. Hatred is in the air. Wittingly or not, I am convinced that the BBC has become the principal agent for reinfecting British society with the virus of anti-Semitism."

"Old, Old, Old. Tired, Tired, Tired" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/05/29)
"The early days after Sept. 11 produced an entire instant mini-literature in dead language as our public intellectuals sought to explain the new unthinkable in the terms in which they had been thinking for decades. The intellectuals intended, in the usual way of these things, to provoke outrage. And to some modest degree they did, which led to the usual rounds of "debate" in the pages of the usual organs; and Susan Sontag and Noam Chomsky and Edward Said and Harold Pinter got their names in the papers again, which was the whole point of the exercise. But did you notice how irrelevant and inconsequential it all felt? ... It is a sense of: You're still here? You're still talking? Why? ... These people - precisely these people - have been saying these things - precisely these things - since, in many cases, the early Dylan years (Bob, mostly, although in some cases Thomas). ... Reading, say, The New York Review of Books, you are increasingly struck with the realization that it is simply reactionary; this is our Old Guard now."

"Terrorism Focus Set for FBI" (Susan Schmidt, The Washington Post, 2002/05/29)
"The FBI will shift 480 agents from drug and other criminal investigations to counterterrorism posts and plans to more than double the bureau's anti-terror forces under a major reorganization that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III is scheduled to announce today. Mueller's plan, as outlined by law enforcement officials, would permanently devote 2,600 agents – nearly a quarter of the bureau's 11,500-agent workforce – to counterterrorism units, which were staffed by 1,000 agents before the Sept. 11 attacks."

"Four Israelis killed in two West Bank shootings" (Haaretz, 2002/05/29)
"At the settlement of Itamar southeast of Nablus, a Palestinian gunman burst into a yeshiva at around 11 P.M., killing three students and wounding two others, before he was shot dead by a security guard. The terrorist first saw two students playing basketball outside the yeshiva and shot them dead, then went in and opened fire, killing another student and wounding two more lightly before he was killed. The yeshiva serves students aged 14-18 from throughout the country. ... In a separate incident earlier in the evening, Albert Malul, a 50-year-old resident of Jerusalem, was killed last night when shots were fired at the car in which he was traveling south of the West Bank settlement of Ofra."

 

Tuesday, May 28, 2002

News and commentary:

"What War?" (Angelo M. Codevilla, Claremont Review of Books, from the Spring 2002 issue)
A must-read essay about the "war" that never was: "By spring 2002, the Bush administration's pretense that it was making war had worn thin. ... After Arabs had terrorized America on behalf of Arab causes, the Bush team refused to fight or even to indict any Arab entity at all. It did this to shore up "friendly" Arab governments that (it chose not to notice) were in thrall to the terror states of Iraq, Syria, and the Palestinian Authority (PA). By mid 2002, the Bush team's war on terrorism consisted chiefly of impotent, counterproductive, and silly security measures at home and, in the Middle East, of restraining Israel. ... The list of terrorist acts by Arabs against Americans aimed at influencing U.S. policy toward Israel is too long and well known to rehash. The list of U.S. military retaliations against an Arab government, however, contains only one small item: President Reagan's 1986 strike on some Libyan army barracks. That Arab governments allied with the United States, never mind the Arab terror regimes of Iraq, Syria, and the PA, support anti-American causes politically and psychologically is obvious to anyone who goes on-line. Equally obvious is that the American foreign policy class nevertheless continues to pretend that Arab regimes in general and even "progressive" organizations such as the PLO and the Ba'th party are viable partners for peace."

"All cultures are not equal" (Kenan Malik, spiked, 2002/05/28)
"To be radical today is to display disenchantment with all that is 'Western' - by which most mean modernism and the ideas of the Enlightenment - in the name of 'diversity' and 'difference'. ... 'Subjugation', according to the philosopher David Goldberg, 'defines the order of the Enlightenment: subjugation of nature by human intellect, colonial control through physical and cultural domination, and economic superiority through mastery of the laws of the market'. ... Enlightenment universalism, such critics argue, is racist because it seeks to impose Euro-American ideas of rationality and objectivity on other peoples. 'The universalising discourses of modern Europe and the United States', argues Edward Said, 'assume the silence, willing or otherwise, of the non-European world.' ... The corollary of turning the whole world into a network of victims is to transform the West, and in particular the USA, into an all-powerful malign force - the Great Satan - against which all must rage. ... In this fatalism lies a common thread that binds contemporary Western radicalism and fundamentalist Islam. On the surface the two seem poles apart: fundamentalists loathe Western decadence, Western radicals fear Islamic presumptions of certainty. But what unites the two is that both are rooted in contemporary nihilistic multiculturalism; both express, at best, ambivalence about, at worst outright rejection of, the ideas of modernity, universality, and progress. And both see no real alternative to Western power."

"Triangle of Tension: India, Pakistan and the United States" (STRATFOR, 2002/05/28)
An analysis of the escalating conflict between India and Pakistan: "India's calculus is not the same, however. If it is accepted that Pakistan represents a permanent strategic threat to India, the question of war is not whether but when. Given the current political situation and correlation of forces, if this isn't the perfect time, what is? If war is inevitable, it is difficult to see how India can act without taking out Pakistan's nuclear capability. It is unclear how India could take those out without nuclear weapons, or without U.S. precision-guided munitions, Special Operations and other covert forces. ... We are therefore in an extraordinarily difficult crisis. The three players each have strategic interests that simply don't mesh. If Washington convinces New Delhi to wait, it will have to convince Islamabad to stay in India's crosshairs and India to put up with intolerable attacks. If India proceeds, it essentially would save al Qaeda by shattering Pakistan. In the event of complete mismanagement, a nuclear exchange costing millions of lives is a genuine possibility."

"State's terror untruths" (Daniel Pipes, New York Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/05/28)
A critique of the State Department's "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001": "The overwhelmingly most important sources of terrorism are militant Islam and Palestinian nationalism. ... But the report's only allusions to militant Islam are to deny its importance: "The war on terrorism is not a war against Islam." "Adverse mention in this report of individual members of any political, social, ethnic, religious, or national group is not meant to imply that all members of that group are terrorists." And it includes this quote from a Muslim figure: "Our tolerant Islamic religion highly prizes the sanctity of human life." End of discussion. ... Worse, State pretends the vast majority of Palestinian terrorist incidents simply did not happen. ... The U.S. government asserts that Palestinian atrocities against Israel made up just 9 percent of the world's serious terrorist incidents in 2001, but in fact they constituted 46 percent of them. In all, this document reflects a mentality in Washington of reluctance to confront unpleasant realities. The danger is clear: He who fools himself about his enemy in time of war is likely to lose that war." (See also: "Patterns of Global Terrorism 2001", U.S. Department of State, 2002/05/21)

"Europe and the Muslim war against the Jews" (Robert S. Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/28)
"Since October 2000, there has been an alarming rise in the number of anti-Semitic assaults on Jewish communities around the world for which young Muslims have been responsible and nowhere is this more apparent than in France. These new immigrants carry with them anti-Semitic baggage from their mother countries and Islamic culture. ... This highly explosive cocktail of fanatical religious passion, Jew-hatred, and warlike zeal sentiments perfectly encapsulated in the concept of Jihad (Holy War) has been still further inflamed by the violently anti-Israel coverage of the Palestinian intifada in most of the French and European media. ... But the impeccably "anti-racist" and humanist Europeans of today prefer not to recognize their handiwork in the perverted and genocidal ideology of Islamist anti Semitism, for which historically they bear considerable guilt. Instead they stand by almost silently when they are not actively denying the existence of Muslim Jew-baiting or trying to excuse it as a purely political act of "resisting the (Israeli) occupation." This trivializing response to the Muslim war against the Jews (which has its counterparts in Israel and the Diaspora) reminds me of the failure of the West to effectively counter Nazi anti-Semitism. It smacks of appeasement, cowardice, and a failure to confront Europe's inner demons which have instead been projected with almost hysterical fury against the alleged sins of the Jewish State."

"Dangerous illusions" (Schlomo Avineri, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/05/28)
"There is no doubt that the Palestinian Authority in its present form cannot be a partner for peace negotiations. US President George W. Bush has clearly acknowledged this. But in the quest for alternatives, some dangerous nonsense is being tauted as new conventional wisdom. The most outlandish is that of the possibility of the PA becoming democratic and transparent. This is perilous wishful thinking. One of the tragic phenomena of the last two decades in our region has been that wherever democratization has occurred in the world admittedly with mixed results no Arab country has shown even minuscule movements towards it. ... So if one hopes for a Palestinian democratic structure, one should ask how the Palestinians who are in a much more complex situation than the Kuwaitis, the Syrians or the Egyptians will be able to succeed where all Arab societies have failed. ... No such conditions exist today in any Arab country; none exists in Palestinian society, which has been mobilized by a terroristic nationalism for decades. To imagine, therefore, that the PA can be democratized with or without Arafat is a pipe dream."

"Taliban and Qaeda Believed Plotting Within Pakistan" (James Dao, The New York Times, 2002/05/28)
"Virtually the entire senior leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been driven out of eastern Afghanistan and are now operating with as many as 1,000 non-Afghan fighters in the anarchic tribal areas of western Pakistan, the commander of American-led forces in Afghanistan said today. ... But on a second level, General Hagenbeck was expressing the view, widely held in Washington, that it is up to Pakistan to move more aggressively against the Qaeda forces, which are considered particularly fierce and well disciplined. He estimated that 100 to 1,000 non-Afghan Qaeda fighters were in the tribal areas, including Chechens and Uzbeks, as well as Uighurs from western China."

"Suicide Bomber Had Score to Settle" (Mahammed Daraghmeh, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/28)
"Just before blowing himself up near an ice cream parlor in a Tel Aviv suburb, 18-year-old Jihad Titi called his mother to say goodbye. Haleema Titi said she cried when she spoke to her son, but quickly pulled herself together. "I realized that he is going to carry out a suicide attack," said Titi, 52. "I said, 'Oh, son, I hope your operation will succeed.'" The blast Monday evening killed a 56-year-old Israeli woman and her 18-month-old granddaughter in the Tel Aviv suburb of Petach Tikvah. ... "I would hope that my son would be a nuclear bomb, not a normal bomb, to destroy everything," said [Jihad's father Ibrahim]. 'If we are not able to live, we don't want the others (the Israelis) to live. We can either live together or die together.'" (See also: "Suicide Bomber Hits Israeli Mall" (Jamie Tarabay, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/27))

 

Monday, May 27, 2002

News and commentary:

"Suicide Bomber Hits Israeli Mall" (Jamie Tarabay, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/05/27)
"A suicide bomber blew himself up Monday at an outdoor mall in a city next to Tel Aviv, killing himself and two other people and wounding about 20, police and witnesses said. The bomber struck the city of Petach Tikvah as Israeli forces were conducting a sweep through the West Bank town of Bethlehem, one of a series of quick raids aimed at stopping suicide bomb attacks. ... Police and hospital officials said two people, a woman and a two-year-old girl, were killed. Among the wounded were several babies. ... A baby carriage, its blue fabric stained by blood lay on its side in the midst of the rubble. An eyewitness who gave his name as Haim told Israel Radio that the attacker struck "children and babies who were sitting with their parents at the cafe near the supermarket." The Lebanese TV station Al-Manar, representing the Hezbollah guerrillas, broadcast a claim of responsibility from the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, affiliated with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement."

"Fury over hijacker's visit to Britain" (Jessica Berry, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/05/27)
"A Palestinian hijacker has been allowed back into Britain to address a London university where she promoted terrorist tactics, sparking fury among senior MPs and community groups. Leila Khaled, is a respected figure within the terror group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which last week claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Israel. ... On Wednesday she addressed a packed student meeting at the School for Oriental and African Studies. "There are no suicide bombers," she told the meeting of about 100 people. "They are freedom fighters." ... In 1969 Ms Khaled hijacked a TWA aircraft which was diverted to Damascus. She was able to escape after she was put on the same bus as the victims. The following year she attempted to hijack an El Al flight. The plane made an emergency landing at Heathrow. She was jailed for 28 days and then freed in exchange for a hostage. She was charged but not put on trial before her release. Therefore, she could still face prosecution. In January last year she was allowed into the country and attended a meeting at the House of Commons where she was quoted equating Zionism with Nazism."

"The mother of all anti-Jew sites" (Ron Strom, WorldNetDaily, 2002/05/27)
"Despite the prominent display of the words "No hate, no violence," an anti-Jewish website provides plenty of opportunities – in several different languages – to read about the "evils" of the Jews and how the "deception" of the Holocaust is being used as a propaganda tool by "Zionists." Radio Islam is named for a radio station of the same name in Stockholm, Sweden, begun in 1987, according to the site. The website creators say its goal is to "combat Jewish racism and the Zionist ideology by information in order to reveal the simple propaganda – lies that Zionists use in order to promote their ideology and political aims – lies which thereby become an instrument of oppression of people." ... The website includes countless links in up to 16 languages, including columns, statements and other documents supporting an unwavering position against Jews worldwide. ... A main theme woven throughout the site is the claim that Jews control the United States. A questionable quote the site attributes to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says: "We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it." Another page features a list of Jews in the Bush administration, including photos, while still another is titled, 'USA's Rulers: All Are Jews!'" (See also: Radio Islam)

"French show their resentment at latest US invasion" (Charles Bremner, The Times, 2002/05/27)
"The Americans landed in force in France yesterday, from the seaside villages of Normandy to the heart of Paris. Their arrival stoked the anger of thousands of protesters who see President Bush as the world’s biggest bully and warmonger. ... In the capital's Place de la République and in the Norman city of Caen, there were demonstrations against the "evil empire" of "le cowboy Bush". The protesters included intellectuals, anti-globalisation champions and officials from the Green and Communist parties that were part of the last Government of Lionel Jospin. ... In Caen, where Mr Bush will today pay homage to the American dead at the D-Day landing beaches, protesters shouted: "No to imperial America." The President was accused of 'using the memory of the soldiers killed fighting Nazism to promote his plan for world domination.'"

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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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