Archived news and commentary: July 1 - 7, 2002

2002/09/23 - 2002/09/29
2002/09/16 - 2002/09/22
2002/09/09 - 2002/09/15
2002/09/02 - 2002/09/08
2002/08/26 - 2002/09/01
2002/08/19 - 2002/08/25
2002/08/12 - 2002/08/18
2002/08/05 - 2002/08/11
2002/07/29 - 2002/08/04
2002/07/22 - 2002/07/28
2002/07/15 - 2002/07/21
2002/07/08 - 2002/07/14
2002/07/01 - 2002/07/07

Sunday, July 7, 2002

News and commentary:

"Fury as academics are sacked for being Israeli" (Charlotte Edwardes, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/07)
"A British academic has sparked worldwide protests after sacking two scholars from her highly respected international journals because they are Israeli. Mona Baker, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), admitted yesterday that she had dismissed Dr Miriam Shlesinger and Prof Gideon Toury because of their nationality. Despite a storm of complaints raised by her action, Prof Baker stood by her decision, telling The Telegraph: "I deplore the Israeli state. Miriam knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation." ... The dismissals raised no public opposition from within British universities. International academics, however, led by Prof Stephen Greenblatt, a world-renowned Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University, have now condemned the decision and called on British academics to stand up for intellectual freedom. ... [Baker] said that her actions were "my interpretation of what a boycott of Israel means". Prof Baker added: 'Many people in Europe have signed a boycott against Israel. Israel has gone beyond just war crimes. It is horrific what is going on there. Many of us would like to talk about it as some kind of Holocaust which the world will eventually wake up to, much too late, of course, as they did with the last one.'"

"More About the LA Terror Assailant" (DEBKAfiles, 2002/07/07)
"However, Sunday, July 7 the influential Arabic London-based Al Hayat followed the original DEBKAfile disclosure of July 5 - that Hadayat was a member of the Egyptian Jihad Islami - and took it a step further. According to the Arabic paper, the Egyptian gunman met Dr. Ayman Zuwahri, the Jihad Islami chief who is Osama bin Laden’s deputy, twice in California – once in 1995 and again in 1998. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, it was at that second encounter that Hadayat was told to leave his job with Mercury and given capital to set up his small limousine firm, so as to take advantage of his access to airport facilities and airline personnel contacts, while at the same time shaking off any watchers. ... From all the foregoing, our counter-terror experts cite Hesham Hadayat as a classical a Qaeda plant. He was positioned at Los Angeles airport in the early 1990s to bide his time for the right moment to carry out a terrorist attack against an El Al flight." (See also: "Hadayat Belonged to Egyptian Jihad, al Qaeda's Operational Arm" (DEBKAfiles, 2002/07/05))

"Why Don't We Listen Anymore?" (Clyde Prestowitz, The Washington Post, 2002/07/07)
"'The way things are going, it will soon be the United States against the world.' That comment, by a top political leader in Kuala Lumpur, was just one of hundreds of expressions of a new and disturbing alienation from America that I heard during a recent swing through 14 Asian, European and Latin American capitals. ... Of course, anti-Americanism is not new, but what I found disturbing after 35 years of visiting these cities was that foreign leaders who have been longtime friends of the United States are the ones voicing dismay. ... The gulf between the American view of the Middle East and that of virtually everyone else could not be wider. ... It is radicalizing attitudes in countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia. Strategically important and traditionally practitioners of a liberal Islam, neither nation has significant economic or political ties to the Middle East. Yet no conversation there can get past the Israeli-Palestinian situation that has caused many, including longtime friends of America, to conclude that the United States is attacking Islam itself."

"US 'to attack Iraq via Jordan'" (Jason Burke et al., The Observer, 2002/07/07)
"American military planners are preparing to use Jordan as a base for an assault on Iraq later this year or early in 2003, The Observer can reveal. Although leaked Pentagon documents appear to show that Turkey, Kuwait and the small Gulf state of Qatar would play key roles, it is believed that Jordan will be the 'jumping-off' point for an attack that could involve up to 250,000 American troops and forces from Britain and other key US allies. ... Iraqi dissidents in Amman have told The Observer that hundreds of American advisers have arrived in Jordan in the past few months. The Amman-based Iraqi National Accord (INA), which contains many of the key military dissidents, has held talks in Washington about plans for a strike on Iraq."

 

Saturday, July 6, 2002

News and commentary:

"Afghan Vice President Qadir Gunned Down" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/07/06)
"Haji Abdul Qadir, one of Afghanistan's three vice presidents, was assassinated outside his office in the center of Kabul on Saturday, Interior Minister Taj Mohammad Wardak said. Qadir, a Pashtun from the Northern Alliance who was also public works minister and governor of Jalalabad, was shot by two gunmen as he drove into his office compound, Kabul police chief Basir Salangi told reporters. ... A veteran warlord from eastern Afghanistan, Qadir played a leading role in the downfall of the Taliban last year. His brother, Mujahideen commander Abdul Haq, was himself executed by the Taliban shortly after the United States launched air strikes on Afghanistan last year. "He was one of the few Pashtuns in the Northern Alliance, so it could have been a kind of Taliban hit, because he is considered a betrayer of the Taliban," one Afghan expert said."

"Allah Mode - France's Islam problem" (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard, from the 2002/07/15 issue)
"What worries people at the most visceral level is the growth of a real Muslim underclass. In his book La France et les beurs, Zair Kedadouche, a former professional soccer player who has become an adviser to the mayor of Paris, refers to the housing projects of suburban Paris as "a Soweto that dare not speak its name." ... Fifty percent of France's unemployed are Muslims, according to Zinedine Houacine, president of the Arab/Muslim Union of Seine St-Denis. Over half of France's prison population is made up of people of "foreign origin," as is 43 percent of its reform-school population. ...
Down the street from Kamel Hamza's offices in La Courneuve is the Union of French Islamic Organizations (UOIF). This is the largest umbrella organization of French Muslims, and it is skewed to the far, far right of national opinion. (At its convention in Le Bourget in March, the UOIF drew 100,000 people to attend presentations on such topics as "Liberated Women, De-Natured Women.") ...
One imam in Roubaix met Lille mayor Martine Aubry on the edge of the Muslim-majority neighborhood where he preaches, declaring it Islamic territory into which Mme. Aubry - the most important minister of labor in modern French history, the early favorite to win France's presidential elections in 2007, and the daughter of former prime minister Jacques Delors - had no authority to venture."

"The Terror In Sudan" (Eric Reeves, The Washington Post, 2002/07/06)
"The number is so shockingly large as to defy casual comprehension. We must exercise both moral and statistical imagination to understand the evil represented: 1.7 million human beings, the most recent U.N. estimate for people in southern Sudan deliberately being denied humanitarian aid by Khartoum's National Islamic Front regime. Such denial of food and medical assistance, given the distressed condition of so many of these people, is nothing less than a terribly crude but equally effective "weapon of mass destruction." ... U.S. commitment alone will not end the crisis in southern Sudan. But unless we start to wield what influence we have with Khartoum, in ways that make it clear the current catastrophic situation will not be allowed to continue, the regime will calculate that its weapon of mass destruction can be deployed without consequence. In the world after Sept. 11, this is unacceptable. If we know that Khartoum is waging daily terror against its own people, and we are serious about terrorism, we cannot confine our concerns to our own shores and our own people."

"Officials Puzzled About Motive of Airport Gunman Who Killed 2" (Rick Lyman and Nick Madigan, The New York Times, 2002/07/06)
"The man officials say opened fire at a crowded El Al airlines ticket counter on Thursday was an Egyptian-born owner of a limousine service who apparently went to the airport heavily armed and determined to kill, managing to take two lives before Israeli security guards shot him to death during a fierce, bloody struggle. ... But a former driver for Mr. Hadayet, Abdul Zahab, 36, said in an interview this afternoon that he often heard his boss express virulent anti-Israeli sentiments. "He had hate for Israel, for sure," said Mr. Zahab, who was born in Syria and worked a month for Mr. Hadayet about two years ago. 'He told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt. He said that the two biggest drug dealers in New York are Israeli.'"

 

Friday, July 5, 2002

News and commentary:

"Hadayat Belonged to Egyptian Jihad, al Qaeda's Operational Arm" (DEBKAfiles, 2002/07/05)
"Hashem Mohamed Hadayat, 41, who gunned down Yakov Aminov, 46, and Vicky Hen, 25 – both from Los Angeles - on the 4th of July at the El Al terminal of Los Angeles, and wounded 7 others, is revealed by DEBKAfile's intelligence and counter-terror sources as a Muslim extremist. During his ten years in the United States, he was a secret operative of the Egyptian Jihad who maintained undercover links to the same Jihad cell in Brooklyn, New York, as the "blind sheikh" Abdul Rahim Rahman and Ramzi Yousef. Both are doing time for perpetrating the first attack on the New York World Trade Center in 1993."

"At least 35 killed in Algerian bombing" (James Drummond, Financial Times, 2002/07/05)
"At least 35 people were killed and 80 more were injured when a massive bomb exploded on Friday in Algeria as locals celebrated the 40th anniversary of the country's independence from France. A second bomb blast on the same day, in a cemetery near Jijel, 200km east of the capital, left one dead, according to the official APS news agency, while witnesses reported a third explosion at a Mediterranean beach that lightly injured a small child. ... No group claimed responsibility, but the attack bore all the hallmarks of an operation mounted by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), one of two militant Islamist groups still operating in Algeria. The explosion occurred just three days after the army chief of staff, Lt-General Mohamed Lamari, declared the government had won its war against Islamic guerrillas."

"Why does everybody suddenly hate America?" (Alice Thompson, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/05)
"It was Independence Day yesterday - the United States was on high alert after September 11. Yet in the 10 months since the terrible salami-slicing of the World Trade Centre, we have become increasingly anti-American. A book published yesterday is called Why Do People Hate America?. Can you imagine a book called Why Do People Hate Arabs? or Why Do People Hate Jews? The author, Ziauddin Sardor, says we should be disgusted by this avaricious country, which spends enough on pet food alone to meet the health and nutrition requirements for the world's poor. British tabloid newspapers can be equally anti-American. The Daily Mirror called on its readers to 'Mourn on the 4th of July - for the victims of George W Bush and his bid to control the world'."

"Misreporting Israel's war" (Joel Himelfarb, The Washington Times, 2002/07/05)
"During Operation Defensive Shield - the five-week-long military campaign Israel launched March 29 in response to a devastating series of suicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists operating out of areas controlled by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority - CNN and other major news organs in the United States consistently portrayed Israel's actions in the most malevolent light possible while ignoring serious misconduct from the Palestinian side. During one CNN broadcast, for example, anchor Carol Lin demanded to know why the United States should press Mr. Arafat to rein in terrorist violence without simultaneously demanding that Israel agree to the creation of a Palestinian state. "What sense does that make?" Mrs. Lin indignantly demanded. ... On MSNBC, Martin Fletcher allowed suicide bombers and their defenders to argue without challenge that suicide bombings were a purely defensive response to unprovoked Israeli attacks. ... On the Fox News Channel, correspondent Geraldo Rivera suggested that Israel was "not fighting terrorism" but "inflicting terrorism" by attacking terrorists operating out of densely populated civilian areas. ... All too often, the only news fit to print seemed to be that which portrayed Israel in the darkest possible light."

"U.S. Plan for Iraq Is Said to Include Attack on 3 Sides" (Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, 2002/07/05)
"An American military planning document calls for air, land and sea-based forces to attack Iraq from three directions - the north, south and west - in a campaign to topple President Saddam Hussein, according to a person familiar with the document. The document envisions tens of thousands of marines and soldiers probably invading from Kuwait. Hundreds of warplanes based in as many as eight countries, possibly including Turkey and Qatar, would unleash a huge air assault against thousands of targets, including airfields, roadways and fiber-optics communications sites. Special operations forces or covert C.I.A. operatives would strike at depots or laboratories storing or manufacturing Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction and the missiles to launch them."

"As Pakistani's Popularity Slides, 'Busharraf' Is a Figure of Ridicule" (Dexter Filkins, The New York Times, 2002/07/05)
"Nine months after joining the Western coalition against terrorism, General Musharraf, 58, is isolated in his own land, increasingly a figure of ridicule and the focus of a growing anti-Western fury that is shared by Islamic militants and the middle class alike. The decline in the general's fortunes represents an abrupt turnaround since last autumn, when he was hailed at home and in the West as a reform-minded Muslim leader in the mold of Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey and one of the general's heroes. ... General Musharraf's dutiful carrying out of Washington's demands is galvanizing a widespread feeling here that he has largely traded away Pakistan's sovereignty to the United States and that Pakistan's new policy toward Kashmir is the latest in a series of humiliations he has endured at America's hand. With F.B.I. agents now joining in raids of suspected hideouts of Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the anti-American sentiment here has reached a peak. Indeed, General Musharraf has become so closely identified with the Americans that he has even earned a nickname on Pakistan's streets: 'Busharraf.'"

"Yasser Arafat is a modern, plastic Pharaoh" (Uri Dan, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/05)
"One more agreement like Oslo would be the end of us. It alone, for the first time after a century, turned Palestinian terrorism into a threat against Israel's very existence. It drowned in the blood of innumerable innocent people all the arguments put forward by Israeli ministers, MKs, generals and incorrigible media chatterboxes that Palestinian terrorism "will not form a strategic threat or endanger Israel's existence." The hundreds of Israeli dead and injured during the last 20 months, our shaky economy, our stunned society all testify to how close Yasser Arafat came to achieving his aim: the undermining of the Jewish state prior to its total destruction. ... Only Yasser Arafat caused the majority of the Jews to awaken from their dream of peace with the Palestinian Authority, unite against the terror and report en masse for reserve duty in order to combat it. Only friend Yasser, around whom Ehud Barak and Shlomo Ben-Ami danced at Camp David two years ago, saved Israel from the dangerous concessions they were ready to make there. Had Arafat hated the Jewish state a little less, his murderers would today be firing on Jews from the walls of Jerusalem that Barak had been prepared to hand over to the Palestinians."

"FBI: Gunman at Los Angeles Airport was Egyptian national" (Anat Cygielman et al., Haaretz, 2002/07/05)
"The FBI said Friday that the gunman who killed two people at the El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles International Airport was a 41-year-old Egyptian national, who arrived in the U.S. in 1992 and lived in Irvine, California. FBI officials also said that the gunman, Hesham Mohammed Hadayet, did not utter words during the attack, contradicting earlier eye-witness reports that the gunman shouted "He took my job" during the shooting. Israeli officials said Thursday that the Los Angeles Airport shooting was a terror attack, but the FBI maintained that there was no reason to believe the incident was an act of terrorism." (See also: "Neighbor's American Flag Angered Gunman" (AP/Fox News, 2002/07/05): "Neighbors said Hadayet lived quietly, but became incensed when an upstairs neighbor hung large American and Marine Corps flags from a balcony above his front door after Sept. 11. The flags remained there Thursday night. "He complained about it to the apartment manager. He thought it was being thrown in his face," said another neighbor, Steve Thompson. ... A bumper sticker on Hadayet's front door said: "Read the Koran." It was later removed.")

Thursday, July 4, 2002

News and commentary:

"Shooting at Los Angeles airport" (BBC News, 2002/07/04)
"At least three people, including an unidentified gunman, have been shot dead at Los Angeles International Airport, American officials have said. News of the shooting - which also left several wounded - came as US cities were on high alert for possible attacks as Americans celebrate Independence Day. The airport shooting took place near the ticket office of the Israeli airline El Al, at the Tom Bradley International Terminal. FBI officials said there was no indication that it was a terrorist attack, but added it was too early to rule anything out. Earlier, the Israeli Transport Minister Ephraim Sneh had said he thought the shooting was a terrorist attack. "When a gunman opens fire on El Al passengers at an international airport, you have to assume it is terrorism," Mr Sneh said."

"The feel of religion" (Al-Ahram Weekly, 2002/07/04)
An interview with the author Karen Armstrong, in which she not only defends suicide bombers but also claims that Europe is charged of anti-Semitism because "the Zionist lobby" wants "to discredit European input in any future peace process": "Armstrong believes that the Israeli occupation is responsible for the kind of violent resistance it meets from the Palestinians. "The resistance will be as ruthless and violent as the occupation is," she says. "Every occupation breeds its own kind of resistance." Armstrong believes that the phenomenon of the Palestinian suicide bombers has more to do with politics and hopelessness than it does with religion. "I don't think people sit at home and read the Qur'an and say, yes, I must go and bomb Israel. This is not how religion works, and I see just absolute hopelessness when people have nothing to lose. Palestinians don't have F-16s, and they don't have tanks. They don't have anything to match Israel's arsenal. They only have their own bodies. Violence of any sort always breads violence, and the occupation itself is an act of extreme violence, domination and oppression. The way things have been moving has been aggressively against the Palestinians." ... Armstrong thinks that charges of anti-Semitism in Europe play into the hands of the Zionist lobby in America because "this will discredit anything Europe says. They say Europe is anti-Semitic because for the first time Europe is becoming aware of the plight of the Palestinians. It is part of a campaign to discredit European input in any future peace process."

"America should celebrate its independence" (Mark Steyn, National Post, 2002/07/04)
"That's where the EU, in their haste to line up at the Eurinals and spray their contempt over Bush, are missing the point. Who is this arrogant cowboy, they sneer, to tell the Palestinians whom they can vote for. Actually, that's not what Bush said. The guys who tell people who they can vote for are the Europeans. Only a couple weeks back, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder told the French to vote for Chirac. In February, the Belgian Foreign Minister threatened sanctions against Italy if they voted for Umberto Bossi's Northern League. When Austria proved less pliable and admitted duly elected members of Joerg Haider's Freedom Party to the coalition government, the EU did, indeed, impose sanctions. But to suggest to Palestinians that things might go better if they elected a non-terrorist leadership is apparently unacceptable."

"Bush rallies US against terror" (BBC News, 2002/07/04)
"US President George W Bush has issued a rallying call to Americans and a warning to the country's enemies at the first Independence Day celebrations since the 11 September terror attacks. It came as people across the United States enjoyed the Fourth of July holiday amid an unprecedented security operation. Mr Bush said the United States had a proud tradition of fighting for freedom dating back 226 years to the declaration of independence. "From that day in 1776, freedom has had a home and freedom has had a defender," he told an audience at Ripley, West Virginia. After praising America's diversity of races and religions, the president turned to the attacks on New York and Washington last September. "In a moment we discovered again that we are a single people - when you strike one American, you strike us all," he said to cheers and applause."

"Fear and loathing at 'The Economist'" (Bret Stephens, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/04)
"Is there a newsweekly smarter, better written, or more globally influential than The Economist? ... For sheer intelligent entertainment, there is nothing like it. ... Straight, sensible and fair, that is, except when it comes to Israel. ... To the editors of The Economist, Israel is America's "often awkward" (June 27) and "pampered ally" (April 6). Israel's defenders, notably Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, are prone to "scatological excess and testicular obsession." Prime Minister Ariel Sharon represents Israel's "uglier face" (October 7, 2000); he is a calculated liar (April 21, 2001), whose modus operandi is "calculated brutality" (March 10, 2001). ... Thus the magazine, citing Amnesty International, alleges in its June 29 issue that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti (whom it describes as "an inspiring resistance leader") is "being tortured" in an Israeli jail. What The Economist does not say is that the Amnesty claim is in turn based on one unverified allegation from the Palestine Media Center. ... It is, of course, always important not to jump to damning conclusions on the strength of a couple of sentences. But as novelist Cynthia Ozick has noted in this context, "It all adds up." ... "This is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause."... "Mr Bush is no Zionist."... "Israel is a superior country with superior people: its talents are above the ordinary. But it has to abate its greed for other people's land." It all adds up."

 

Wednesday, July 3, 2002

News and commentary:

"The trail of political Islam" (Gilles Kepel, openDemocracy, 2003/07/03)
"It seems clear that al-Qaida’s aim was to engineer a very spectacular attack, which would prove that the enemy was weak and not worthy of being feared. The masses they wanted to reach out to, it was hoped, would join in the jihad against the West to liberate themselves. But the problem is that such a closely-knit conspiratorial movement is both the basis of their success and, at the same time, the reason for their ultimate failure. They have no way to reach out to the masses. They have no charities. They do not spread the word. They have no way to deal with grassroots politics. So, they cannot mobilise. ...
This led to a striking phenomenon. I have travelled widely in the Middle East since 11 September, and I have frequently noticed a widespread enthusiasm for Osama bin Laden – the man who ‘stood for us’ – particularly among the youth, in (for example) Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and the Emirates. They were not sure about the massacre of civilians at the World Trade Center; it could not be him, ‘it must have been Mossad, probably’. The suicide attacks against Israel were a different matter, because Israel is a country that has invaded Muslim lands. But what is crucial is that they were not convinced by the ‘violence argument’ as such. They did not go for that.
In my view, this is a sign that in spite of the appearance of strength in the violent events of 11 September, with many people massacred, and the very visible threat to the West of these Islamist movements – in spite of this, the very violence of these movements is not a symbol of strength, but precisely shows that they cannot reach out to the constituencies they need to mobilise, in order to seize power."

"'Become a Muslim warrior'" (Daniel Pipes, The Jerusalem Post/danielpipes.org, 2002/07/03)
'Become a Muslim warrior during the crusades or during an ancient jihad." Thus read the instructions for seventh graders in Islam: A Simulation of Islamic History and Culture, 610-1100, a three-week curriculum produced by Interaction Publishers, Inc. In classrooms across the United States, students who follow its directions find themselves fighting mock battles of jihad against "Christian crusaders" and other assorted "infidels." Upon gaining victory, our mock-Muslim warriors "Praise Allah." ... The Thomas More Law Center is absolutely correct: This simulation blatantly contradicts Supreme Court rulings which permit public schools to teach about religion on condition that they do not promote it. Interaction openly promotes the Islamic faith, contrary to what a public school should do. As Richard Thompson of the center notes, the Byron school district 'crossed way over the constitutional line when it coerced impressionable 12-year-olds to engage in particular religious rituals and worship, simulated or not.'"

"An indictment of the Arab world" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/03)
"Yesterday might very well come to mark a turning point in modern Arab history. For the first time in recent memory, a group of prominent Arab intellectuals held up a mirror to Arab society, courageously offering a precise description of what they saw, warts and all. Not surprisingly, the picture they painted, particularly with regard to political freedom and social development, was both unflattering and deeply disturbing. ... The importance, then, of the Arab intellectuals' report is that it provides a credible opening that will enable others to step forward and speak out for greater democracy in the Arab world, which remains the last bastion of despotism and dictatorship on the globe. For too long, the international community has been willing to look the other way as basic freedoms and human rights were trampled upon throughout North Africa and the Middle East. The men and women who toiled over the report have provided a damning indictment of Arab society, its ills and tribulations. One can only hope that their plea will not go unheard." (See also: "Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies" (Barbara Crossette, The New York Times, 2002/07/02))

"Arafat's despotism has caused us Palestinians enough harm" (Omar Karsou, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/07/03)
Omar Karsou is a Palestinian businessman who recently launched the movement Democracy in Palestine: "These days, the tightly controlled Palestinian media are trying to suppress the fact that many ordinary Palestinians are heartened by the calls for democracy for Palestinians from around the world. In the West Bank and Gaza, people are whispering that there might be an end to the repression and corruption that have characterised the past five years under the Palestinian Authority. ... Our legitimate cause was eventually hijacked by the despotic rule of the Palestinian Authority and by those who want to speak through violence. ... Middle Easterners love to dwell on the past - it is part of our "victimhood game": it seems always to be somebody else's fault. But to forge ahead, we need to go beyond the past. If we are to hope for a better future for the next generation, we need accountability and new strategies. We have to place power into the hands of the true representatives of the majority, while giving the minority an equal platform."

"Free Palestine Can Become a Reality" (Natan Sharansky, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/07/03)
Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident, is deputy prime minister of Israel: "After a three-year transition period, free elections will be held in the areas administered by the PAA. Israel will then negotiate the terms of a permanent peace with the elected representatives of the Palestinian people. The plan outlined above recognizes that in the climate of fear, hatred and death that Arafat has created, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find leaders who dare to work openly for peace. In order to enable such leaders to emerge and allow Palestinians to freely express their views in a democratic climate, a transition period is absolutely necessary. During this period, Palestinians can lay the foundations of democratic life and combat the effects of years of propaganda and incitement. Just as Germany and Japan had to undergo a process of rehabilitation in order to rejoin the international community following World War II, so today Palestinian society must undergo a transformation."

 

Tuesday, July 2, 2002

News and commentary:

"The saga of an Egyptian jihad leader" (Andrew Higgins and Alan Cullison, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/07/02)
An article on how "Ayman al-Zawahri became 'the brains of bin Laden'": "Through apocalyptic violence and a cult of secrecy, Islamic militants torment the West with the specter of a highly disciplined and unshakably united foe. In reality, they have regularly been torn by venomous policy disputes, personal feuds and repeated failures. The Sept. 11 cataclysm both masked and flowed from militant Islam’s truest feature: disarray and an inability to take and hold power in almost any Islamic country since Iran in 1979. Islamists preaching revolution in Egypt and elsewhere were in retreat, not ascendancy. Attacking America, Dr. Zawahri hoped, would reinvigorate and unite their cause. ... "Stop digging problems from the grave," he pleaded in a letter to followers that was stored on the computer in Kabul, dated May 31, 2001, and signed with one of Dr. Zawahri’s aliases. Mr. bin Laden, he said, had a "project" that needed their support. "Our friend has been successful and is seriously preparing for other successful jobs ... Gathering together is a pillar for our success." Four months later, the twin towers of the World Trade Center crumpled. After the attack, the al Qaeda computer was used to store television images of the inferno, kept in a video file. Its name: 'The Big Job.'"

"Prophet of doom" (Peter Nicholas, The Philadelphia Inquirer, 2002/07/02)
"In 1998, University of Pennsylvania political science professor Stephen Gale went to Washington with a warning. He told Federal Aviation Administration security officials that terrorists might seize airplanes and fly them into some of the nation's most prized landmarks. Two he mentioned: the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. No one listened, he said. An FAA security official told him that scenario fell into the category of threats the government is powerless to stop - like meteorites. Gale walked out furious. ... Gale's message isn't a comforting one. He warns that the nation could be paralyzed by attacks on electrical power grids that are guarded by rent-a-cops. He describes Osama bin Laden's network as smart, resourceful and determined to cripple the economy in ways that could make Sept. 11 seem mild. He gives al-Qaeda a 50-50 chance of toppling the United States - reducing the nation to frightened, fragmented territories focused on their own survival."

"Egyptian Government Daily Al-Akhbar Responds to Bush's Address" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 397, 2002/07/02)
Excerpts from an Op-Ed in the Egyptian government daily Al-Akhbar: "The next day, the Al-Akhbar editorial, titled, "No one would support America if the events of September 11 recurred," read: 'Is America weak to such an extent?!... America, with all the might of [its] power of oppression, locks horns with the besieged Yasser Arafat, who wants to remove the blockade from the Palestinian people and himself! The government of America... talks only of Yasser Arafat, and demands his removal, as if it was he who was derailing the peace process! ... America thinks it is distant from this danger, but it would seem that it has forgotten – or pretends it has forgotten – September 11, 2001, which exposed its weakness! It is not out of [reach] of anyone! And America, under Bush's leadership, is close to no one's heart. For this reason, it is noticeable that the international sympathy following the events of September 11 is dissipating! America ... has allocated $90 million to survey international public opinion regarding America. It knows that no one is sympathetic towards her or supports her except for Israel and Sharon – a fact that evokes ridicule, because America, Israel, and Sharon are one. There is no difference. No difference.'"

"Al Qaeda thriving in Pakistani Kashmir" (Philip Smucker, The Christian Science Monitor, 2002/07/02)
"A week-long investigation uncovered evidence that Al Qaeda and an array of militant affiliate groups are prospering inside Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, with the tacit approval of Pakistani intelligence. ... Mohammad Muslim, the regional chief of Pakistan's powerful Interservices Intelligence (ISI) agency, says there are no Al Qaeda cells operating inside Kashmir. But he bitterly denounces what he calls the US government's "war against Islam." "The US government destroyed the World Trade Center so that it would have an excuse to destroy Afghanistan," he says, drinking tea in the office of the regional police chief, who nods in full agreement. "After that, the US military killed tens of thousands of women and children in Afghanistan." ... In the '90s the ISI paid for Kashmiri guerrilla training camps to be moved into Afghanistan with the help of groups like Harakat ul Mujahideen. Now, these same jihad fighters are flocking back to Kashmir. ... Shabir Ahmed Madani, an armed activist with Harakat ul Mujahideen, whose own mountain redoubt is reached by a small cable car that swings precariously across an immense gorge, says his organization has played a vital role in moving thousands of Afghan and Arab fighters across northern Pakistan and into Kashmir."

"Study Warns of Stagnation in Arab Societies" (Barbara Crossette, The New York Times, 2002/07/02)
"A blunt new report by Arab intellectuals commissioned by the United Nations warns that Arab societies are being crippled by a lack of political freedom, the repression of women and an isolation from the world of ideas that stifles creativity. The survey, the Arab Human Development Report 2002, will be released today in Cairo. ... Per capita income growth has shrunk in the last 20 years to a level just above that of sub-Saharan Africa. Productivity is declining. Research and development are weak or nonexistent. Science and technology are dormant. Intellectuals flee a stultifying - if not repressive - political and social environment, it says. Arab women, the report found, are almost universally denied advancement. Half of them still cannot read or write. The maternal mortality rate is double that of Latin America and four times that of East Asia. ... The authors also describe a "severe shortage" of new writing and a dearth of translations of works from outside. ... In the 1,000 years since the reign of the Caliph Mamoun, it concludes, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain translates in just one year." (See also: "Arab Human Development Report" (UNDP, 2002/07/02))

"Fatah calls for attacks on US, Zionist targets" (Margot Dudkevitch and Lamia Lahoud, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/07/02)
"Groups affiliated with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement yesterday called upon all Palestinian organizations, including the Islamic movements, to attack Zionist and American targets everywhere in response to US efforts "to remove the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian people." Fatah's military wing, al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, issued a statement yesterday in which it threatened "to strike at Zionist and American interests and installations" in Israel and throughout the world if the United States maintains its opposition to Arafat. The statement warned US President George W. Bush that it will return to the type of fedayeen operations that prevailed in 1970s if what they called the conspiracy against Arafat continued."

 

Monday, July 1, 2002

News and commentary:

"'Scores killed' in US Afghan raid" (BBC News, 2002/07/01)
"Reports from Afghanistan say the United States air force has mistakenly bombed a village wedding party, killing many of the participants. A witness from the village, in Uruzgan province, told the BBC the overnight raid left scores of people - many of them women - dead. Afghan officials in the capital, Kabul, put the death toll at at least 30, although other reports say the figure is much higher. In Washington, a military spokesman said a coalition air reconnaissance patrol flying in the area had reported coming under anti-aircraft artillery fire. The Pentagon said other coalition aircraft in the patrol retaliated and acknowledged there had been an error. "At least one bomb was errant. We don't know where it fell," he said. An AC-130 gunship, a B-52 bomber and other aircraft were involved in the incident."

"No Change" (Michael Rubin, The New Republic, 2002/07/01)
"In the past two years, Iran has sharply escalated her multifaceted support for terrorism and her violent opposition to the Middle East peace process. ... In a December 15, 2000 sermon, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared, "The cancerous tumor called Israel must be uprooted from the region." One month later, he elaborated, "The perpetual aim of Iran is the obliteration of Israel." ... President Muhammad Khatami, often considered a reformist, is no less vehement in his calls for Israel's destruction. In a televised October 2000 address, Khatami declared, 'In the Koran, God commanded to kill the wicked and those who do not see the rights of the oppressed and to murder them. Today we must all hear the sound of the cries of our oppressed brethren in Palestine and mobilize to protect them… If we abide by the Koran, all of us should mobilize to kill.'"

"Bin Laden Not in Pakistan, Musharraf Says" (Reuters/Yahoo! News, 2002/07/01)
"Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Monday he thought al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was probably not alive, but if he was he could not be in Pakistan. "If he was alive, he obviously would be moving with a large entourage of local people and therefore they would like to have a safe haven, a large area for themselves," Musharraf told a news conference. "He cannot be hiding in one small corner of Pakistan in the border areas, and his remaining there without being found is also impossible." "Therefore I think Osama bin Laden cannot possibly be in Pakistan if he is alive," he said. "I still doubt if he is alive, but if he is alive he cannot be in Pakistan." ... Time magazine reported in editions out on Monday that bin Laden was alive as of late December, which means he survived a U.S. assault on caves in Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan. Evidence the Saudi-born militant was alive came in the form of a letter he wrote to his operations chief, Abu Zubaydah, which was found among the papers that Zubaydah was carrying when he was arrested in Pakistan in March, Time reported. The hand-written note urges Zubaydah to continue fighting the United States even if something happens to bin Laden, Time reported citing a source who has seen a French intelligence analysis of it."

"Our Enemies, the Saudis" (Victor Davis Hanson, Commentary, from the July/August 2002 issue)
"But the point in any attempt to change our relationship is not so much to punish the Saudis for past hostility and duplicity as to create a landscape for real revolution in the Middle East - a reordering that might in its turn prevent a future clash of civilizations. ... Only by seeking to spark disequilibrium, if not outright chaos, do we stand a chance of ridding the world of the likes of bin Laden, Arafat, and Saddam Hussein. Just as a reconstituted Afghanistan eliminated the satanic Taliban and turned the region’s worst regime into a government with real potential, so too a new Iraq might start the fall of dominoes in the Gulf that could wipe away the entire foul nest behind September 11. Even should fundamental changes go wrong in Saudi Arabia, the worst that could happen would not be much worse than what we have now - thousands of our citizens dead, a crater in New York, millions put out of work, Israelis blown up weekly, and a half-billion people in the Arab world unfree, hungry, illiterate, and informed by the perpetrators of evil that America and Israel are at fault. As a student said to me shortly after September 11, 'What are we afraid of? Are they going to blow up the World Trade Center with thousands in it?'"

"Jihad and Human Rights Today" (Bat Ye'or, National Review, 2002/07/01)
"Tragically, jihad ideology will not disappear soon. It is shaping the minds of a generation of young Muslims in many countries. Jihad ideology is a well-constructed system, created after the death of the prophet Mohammed. It has remained alive and well since then - except under secularized Muslim governments like that of Turkey, after the Kemalist revolution. It is delusional and dangerous to maintain that this ideology is rooted in social deprivation, backwardness, injustice, or despair. Moreover, paying subsidies to suspend global jihad terrorism is tantamount to paying a tribute to terrorist states, and buying one's own peace and security as temporarily ransomed privileges - instead of living by the principles of universal human rights, which proclaim the inviolability of every human being. Societies that pay a tribute to survive are destined to disappear."

"The Cold War and the War Against Terror" (Jamie Glazov, FrontPageMagazine, 2002/07/01)
FrontPageMagazine invited Vladimir Bukovsky, Daniel Pipes, Paul Hollander and Michael Ledeen to "compare the threat of radical Islam to that of the Soviet empire": "Bukovsky: I think we have to keep focused on the psychotic state of the minds of Western leftwing intellectuals. Even if they are in power as they are today, they still view themselves as an opposition, as underdogs, as victims. Second, although they crave absolute power, they do not accept any responsibility for exercising it. You can say, if you wish, that it is self-destructive tendency, but only from an objective viewpoint. Thus, objectively, their theories and actions usually lead to destruction of the society. They just refuse to see themselves as a part of it. This is why Western leftist intellectuals represented a great threat to the West in the face of the Soviet threat, and why they represent such a great threat to the West right now in the face of Islamic extremism."

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

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Jacques Barzun

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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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