Archived news and commentary: June 24 - 30, 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 30, 2002

News and commentary:

"America's Virtual Empire" (Martin Walker, World Policy Journal, from the Summer 2002 issue)
An interesting essay on the nature of America's "Empire", "a new beast, the like of which the world has not seen before": "To answer Lord Carnarvon's question today, it could be said that America is a virtual empire, whose power is so evident and so sweeping that it does not need to be formally exercized. It has grown beyond Palmerston's dictum, enjoying trade without the expense and burdens of rule because rule is hardly necessary when so many of the goods that flow from the virtual empire are too desirable or essential to be adjured. The virtual empire can thus maintain its preeminence with more than a degree of courtesy for the rest of the international order. The forms of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, and other international bodies are usually observed. Allies are treated with the respect due to sovereign states, although enemies get short shrift. Old enemies like Germany and Japan after 1945, and Russia after the Soviet collapse, are routinely invited and even helped to become new friends, and most of them find it profitable and congenial to agree. And the policies of the virtual empire are extraordinarily open to argument and persuasion, whether by foreign lobbying, commercial pressures, or the assiduous cultivation of influence by domestic interest groups, a process that is kept reasonably open by a free and inquisitive media."

"The Future of 'History'" (Stanley Kurtz, Policy Review, from the June & July 2002 issue)
Kurtz on Fukuyama vs. Huntington: "It's easy to forget how controversial it was when it appeared. For all the respectful (if often skeptical) attention Huntington's views have garnered from the policy community, his reception within the academy, among liberal opinion makers, and in many overseas capitals has been, and remains, overwhelmingly hostile.
The reason why is that The Clash of Civilizations sticks a thumb in the eye of liberalism and multiculturalism alike. ... "Muslim bellicosity and violence," says Huntington, "are late-twentieth-century facts which neither Muslims nor non-Muslims can deny." Yet until last September, deny they did. For the post-September 11 reader, watching Huntington demolish President Clinton’s contention (so like the current president's) that the West has no problem with Islam, but only with violent Islamic extremists, is a fascinating bit of reverse déjà vu:

The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture. ...

How did Huntington manage to predict the future so uncannily? He recognized that the future already existed in the present. He acknowledged and explored what others failed to recognize — that America was already engaged in a war of sorts with the Islamic world, even before September 11. And in yet another uncanny moment, Huntington casts his eye eastward and effectively predicts the advent of an "Axis of Evil" — an alliance of Middle Eastern and East Asian states in opposition to America and the West. He also points to a future in which weapons of mass destruction will act as military equalizers between civilizations in confrontation." (See also the essay, via the WayBack Machine: "The Clash of Civilizations?" (Samuel P. Huntington, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993))

"Israeli Forces Kill Top Hamas Bomb-Maker" (Atef Sa'ad, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/30)
"Israeli special forces killed a top bomb-maker from the militant Islamic group Hamas on Sunday in a strike which also left at least one of his deputies dead, Israeli security sources said. The security sources said troops had killed the militant in a raid on a house in the West Bank city of Nablus. ...
Palestinians described the man, Muhanad al-Taher, known as "the Engineer-4," as topping Israel's most-wanted list. Israeli security sources said Taher, head of Hamas's military wing in the Nablus area, and his men were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 Israelis in suicide bombings, including an attack on a Jerusalem city bus that killed 19 people two weeks ago. ...
Outside Nablus, the army relaxed its clampdown on West Bank hotbeds of militancy by lifting a curfew in Bethlehem. But more than 500,000 Palestinians remained confined to home elsewhere."

"U.S. won't accept election of Arafat" (MSNBC, 2002/06/30)
"In the latest sign of the Bush administration’s efforts to oust Yasser Arafat, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice suggested Sunday that the United States "cannot deal" with an administration that includes the embattled Palestinian leader. "The U.S. respects democratic processes, but if a leadership emerges that does not deal with terrorism, the U.S. cannot deal with that,"Rice told NBC's "Meet the Press," suggesting that the United States would not deal with Arafat even if he were elected in free elections. ...
Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday he has no plans to meet with Arafat and that previously discussed international peace conference this summer is not likely. ... "At the moment, we are not dealing with him," said Powell on "Fox News Sunday." Asked if the United States would resume contacts with Arafat, Powell said: 'I don’t expect so.'"

"Europeans Courting International Disaster" (Robert Kagan, The Washington Post, 2002/06/30)
Kagan on the International Criminal Court: "Europeans, along with many other less influential and less worthy nations, are trying to advance their vision of international civilization, with a web of international laws and institutions assuming authority over individual nation-states. Not surprisingly, the world they're trying to create looks an awful lot like the European Union, where rules and laws are more important than military power. And not surprisingly, they're none too happy about the militarily dominant United States placing itself above or outside their new international legal system before it's even begun. ...
Even those who believe the ICC is a good idea have to admit, if they're honest, that the United States is going to be more vulnerable than other powers. ...
But in the meantime, the United States, which has the lion's share of responsibility for defending the rest of the civilized world against rogue states, will have to worry every time it sends troops into hostile territory. Can a more liberal international order be built by hobbling the most powerful defender of that order? That's a question our European allies might want to start asking themselves."

"The End of Something" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/06/30)
"But here's the rub: Even if Mr. Arafat went away, and even if a majority of Israelis were ready to give his successor all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the security requirements and limitations on Palestinian sovereignty that Israelis would insist upon - in the wake of the total breakdown in trust over the last year - would probably be so high that no Palestinian leader would be able to accept them. If that is the case, it means that a negotiated two-state solution is impossible and Israel is doomed to permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. And if that is the case, it means Israel will have to rule the West Bank and Gaza permanently, the way South African whites ruled blacks under apartheid."

"Terror Alliance Has U.S. Worried" (Dana Priest and Douglas Farah, The Washington Post, 2002/06/30)
"The Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization, one of the world's most formidable terrorist groups, is increasingly teaming up with al Qaeda on logistics and training for terrorist operations, according to U.S. and European intelligence officials and terrorism experts. The new cooperation is ad hoc and tactical and involves mid- and low-level operatives. It mutes years of rivalry between Hezbollah, which draws its support primarily from Shiite Muslims, and al Qaeda, which is predominantly Sunni. It includes coordination on explosives and tactics training, money laundering, weapons smuggling and acquiring forged documents, according to knowledgeable sources."

 

Saturday, June 29, 2002

News and commentary:

"Palestinian schoolbooks fan the flames of hatred" (Amos Harel, Haaretz, 2002/06/29)
"The investigation, led by Noah Meridor, from the liaison office, examined 23 such books. It revealed "systematic education to delegitimize the existence of the State of Israel, fanning the flames of hatred and violent revenge to destroy the country." ...
The Palestinians, the books claim, have first rights to the country. The "Arab Canaanites" were here before the Jews, therefore the Zionistic claim of rights to the land by virtue of forefathers are a lie. ...
Israel is described as an evil country, which exploits and degrades, where soldiers shoot merciful nurses, and Jews build gallows. ...
The solution to the Palestinians' situation is revealed through the exultation of two goals: the Right of Return for refugees, and Jihad (holy war). The Right of Return is the solution for Palestinian refugees, and this is endorsed through songs, drawings, stories and history lessons. ... Jihad is also considered a legitimate and esteemed course of action. Valorous fighting and dying in battle - as a "shaheed" (suicide bomber) - are considered worthy values. The words to the "Song of the Shaheed" are in a seventh grade book: "It is better to die without my stolen right and homeland, the flow of blood is music to my ears." The textbook goes on to explain: An honorable death is one in Allah's name, defending the homeland."

"The Most Wanted Palestinian" (Elizabeth Rubin, The New York Times Magazine, from the 2002/06/30 issue)
A profile of Qeis Adwan, "a 25-year-old Hamas activist, inventive bomb maker, mastermind of several devastating suicide-bomb attacks and charismatic political leader who had risen to the top of Israel's most-wanted list the previous summer.": "Before I left An Najah University, I took a tour of the Hamas exhibition of the Israeli occupation. I was curious to see what the university officials had wanted to hide from the local press. ...
A warning sign was tacked over the door to the next room: ''If you have a weak heart or troubles, take care when entering this room.'' There you were greeted by photographs of Palestinian babies torn apart, of bodies charred and chewed up by shrapnel. Next was a scene from paradise - a photograph of Qeis in military fatigues atop a painted mountain, with an elegy to him as he joins his Hamas comrades. ...
What followed was an homage to Qeis: his graduation project, which was a large model of a tree-lined bus terminal and shopping center planned for downtown Jenin, and photographs of him accepting the student leadership, speaking at a rally and honoring the best students. On display behind black curtains and a low black scrim were the highlights of his career in Al Qassam - models of the Sbarro restaurant, the Matza restaurant, posters of the suicide bombers involved in each and a poster with Qeis in the middle flanked by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and leader of Hamas, and Osama bin Laden."

"The Lessons of Lebanon" (Michael Rubin, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/07/01 issue)
"More than two years after Israel's unilateral withdrawal, peace is increasingly distant. Syria and Iran saw Israel's retreat not as a gesture of peace, but as a sign of weakness. Rather than enjoy peace, Israeli border towns prepare for renewed terror. ...
Hezbollah does not operate in isolation. "Syria is the brains and Iran is the heart," one counterterrorism expert explained. Twice a week, Iran Air cargo planes touch down at the Damascus airport, supplying increasingly sophisticated arms to terrorist camps across the border in Syrian-occupied Lebanon. In recent weeks, Hezbollah has deployed thousands of missiles capable of striking targets as deep inside Israel as Haifa. ...
The growth of anti-Israel terror is directly proportional to the decline of Israeli deterrence. ... When urging dialogue and restraint, Secretary of State Colin Powell must understand that willingness to meet any terrorist demand, no matter how small, only rewards violence and indicates U.S. weakness. Terrorism is not the result of a cycle of violence. Rather, it is a result of too little retaliation."

"Israeli Army Destroys Palestinian HQ" (Susan Sevareid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/29)
"With a pair of powerful nighttime explosions, Israel destroyed the hulking Palestinian municipal and security headquarters in this West Bank city, ending a four-day siege and leaving a smoldering pile of rubble Saturday. Before the blasts, Israel was insisting that about 15 wanted Palestinian militants were holed up in the four-story-high building set on a hilltop overlooking Hebron. Israeli soldiers moved through the debris Saturday morning, and officially, the army said only that its operations were continuing. Israeli military sources told The Associated Press that soldiers were searching for bodies, but had not found anyone, alive or dead."

 

Friday, June 28, 2002

News and commentary:

"'Baby bomber photo' shocks Israel"
(BBC News, 2002/06/28)

"'Baby bomber photo' shocks Israel" (BBC News, 2002/06/28)
"The Israeli army has released a picture it says was found during its incursion in the West Bank town of Hebron showing an infant dressed as a Hamas militant wearing a suicide bomber's harness. The army says the controversial picture was found in a family album during a search of a house belonging to an alleged Hamas militant. Palestinian children often dress up as militants brandishing toy guns or suicide bombers, but the Hebron "baby bomber" photograph has provoked widespread concern in Israel. ...
However, British broadcaster Sky News has reported an unnamed member of the child's family as saying that dressing the infant baby as a bomber was "just a joke". ...
The picture - which the Israeli army says is genuine - shows a boy, about 18 months old, standing wide-eyed in a baby suit. Red wires are strapped to his waist, which is clad in a pretend explosives belt, and across his head is tied a red bandana of the extremist Islamic group, Hamas. ... Hamas has been known to organise public rallies in which young children stage mock-ups of famous attacks against Israel. Recently a group re-enacted the lynching of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah, in which a small girl had her hands painted red to show the blood of the soldiers."

"Pakistan joins war against Al Qaeda in its tribal areas" (Jawad Naeem, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/06/28)
"The nocturnal raid this week by Pakistani troops – with FBI assistance – on an Al Qaeda hide-out was the first cooperative effort of this kind on Pakistani soil. According to sources in Islamabad, five FBI agents worked alongside nearly 50 Pakistani Army soldiers during the operation near the Afghan border. But the US agents were not involved in the two-hour firefight. This marks the first major combat operation inside Pakistan's autonomous tribal areas, and underscores the shift in the war on Al Qaeda from Afghanistan to Pakistan. In May, US special forces and Pakistani troops searched a madrassah in Northern Waziristan. This latest ongoing operation is also an acknowledgment by Islamabad, say analysts, that Osama bin Laden's followers are regrouping in its territory – and that President Pervez Musharraf's government is willing to cooperate fully with US efforts. ... As such, it's unlikely to be the last Pakistani operation in the tribal areas. US military officials estimate that up to 1,000 Al Qaeda fighters have fled into the region from Afghanistan."

"At Least 19 Killed in Afghan Ammunition Blast" (Saeed Ali Achakzai, Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/28)
"At least 19 Afghan soldiers and civilians were killed when an ammunition dump blew up on Friday, unleashing a chain of explosions that spread damage across a wide area, witnesses and officials said. A further 15 soldiers who were on duty at the depot on the outskirts of the town of Spin Boldak in southern Afghanistan were missing, a senior local official, Syed Fazaluddin Agha, said. Agha and other officials said a rocket fired by al Qaeda fugitives had hit the depot in the town, near the border with Pakistan, but another said it was too early to say what caused the blast."

"Fish Story" (Peter Berkowitz, The New Republic, 2002/06/28)
Berkowitz takes on Stanley Fish's "public relations campaign on postmodernism's behalf": "His current argument about the relevance of postmodernism to September 11 and the world it created has this same, characteristically charming audacity about it. It is also rank sophistry. ...
According to Fish, the new critics didn't grasp postmodernism's true meaning. They were under the mistaken impression that "since postmodernists deny the possibility of describing matters of fact objectively, they leave us with no firm basis for either condemning the terrorist attacks or fighting back." In fact, claimed Fish, "Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one." These two passages may have left some readers puzzled. Had not Fish, in the span of two sentences, just reaffirmed the notion he said he was knocking down? The lack of independent standards for determining the truth among competing accounts is what most people mean by the impossibility of describing the facts objectively."

"Countries in glass houses shouldn't..." (Star Parker, USA Today, 2002/06/28)
The president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education draws a moral equivalence between suicide bombings and divorces. Talk about loss of moral clarity: "The same politicization of human life that produces suicide bombers has crept into our own society. More than 1.3 million fetuses are aborted each year. Seven out of 10 black babies are born to unwed mothers. Many marriages end in divorce. Americans are losing a sense of the sacred regarding how we live and even life itself. This loss of moral clarity affects our behavior and decisions, whether in domestic policy or in forming international alliances. As a nation, we should not forget that freedom is precious because life is sacred."

"Terrorism gets the door" (Cal Thomas, The Washington Times, 2002/06/28)
"The onus is clearly on the Palestinians to demonstrate whether they truly want a peacefully co-existing state with democratic values and will commit to ending terror. Good luck. ... They won't, of course, because the intention of much of the Palestinian leadership and its followers is not building shopping malls and prosperity, separation of powers, a constitution, freedom and peaceful co-existence with Israel. Their theology, as expounded by radical clerics, is that Israel has stolen land that is theirs (all of it) and that their God is ticked and wants them to use force to reclaim the land, which includes the murder of babies and grandmothers. They see the West as decadent and Christians and Jews as enemies of God. How do you make peace when your enemy thinks like this? Palestinians will need the religious equivalent of a new revelation if they are to think differently. That would then require the next generation of children to be taught something other than martyrdom and the current generation to stop seeing Israel as a target for eradication. ... The Middle East is known for miracles, but this one is beyond belief."

"Dust bin" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/06/29 issue)
"The alleged Suleiman insists that Osama, his Number Two Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and '98 per cent of the leadership of al-Qa'eda are safe and are running their affairs perfectly'. But, in that case, where are they? Holed up in the hills far from a video camera? Unlikely. ...
If Daniel Pearl’s murderers can get access to a professional studio and editing facilities, surely '98 per cent' of al-Qa'eda’s leadership can. If they could have, they would have - if not Osama, then al-Zawahiri or Mullah Omar or any of the other hotshots who've been silent these last six months. They can't all be recuperating from kidney transplants. One or other would have turned up to crow on 11 March (the semi-anniversary) or some other significant date."

"Gods and Monsters" (Salman Rushdie, The Washington Post, 2002/06/28)
"...one of the more worrying aspects of our more-than-worrying times is the extent to which the ordinary citizenry of the Muslim world is prepared to go along with the Osama bin Laden mob's characterization of America in particular, and of the West and "the Jews" in general, as monstrous. ... Most of the voices we have heard have had extremely harsh things to say about the United States of America, and its arrogance, brutality, ignorance and so on. ...
It is difficult not to hear, in the widespread condemnations of the West's sybaritic, hedonist, sex-obsessed individualism, milder echoes of the fanatical puritanism of the Islamist extremists. It is difficult not to hear, beneath the condemnations of America's suffering at the hands of Sept. 11 murderers, a gleeful note of schadenfreude; it is difficult to ignore the admiration for the terrorists' success in giving America a bloody nose. ...
But if, indeed, most of the world's 1 billion Muslims want nothing to do with terrorism, as we are constantly being told, then it's time that their leaders, educators, information media and intelligentsia stopped creating the preconditions for that terrorism by perpetuating the image of a satanic, Polyphemus-like America that is well worth destroying."

"Peace Through Democracy" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/06/28)
"The president's proposal for democratizing Palestine is a fundamental rejection of the Oslo conceit that you could impose upon Palestinian society a PLO thugocracy led by the inventors of modern terrorism and then be surprised that seven years later it exploded in violence. After a decade of ignoring the Palestinian Authority's corruption, its incitement to hatred, its militarization of Palestinian society, its glorification of violence, indeed, its creation in Palestine, as nowhere else on earth, of a deeply disturbed cult of death, the United States has declared that with this leadership there can be no peace. The Bush proposal is grounded in the larger American idea that the spread of democracy is fundamental not only to the spread of American values but also to the achievement of peace."

 

Thursday, June 27, 2002

News and commentary:

"Virgin video on Arafat's TV promises sexy after-life for 'martyrs'" (Michael Widlanski, The Media Line, 2002/06/27)
"The movie clip, which preceded and introduced the 3PM afternoon news, is about Palestinian "martyrdom"- its causes and its rewards. The man and his wife see Israeli army (IDF) soldiers, and frowns darken their features, and the music is very morose. The young man clearly starts thinking about how to strike out at the Israeli soldiers. Almost immediately, the music changes to a more optimistic tone as, out of a kind of mist, stunningly beautiful young women - between 18 and 22 years of age - begin to beckon to him. The gorgeous women, who are younger than his wife, are all clad in billowy white robes. They are all smiling fetchingly as they call to him, making motions with their hands as if to say "come-here" and "join us." We next see the man after he is captured by the IDF following an apparent attack on them. But, as the music takes on another sinister twist, the Israelis deliberately release the Palestinian man. Their plan is clear: they are going to kill the handsome Arab man "while trying to escape." He appears as a target in the cross-hairs of an Israeli automatic rifle. His wife cries, her face screwed up in agony, but the end is not sad. The camera moves quickly from the bereaved widow to the new Palestinian martyr who is smiling in paradise. One of the gorgeous women in white greets him and pulls him into the mist where she and seven or eight beautiful women begin to surround him and gently caress him. The video ends on a happy note without a word having been said, but the message is clear: here is the Islamic tradition of a martyr being welcomed into paradise where he will be ministered by 72 beautiful virgins. ...
The new Palestinian television video - aired in the afternoon for maximum viewing by Palestinian children - underscores the message of hope. It is a hope for a better world, but not in this world, not in this lifetime."

"A Vision for Peace - After 28 Drafts" (Robin Wright and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, 2002/06/27)
"The speech was drafted, redrafted and then worked over again and again - 28 times in all before President Bush finally delivered his vision for achieving peace in the Middle East. ...
Central to the first version, drafted at the State Department, were proposals for a U.S.-hosted international conference to generate momentum so that the leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority would focus on peace rather than confrontation, U.S. officials say. But that approach faded as Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld joined the debate and offered strong arguments mirroring the Israeli position that Arafat, the Palestinian Authority president, is unable to make peace. Their view overpowered the approach advocated by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. Increasingly, the White House's National Security Council, headed by Condoleezza Rice, took over drafting the text. The final draft, polished by chief White House speech writer Mike Gerson and Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, had no mention of the conference. And Arafat was targeted for political retirement."

"Mossad chief: Israel must foil regional nuclear arms plans" (Amir Oren, Haaretz, 2002/06/27)
"Israel cannot spare any effort to foil, prevent or delay the attainment of weapons of mass destruction by countries like Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lybia, the head of Israel's Mossad said Wednesday. Speaking to a meeting of NATO's North Atlantic Council in Brussels, Mossad director, Ephraim Halevy, warned that radical Islamic terrorism as a whole, and suicide attacks in particular, pose a "formidable threat" to NATO member states whose "Muslim communities are rapidly developing and increasing in numbers and influence." ...
He said Iran is researching and developing "missiles with longer ranges, which could reach Europe and in the future, even North America." ...
As to the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein, Halevy said one must assume Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear capabilities ever since the United Nations' monitoring team was expeled in 1998. "As you know, on the eve of the Gulf War, Iraq was on the verge of obtaining nuclear capability. They were months away from producing fissile material," he told the officials. 'We have clear indications that this has been and is their unswerving desire ... We have partial evidence that they have renewed their production of VX and possibly Anthrax. As to delivery systems, we have sufficient evidence to affirm that they are sparing no effort to preserve their residuary capabilities and to augment them with new ones.'"

"Cyber-Attacks by Al Qaeda Feared" (Barton Gellman, The Washington Post, 2002/06/27)
"Unsettling signs of al Qaeda's aims and skills in cyberspace have led some government experts to conclude that terrorists are at the threshold of using the Internet as a direct instrument of bloodshed. The new threat bears little resemblance to familiar financial disruptions by hackers responsible for viruses and worms. It comes instead at the meeting points of computers and the physical structures they control. U.S. analysts believe that by disabling or taking command of the floodgates in a dam, for example, or of substations handling 300,000 volts of electric power, an intruder could use virtual tools to destroy real-world lives and property. They surmise, with limited evidence, that al Qaeda aims to employ those techniques in synchrony with "kinetic weapons" such as explosives. "The event I fear most is a physical attack in conjunction with a successful cyber-attack on the responders' 911 system or on the power grid," Ronald Dick, director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center, told a closed gathering of corporate security executives hosted by Infraguard in Niagara Falls on June 12."

"Europe's Anti-Israel Excuse" (Abraham H. Foxman, The Washington Post, 2002/06/27)
Foxman on a survey of European sentiments towards Israel and Jews made by the Anti-Defamation League: "Among the 2,500 people polled in late May and early June as part of our survey, 45 percent admitted to their perception that Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, while 30 percent agreed with the statement that Jews have too much power in the business world. Perhaps most telling, 62 percent said they believe the outbreak of anti-Semitic violence in Europe is the result of anti-Israel sentiment, not anti-Jewish feeling. The contrariness of their own attitudes suggests that Europeans are loath to admit that hatred of Jews is making a comeback. This view may make Europeans more comfortable in the face of what is happening in their countries, by suggesting that this time around, Jews are not the innocent victims but are themselves the victimizers in the Middle East. But the incredibly biased reaction against Israel seen in the poll - despite the fact that Israel under former prime minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians an independent state, and despite the fact that Palestinians have carried out a sustained campaign of terrorism against Israeli civilians - speaks to a repressed hostility to Jews that may not be socially acceptable in post-Holocaust Europe. Still, even with such constraints, some 30 percent of Europeans are not averse to expressing their anti-Semitic beliefs openly and directly."

"No common sense and no love of country" (Suzanne Fields, The Washington Times, 2002/06/27)
"Gloria Steinem, actors Ossie Davis and Ed Asner, playwrights Eve Ensler ("The Vagina Monologues"), Tony Kushner ("Angels in America") and Noam Chomsky, the MIT professor who is always first in line to find fault with America, have signed a letter in the name of "people of conscience," urging "all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate." ...
In a poll of 634 college students, conducted by Frank Luntz for a new organization called Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, only 3 percent "strongly agree" that Western culture is superior to the culture of the Arab world. Fully 43 percent "strongly disagree." They weren't asked to consider specifically why a culture that systematically represses women, executes homosexuals, restricts the press, abrogates freedom of speech and religion and persecutes Christians and Jews is thought to be just as good as a culture that empowers women, works to eliminate prejudice against homosexuals, and guarantees freedom of the press, of speech and of religion." (See also: "College students speak out" (AVOT, 2002/06/20), for more poll results from the survey.)

"Palestine's Deliverance" (Fouad Ajami, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/06/27)
"But a beginning is made; henceforth, the politics of the lowest common denominator, the politics of giving a pass to Palestinian (and Arab) dictators in the name of stability, in the name of a fatalistic belief that reform is a hopeless undertaking in Arab lands, that the choice in these lands is between terrible leaders and more malignant oppositionists, may begin to yield. The Palestinian and Arab worlds may disappoint us: There may be a Gordian knot of radicalism that no foreign sword can cut through. But the attempt must be made, and in full daylight. We can't give in to Palestinian victimology, grant it a waiver from decency and practicality, write off its cruel deeds as the inevitable product of a particularly disillusioning history."

"Sharon was right" (Eric Fettman, New York Post, 2002/06/27)
"Back in 1989, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Sharon warned against what he called "one of the most dangerous developments for many years now" - namely, "the capitulation of the Western democracies, in Europe and in the United States, to the PLO terrorist organization." "There is an attempt to please the aggressor," he said, decrying the "illusion that once the aggressor will get what he is demanding, he will stop being the aggressor." ...
Now, finally, Sharon's view has been endorsed by a U.S. president: Bush declared forthrightly that the Palestinian Authority "has rejected [Israel's] offered hand and trafficked with terrorists." ...
By ousting Arafat from Lebanon two decades ago, Sharon tried to implement at least part of the conditions he believed imperative if genuine peace was ever to be reached. Israeli leftists and the world media cast Israel as the ugly aggressor brutalizing helpless people, and Sharon was ultimately cast into the political wilderness. But time eventually proved him right: The attempt to work with Arafat in the Oslo process proved a disaster for Israel (and the Palestinians), paving the way for Sharon's ascension to prime minister - one of the great political comeback stories of all time."

"Bush won't budge on Arafat ouster" (Joseph Curl, The Washington Times, 2002/06/27)
"President Bush said the United States will not accept Yasser Arafat as Palestinian leader even if he wins the January elections, for which he announced his candidacy yesterday. "I meant what I said, that there needs to be change. If people are interested in peace, something else has got to happen," Mr. Bush said yesterday after a meeting at the summit of the Group of Eight in Canada. "The status quo is simply unacceptable, and it should be unacceptable to them." ... But the United States will make its own determination as well, and Mr. Bush threatened that his administration would cut off millions in U.S. aid if Palestinians do not adopt the sweeping political and security reforms he has demanded. "Listen, I can assure you we won't be putting money into a society which is not transparent and [is] corrupt. And I suspect other countries won't either," Mr. Bush said after a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair."

 

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

News and commentary:

"The Wall" (Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic, 2002/06/26)
"The eagerness with which most of the world adopted the Palestinian account of the Camp David talks and dismissed Israel's previously unimaginable concessions as irrelevant; the U.N.'s obsessive search for a nonexistent massacre in Jenin even as it ignores the massacres of Israelis; Europe's growing sympathy for suicide killers and its simplistic reduction of the conflict to occupation; anti-Zionism's emergence, since the Durban anti-racism conference, as a defining feature of the anti-globalization movement; the application of traditional Christian anti-Jewish imagery to the Palestinian conflict (like the new mural in a Scottish church depicting a crucified Jesus surrounded by Israeli soldiers) - all have convinced many Israelis that collective Jewish existence is again on probation. But in the last few months Israeli despair has broadened. Israelis now fear not only that they will never be accepted in the Middle East, but also that they will never be accepted in the world at large."

"Dowd, Krugman and Moore make inflammatory accusations" (Bryan Keefer, Spinsanity, 2002/06/26)
Keffer examines recent attacks on the Bush administration suggesting that "President Bush is attempting to make himself a dictator.": "But the award for the densest attack goes to filmmaker and author Michael Moore. In a new online-only chapter of his book Stupid White Men titled "The Sad and Sordid Whereabouts of bin Cheney and bin Bush," Moore asks "What if there is no 'terrorist threat?' What if Bush and Co. need, desperately need, that 'terrorist threat' more than anything in order to conduct the systematic destruction they have launched against the U.S. constitution and the good people of this country who believe in the freedoms and liberties it guarantees?" He goes on to claim that Bush is part of a "corrupt, banal administration of con artists who shamelessly use the dead of that day in September as the cover to get away with anything." Citing an anonymous source who claims that the Bush administration refused to ban matches and cigarette lighters from flights after September 11 at the behest of the tobacco industry, Moore segues into a broad attack on Bush that concludes: 'The bottom line: Anyone who would brazenly steal an election and insert themselves into OUR White House with zero mandate from The People is, frankly - sadly - capable of anything...'" (See also: "The Sad and Sordid Whereabouts of bin Cheney and bin Bush" (Michael Moore, Michael Moore.com, June 2002))

"Arafat Vows to Run Again in 2003" (Susan Sevareid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/26)
"Despite President Bush's demand for new leadership, Yasser Arafat will run for re-election in January, a senior aide said Monday, hours after the Palestinians announced sweeping reforms for the their financial, judicial and security systems. The Palestinian Authority, under fire as corrupt and linked to terrorism, insisted its plans came in response to concerns of its own people, not Bush's calls Monday for reforms and a new Palestinian leadership "not compromised by terror." ...
A poll by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center - a Palestinian research group headed by Ghassan Khatib, who was named labor minister this month - asked 1,179 Palestinians whether they expected Arafat would be elected. The random sample found 47.5 percent said they expected Arafat to be re-elected, 37.8 percent said they did not and 14.7 percent gave no answer. Still, when asked which Palestinian they trusted most, Arafat was identified by 25.1 percent of respondents - edging out the 24.5 percent who answered "I don't trust anyone." The most-trusted individual after Arafat was Sheik Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of the Hamas extremist organization, with 8.8 percent."

"Yasser Arafat and the Myth of Legitimacy" (Daniel Polisar, Azure, from the Summer 2002 issue)
"What is true is that Arafat has made himself irreplaceable in a very different sense: He has acted successfully to destroy the elements of a pluralistic society that had been present in the West Bank and Gaza, and to mold the Palestinian Authority into a police state and a personal dictatorship. As a result, he has done much to damage the prospects of a viable, alternative leadership emerging. In other words, having succeeded in eliminating his opposition, he is now turning to the democratic world and pleading to stay in power on the grounds that he knows of no one who could replace him. ...
It took Arafat nearly two years to pave the way for the electoral landslide that gave him the counterfeit aura of democratic legitimacy that still clings to him, and he has spent an additional six years strengthening his dictatorship and weakening potential opponents. The process of recovering from the damage he has done during this time will no doubt be a long one. But prolonging the current situation by attributing to Arafat a legitimacy that he does not deserve contributes nothing to that process."

"Noam Alone" (Pejman Yousefzadeh, Tech Central Station, 2002/06/26)
Yousefzadeh takes on Noam Chomsky, "chief among the critics of American foreign policy": "One also finds statements and assertions that are not only historically false, but morally daft and reprehensible. ... One of Chomsky's more notable comments regarding the then-impending U.S. military action in Afghanistan, was the following statement he made in a speech: ...
"Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the elite culture, the culture we are part of. It indicates that whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next few months very casually with no comment, no particular thought about it, that's just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe." ...
To flatly say, without any evidence whatsoever, without any logical reasoning at all, that the United States was making plans "on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next few months," is the worst possible kind of cheap demagoguery. And as it turns out, not only were Chomsky's comments utterly outrageous and despicable, they were also completely wrong. ...
This then, is the eminence that leads the intellectual campaign against the war on terrorism. Chomsky's foolish and demonstrably false past statements make him a poor spokesman for the antiwar Left. If the antiwar movement wishes to have any vibrancy and relevance in current debates, it would do well to abandon Chomsky's fossilized rhetoric, and his unthinking, Pavlovian philosophy of automatically blaming America for the evils that confront it."

"So, we are all racist, but it doesn't change anything?" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/06/26)
Daley on Sir David Calvert Smith's, the director of public prosecutions, assertion that "we are all racists": "What you might call overt, or practising, racism is clearly not the issue. We have got far beyond the merely empirical questions of people's actions and behaviour. Sir David referred specifically to racism in "the Macpherson sense": that is, the unwitting, unrecognised, unconscious sense in which racial prejudice is so deeply buried in the underpinning of our personalities that it requires excavation to be discovered. This is the sense in which we are all guilty. Racism is not so much a set of obnoxious acts, cruel afflictions or unfair practices: it is a form of original sin that inheres in the consciousness of us all, however oblivious we might be of its existence. The only way that we can ever be free from this curse (and thus enable Sir David's colleagues to go about their work effectively) is to perform psycho-social surgery, probing deep below the layers of tolerance and fairness (or even indifference to the issue) that we believe to be our true feelings. Not until we acknowledge our true racist nature (or confess our fault, to use the theological language that is the model for this) can we eradicate it. As with all mystical authoritarianism, whether it is Maoist re-education or McCarthyite accusation, your denial of guilt will be held against you."

"An End to Pretending" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/06/26)
"For better or worse - a great deal better, I think - Bush has set the Palestinian issue within the context of a larger approach that is fundamentally, historically radical: a rejection of decades of policy, indeed a rejection of the entire philosophy of Middle East diplomacy. This philosophy has rested on a willingness to accept a U.S. role as a player in a running fraud. In the interests of "stability" and cheap oil and concessions to American military needs, the United States chose to recognize all regimes (except those such as Iran, Libya and Iraq who openly attacked us or the regional status quo) as more or less legitimate. ...
In his Monday speech, as in his policy as a whole, Bush is announcing an end to all this. He is saying, repeatedly and clearly, that the United States will - seriously, on principle - support all genuine efforts at peace and toward democracy and human rights in a Palestinian state and in all the countries of the Middle East. And the United States will - seriously, on principle - support a real Palestinian state, with whatever reasonable concessions from Israel that requires. But the United States - for the next three years at least - is out of the old fraud game. From now on, we do business with people who do honest business with us. That is radical, and it will produce radical results."

"Blair faces rift with Bush on Middle East" (Philip Webster et al., The Times, 2002/06/26)
"Although Mr Bush will be looking for British support, he looks to be facing isolation at the two-day summit. Not one ally backed his call to replace Mr Arafat yesterday. The response to the speech across the EU and the Arab world was lukewarm at best. "The Palestinian people alone must decide on its legitimate leadership," Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign Minister, said. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, said that unless the outside world continued to deal with Mr Arafat it could create a dangerous power vacuum in the Middle East. He also feared that Mr Arafat could be replaced with someone more radical. There was criticism at home, too. George Mitchell, the former Democrat Senator who developed America’s most recent Middle East peace plan, said: 'There’s a risk that someone from Hamas or Islamic Jihad could succeed Arafat, which would make it much, much worse than the current situation.'"

 

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

News and commentary:

"A Mother's Blessing to Kill and Be Killed" (Daniel Williams, The Washington Post, 2002/06/25)
"Although most parents of the dead are in the dark - or at least feign ignorance - about their offspring's activities, Farahat said she was in on Mohammed's plans from the beginning. She gave him moral support and has the videotape to prove it. The video, recently beamed throughout the Middle East on Arabic-language television, has made Farahat a celebrity. She has taken on the name Um Nidal, Mother of Struggle. Arab reporters flock to her door (when she is not in hiding, for fear of Israeli reprisals). ...
Wusam, the brother who lost three fingers in the grenade blast, shot the video of the last goodbye. It was the beginning of an elaborate propaganda testament. Mother and son, she in a black robe and head scarf, he in an olive fatigue shirt over a black T-shirt, strolled in a walled garden. ...
She kissed him four times on the neck, held her hand over his heart and blessed his mission. ...
Later, an off-camera narrator remarked, "Images like these render words useless." ...
Wusam said he would like to imitate his older brother. Hearing this, Farahat's composure returned. "I love all my children," she said, 'but my feelings for them can never match the feelings I have for my martyred son.'"

"Are we all Palestinians now?" (Josie Appleton, spiked, 2002/06/25)
"Hundreds of Westerners, many of them sympathisers with the anti-globalisation movement, are going to Palestine to stage 'direct action' in support of the Palestinians - keeping checkpoints to Palestinian areas open, or acting as 'human shields' to protect Palestinians under siege. Arms activist Angie Zelter told me that about 400 international activists - from Britain, America, Italy and France - were in the region during her last visit. Others have launched campaigns to boycott Israeli goods. ...
In their various ways, all these groups view the Palestinian issue through the spectrum of their own sentiments of frustration and powerlessness. The Palestinians are identified with because of their status as the ultimate victims. The anti-globalisation movement has long promoted the idea that people and governments are in the grip of all-powerful corporate forces, which control our lives and determine our identity. ...
On the surface, the desire to feel Palestinian seems utterly bizarre. But for the anti-globalisation movement, it makes a certain sense. The Palestinians live out the state that anti-globalists can only talk about. Anti-globalists claim that they are controlled by sinister outside forces, that the odds are stacked against them. Palestinians really are controlled, they really are occupied. For the human shields, the experience lends their sentiments authenticity and substance."

"Bush is rewarding terrorism" (Daniel Pipes, National Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/06/25)
"Instead, the President outlined his vision for a "provisional" Palestinian state and demanded an end to what he called "Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories." Both of these constitute very major benefits to the Palestinians; as such, they represent rewards for suicide bombings, sniper attacks, and the other forms of terrorism. This not only does grave damage to the President's proclaimed war on terrorism but it sends a signal to the Palestinians to expect further rewards for yet more violence. True, there was much in his presentation about the virtues of local elections, independent auditing and market economics, but the only message that will stick is a cruder one: Terrorism pays. ...
A house cannot be built from a blueprint that gets wrong the terrain, the size and shape of the plot, and the building materials. Likewise, a political program cannot work if it is premised on errors. By rewarding terrorism, the Bush speech sets back the current war effort; by misunderstanding the Palestinian-Israeli war, it is rendered unworkable as a serious effort at conflict resolution. In all, it represents a disappointment and a missed opportunity."

"Democracy for Palestinians" (The Wall Street Journal, 2002/06/25)
"Yesterday Mr. Bush said this day is over. "Today the elected Palestinian legislature has no authority, and power is concentrated in the hands of an unaccountable few," he said, adding that, "Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable." In short, if Palestinians want the world to recognize them as a state, then they need to behave like a civilized one. That means democratic institutions, with leaders who win their legitimacy through the ballot box. It means functioning courts, not summary executions of collaborators. ...
We've worried recently that Mr. Bush was losing his way in the Middle East, allowing himself to get bogged down in Palestine instead of focusing on the war on terror. But yesterday's speech lifted him out of that morass and put him firmly on the side of a new and very different Middle East, one with democracy at its core. It's a message we think will have surprising resonance in the Arab world, not least among the people of Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia."

"Jerusalem delighted, Palestinians distraught" (Herb Keinon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/06/25)
"Officials in the Prime Minister's Office said Bush accepted Israel's two primary demands: that there be a total cessation of terrorism, and that the PA undergo a total reformation, before any progress can be made. ...
Minister-without-Portfolio Dan Naveh said the speech represents "the end of the Arafat era and the victory of Israel's position." Palestinian reaction was less enthusiastic, though the official response was cooly receptive. ...
But Mahmoud Zahar, a prominent Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, described Bush's speech as and adaptation of Sharon's attitudes. "We see the speech as Hebrew words that were translated into English and spoken by Bush on behalf of Sharon," Zahar said."

 

Monday, June 24, 2002

News and commentary:

"Detail of Giovanni da Modena's 1415 fresco..."
(artnet)
"Detail of Giovanni da Modena's 1415 fresco in the San Petronio basilica in Bologna, depicting Mohammed in hell, tormented by demons."

"'Islamic plot' to destroy cathedral fresco" (Bruce Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/06/24)
"Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qa'eda plotted to destroy Bologna's 14th century cathedral because it contained a medieval fresco depicting the Prophet Mohammed in hell.
The plan was foiled by Italian paramilitary police according to the Corriere della Sera newspaper. ...
The cathedral, in the city's central Piazza Maggiore, is dedicated to Bologna's patron saint, San Petronio.
The 15th century Mohammed fresco, in the Bolognini chapel, shows the Prophet being set upon by demons. Four years ago, the chapel was occupied by Islamic immigrants during Ramadan in protest at the fresco, before police intervened.
According to the reports, special branch officers with the paramilitary Carabinieri force first heard of the plan in February. The plotters were said to be linked to Algeria's radical Salafist "Group of Prayer and Combat". ...
From the taped conversations in Milan, the authorities interpreted what they believed to be signs of plans to attack the American embassy in Amsterdam, and concrete plans for a terrorist raid on Bologna cathedral."

"Against Multiculturalism" (Kenan Malik, New Humanist, from the Summer 2002 issue)
A must-read critique of multiculturalism: "As the philosopher Richard Rorty observes, the embrace of diversity and the desire for equality are not easily compatible. For Rorty, those whom he calls 'Enlightenment liberals' face a seemingly irresolvable dilemma in their pursuit of both equality and diversity: Their liberalism forces them to call any doubts about human equality a result of irrational bias. Yet their connoisseurship [of diversity] forces them to realise that most of the globe’s inhabitants do not believe in equality, that such a belief is a Western eccentricity. Since they think it would be shockingly ethnocentric to say "So what? We Western liberals do believe in it, and so much the better for us", they are stuck.
Rorty himself, a self-avowed 'postmodern bourgeois liberal', solves the problem by arguing that 'equality' is good for 'us' but not necessarily for 'them'. We can see here how the argument for incommensurability leads not to equal respect for, but to an indifference to, all other cultures.
Equality arises from fact that humans are political creatures and possess a capacity for culture. But the fact that all humans possess a capacity for culture does not mean that all cultures are equal. "We know one of the realest experiences in cultural life", the art critic Robert Hughes has observed, "is that of inequalities between books and musical performances and paintings and other works of art".
Much the same could be said about all cultural and political forms. Some ideas, some technologies, some political systems are better than others. And some societies and some cultures are better than others: more just, more free, more enlightened, and more conducive to human progress. Indeed the very idea of equality is historically specific: the product of the Enlightenment and the political and intellectual revolutions that it unleashed."

"Bush Calls for Removal of Arafat" (Barry Schweid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/06/24)
"President Bush urged the Palestinians Monday to replace Yasser Arafat with leaders "not compromised by terror" and to adopt democratic reforms that could produce an independent state within three years. "Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born," Bush said at the White House. In his long-anticipated speech, Bush said "reform must be more than cosmetic changes or a veiled attempt to preserve the status quo" if the Palestinians are to fulfill their aspirations for a state alongside Israel. ...
"When the Palestinian people have new leaders, new institutions and new security arrangements with their neighbors, the United States of America will support the creation of a Palestinian state, whose borders and certain aspects of its sovereignty will be provisional until resolved as part of a final settlement in the Middle East," Bush said." (See also the full text of speech: "President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership" (The White House, 2002/06/24): "Today, Palestinian authorities are encouraging, not opposing, terrorism. This is unacceptable. And the United States will not support the establishment of a Palestinian state until its leaders engage in a sustained fight against the terrorists and dismantle their infrastructure.")

"Children of Hate" (Jackie Hugi, Maariv/Tal G.in Jerusalem, 2002/06/24)
English translation of an article from Maariv: "Kindergartens in Gaza teach children Jihad against Israel, justification of the Ramallah lynching [in Oct 2000], admiration of the Hizbullah, and the continuation of the Intifada. The children receive these lessons in Israel-hatred at the independently-run education network of the "Islamic Charitable Association", which is responsible for the education of some 5000 children. At the graduation ceremony of one of the most recent kindergarten classes, the children burned the Israeli flag and cried: "In the name of the Shahid (martyr) Mohammed al-dura and the Shahida, the infant Iman al-Haju, we promise to continue with the Jihad, the resistance and the Intifada". One of the girls raised her hands high, hands dipped in red paint, in the manner of one of the perpetrators of the Ramallah lynching, whose hands were covered in blood." (See also: Original article/photo.)

"Islamikazes and virtue" (Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, 2002/06/24)
"Following up from Susan Sontag, Matthew Parris has an article in Saturday's Times of London that gives you a sense of where even mainstream conservative commentary now is in Europe. ...
He concedes that murdering others changes the moral balance somewhat; but he basically sides with Cherie Blair in believing that all Israelis are somehow legitimate targets because of their country's occupation of the West Bank: "I do not think that in his heart an Israeli would deny that, if your enemy has taken land that is rightfully yours and occupied it, then not just your enemy's army but his wife and son and daughter and servants and all who, under his protection, come to live and make their living on the stolen land, are aggressors. By their presence they aid and abet the occupation." As with most European discussions of this issue, there is no historical analysis of how the West Bank came to be occupied, no account of the attempts of the Israelis to come to some sort of peace under Rabin and Barak, in fact, no historical understanding at all of how we come to be where we are. ...
Parris even evokes Christ in his litany of precedents for the Islamikazes! That's how far we've come from the days of last September, when moral clarity about terrorism was sharpest. ...
There seems to me little doubt that Israel and, by implication, America is losing this battle of ideas. Since it is the most important battle since the Cold War, we need to think far more ambitiously about how to wage it." (See also: "Death becomes them, despite what they do" (Matthew Parris, The Times, 2002/06/22))

"Israel plans 'crushing offensive' to fight terror" (Stephen Farrell, The Times, 2002/06/24)
"Israel called up a brigade of reservists and pushed its forces into another West Bank town yesterday, with officials giving warning of a "crushing offensive" in Palestinian areas in response to a renewed wave of suicide attacks. The Israeli Cabinet was also reported to have approved the expulsion of "terrorists" from the country and plans to expel suicide bombers’ families, pending a legal review. Mr Arafat, the Palestinian leader, who is under intense pressure to curb militant groups who killed 31 Israelis last week alone, had rounded up a dozen Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in Gaza. He also placed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual mentor of Hamas, under house arrest in Gaza City early today, a Palestinian security official said."

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Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

"Losing the Enlightenment" (Victor Davis Hanson, OpinionJournal, 2006/11/29)

"Allah’s England?" (Daniel Johnson, Commentary. November 2006)

"'Sex in the Park': The latest doings of the Danish imams" (Henrik Bering, The Weekly Standard, 2006/11/18)

"Narcissism on Stilts" (Harold Evans, New York Sun, 2006/11/16)

"Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss" (Philip Johnston, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/11/10)

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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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