Archived news and commentary: August 5 - 11, 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, August 11, 2002

News and commentary:

"Memo to Europe: Grow up on Iraq" (Andrew Sullivan, The Sunday Times/andrewsullivan.com, 2002/08/11)
"The experience of the EU - the way in which ancient enemies like France and Germany now cooperate in a conflict-free, post-nationalist arena - is regarded as morally and strategically superior to America's still-tenacious defense of sovereignty and millitary force. What this analysis misses, of course, is a little history. The only reason the E.U. can exist at all is because American military force defeated Nazi Germany. The only reason why all of Germany is now included in the E.U. is because American military force defeated the Soviet Union. Europhiles mistake the fruits of realpolitik with its abolition. And they don't realize that the best and only guarantor of European peace and integration - now threatened from within and without by Islamist terror - is American force again. Instead of cavilling at such intervention, these Europeans should be praying for it - in order to save their own political achievement."

"How Al Qaeda Slipped Away" (Rod Nordland et al., Newsweek, from the 2002/08/19 issue)
Newsweek's "inside story of Al Qaeda's mass escape": "Newsweek has interviewed two sources who gave plausible accounts of having seen bin Laden. One is a professional guide and former Taliban official, whose story seems to fit the known facts. He says he led bin Laden and an entourage of 28 people on horseback out of Tora Bora around the time of the supposed radio message. ... The second source, a Taliban soldier named Ali Mohammad, 26, who has no connection to the guide and was interviewed separately, tells of seeing bin Laden at Shahikot. In mid-February, Ali's unit was ordered to prepare for an American attack. As the fighters took up fighting positions, Ali spotted a tall man walking down the rocky mountainside from Chilam Kass peak, accompanied by 15 armed security men. When he got closer, Ali recognized the tall, lanky man as bin Laden. The Qaeda leader spoke briefly to the guerrillas and shook hands with them. "Be honest with each other and be true and sincere with your commander and keep your morale and spirits high," Ali recalls his saying. 'Take care of the injured and be confident that God will award you on Judgment Day.'"

"Iran Is Said To Give Up Al Qaeda Members" (Peter Finn, The Washington Post, 2002/08/11)
"Iran has quietly detained and expelled to Saudi Arabia 16 al Qaeda fighters who sought refuge in the country after fleeing neighboring Afghanistan, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud Faisal, said today. Iranian authorities handed over the al Qaeda fugitives, all Saudis, knowing that whatever intelligence was obtained from them during interrogation in Saudi Arabia would be passed on to the United States for use in the war against terrorism, Saud said. ... The expulsion reversed long-standing Iranian claims that there were no al Qaeda operatives in its territory. The detainees are in Saudi Arabia, but officials declined to say if they are still incarcerated."

"Who will save Iraq?" (Nick Cohen, The Observer, 2002/08/11)
"The bad faith of the anti-war movement is revealed in what it doesn't say. For all its apparent self-confidence, the Left, reinforced by a small army of bishops, mullahs and retired generals, lacks the nerve to state that the consequence of peace is the ruin of the hopes of Iraqi democrats. The evasion is on a Himalayan scale. ... The opponents of Saddam therefore include many brave men and women who are paying dearly to uphold the values of at least a part of the liberal-Left. They champion human rights and the protection of the Kurdish minority. Yet when they ask their natural allies to pressure Blair into supporting a democratic Iraq they are met with indifference or the preposterous slander that they are the stooges of the CIA. ... There are honourable grounds for upholding the authority of the United Nations and opposing American global domination. What is dishonourable - indeed insufferable - is the pretence of everyone from Trots to archbishops that their animating concern is the sufferings of the peoples of Iraq."

"Arabs Ignore Palestinians' Plight" (Marc Ginsberg, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/11)
"To those who genuinely care about the fate of the Palestinian people it is surely a disgrace that the U.N. has played into the hands of Arab governments and the Palestinian Authority. Insisting that the refugee camps remain temporary shelters ensures that Arafat's demands for the right of return are not undermined. It has been an exercise of the most cynical sort - using those whose cause is championed as political pawns. Any reasonable attempts to develop long-range rehabilitation programs or to improve the conditions of these camps have been consistently thwarted by the Arab League and the Palestinian Authority. It is not by accident that the infamous Jenin refugee camp - the site of so much recent controversy - gave birth to at least 28 suicide bombers. The inhumanness of these camps and the endless, hopeless exile create fertile recruiting grounds for extremist groups."

"The Mideast Threat That's Hard to Define" (Youssef M. Ibrahim, The Washington Post Outlook, 2002/08/11)
Ibrahim thinks that the "Sept. 11 attacks and their aftermath in Afghanistan may signal the peak of Wahabi influence, and a turning point in Arab attitudes toward such extremists": "The attack on the United States by al Qaeda may spell the beginning of the end of this brand of radical Islamic extremism, as people in the region deal with the harm Wahabi disciple Osama bin Laden has done to the reputation and welfare of Muslims around the world. The entire Saudi religious establishment is under pressure from both the royal family and the Saudi public. For the first time, artists, politicians and pundits are openly criticizing the clergy in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Malaysia and throughout the world of Islam. The historic alliance between the Sauds and Wahabis may be coming apart - unless we in the United States intervene with unreasonable demands for instant reforms couched in barely disguised racial slurs. Instant anything in Saudi Arabia or the conservative world of Islam is impossible."

"A complimentary double standard" (Yair Sheleg, Haaretz, 2002/08/11)
Professor Adi Ophir, "an instructor in philosophy at Tel Aviv University and founder/editor of Theory and Criticism," thinks Israel "deserve much more severe steps" than Milosevic' regime in former Yugoslavia: "If Europe were free of the shadow of anti-Semitism, and could stand up to Israel the way it did to Yugoslavia in the 1990s, I'm sure the criticism, and the practical steps, would be much more severe; and justifiably so, since we deserve much more severe steps. Maybe not NATO bombings, though if things go on as they are, perhaps that will come, but steps taken, for example, against South Africa - sanctions and pressure of all kind." Nonetheless, don't the leftists who are critical of Israel have to fight the anti-Semitism that Ophir admits exists? 'When anti-Semitism is exploited to silence criticism, I can understand ignoring it, because then you are playing the game of silencing the critics.'" (See also: "The charges against Milosevic" (BBC News, 2002/02/08), for a survey of the indictments against him: "It cites the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, where 'almost all captured Bosnian Muslim men and boys, altogether several thousands, were executed at the places where they had been captured or at sites to which they had been transported for execution.'")

"Al-Qa'eda regrouping to attack American forces in Afghanistan" (Scott Baldauf, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/11)
"Al-Qa'eda has established two main bases inside Pakistan and is preparing for a big strike on Afghanistan, Kabul's military intelligence officials said last week. ... Al-Qa'eda has regrouped, together with the Taliban, Kashmiri militants, and other radical Islamic parties," said Brig Rahmatullah Rawand, the military intelligence chief in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan. "They are just waiting for the command to start operations. "Right now, they are trying to find anti-aircraft missiles capable of hitting America's B-52 bombers." He believed that they might find them in China, and then "bring them here". ... Afghan intelligence officials said their reports were compiled last week after their spies infiltrated the two al-Qa'eda camps in Pakistan. The report said China might be involved in supporting the camps, either by tacitly allowing Islamic radicals in western China to cross into Pakistan to join al-Qa'eda, or by offering to provide anti-aircraft missiles."

 

Saturday, August 10, 2002

News and commentary:

"Terror threat overblown, says expert" (Christian Bourge, UPI, 2002/08/10)
According to Roger Congleton "the statistical reality" makes the September 11 attacks comparable to highway accidents: "'I basically think we are really overreacting to this in a fairly large way,' said George Mason University economist Roger Congleton. "I think it would be useful for the press and the government to be reminded that the risks are not as gigantic as we seem to have been encouraged to believe over the last year." ... Congleton says that the risks of dying in more ordinary crimes or accidents - being run over by a car, killed in the traffic accident while driving, or even being murdered - are much higher than those of being killed in a terrorist act. ... Congleton says the drama of the Sept. 11 attacks makes the overreaction understandable but that the statistical reality of the terror threat should be the key to allocating resources. "When you have 3,000 people killed at once it is a very shocking and trying event, but that many people were killed in highway accidents in September 2001," said Congleton. 'This is no less shocking for the people who lost loved ones.'" (Note: Rabbi Lerner used the same analogy to downplay the threat of suicide bombings - "Though we at The Tikkun Community oppose the outrageous and disgusting acts of terror against Israelis, we know that the actual level of violence is small compared to the number of Israelis who die each year in automobile accidents." ("Radical Jewish Left reaches new low in morality - adopts 'traffic accident' standard - murder of 149 termed 'almost nonexistent terror'" (IMRA, 2002/04/05))

"Hamas bomber 'told girl to get off doomed bus'" (Stephen Farrell, The Times, 2002/08/10)
"She will for ever be the girl who said nothing. For days Israel has been transfixed by the saga of the young Israeli-Arab woman who, when warned by a suicide bomber that "something bad" was about to happen to the bus she was on, simply stepped off the doomed vehicle and made no effort to warn other passengers or the police. Yassra Bakhri, it appears, paused only to drag her friend Samia Assadi along with her. ... Hisham Ghanem, the taxi driver who picked the girls up after they fled the bus, said that aspects of their behaviour during the 20-minute ride before the explosion seemed unimportant at the time, but later acquired more significance. Mr Ghanem, 26, and his sister Hanan said Ms Bakhri and Ms Assadi laughing and constantly glancing at the bus in the cab's rear view mirrors, becoming nervous only when it came too close. "When I got alongside it at one junction one of them screamed 'Yamma' (mother) said Mr Ghanem. 'At the next stop the bus was behind us and as it approached they started saying 'Yalla, yalla (hurry, hurry)'.'" (See also: "The road to irredentism" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/09) and "Israeli Arab nursing student charged for failure to warn of bus bombing" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/07))

"Palestinians Whoop It Up" (Michael B. Oren, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/10)
"In Gaza last week, crowds of children reveled and sang while adults showered them with candies. The cause for celebration: the cold-blooded murder of at least seven people - five of them Americans - and the maiming of 80 more by a terrorist bomb on the campus of Jerusalem's Hebrew University. The joyful response of so many to the death, suffering and mutilation of students and university workers raises pointed questions about the health of Palestinian society, both mental and moral. It makes many Israelis ask whether, even if a cease-fire is reached and negotiations someday resume, peace with the Palestinians is possible. There is, of course, nothing new about Palestinians applauding terror. During the Gulf War in 1991, they danced on rooftops in praise of Iraqi scud missiles raining on Israeli neighborhoods. Again, in the mid-1990s, after bus bombs in Israel killed dozens - one of them was my sister-in-law - an estimated 70,000 Palestinians filled a Gaza stadium to cheer a re-enactment of the massacre."

"Tales from the metal detector" (Mark Steyn, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/10)
"I wasn't surprised to hear that airport security at Los Angeles had seized from a British granny the 2in toy rifle of a GI Joe action doll she'd bought for her grandson. Nor by the news that a Long Island woman boarding at JFK had been made to drink bottles of her own breast milk in front of other passengers to prove it wasn't a dangerous liquid. ... Whether these two suspects are indeed the notorious Osama bin Lactate and Mullah Old Ma, it's too early to say, but we do know that it would have been all too easy to insert a toy miniature rifle in the top of the rubber nipple of a baby bottle, give it a surreptitious squeeze and send the plastic projectile flying into the aisle to give the stewardess a nasty nick in her pantyhose. The day that happens you'll know we're not doing our job."

"Schools of Hatred" (The Times, 2002/08/10)
"The murder of three Pakistani nurses at a missionary school by assailants hurling grenades has sent a wave of fear and revulsion throughout Pakistan. ... But it is all too clear that, for the fanatics emerging from the seminaries and mosques under the control of obscurantist mullahs, Christians of any race and Westerners are legitimate targets. ... What the West has shockingly failed to acknowledge is that the funds to support some of the most fanatical and anti-Western seminaries have often come from the West. Rich Muslims in Europe, and especially in Britain, have smugly discharged their religious duty to support charity by sending millions of pounds to addresses that are often fronts for the training of terrorists. And until the West stops the flow of funds to these distant centres of terrorist indoctrination, Mr Musharraf's war against fanaticism will fail. More Christians will be murdered, more hatred engendered and more terrorists strengthened in their determination to strike at the West." (See also: "Grenades Kill at Church in Pakistan" (Munir Ahmad, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/09))

 

Friday, August 9, 2002

News and commentary:

"Grenades Kill at Church in Pakistan" (Munir Ahmad, AP/Yahoo! News, 2002/08/09)
"Assailants hurled grenades at worshippers leaving church Friday, killing three Pakistani women and reinforcing fears that Islamic militants are targeting Christians and Westerners in Pakistan in retaliation for the government's support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Investigators said they suspected the attackers were from the same cell of militants behind an assault Monday at a school for children of Christian missionaries in Murree, outside the capital. ... In Friday's attack, three men, one of them brandishing a pistol, ran through the front gate of a Presbyterian-supported hospital in Taxila, 25 miles west of Islamabad. They locked two watchmen in a guard booth and then hurled grenades at women leaving the church on the hospital grounds. Three Pakistani nurses were killed, and at least 25 other people were wounded, half of them seriously."

"Islam, Taboo, and Dialogue" (Bat Ye'or, National Review, 2002/08/09)
"In the current political climate, it is tempting to maintain the taboos on those historical subjects that could be easily exploited by xenophobes. One such taboo is dhimmitude, which resulted when Christians and Jews (dhimmis), in addition to other non-Muslim, indigenous peoples, were conquered by jihad wars, and henceforth "tolerated" and "protected" as subjects of Islam. ... The main principles of dhimmitude are: (1) the inequality of rights in all domains between Muslims and dhimmis; (2) the social and economic discrimination against the dhimmis; (3) the degradation and vulnerability of the dhimmis. ... The history of dhimmitude, so long repressed by our collective cowardice, is unfolding around us, before our very eyes. It is claiming victims in Algeria, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, the Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Pakistan, Kashmir, the Philippines, Indonesia, and elsewhere. It even forms part of our daily lives, governed by antiterrorist measures in the United States, Europe, and now worldwide, and it wreaks havoc among the Muslim elites, responsible for having concealed it. This forbidden history, banished from memory, is casting its dark shadow over the world's future. Dhimmitude must be discussed in academia, the media, and elsewhere, without apology. This frank discussion will allow Muslim intellectuals to rethink their whole relationship with the People of the Bible - and non-Muslims in general - without renouncing their faith, and uniting all peoples in the fight against tyrannical oppression and dehumanization. In the absence of such genuine interfaith dialogue, I fear the 21st century will become a bloodbath, in which civilizations will continue to collide."

"The Palestinians' Lost Marshall Plans" (Patrick Clawson, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/09)
An interesting article, comparing Palestinian income and aid with other Arab states: "According to the World Development Indicators 2002, in 2000, [West Bank and Gaza] income per person was $1,660. That was higher than in such middle-income Arab countries as Algeria ($1,580) or Egypt ($1,490). ... As the comparison above shows, the Palestinians pre-intifada were solidly middle-class in the Arab world: their income was above the average for all Arabs. With the disastrous violence of the last two years, Palestinians have slipped down to become lower-middle-class among the Arabs somewhere below Morocco but above Syria. This reality is bleak, but nothing like the end-of-the-world rhetoric used by some supporters of the Palestinians. ... Even after the terrible blows they have brought upon their economy, the Palestinians remain head and shoulders above the poor Arab states with average incomes below $400 a year, namely Yemen ($370), Sudan ($310), and the fringe Arab League members Mauritania, Somalia, and Comoros. In their desperate condition of 2002, Palestinian income remains more than three times higher than that of Arabs in these poor countries."

"UN Report on Jenin" (HonestReporting, 2002/08/09)
A survey of how news agencies are retrospecting on their claims of a "massacre" in Jenin in the light of the UN Report which dismissed those claims: "To his credit, Phil Reeves of The Independent comes clean in a report entitled: "Even journalists have to admit they're wrong sometimes." Reeves admits that his report "was highly personalized" and writes: "It was clear that the debate over the awful events in Jenin four months ago is still dominated by whether there was a massacre, even though it has long been obvious that one did not occur." ... Peter Cave of Australia's ABC still insists there was a massacre in Jenin. Here's some snippets from a transcript: 'I personally saw 30 Palestinian corpses at the hospital on April the 20th, and with dozens of other foreign reporters, watched them being buried at a mass grave just up the road from the hospital... Just as in Tiananmen Square, the power of the gun and the tank ensured there was no proper body count or accounting. Just as happened in Tiananmen Square, the uninformed and those with their own agenda, are now claiming there was no massacre. There was a massacre, a considerable number of human beings were indiscriminately and unnecessarily slaughtered...'" (See also: "Even journalists have to admit they're wrong sometimes" (Phil Reeves, The Independent, 2002/08/03) and "UN report on Jenin massacre flawed" (ABC News Online, 2002/08/04))

"Lunch with the FT: Bernard Lewis" (Michael Steinberger, Financial Times, 2002/08/09)
An interview with Bernard Lewis, one of the world's preeminent experts on the Middle East: "'Imagine,' says Lewis, "if the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation obtained total control of Texas and had at its disposal all the oil revenues, and used this money to establish a network of well-endowed schools and colleges all over Christendom peddling their particular brand of Christianity. This is what the Saudis have done with Wahhabism. The oil money has enabled them to spread this fanatical, destructive form of Islam all over the Muslim world and among Muslims in the west. Without oil and the creation of the Saudi kingdom, Wahhabism would have remained a lunatic fringe in a marginal country."

"Flunking with Flying Colors" (Victor Davis Hanson, National Review, 2002/08/09)
"For two decades Arab countries hated Israel not because the West Bank peoples suffered under Jordanian control, but only because there were any Jews at all in the new state of Israel. Unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon did not bring praise from Hamas and Hezbollah, but contempt. Offers to turn back up to 97 percent of the West Bank were seen as foolish when an intifada could get 100 percent - or more. Iraqi guided missiles raining down on Tel Aviv disappointed cheering Palestinians only because they were not laced with germs or nerve gas. All this the world ignores, as it seeks in vain to fabricate a holocaust in Jenin. For these reasons and more, the current prejudices of the United Nations and the equivocation of the Europeans, who should know better, are nauseating - and in the end simply shameful. In the latter case, the sanctimonious hedging indeed finally becomes too much and is abjectly reprehensible: Europe, after all, is the great, eternal cemetery of the Jewish people, where six million were incinerated through the evil of the Nazis and the complicity of millions of timid and opportunistic other Europeans."

"Islamist Leaders in London Interviewed" (MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series - No. 410, 2002/08/09)
Translations of two highly interesting interviews with "two Islamist leaders living in London: Sheikh Abu Hamza the Egyptian, imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque and head of the Ansar Al-Shari'ah organization, and Sheikh Omar Bakri, originally from Syria, who established and heads the Islamic Religious Court in London and also heads the Al-Muhajiroun Islamist organization." Here's an excerpt from the interview with Omar Bakri:
"Bakri: "Allah willing, we will transform the West into Dar Al-Islam [that is, a region under Islamic rule] by means of invasion from without. If an Islamic state arises and invades [the West] we will be its army and its soldiers from within. If not, [we will change the West] through ideological invasion from here, without war and killing." ...
Q: "You are charged with links to organizations towards which Britain is hostile and which it sees as enemies. You preach to your pupils to see the Taliban movement and Osama bin Laden as the group which [according to Muslim tradition] will be saved [on Judgment Day]."
Bakri: 'As long as my words do not become actions, they do no harm! Here, the law does not punish you for words, as long as there is no proof you have carried out actions. In such a case you are still on the margins of the law, and they cannot punish you. If they want to punish you, they must present evidence against you, otherwise their laws will be in a state of internal contradiction. Then this will serve Islam, because we will be able to claim that the capitalist camp has failed in the face of the Islamic camp in actualizing the things in which it believes, like freedom of expression.'" (Note: Abu Hamza puts forth a conspiracy theory regarding the September 11 terror attacks - "It turned out that Al-Qa'ida was not connected to the events. From an engineer's standpoint, I can prove that these buildings did not fall just like that because of a fire... Anyone who knows the properties of these buildings knows that Al-Qa'ida didn't do it. These buildings were blown up from within...")

"Hollywood goes La-La" (Diane West, The Times, 2002/08/09)
West notes that the Islamic jihadists in Tom Clancy's novel "Sum of All Fears" have turned into politically correct South African neo-Nazis in the Hollywood movie: "But La-La Land is not alone in ducking reality. Indeed, historians may look back on our age (assuming, of course, there is much of a future from which to look back on any age) as one rivaling, if not surpassing the Victorian era of chaperones, draped piano legs and - imagine - concealed bra straps for reticence and euphemistic absurdity. From the president, to the press, to the man on the street, nobody will bring himself to mouth the words that accurately describe the pernicious threat we face now and for the foreseeable future. It is not, as widely and incessantly reported, the threat of "terrorism" or "terror" - these are only tactics. And it is not the threat of generic "terrorists." On the contrary, the threat that has diminished all our lives is the specific threat of Islamic jihad, and it is posed by what should very specifically be called Islamic jihadists. ... Having cloaked Islamic jihadists in euphemism out of deference to non-jihadist Islamics, we have not only given the enemy tactical cover, we have allowed them to remain camouflaged within Islam itself. That is, by purposefully averting our gaze from the Koranically inspired ideology of the jihadists, we have also failed to focus non-jihadist Islam on a task no one in the West can perform: namely, reforming Islam."

"What Do Iraqis Think About Life After Hussein?" (Michael Rubin, The New York Times, 2002/08/09)
"In all the debate, however, one thing is forgotten: What the Iraqis themselves say about their post-Saddam Hussein future. ... The Iraqis I know would shed few tears if Saddam Hussein were to go. As one university professor in Sulaimaniya, in northeast Iraq, asked me, 'Why do people in the West think we want to live under Saddam any more than they would?'"

"Steps on the way to ousting Saddam from Iraq" (Henry Kissinger, HoustonChronicle, 2002/08/09)
"In an eloquent address in June at West Point, President Bush stressed that new weapons of mass destruction no longer permit America the luxury of waiting for an attack, that we must "be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty." ... The new approach is revolutionary. Regime change as a goal for military intervention challenges the international system established by the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which, after the carnage of the religious wars, established the principle of nonintervention in the domestic affairs of other states. And the notion of justified pre-emption runs counter to modern international law, which sanctions the use of force in self-defense only against actual, not potential, threats. ... The administration should be prepared to undertake a national debate because the case for removing Iraq's capacity of mass destruction is extremely strong. The international regimen following the Treaty of Westphalia was based on the concept of an impermeable nation-state and a limited military technology which generally permitted a nation to run the risk of awaiting an unambiguous challenge. But the terrorist threat transcends the nation-state; it derives in large part from transnational groups that, if they acquire weapons of mass destruction, could inflict catastrophic, even irretrievable, damage." (Note: Thanks to Barry Kaplovitz for the pointer.)

"U.S. Is Blessed To Ponder Terror at Leisure" (Daniel Henninger, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/09)
"With the first anniversary of September 11 upon us, one may hope that this country doesn't need to have another several thousand or so Americans die on U.S. soil to understand that the target of terrorism is the rest of us. ... This is not the mood of a country whose people are under mortal threat. This is the mood of a country having a nice, interesting policy debate. ... Without suicide bombers dismembering some of us at any moment in Times Square, Lafayette Park or the Yale University cafeteria, our statesmen are able to ponder at leisure their decisions about how, or whether, to fight. But maybe, in the shadow of the next September 11, a few frank things need to be said: One, these people are trying to kill us."

"Yasser Arafat: Nazi trained" (David N. Bossie, The Washington Times, 2002/08/09)
"Since he was a teen-ager in the 1940s, the co-winner of the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize has ordered the murder of thousands of civilians while waging war against the Jews. Mr. Arafat's mentor, Haj Amin Al Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, indoctrinated him with hatred toward Israel. ... During World War II, the mufti journeyed to Nazi Germany where he personally begged Adolf Hitler to invade British-ruled Palestine and rid it of Jews. The mufti received sympathy, but no help, from Hitler. Nevertheless, he broadcast radio tirades approving Hitler's "final solution" of the Jewish problem. ... Mr. Arafat's Fatah terror network began conducting murder raids into Israel from Syrian bases in 1964. Mr. Arafat's raids triggered the 1967 Six Day War between Israel and its hostile Arab neighbors. Despite causing this disastrous defeat for the Arabs, which lost them strategic territory in Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Mr. Arafat emerged as a hero. The "Arab street" lauded Mr. Arafat for the purity of his hatred for Israel; they could have cared less that his actions resulted in military disaster. ... Since then Mr. Arafat has been on a mission, a man wholly dedicated to destroying Israel in order to replace it with a Palestinian state."

"The road to irredentism" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/09)
"How did it come to pass that Yassra Bakri, a 20-year-old Israeli Arab nursing student at Safed College, and her girlfriend, Samiya Asedi, another Israeli Arab student, said nothing for 20 minutes about the presence of a mass murderer on a No. 361 Egged bus this past Sunday morning? ... According to Moti Zaken, Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau's Arab affairs adviser, much of this extremist trend is the result of work by Arab non-governmental organizations that were founded over the last decade. ... One of the most active and most successful of these organizations is Adala, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. ... In a report submitted to the Amman NGO networking meeting for the UN World Conference Against Racism in February 2001, Adala claimed that in Israel, "Racism exists at almost every level of society." At Durban itself, Adala was a central force in the NGO conference, where Israel was defined to be "a racist apartheid state in which Israel's brand of apartheid is a crime against humanity." ... The widespread legitimacy given to Adala's advocacy of the notion that Israel is a racist state whose very self-definition as a Jewish state is wrong, paves the way for monstrous behavior like that of Bakri and Assedi on the No. 361 bus. After all, if the goal is irredentism, what possible responsibility should they have toward citizens of the state that they are taught to consider illegitimate and racist?" (See also: "Israeli Arab nursing student charged for failure to warn of bus bombing" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/07))

Added in Author index:
Caroline B. Glick
Evelyn Gordon
Michael Rubin

Added in archive:
"No tolerance for genocide" (Caroline B. Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/02)
"One of the Most Destructive Myths of American Foreign Policy" (Michael Rubin, The New York Sun, 2002/07/25)
"Israeli-Arab extremism" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/04/17)
"Powell was right" (Evelyn Gordon; The Jerusalem Post, 2002/03/12)
"Europe Finally Wakes Up and Recognizes Arafat's Nastiness" (Yoel Esteron, International Herald Tribune, 2001/12/14)
"Terrorism? What Terrorism?!" (Martin Kramer, Wall Street Journal/The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001/11/15)
"Uncivil" (Michael Rubin, The New Republic, 2001/10/11)
"Anti-Semitism at the United Nations: The World Conference Against Racism Becomes a World Conference For Racism" (Anne Bayefsky, Justice, from the Autumn 2001 issue)

Added one new theme in Themes:
"Investing in terror" - News and commentary on Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism.

Added one new section and 10 links in Links:
Saudi Arabia and Wahhabism - Links to country profiles, backgrounds, special reports etc.

 

Thursday, August 8, 2002

News and commentary:

"A war for civilisation" (Mark Steyn, The Spectator, from the 2002/08/10 issue)
"But I prefer to look at it this way: What's the real long-term war aim of the United States? I'd say it's this - to bring the Middle East within the civilised world. How do you do that? Tricky, but this we can say for certain: you'll never be able to manage it with the present crowd - Saddam, the Ayatollahs, the House of Saud, Boy Assad, Mubarak, Yasser. When Amr Moussa, secretary-general of the Arab League, warns the BBC that a US invasion of Iraq would 'threaten the whole stability of the Middle East', he's missing the point: that's the reason it’s such a great idea. Suppose we buy in to Moussa's pitch and place stability above all other considerations. We get another 25 years of the Ayatollahs, another 35 years of the PLO and Hamas, another 40 years of the Baathists in Syria and Iraq, another 80 years of Saudi Wahabbism. What kind of Middle East are we likely to have at the end of all that? The region's in the state it's in because, uniquely in the non-democratic world, it's too stable. It's the stability of the cesspit."

"A new special relationship" (Bruce Anderson, The Spectator, from the 2002/08/10 issue)
"This mutual incomprehension and disdain [between Europe and America] will have far-reaching consequences, including a reassessment of American interests. Initially hurt by the Europeans’ attitudes, the Americans have rapidly ceased to care. They have now reached a stage at which they are no longer interested in what European countries think, with two exceptions: Britain — and Russia. ... As for the UK, the special relationship has never been in better shape. When it comes to the Russians, there could be a new special relationship in the making. ... This relationship is still in its infancy. But the Americans have already come to two conclusions. They have realised that it is possible to fly from Washington to Moscow without landing in Paris or Berlin. They have also decided that Europe is no longer the centre of the world. The anti-Americanism of contemporary Continental European politicians has ensured that Western Europe will be relegated to international diplomacy’s second division."

"The UN on the Loose" (AEI/Commentary, Joshua Muravchik, 2002/08/08)
Muravchik on the United Nations Commission on Human Rights 58th annual meeting, which was the first time the United States did not participate: "None of the resolution's supporters explained why the commission should deplore attacks on Muslims in particular at a time when, in Europe, synagogues were being burned, Jewish cemeteries vandalized, and Jews assaulted on a daily basis - almost always by Muslim immigrants. Nor did they say why it was erroneous to associate Islam with terrorism and human-rights violations when about two-thirds of the terrorist groups named in the State Department's annual report on the subject are Islamic and when the world's predominantly Muslim states duster together at the bottom of Freedom House's survey of civil and political liberty. But the hypocrisy in the commission's concerns about "defamation" of the Islamic world were as nothing compared to its treatment of Israel. ... The coup de grace of the anti-Israel resolutions "affirmed the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to resist the Israeli occupation," adding that "by so doing, the Palestinian people is fulfilling ... one of the goals and purposes of the United Nations." To dispel any doubt about the import of the term "resist," the resolution invoked the authority of General Assembly Resolution 37/43 of December 3, 1982. Opposed at the time by both the U.S. and the Europeans, this proclaims "the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples against foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle". As everyone understood then and now, the last six words mean terrorism. This blatant sanction of terrorism was approved by a vote of 40 to five, with seven abstentions. Two of the nine EU members of the commission, Britain and Germany, voted against the resolution, as did Canada, Guatemala, and the Czech Republic. One, Italy, was among the abstainers, as were Japan and Poland. The other six EU members - France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Austria - voted for it."

"Has History Restarted Since September 11?" (Francis Fukuyama, The Centre for Independent Studies, 2002/08/08)
"There is in fact a deeper issue of principle between the United States and Europe that will ensure that transatlantic relations will remain neuralgic through the years to come. The disagreement is not over the principles of liberal democracy, which both sides share, but over where the ultimate source of liberal democratic legitimacy lies. To put it rather schematically and over-simply, Americans tend not to see any source of democratic legitimacy higher than the constitutional democratic nation-state. To the extent that any international organisation has legitimacy, it is because duly constituted democratic majorities have handed that legitimacy up to them in a negotiated, contractual process. Such legitimacy can be withdrawn at any time by the contracting parties; international law and organisation has no existence independent of this type of voluntary agreement between sovereign nation-states. Europeans, by contrast, tend to believe that democratic legitimacy flows from the will of an international community much larger than any individual nation-state. This international community is not embodied concretely in a single, global democratic constitutional order. Yet it hands down legitimacy to existing international institutions, which are seen as partially embodying it. Thus, peacekeeping forces in the former Yugoslavia are not merely ad hoc intergovernmental arrangements, but rather moral expressions of the will and norms of the larger international community." (See also: "Has History Started Again?" (Francis Fukuyama, Policy, from the Winter 2002 issue))

"'I tracked Iraq's biological weapons'" (BBC News, 2002/08/08)
Terry Taylor, a UN weapons inspector, recalls searching for Iraq's biological weapons: "We had some successes but it took four-and-a-half years to produce enough evidence to force the Iraqis to admit that they did indeed have a biological weapons programme. That just shows how difficult and challenging the task was, the enormous effort the Iraqis took in hiding this programme. ... One of our successes was to uncover the main production facility at Hakam, about 60km outside Baghdad, which appeared to be making an additive for animal food and a biological pesticide. We managed through documentation to prove that they were actually producing anthrax and botulinum toxin, two of the most deadly agents. ... Biological weapons have great potency, especially when you take into account the advances in biotechnology over the past 10 years, advances the Iraqis had been exploiting. I believe there is a sufficient case to do something about Iraq on the weapons of mass destruction basis alone. To do nothing, or to do little, or to attempt to negotiate with the present regime could be more dangerous than trying to do something more dynamic."

"'E-bomb' may see first combat use in Iraq" (David Windle, New Scientist, 2002/08/08)
"Weapons designed to attack electronic systems and not people could see their first combat use in any military attack on Iraq. ... US intelligence reports indicate that key elements of the Iraqi war machine are located in heavily-fortified underground facilities or beneath civilian buildings such as hospitals. This means the role of non-lethal and precision weapons would be a critical factor in any conflict. High Power Microwave (HPM) devices are designed to destroy electronic equipment in command, control, communications and computer targets and are available to the US military. They produce an electromagnetic field of such intensity that their effect can be far more devastating than a lighting strike."

"Iraqi Strategy Centers on Cities" (Greg Miller and John Hendren, Los Angeles Times, 2002/08/08)
"Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has told regional government officials that he aims to thwart any U.S. invasion by avoiding open desert fighting and massing his military in major cities where civilian and American casualties would be highest, current and former U.S. intelligence officials say. ... Urban fighting is one of the most daunting scenarios U.S. military planners face. Baghdad in particular is a sprawling setting, where Hussein's forces would have significant advantages. Military targets in Baghdad are sprinkled among a population approaching 5 million. Hussein has constructed an elaborate warren of underground bunkers and escape routes. U.S. soldiers would probably have to slog through Baghdad's streets wearing chemical-weapons suits and carrying extra equipment."

"Saddam warns against Iraq attack" (BBC News, 2002/08/08)
"In his first public remarks since US President George W Bush vowed last month to see the Iraqi leader replaced, Saddam Hussein said that "evil people" who threaten Arab and Muslim countries would be left "in the dustbin of history". ... In his address, marking the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988, Saddam Hussein said the way to achieve "peace and security" was through "equitable dialogue and on the basis of international law and international covenants". ... But, he said, "the enemy" refused to listen to appeals from Arab and Muslim countries and had "rejected all the initiatives and calls for peace, which we had proposed more than once". ... The Iraqi leader urged Iraqis to be prepared "with all the force you can to face your enemies", adding 'the forces of evil will carry their coffins on their back to die in a disgraceful failure.'" (See also transcript of full speech: "Speech of His Excellency President Saddam Hussein on the occasion of 14th Anniversary of the Day of the Great Victory" (Iraqi News Agency, 2002/08/08): "The forces of evil will carry their coffins on their backs, to die in disgraceful failure, taking their schemes back with them, or to dig their own graves, after they bring death to themselves on every Arab or Muslim soil against which they perpetrate aggression, including the Iraq, the land of Jihad and the banner. We say this to refute the grumbling and sibiliation of those bragging their power, governed by the devil, their master in every evil act and crime which they perpetrate against the land of the Arabs and Muslims, while they wade in the rivers of innocent blood they shed in the world, believing that the people of the world should become slaves to Tyranny and its threats, both declared and executed threats.")

"Faces of American Islam" (Daniel Pipes and Khalid Durán, Policy Review, from the August & September 2002 issue)
"The most visible Muslim organizations are those that claim to represent Muslim political interests, and especially the trio of the American Muslim Council, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and the Muslim Public Affairs Committee. It is striking to note that all three organizations are Islamist and so seek to forward goals deeply at variance with mainstream American principles (as well as the aspirations and concerns of a majority in the Muslim community). They aspire to achieve four general goals: winning special privileges for Islam (e.g., calling for the creation of a White House Muslim advisory board); intimidating and silencing the opponents of militant Islam (e.g., having death edicts brought down on them, as happened to Khalid Durán); raising funds for, apologizing for, and otherwise forwarding the cause of militant Islamic groups abroad, including those that engage in violence (e.g., the Holy Land Foundation, closed down for raising money "used to support the Hamas terror organization," in President Bush's words); and sanitizing militant Islam (e.g., jihad is not warfare but a form of moral self-improvement)."

"The rising tide of anti-Semitism" (Suzanne Fields, The Washington Times, 2002/08/08)
"The comparison of the Jews to the Nazis is commonplace among Palestinian sympathizers in Europe and the Middle East. It is especially virulent among European intellectuals and journalists who attempt to camouflage their anti-Semitism in political virtue as a defense of the Palestinian "victims." ... A cartoon in the Ethnos, the main pro-government paper in Greece, contains a cartoon in which two Israeli soldiers look like Nazis slaughtering innocents. "Don't feel guilty brother," one of them says. 'We were not in Auschwitz and Dachau to suffer, but to learn.'"

"Anatomy of an execution" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/08)
An eyewitness account of the execution at Arafat's Ramallah compound yesterday: "Behind them is a small building surrounded with barbed wire. On top of the gate is a sign: "Ramallah Correctional Center." ... As [Zuhair Manasreh] is talking, two plainclothes policemen emerge from the prison. One is "embracing" a young, bearded man whose face is badly swollen. He looks me straight in the eye, as if he is trying to tell me something. ... The man was blindfolded and made to stand against a wall. Three policemen, standing about three meters away, sprayed him with bullets from their rifles. He was hit in the head and chest and fell to the ground. One of the policemen then walked up to him and fired one more shot into his head. ... I asked a police officer what happened and he replied, "A criminal has been executed. What's the big deal?" "What did he do?" I asked another police officer who was trying to block cameras with his hand. "He murdered two elderly women and raped his grandmother," he answered. "Was he ever tried?" "I don't know, but the president this morning approved the execution." ... A few hours later the PA confirmed that the execution did take place, identifying the victim as Bashir Attari. Palestinians described him as mentally retarded." (UPDATE 2004/05/30: As the original link is down and the article is quite revealing, I've posted the complete article here: "Anatomy of an execution" (Khaled Abu Toameh, The Jerusalem Post/Watch, 2002/08/08 [2004/04/30]))

 

Wednesday, August 7, 2002

News and commentary:

"Open Letter to America from a Canadian" (W.R. McDougall, The Baltimore Chronicle, 2002/08/07)
At first I thought this was a parody of anti-Americanism, as McDougall crams just about every conceivable platitude into it. Can you imagine a "progressive" paper publishing something like this about any other countries than the U.S.A. or Israel?: "Your once-great nation has fallen into madness, an affliction of mass denial that brings shivers up the spines of millions outside your borders. ... You have become a nation of monsters, America. Hypocrites. Murderers. Fools. ... How many of you give the slightest damn about the totalitarian measures your government is taking to keep its secret meetings, grubby files and treasonous activities from your eyes?.... ... As I write these words, I can only imagine what additional horrors your shadow government might be planning in what will surely be an attempt to justify militarism and totalitarianism on a universal scale. A nuclear explosion in one of your cities, perhaps? A massive bio-chemical attack? Or perhaps it will be some Arab terrorist who finally commits the terrible deed, his last thought before death being the promises you made to him before you killed his family."

"Saudis blame Jews for hostile views" (UPI, 2002/08/07)
An article on reactions in Saudi media to the Pentagon breefing at which Saudi Arabia was decribed as an enemy of the United States: "The mass circulation Okaz said the description of Saudi Arabia as an enemy to the United States "did not come as a surprise to us because all it's (the Pentagon's) members are either Jews or allies of the Zionist lobby." ... Al-Nadwa accused the Zionist lobby of waging a campaign against Saudi Arabia because it represents the religious center of Muslim nations. "Although it has failed to exploit the Sept. 11 attacks to sow dissent between the United States and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Zionist Lobby has not despaired from taking advantage of any chance to achieve its nasty objective," Al-Nadwa said. ... Okaz called the U.S. reactions to Sept.11 harsh and said ... "Accusing Muslim countries of supporting and financing terrorism and fundamentalist groups were all extreme reactions by the Americans who countered terrorism with terrorism," a reference to the United States response to the Islamist terrorist attacks on New York and Washington last Sept.11. Of 19 men believed to have carried out the attacks, 15 have been identified as Saudi." (See also: "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06))

"US money glorifying Palestinian terrorist/UNICEF funded hate camp" (Itamar Marcus, PMW/IMRA, 2002/08/07)
"Dalal Mughrabi is the woman terrorist who participated in the murder of 36 Israelis and an American nature photographer, Gail Ruban, in 1978. A girls' high school named for the terrorist - "The Dalal Mughrabi School" - is now being renovated with money from USAID - through ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid). A school named after a terrorist promotes murder and terrorism as positive values to children in general, and especially to those children studying in that school. US money is helping to support an educational structure that is inherently promoting terrorism and glorifying the murderer of an American. This school's name is not an exception. Numerous schools, summer camps and sports teams are named for terrorist-murderers, including Ayyat al-Akhras, the woman suicide bomber, and symbols of violence continue to be used in educational and sport structures. The background poster of a UNICEF funded summer camp includes a gun."

"Sophisticated Stupidity" (James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal/Best of the Web Today, 2002/08/07)
"George Orwell is said to have observed that some ideas are so stupid, only an intellectual could believe them. A wonderful example comes from columnist James Carroll in the Boston Globe. Carroll uses yesterday's anniversary of the nuking of Hiroshima to argue that Saddam Hussein is no worse than America. ... "If we used the nuclear weapon as much to send a signal to the Soviet Union as to end World War II, then all the wickedness unfolding from that use - not only the arms race, but the demonic new idea that national power can properly depend on the threat of mass destruction - belongs to us. If Saddam Hussein wants weapons of mass destruction for the sake of the strategic diplomatic power they will give him, he is playing by rules written in Washington." This is like arguing that cops have guns, so we shouldn't begrudge them to criminals. In Carroll's blinkered view, there is no moral distinction between America - which ultimately used the power of its nuclear weapons to liberate the Soviet Union and most of its world-wide empire from communism - and Saddam's Iraq, a barbaric regime whose raison d'être is the glorification and enrichment of a murderous lunatic." (See also: "A mistake and a crime" (James Carroll, The Boston Globe, 2002/07/06))

"Israeli Arab nursing student charged for failure to warn of bus bombing" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/07)
"Nineteen-year-old Yasara Bachri of Galilee was charged Wednesday in Nazareth District Court for failing to warn police after alighting a bus she knew would blow up near Safed on Sunday. Another suspect, also 19, is also expected to be charged for failure to prevent a crime in connection with the case, media reports said. The two nursing students were arrested shortly after the blast on August 4, on suspicion they were told about the impending suicide bombing but failed to report this to police. The two women got off the bus after the Palestinian assailant told one of them that "something horrible" was going to happen, said Ilan Harush, a local police chief in northern Israel. Twenty minutes later, the bomber set off the explosives he was carrying, killing himself and nine passengers. ... The women are cooperating with investigators and said that they did not think they had to inform police, Harush said."

"Our Enemies the Saudis (Continued)" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, 2002/08/07)
Barone on the report that the Saudis were depicted as enemies at a Pentagon briefing: "Ricks's article verges on the misleading in one respect. It suggests that the recognition that the Saudis are behaving like enemies of the United States is limited to certain members of the Bush administration and "neoconservative" writers. He cites two anti-Saudi articles published in the July 15 Weekly Standard and the August Commentary. He did not cite my own piece in the June 3 U.S. News entitled "Our Enemies the Saudis." The response to that piece was overwhelmingly positive–and not just from conservatives, neo and otherwise, but from moderates and liberals as well. You don't have to be a conservative to regard as an enemy a regime that exports terrorism and totalitarian ideas." (See also: "Our enemies the Saudis" (Michael Barone, usnews.com, from the 2002/06/03 issue) and "Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06))

"Sontagism" (Stefan Kanfer, City Journal, 2002/08/07)
Kanfer on Susan Sontag - "The queen of knee-jerk anti-Americanism strikes again": "The occasion: the Lincoln Center Festival production of three traditional Iranian plays. ... The plays concerned child martyrdom - indeed, one ended with the bloody beheading of a ten-year-old—and during a post-production symposium Sontag congratulated the festival director for importing the dramas to the U.S. "You've done something incredible," she burbled. "To view these works was a privilege and a duty for us who don't live by the contemptible rhetoric of the Bush administration. The last thing in the world we want to do is cooperate with the jihadist mentality of this administration." ... Manifestly, Sontag did not intend to imply that George W. Bush had converted to Islam. She meant that the present U.S. government was as zealous and vengeful as . . . but the lady preferred not to connect the dots." (See also: "First Reactions" (Susan Sontag, The New Yorker, 2001/09/17))

"'And then what?' is no defence against action in Iraq" (Tim Hames, The Times, 2002/08/07)
"The "and then what?" position might seem to be more sophisticated than the "can't be done" philosophy but, if so, appearances are deceptive. It is, in truth, an absolutely extraordinary doctrine. If upheld, it would require any proposed military venture to provide, in advance, a detailed blueprint of how every post-conflict practicality might be handled. Yet the Allies, for example, did not have even an outline plan for postwar Germany until January 1945, but they realised that the defeat of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis was rather more important than achieving a consensus on the optimal model of proportional representation that might be put in place afterwards. ... What "containment and deterrent" means in practice is that we should hope that either Saddam drops dead at some convenient moment, or that he finds the whole process of seeking to accumulate weapons of mass destruction too arduous and abandons it, or that having succeeded in accumulating this poisonous kit he decides to go straight and not so much as threaten to use it. At the end of all this, a point which will be reached in two or three years' time, perhaps less, it will be his neighbours and the West who have been contained and the only deterrent that will operate on Iraq is that which Saddam's regime chooses to apply to itself. And then what?"

"Justice for Iraqis" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/07)
"The future Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has signed the Pax Christi declaration on the "legality and morality of war against Iraq" that was presented at Number 10 yesterday. ... There is much muddled thinking here. It is not "the most powerful nations" that regard war as acceptable; rather, it is smaller tyrannical nations such as Iraq, unfettered by such forms of accountability, that treat war as an "acceptable" instrument of policy. ...
But the worst aspect of the petition is its moral equilateralism. Massive Iraqi atrocities are acknowledged, but the West's role is treated as being at least as bad. Indeed, the emotional force behind the statement is mainly directed at the West for murdering thousands of Iraqi children. Even if this were true - and it is not - it would scarcely be a matter of deliberate policy as it is with Saddam." (See also: "Clergy protest against war on Iraq" (BBC News, 2002/08/06))

"Nothing is sacred" (The Times, 2002/08/07)
"Islamic terrorists in Kashmir appear determined to pile outrage upon outrage. Yesterday’s killing of eight Hindu pilgrims came less than a month after the slaughter of 28 residents of a shantytown in Kashmir by militants disguised as Hindu holy men. On Monday gunmen killed six staff at a Christian school in Pakistan, claiming to be avenging Muslim deaths in Palestine, Afghanistan and Kashmir. Militants whose own children’s education is steeped in the culture of war are taking that conflict directly into the schools and holy places of their perceived enemies." (See also: "Hindu pilgrims killed in Kashmir attack" (BBC News, 2002/08/06))

"Lessons From Sri Lanka" (Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, 2002/08/07)
"To begin with, one of the key factors in halting Tamil suicide bombings was the Tamil diaspora, living in North America, Europe and India. This Tamil diaspora had been the main source of funding for the Tamil Tigers. But the Tamil diaspora is made up largely of middle-class merchants and professionals, and when in the late 1990's the U.S., Britain and India all declared the Tigers a "terrorist" group, not freedom fighters, the Tamil diaspora became embarrassed by them and started choking off their funds. ... Unfortunately, in the Middle East Arabs and Muslims continue to indulge, justify, praise or provide religious legitimation for Palestinian suicide bombers, even after 9/11. The Palestinians have convinced themselves, with the help of many Arabs and Europeans, that their grievance is so special, so enormous that it isn't bound by any limits of civilized behavior, and therefore they are entitled to do whatever they want to Israelis. And Israelis have convinced themselves that they are entitled to do virtually anything to stop it."

 

Tuesday, August 6, 2002

News and commentary:

"Secretary Rumsfeld Town Hall Meeting" (Donald Rumsfeld, DefenseLINK, 2002/08/06)
Transcript of a "Town Hall meeting" with Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, in which he among other topics comments on the situation in the Middle East: "If you have a country that's a sliver and you can see three sides of it from a high hotel building, you've got to be careful what you give away and to whom you give it. If you're giving it to an entity that has some track record, that has a degree of accountability, that has the ability to enforce security that's promised in whatever arrangements are made, it seems to me that's one thing. If you're making a deal and yielding territory to an entity that cannot or will not do that - and there is no question but that the Palestinian Authority have been involved with terrorist activities, so that makes it a difficult interlocutor. My feeling about the so-called occupied territories are that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict. In the intervening period, they've made some settlements in various parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won."

"Fear, rage fester inside for West Bank children" (Gregg Zoroya, USA Today, 2002/08/06)
A report from Ramallah on the long-term effects of terror, clamp-downs and curfews on the region's youth: "'What this generation is passing through will bear more hatred, and they will become more and more hostile against the Jews in the future,' says Maryan Suleiman, 62, as she sadly watches her giggling 7-year-old twin grandchildren pretend to be terrorists in her living room. "The suiciders now are nothing compared to what will be." ... Their anger causes them to lash out. Thousands get a steady diet of anti-Israeli images on Arab television. One of Suleiman's twin grandchildren, Mohammad, has been immersed in war for the past several months. The 7-year-old spouts his worldview through a gap-toothed grin: "I hate the Israelis," he says. "They shoot the Arabs." ... In the living room of the Suleiman house, the 7-year-old twins Mohammad and Shada play the game they have made up during the weeks they have been confined to their house. Mohammad is the martyr, the suicide bomber lying sprawled on the carpet, blown apart by his mission. His sister is the martyr's mother. Bent over the tiny figure of her brother, Shada holds her face and rocks back and forth, weeping over her loss."

"Howell Raines in Power" (Benjamin Zycher, National Review, 2002/08/06)
"Stop me if you've heard this one, but the New York Times really, really, really believes that the inadvisability of a forced regime change in Baghdad is front-page above-the-fold News Fit to Print. And for so many reasons: The Europeans will stomp their feet. The Arab Street will throw more rocks. "Instability" will follow a removal from power of Saddam Hussein, romance novelist, nurturer of sons, killer of Kurds, Shiites, Jews, Americans. The House of Saud will find it more difficult to pursue their pro-U.S. war against terror and Islamic fascism. The Iranians and Iraqis will be forced into each other's arms. Hosni Mubarak will be unhappy. The Syrians will fail to leave Lebanon. The Peace Process will collapse. If Saddam is removed, the terrorists somehow will have won. Global warming/the ozone hole/AIDS/rain forest destruction/ extinction of the Arabian rat/subjugation of women/cancer/ad infinitum will be exacerbated."

"Clergy protest against war on Iraq" (BBC News, 2002/08/06)
Or, rather, "Clergy protest against any war at all under any circumstances": "The next Archbishop of Canterbury is among 2,500 signatories of a Christian petition delivered to Downing Street opposing military action against Iraq. The declaration drawn up by the Christian peace group Pax Christi calls any attack on Iraq "immoral and illegal". It is signed by members of a variety of religious groups and several Anglican and Roman Catholic bishops, including Dr Rowan Williams, who will take over the Church of England's top job in October. ... It states: 'It's deplorable that the world's most powerful nations continue to regard war, and the threat of war, as an acceptable instrument of foreign policy.'" (Note: Best of the Web Today points out this dispatch on Williams: "Archbishop in waiting becomes druid" (Richard Savill, The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/06): "The next Archbishop of Canterbury was inducted as an honorary white druid yesterday at an open-air ceremony in Wales reminiscent of a scene from a Monty Python sketch." See also: "Tales of Canterbury's Future?" (Peter Mullen, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/07/12))

"The logic of empire" (George Monbiot, The Guardian, 2002/08/06)
Or, rather, "The logic of neo-Marxist anti-Americanism": "There is something almost comical about the prospect of George Bush waging war on another nation because that nation has defied international law. Since Bush came to office, the United States government has torn up more international treaties and disregarded more UN conventions than the rest of the world has in 20 years. ...
Even its preparedness to go to war with Iraq without a mandate from the UN security council is a defiance of international law far graver than Saddam Hussein's non-compliance with UN weapons inspectors. ...
As the US government discovers that it can threaten and attack other nations with impunity, it will surely soon begin to threaten countries that have numbered among its allies. As its insatiable demand for resources prompts ever bolder colonial adventures, it will come to interfere directly with the strategic interests of other quasi-imperial states. ...
To accept that the US presents a danger to the rest of the world would be to acknowledge the need to resist it. ...
And we should cross our fingers and hope that a combination of economic mismanagement, gangster capitalism and excessive military spending will reduce America's power to the extent that it ceases to use the rest of the world as its doormat."

"Whatever happened to Amnesty International?" (National Post, 2002/08/06)
"But in practice, AI has begun to fritter away its well-earned moral capital on fashionable causes that have nothing to do with any of these issues. For instance, some of AI's supporters were alienated when the group supported last year's disastrous UN "anti-racism" conference in Durban, South Africa. Of all the nations in the Middle East, Israel has by far the most humane and civilized justice system. Yet in Durban, Amnesty International singled out Israel for special blame. And the group refused to walk out on the proceedings even when the NGO conference degenerated into a festival of unvarnished anti-Semitism. ... The broader question is this: Given AI's mandate and limited resources, why is the group wasting its time and resources complaining about inconvenienced lobster thugs and "stereotyped" refugees when people are being butchered and railroaded en masse in places like Angola, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia? The answer is that it has become more politically fashionable to sniff for racism in the First World than to hunt for torture in the Third. Like Human Rights Watch and other brand-name NGOs, AI has been tempted away from its original mandate, and now fritters away its credibility attacking Zionism, globalization and the West."

"Hebrew U Survivor" (Michael Ledeen, National Review, 2002/08/06)
An interview with Eliad Moreh, a survivor of the Hebrew University terror attack: "If I have survived while the young man sitting next to me - my dearest friend Diego David - was assassinated, it must be because I am obliged to speak out. ... The seven people murdered here were targeted because they were Jews, and found themselves on the soil of Israel. That was their crime, that was why they were assassinated. ... I see history repeated. It is again considered a crime to be a Jew, just as it was during the thirties and forties. Nobody gives a damn. Just as in the thirties and forties, the rest of the world stands by while Jews are assassinated every day. ... By finding reasons to justify the assassins, some people in Europe encourage them to shed more Jewish blood. ... Is there anything that can justify the deliberate murdering of as many people as possible?"

"The delusions of Gaddafi, Emperor of Africa" (Michael Dynes, The Times, 2002/08/06)
"Having abandoned plans to promote Arab unity, Colonel Gaddafi is focusing much of his attention on gaining control of the African Union. In contrast to the vision of an Africa made up of democratic governments that respect the rule of law and human rights, as championed by Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, Colonel Gaddafi has been campaigning for the creation of a United States of Africa in which he would in effect be crowned Emperor of Africa. The Sandhurst-trained dictator, who lost both of his grandfathers in the fighting that followed Italy's invasion of Libya in 1911, has made no secret of his desire to see the white man expelled from Africa, and the former imperialist powers made to pay compensation for slavery and colonialism. ... But at least the spectacle of Colonel Gaddafi manipulating populist rhetoric to peddle his vision of an Africa united against the evil West demonstrated that he remains what he has always been: a rabble-rousing dictatorial showman whose notion of development does not go much further than his own bloated ego." (See also: "Gaddafi show baffles the starving" (Michael Dynes and Daniel McGrory, The Times, 2002/07/17))

"Martyred in silence" (The Daily Telegraph, 2002/08/06)
"The killing yesterday of six people at a Christian school in Pakistan is a reminder of the acute difficulties faced by Christian minorities in many parts of the Islamic world. ... In Saudi Arabia, the public practice of Christianity is simply forbidden, despite the fact that many Filipino Christians work there. Wearing a cross or possession of a Bible is an offence, and Christmas cannot be celebrated. In Indonesia, Muslims and Christians have clashed in the Moluccas and Sulawesi, and churches have been bombed across the country. Turning from Asia to Africa, Christians in Sudan face discrimination in the north and the risk of being kidnapped and enslaved in the south. In Nigeria, thousands of Christians have fled the Muslim north as various states have sought to introduce sha'ria law. In Algeria in 1996, Pierre Claverie, the Bishop of Oran, was killed by a bomb, and seven Trappist monks were decapitated. These are merely outstanding examples of Muslim militants turning on Christian minorities. It is not difficult to imagine the uproar in the West if the boot were on the other foot and Christians were persecuting followers of Mohammed. ... But the fear of being branded racialist or neo-colonialist still acts as a deterrent to proper Western condemnation of sectarian violence. Double standards are applied. And that serves neither the persecuted minorities in the Islamic world nor the moderate Muslims who live in the West."

"Truth Massacred" (Richard Cohen, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06)
"But the readiness, the alacrity, with which some in the West stand ready to judge Israel by standards they would not apply elsewhere - and which are routinely violated in the Arab world -- is downright repellent. The hard truth is that Israel could sharply reduce its Palestinian problem by sharply reducing the number of Palestinians - push them out. This is how Czechoslovakia got rid of its Germans after World War II. And an immense swap of populations accompanied the partition of Pakistan and India. In other words, it has been done. A heartbreaking tragedy is being played out in the Middle East. Two peoples, convinced of the righteousness of their cause, are struggling for the same piece of land. But one engages in the inhumane murder of civilians while the other strives, sometimes vainly, to retain its humanity. This, too, is a fact - one that often gets obscured by the din of propaganda. Jenin is an example of that. What got massacred there was not Palestinians but truth itself."

"Briefing Depicted Saudis as Enemies" (Thomas E. Ricks, The Washington Post, 2002/08/06)
"A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States. "The Saudis are active at every level of the terror chain, from planners to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist to cheerleader," stated the explosive briefing. It was presented on July 10 to the Defense Policy Board, a group of prominent intellectuals and former senior officials that advises the Pentagon on defense policy. "Saudi Arabia supports our enemies and attacks our allies," said the briefing prepared by Laurent Murawiec, a Rand Corp. analyst. A talking point attached to the last of 24 briefing slides went even further, describing Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent" in the Middle East."

"Hindu pilgrims killed in Kashmir attack" (BBC News, 2002/08/06)
"At least 13 people have been killed in attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir. Nine people died and 37 were injured after a camp of Hindu pilgrims at Nunwan, near the resort town of Pahalgam, was attacked by suspected Islamic militants. One of the militants was also killed. A few hours later, three people died in a gun battle north of Srinagar. The Hindu pilgrims were attacked in the early hours of Tuesday morning, while they were sleeping at a camp on their way to a shrine in the foothills of the Himalayas. Gunmen threw a grenade and then opened fire on the travellers."

Added in archive:
"An Ugly Rumor or an Ugly Truth?" (Richard Bernstein, The New York Times, 2002/08/04)

 

Monday, August 5, 2002

News and commentary:

"Will France Clean Up Anti-Semitism?" (Kenneth R. Timmerman, Insight, 2002/08/05)
"The Representative Council of French Jewry (CRIF) has catalogued more than 1,000 violent threats against Jews and overt anti-Semitic acts. During the last three months of 2000 alone, physical violence included 44 firebombings, 43 attacks on synagogues and 39 assaults on Jews as they were leaving places of worship. ... An Interior Ministry report late last year concluded that the violence was the work of "petty criminals," not anti-Semites. "There was no rejection of the Jew," the author of the report, Khadija Mohsen-Finan, told the New York Times after interviewing nearly 500 young Muslims. "So far, the number of incidents has been small." ... "Are there verbal attacks? Sure. But that goes both ways," she said. The "verbal attacks" Mohsen-Finan dismissed as "inconsequential" included such incidents as bands of young Muslim youths gathering in front of synagogues as Jewish worshippers emerged, chanting "death to the Jews." ... Many of the individuals caught firebombing synagogues in April still are awaiting trial. How they are treated by the French courts will provide the best yardstick for judging the sincerity of Prime Minister Raffarin's pledge to crack down on an anti-Semitic violence that has been tolerated for 18 months by the French political establishment from right to left."

"Nazi ally, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, is Arafat's 'hero'" (Itamar Marcus, PMW/IMRA, 2002/08/05)
"Introduction: In an interview this week Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, "our hero". ...
Background: "Hajj Amin Al Husseini (1895-1974) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem... He supported the Nazis, and especially their program for the mass murder of the Jews. He visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend the "Final Solution" to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine. In 1946 he escaped to Egypt." [Simon Wiesenthal Center Web Site]
The following is the text from the interview:
Interviewer: "I have heard voices from within the [Palestinian] Authority in the past few weeks, saying that the reforms are coordinated according to American whims."
Arafat: "We are not Afghanistan. We are the Mighty People. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? ... There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops." [Al Sharq al Awsat, a London Arabic daily, reprinted in the Palestinian daily Al Quds, Aug, 2, 2002]"

"The War Is Not Yet Won" (Garry Kasparov, The Wall Street Journal, 2002/08/05)
It's interesting to compare the moral clarity of the world's top-ranked chess-player, Garry Kasparov, with the moral collapse of Bobby Fischer, "the greatest chess-player of all time". It seems genius can lead both ways: "If the war on terror is to be won swiftly, Mr. Bush must not lose sight of the war's twin imperatives: a decisive counterattack and a total unwillingness to appease our enemies. ... It requires the U.S. to rebuild the nations ravaged by Islamic fundamentalism. We cannot wait for the internal liberalization of rogue countries. There will be moaning about a new colonialism. Yet ask if the people of Afghanistan are better off now. It is in our interests that others too are freed. But offense comes first. Baghdad remains the next stop but not the last. We must also have plans for Tehran and Damascus, not to mention Riyadh. The tactics will vary, but the goal - total defeat of terrorism - is clear. Once American ground troops are in Iraq, the message must go out to all terrorist sponsors that this game is up. .. There will be no peace in Gaza, no freedom from fear in Jerusalem, until we have prosecuted the war on terror in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus and elsewhere. U.S. leadership saved Europe from fascism and communism. It is again the last hope." (See also: "Bobby Fischer speaks out to applaud Trade Centre attacks" (David Bamber and Chris Hastings, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/12/02))

"A piece of empty propaganda" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/05)
Gordon debunks the claim that "the killing of Hamas mastermind Salah Shehadeh disrupted a serious Palestinian cease-fire initiative": "Proponents of the cease-fire theory like to quote the ringing climax of the declaration, published, of course, with the explicit disclaimer that it was now invalid: "The suicide bombings will be brought to an end. By us. Now." But they tend to overlook the important qualification in the next sentence: "You, the people of Israel, should understand clearly what we are proposing. We cannot stop the violence, today, immediately. There are those in our society who will attempt to undermine and deter our efforts. Some of them, unfortunately, may succeed." So what exactly is the meaning of a promise to end the bombings "now" if the signatories "cannot stop the violence today"? Quite simply, public relations: The Palestinians want credit for declaring a cease-fire, even if they do not actually provide one. ... Asked whether Hamas had really considered a cease-fire in exchange for an IDF withdrawal from the major cities, Rantisi replied: "Who said that? Everyone knows that we want to take back all of Holy Palestine, from the sea to the Jordan [River]. "We were only suggesting the possibility of a temporary cease-fire, only temporary, were Israel to agree to withdraw immediately to the 1948 borders. Later, we will concern ourselves with erasing those borders permanently." Some cease-fire, that."

"Memorial: Faces and profiles" (CNN.com, Summer 2002)
Part of CNN's In-depth Special: Victims of Terror, a "memorial to hundreds of victims of terror attacks", which "includes the names, ages and photos of more than 220 men, women and children killed in indiscriminate terror attacks on civilians in public places or in their homes in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza during the first six months of 2002." Thanks to InstaPundit for the pointer:
"Moranne Amit, 25 ... Born and raised in Kibbutz Kfar Hanasi in northern Israel. A second year law student at Haifa University, she also managed a singles forum on an Israeli Web site. According to Kfar Hanasi residents, Moranne was "the pride of the Kibbutz."
February 8, 2002
Stabbed to death by four Palestinians, aged 14 to 16, as she strolled with her boyfriend in Jerusalem's Peace forest on a Friday afternoon." (See also: "Two Israeli women killed in weekend terror attacks" (israelinsider, 2002/02/10))

"Gunmen attack Pakistan school" (BBC News, 2002/08/05)
"At least six people have been killed in a gun attack on a missionary school for foreign students in Pakistan. Police say four gunmen fought their way into the Murree Christian School complex in the hills near the capital, Islamabad, at about 1115 (0515 GMT), firing indiscriminately. Four people were wounded in the ensuing gunbattle with security guards. No pupils were among those killed, all of whom were Pakistani guards and employees, the school says. Correspondents say that because the school has mainly foreign staff and students, the attack appears aimed at Western interests, rather than Pakistan's Christian minority."

"Iraq to use bio-weapons 'soon'" (The Australian, 2002/08/05)
"An Iraqi politician says President Saddam Hussein will soon use weapons of mass destruction. Opposition Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi warned: "Saddam has advanced chemical weapons, he has advanced biological weapons, and he has produced and engineered biological weapons which contain a combination of viruses such as smallpox and ebola. "Those are very, very dangerous weapons and I think, in his hands, he is bound to use them in terrorist action very soon." He told Fox television the Iraqi president is 'working very hard ... to position people and to move with biological and chemical terrorism across the important centers of the world'."

"Thousands cheer in Gaza after 11 killed, 83 wounded in daylong terror spree" (David Rudge and Tovah Lazaroff, The Jerusalem Post, 2002/08/05)
"Eleven people and three assailants were killed in a daylong terror spree that rocked Israel Sunday from north to south, while another 83 people were wounded. In the most deadly incident, nine people were killed and over 60 wounded in a suicide bomber attack Sunday morning aboard a crowded bus near the Meron junction south of Safed. About 4,000 people celebrated the bus bombing in Gaza City on Sunday night, passing out sweets and praying near the wreckage of the home of Saleh Shehadeh, the Hamas bomb mastermind assassinated by Israel on July 22. ... At the celebrations Sunday night, militants shouted through loudspeakers they would "avenge every drop of his blood." "We advise (Israelis) to prepare more bodybags and wait for the coming operations," a masked Hamas man said at the rally."

Added in archive:
"Two Israeli women killed in weekend terror attacks" (israelinsider, 2002/02/10)
"Bobby Fischer speaks out to applaud Trade Centre attacks" (David Bamber and Chris Hastings, The Daily Telegraph, 2001/12/02)

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

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"When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label."

Jacques Barzun