Archived news and commentary: August 14 - 20, 2006

2006/08/14 - 2006/08/20
2006/08/07 - 2006/08/13
2006/07/31 - 2006/08/06
2006/07/24 - 2006/07/30
2006/07/17 - 2006/07/23
2006/07/10 - 2006/07/16

› From 2001/09/11 -

Sunday, August 20, 2006

News and commentary:

"What Next?" (Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack, The New York Times, 2006/08/20)
"The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.
The consequences of an all-out civil war in Iraq could be dire. Considering the experiences of recent such conflicts, hundreds of thousands of people may die. Refugees and displaced people could number in the millions. And with Iraqi insurgents, militias and organized crime rings wreaking havoc on Iraq's oil infrastructure, a full-scale civil war could send global oil prices soaring even higher.
However, the greatest threat that the United States would face from civil war in Iraq is from the spillover -- the burdens, the instability, the copycat secession attempts and even the follow-on wars that could emerge in neighboring countries. Welcome to the new "new Middle East" -- a region where civil wars could follow one after another, like so many Cold War dominoes.
And unlike communism, these dominoes may actually fall."

"If torture could stop a terrorist atrocity and save thousands of lives, would it really be so wrong?" (Alasdair Palmer, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/20)
"One of their lordships summed it up succinctly: the Government "cannot be expected to close its eyes to information [obtained by torture] at the price of endangering the lives of its own citizens. Moral repugnance at torture does not require this".
That apparent ambivalence towards torture disturbs moral absolutists, who believe that renouncing such evidence is precisely what moral repugnance at torture does require. They argue that a willingness to use evidence obtained by torture is akin to complicity in it, and that it is better for a terrorist plot to go ahead and cause mass casualties than for it to be prevented by the use of torture.
It is a view that is easier to hold if someone you care about is not one of the victims of a terrorist outrage. Most of us accept that the Government should be able to prevent terrorist bombs using information extracted by torture, provided that other nations do the torturing." (See also: "Tortured Logic" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2006/08/16) and "Liberal agonies" (The Guardian, 2006/08/15))

"The nuclear fanatic" (Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times, 2006/08/20)
"If some Iran-watchers in America are to be believed, we could be 48 hours away from the day of judgment.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, has promised to deliver on Tuesday his response to international demands that Iran stop enriching uranium for nuclear use.
By the Islamic calendar, Tuesday is also a holy date: the night when Muhammad rose to heaven from the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem on a “buraq”, a fabulous winged beast with the body of a horse and the face of a woman, and reappeared in Mecca.
Will Ahmadinejad seize the moment to unveil the possession of some new fissile material or weapons system — perhaps a nuclear-tipped one? ...
AN expert on the Middle East, Ilan Berman, is based at the American Foreign Policy Council. He said last week: “I’m not in the camp that believes the end of the world will come about on Tuesday, but there is a strong apocalyptic strain in Ahmadinejad and his group. He is positioning Iran to be in the vanguard of the clash of civilisations with the West.'" (See also: "August 22: Does Iran have something in store?" (Bernard Lewis, OpinionJournal, 2006/08/08))

"Iran cartoon show mocks Holocaust" (Robert Tait, The Observer, 2006/08/20)
"Ariel Sharon, the incapacitated former Israeli Prime Minister, is wearing an SS uniform. A man with Jewish side locks is depicted as a vampire drinking from a container marked 'Palestinian blood'. An Arab figure is impaled to the ground by the absurdly long nose of a man in a black hat characteristic of orthodox Jews and marked 'Holocaust'.
At their worst, the images conform to lurid western stereotypes of Iran as a hotbed of anti-Semitism, as evoked by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's dismissal of the Holocaust as a 'myth'.
They are among the results of a competition run by the country's biggest-selling newspaper, Hamshahri, to find the 'cleverest' cartoons satirising the slaughter of six million Jews by the Nazis in the Second World War.
More than 200 images have gone on public display in an exhibition at Tehran's Palestine Contemporary Art Museum. The exhibition's opening was attended by the de facto Palestinian ambassador to Iran, Salah al-Zawawi, who has full diplomatic status in Tehran." (See also: "Iran Unveils Holocaust Cartoon Exhibit" (AP/FOX News, 2006/08/14))

"And Now, Islamism Trumps Arabism" (Michael Slackman, The New York Times, 2006/08/20)
A report from Cairo: "'I have more faith in Islam than in my state; I have more faith in Allah than in Hosni Mubarak,' Ms. Mahmoud said, referring to the president of Egypt. “That is why I am proud to be a Muslim.”
The war in Lebanon, and the widespread conviction among Arabs that Hezbollah won that war by bloodying Israel, has fostered and validated those kinds of feelings across Egypt and the region. In interviews on streets and in newspaper commentaries circulated around the Middle East, the prevailing view is that where Arab nations failed to stand up to Israel and the United States, an Islamic movement succeeded.
“The victory that Hezbollah achieved in Lebanon will have earthshaking regional consequences that will have an impact much beyond the borders of Lebanon itself,” Yasser Abuhilalah of Al Ghad, a Jordanian daily, wrote in Tuesday’s issue.
“The resistance celebrates the victory,” read the front-page headline in Al Wafd, an opposition daily in Egypt."

"Journalists' Kidnapping Protested In Gaza City" (AP/The Washington Post, 2006/08/20)
"GAZA CITY, Aug. 19 -- Palestinian journalists on Saturday protested the kidnapping of a Fox News correspondent and cameraman, as concern about the men's safety grew.
Cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, of New Zealand, and American correspondent Steve Centanni, 60, were taken Monday from their TV van near the Palestinian security services headquarters in Gaza City.
About 30 members of the Palestinian journalists' union gathered outside the parliamentary building in Gaza, holding up signs demanding that the men be freed. Other signs called for security in Gaza, where armed men wander the streets freely.
Jennifer Griffin, chief Fox News correspondent for the Middle East, called the kidnapping a "test for the Palestinian people."
"We don't care who kidnapped them, we want them returned unharmed. This is a very serious case for the Palestinians, for the Palestinian Authority," Griffin said." (See also: "Palestinians seek 2 kidnapped reporters" (Diaa Hadid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/08/15))

"Hezbollah seizes initiative as Israel is racked by doubt" (Hala Jaber, The Sunday Times, 2006/08/20)
"Militants rebound as the 'heroes' of Lebanon": "In these critical first days after the war, Hezbollah and its financial backers in Tehran have seized the moment. They are appeasing those who might have been expected to denounce Hezbollah from the wreckage of their homes. And they are entrenching their support among a growing army of sympathisers.
Iran’s money is crucial. Estimates vary widely, but one Hezbollah source said as much as $1 billion had been made available by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president; another that the Iranian leader had placed no limit on the money pouring in. ...
Hezbollah’s ability not only to withstand the Israeli attacks but to create mayhem in northern Israel has earned Nasrallah stellar status in much of the Arab world. Babies are being named after him, jewellery stamped with his face is suddenly in fashion and mobile ringtones can be heard of songs in praise of him.
Hezbollah’s performance has emboldened the leaders of Syria to talk of retaking the Golan Heights from Israel and Iran to dismiss the latest international demands for a halt to its nuclear programme. Little wonder that Nasrallah shows no sign of yielding to critics at home or abroad."

"In British Inquiry, a Family Caught in Two Worlds" (Ian Fisher and Serge F. Kovaleski, The New York Times, 2006/08/20)
A report on the Rauf family: "A British police official, who has been briefed on the inquiry, said, “The Raufs were targeted precisely because of the family’s links to extremist groups in Pakistan that have, over the years, come to work hand in glove with Al Qaeda.” The official, who requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak about the investigation, said that the family had “been flagged red for months” and that the authorities had come to see Tayib as the leader of the plot in Britain and Rashid as the connection to Pakistan. But he warned that “what is unclear yet is how far this inquiry has been able to trace their links back to some so-called mastermind in Pakistan.”
For years before the airline bombing plot, the Rauf family seemed to have attracted an unusual amount of suspicion, and not only for their ties to Pakistan. Their house in Birmingham was searched, the police say, after two slayings, including the killing of the sons’ uncle. Banking regulators put the elder Rauf’s charity account under review in March this year. In the summer of 2005, after the subway and bus bombings here that killed 52 people and 4 bombers, a neighbor of the charity’s office in East London became so suspicious that she called Britain’s antiterrorism hot line."

"Cleric who urged jihad to be freed from prison" (Jamie Doward, The Observer, 2006/08/20)
"An Islamic cleric who influenced at least one of the 7 July bombers and whose videos may have been seen by several of the terror suspects arrested earlier this month, is to be freed from prison in weeks.
Sheikh Abdullah el-Faisal encouraged Muslims to attend training camps so they could wage jihad on the West. He was jailed in February 2003 for nine years, reduced to seven on appeal, after being convicted of soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. Hundreds of Muslims attended his lectures in mosques across Britain, including Birmingham, London and Dewsbury in West Yorkshire.
His trial heard recordings of el-Faisal, Jamaican by birth but living in Stratford, east London, praising Osama bin Laden. 'You have to learn how to shoot and fly planes and drive tanks,' el-Faisal told those who attended his lectures. 'Jews,' el-Faisal said, 'should be killed... as by Hitler.'
He encouraged the use of chemical weapons to 'exterminate non-believers', and exhorted Muslim women to buy toy guns for their children to train them for jihad. He also suggested that nuclear power stations could be fuelled with bodies of Hindus, slaughtered for their 'oppression' of Muslims in Kashmir.
Videos of his lectures have been found circulating in Muslim circles in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, where police are concentrating inquiries into this month's alleged bomb plot involving airliners."

Saturday, August 19, 2006

News and commentary:

"A letter about Stoning to Death" (Azadeh Pourzand, mehrangizkar.com, 2006/08/19)
"A few weeks ago my mother, Mehrangiz Kar, wrote an article about stoning to death in Iran. She received many different feedbacks for her article that was published in Farsi. Among those responses we found an astonishing letter from an anonymous person whose mother was stoned to death twenty six years ago. ...

Hello.
I read your recent article about stoning to death.
Reading your article reminded me of the bleeding bruises in my heart once again.
You wrote about murdering by stoning?
Have you ever held a bloody tool in your hands with which they have murdered your mother?
Have you ever touched the bloody skin and hair of your mother who has just been killed in a deep hole?
Have you ever followed the line of your mother’s blood in order to find her corpse thrown at the back of a truck?
Have you ever seen the fresh grave of that dearest being with a small piece of paper on which they have written her name wrapped around a small branch of tree?
Has anyone ever said a word about the children of the people who have been stoned to death?
I was fourteen and now I am forty. ...

I never forget the last words of my mother’s Islamic judge:
“I issued a verdict for stoning this woman to death so that other individuals learn a lesson from her doomed fate and to avoid sins of such nature. To execute by shooting would not have made her suffer enough!”
Alas. Twenty six years ago my mother was stoned to death before my eyes. Has these women’s tragic fate helped our society improve? Statistics show that the rates of prostitution and corruption have increased exponentially.
God bless you!"

(Hat tip: Dhimmi Watch. See also: "Tehran’s Killing Fields" (Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, FrontPageMagazine, 2006/01/27))

"Mutiny on Flight 613" (Christopher Leake and Andrew Chapman, The Daily Mail, 2006/08/19)
"British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.
The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.
It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles.'"

"Police Arrest One Suspect in German Train Bomb Probe" (Deutsche Welle, 2006/08/19)
"German prosecutors confirmed Saturday that one of two men suspected of planting two bombs found on German trains last month was arrested in a police swoop on the railway station in the northern city of Kiel.
News reports in Germany said that German police had arrested one of the two suspected suitcase bombers at the railway station in the northern city of Kiel on Saturday. The authorities also found explosives at the station, according to German public broadcaster ARD. ...
German police are hunting for two men suspected of planting two homemade bombs packed into suitcases on July 31 in trains in the western cities of Dortmund and Koblenz. The bombs however failed to detonate. Investigators first thought that the devices were a blackmail attempt, but analysis of the contents revealed a possible link to Lebanon.
"We are now working on the basis that this was the work of a terrorist group based in Germany and that it was an attempt to kill a large number of people," Rainer Griesbaum, a federal prosecutor, told a press conference Friday. ...
The cases containing the bombs were unaccompanied when they were discovered, but closed circuit television cameras recorded pictures of two dark-haired young men, one wearing a Germany football shirt, carrying rucksacks and wheeling the suitcases on to platforms at the Cologne railway station.
The two men seen on the grainy images have been described as being from 'southern countries.'" (Hat tip: LGF. See also: "A Middle Eastern Connection?" (Der Spiegel, 2006/08/04))

"Terror police find 'martyr tapes'" (BBC News, 2006/08/19)
"Police investigating an alleged plot to bring down airliners have found several martyrdom videos in the course of their searches, the BBC has learned.
Unofficial police sources said the recordings - discovered on laptop computers - appear to have been made by some of the suspects being questioned.
Scotland Yard has refused to comment on what officers are finding. ...
Meanwhile, it has emerged that every police force in the UK is now involved in the investigation.
The 43 forces in England and Wales, eight in Scotland and the Police Service of Northern Ireland have sent, or are sending, officers to assist.
Hundreds are said to be involved with further officers on patrol at airports."

Friday, August 18, 2006

News and commentary:

"Suicide of the West" (Melanie Phillips, National Review, 2006/08/18)
"A recent Pew opinion poll across Europe revealed that, while Britain was the most respectful country of all towards its Muslim citizens, they repaid the compliment by hating their home country, the west and the Jews more than Muslims anywhere else. Why? The answer is inescapable. British Muslims are being radicalised by Britain itself.
Since Muslims whose minds are already bent by the propaganda of lies and hatred against America, Israel and the Jews pouring out of the Muslim world are further subjected by the BBC and other media outlets to daily — even hourly — diatribes about the evil of America, the evil of Israel and the fact that Britain is a patsy of evil America and evil Israel, who can possibly be surprised that untold numbers of impressionable young Muslims sign up to rid the planet of this apparent scourge? ...
The key belief that sustains this continuum and fuels the global jihad is the paranoid falsehood that the West is engaged in a conspiracy to destroy Islam — and that the puppet masters of the West are the Jews.
The centrality of anti-Jewish hatred to the threat to Britain and the West makes Britain’s animus against Israel — and gross inversion of Israel’s 50-year fight to defend itself from extinction — not merely a regrettable prejudice but an act of cultural suicide."

"Europe's Fellow Travelers" (Serge Trifkovic, FrontPageMagazine, 2006/08/18)
As Fjordman put it in a recent essay: "There is obviously a connection here: The less control the authorities have with Muslims, the more control they want to exercise over non-Muslims. As problems in Europe get worse, which they will, the EU will move in an increasingly repressive direction until it either becomes a true, totalitarian entity or falls apart.":
"The emerging transnational hyper-state is actively indoctrinating its subject-population into believing and accepting that the demographic shift in favor of Muslim aliens is actually a blessing that enriches the Old Continent’s culturally deprived and morally unsustainable societies. Europe is losing the ability to define and defend itself, to the benefit of unassimilable multitudes filled with contempt for the host-society. ...
The rampant insanity emanating from Brussels grows more unrestrained with each new attack, resulting in calls for more understanding of the “underlying causes” of terrorism (racism, Iraq, poverty etc.) and the insistence on greater inclusiveness and more stringent anti-Islamophobic legislation.
An ideological commitment to neoliberal globalization has turned multiculturalism and effectively open-ended Third World (overwhelmingly Muslim) immigration into two inviolable Euro-givens. The result is the inherent inability of Brussels to defend Europe from the threat of a resurgent and aggressive Islam, and to prevent the resurgence of anti-Semitism within its boundaries. Cynically defeatist, self-absorbed and unaccountable to anyone but their own corrupt class, the Eurocrats are just as bad as jihad’s fellow-travelers; they are its active abettors and facilitators." (See also: "In Praise of the First and Second Amendments" (Fjordman, The Brussels Journal, 2006/07/20))

"It sounded so good to start with. But where did it all go wrong, George?" (Gerard Baker, The Times, 2006/08/18)
"Now we have the worst of all worlds. Not only is the US despised around the globe, it can’t even make its supposed hegemony work.
It’s one thing to be seen as the bully in the schoolyard; it’s quite another when people realise the bully is actually incapable of getting anybody else to do what he wants. It’s unpleasant when people stop respecting you, but it’s positively terrifying when they stop fearing you.
What we have now is a situation in which the world’s only superpower, with the largest economic and military advantage any country has ever enjoyed on Earth, is pinned down like Gulliver, tormented by an army of fundamentalist Lilliputians.
Some will say that the US’s ineffectiveness is a direct result of the loss of its “soft” power. Alienating the rest of the world has weakened its ability to achieve its objectives. Idiocies such as Abu Ghraib and the brief flirtation with torture as a legitimate instrument undoubtedly hurt America’s image. But I don’t truly see how the failings in the Middle East could have been avoided by Washington’s being nicer to foreigners. What’s been missing is resolute leadership.
It is hard for me to recall a time when the world was such a scary place. No one should rejoice at America’s weakness. The world is scarier still because of it."

"Why go to war if you don't intend to fight?" (Evelyn Gordon, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/08/18)
"SO WHAT exactly were the military goals that justified all the death and destruction on both sides? Granted, one goal was ostensibly achieved: an agreement to deploy the Lebanese Army and a beefed-up international force in south Lebanon. However, that was supposed to happen after Israel had sufficiently degraded Hizbullah's capabilities to enable these forces to assume control. Instead, Hizbullah's capabilities are still largely intact - and since, as noted above, everyone admits that these forces are neither willing nor able to disarm Hizbullah themselves, it is hard to see how this constitutes an achievement. On the contrary: It will only make it harder for Israel to take military action when Hizbullah launches the inevitable next war. ...
For a country that many still seek to erase from the map, war will unfortunately sometimes be necessary. This was one of those times, and Olmert's decision to go to war was in principle justified. But thanks to his refusal to actually fight the war once he declared it, 159 Israelis and hundreds of Lebanese ended up dying for nothing. And that is unforgivable."

Added today:
"Wimmin at War" (Sarah Baxter, The Sunday Times, 2006/08/13)

Thursday, August 17, 2006

News and commentary:

"Top al Qaeda Man In Pakistan Nabbed" (Gretchen Peters and Habibullah Khan, The Blotter, 2006/08/17)
"A senior al Qaeda commander allegedly tied to the London airplane bomb plot has been arrested in Pakistan, Pakistani intelligence and law enforcement officials have told ABC News. Matiur Rehman, one of the most wanted men in Pakistan, is known to have met with the alleged plot ringleader Rashid Rauf, according to the officials.
Rehman’s capture could provide the most important leads in months to the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s top two leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri. Rehman was believed to be in frequent contact with Zawahiri."

"Hezbollah 3 - Israel 0" (Ralph Peters, New York Post, 2006/08/17)
"ISRAEL'S rep for toughness in tatters. Hezbollah triumphant. Iran cockier than ever. Syria untouched. Lebanon's government crippled. An orgy of anti-Semitism in the global media. Anti-Americanism exploding among Iraqi Shi'as inspired by Hezbollah.
Thanks, Prime Minister Olmert. Great job, guy. ...
All this is heartbreaking. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could back up our president's surreal claim that Israel won. I wish Israel had won. I wish it had the leadership the Israeli people deserve.
And that's what's tragic: Israel's politicians turned out to be even more profoundly out of touch with their people than the pols in Washington. Israelis were willing to fight. They wanted to win. The rank and file of the IDF would have done what needed to be done. And their leaders failed them.
There will be consequences. Iran's convinced it's on a winning course. Syria got away with murder (literally). And Hezbollah will come back more determined than ever.
Oh, I almost forgot those two IDF soldiers whose kidnapping triggered all this. But I can be forgiven, since Israel's leaders forgot about them long before I did: The U.N. resolution Olmert welcomed makes no binding and immediate demand for their return.
And the world is going to let Iran build nuclear weapons.
Get ready for Round Two."

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

News and commentary:

"Tortured Logic" (James Taranto, Best of the Web Today, 2006/08/16)
"An editorial in London's left-wing Guardian raises a question about last week's foiled terror plot that some will find troubling:

Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know--torture," she said. "There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all." ...

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is so, should those thousands of innocents have been sacrificed so as to spare the British government whatever moral taint came with the Pakistani information? The Guardian doesn't put the question so starkly, but it answers in the affirmative:

This battle must be won within the law. Anything else is not just a form of defeat but will in the end fuel the flames of the terror it aims to overcome. ...

It is a question that Time magazine blogger Andrew Sullivan, an emotional opponent not only of torture but of any form of aggressive interrogation, evidently finds extremely discomfiting, for his response is to suggest that the plot may not have been real after all:

I'd be interested in the number of plotters who had passports. How could they even stage a dummy-run with no passports? And what bomb-making materials did they actually have? These seem like legitimate questions to me; the British authorities have produced no evidence so far. If the only evidence they have was from torturing someone in Pakistan, then they have nothing that can stand up in anything like a court.

I wonder if this story is going to get more interesting. I wonder if Lieberman's defeat, the resilience of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the emergence of a Hezbollah-style government in Iraq had any bearing on the decision by Bush and Blair to pre-empt the British police and order this alleged plot disabled. I wish I didn't find these questions popping into my head. But the alternative is to trust the Bush administration.
Been there. Done that. Learned my lesson."

(See also: "Liberal agonies" (The Guardian, 2006/08/15))

"Muslim Myopia" (Irshad Manji, The New York Times, 2006/08/16)
"LAST week, the luminaries of the British Muslim mainstream — lobbyists, lords and members of Parliament — published an open letter to Prime Minister Tony Blair, telling him that the “debacle” of both Iraq and Lebanon provides “ammunition to extremists who threaten us all.” In increasingly antiwar America, a similar argument is gaining traction: The United States brutalizes Muslims, which in turn foments Islamist terror.
But violent jihadists have rarely needed foreign policy grievances to justify their hot heads. There was no equivalent to the Iraq debacle in 1993, when Islamists first tried to blow up the World Trade Center, or in 2000, when they attacked the American destroyer Cole. Indeed, that assault took place after United States-led military intervention saved thousands of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. ...
Meanwhile, at least as many Muslims are dying at the hands of other Muslims as under the boots of any foreign imperial power. In Sudan, black Muslims are starved, raped, enslaved and slaughtered by Arab militias, with the consent of an Islamic government. Where is the “official” Muslim fury against that genocide? Do Muslim lives count only when snuffed out by non-Muslims?"

"Now the Israeli Squabbling Starts" (Max Boot, Los Angeles Times, 2006/08/16)
"Now will come the political reckoning. Some might see this fractiousness as a sign of weakness. Just the opposite is true. Arab societies tend to attribute their shortcomings to outsiders, a failing apparent in a meeting in Jerusalem last week with Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat, who blamed the prevalence of autocracy and theocracy in the Middle East on (who else?) the West. Israelis, by contrast, look within for the source of their misfortune. That allows them to correct what went wrong and get stronger in the future. This process is now underway, and Israel's enemies would be well advised not to underestimate that nation's fighting capacity, no matter how wrenching the debate."

"Many Israelis Furious at How War Was Run" (Amy Teibel, AP//Bretbart.com, 2006/08/15)
"As the Mideast cease-fire took hold, there was no truce in Israeli politics: Demands mounted for the military chief's resignation, and the government came under increasing criticism over how the war against Hezbollah was waged.
Newspapers and radio shows were filled with outrage over army chief Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz's decision to sell off his stock portfolio just hours before launching Israel's biggest military operation since its 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Halutz declared himself a victim of malicious reporting, saying he has been turned "into a Shylock."
Calls mounted Wednesday for setting up a commission of inquiry into how the war was run, amid growing dissatisfaction with Israel's leaders and Monday's cease-fire."

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

News and commentary:

"Backdropped by a poster of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah..."
(Lefteris Pitarakis, AP, 2006/08/15)
Via Robert Spencer: "Quite an auspicious beginning, wouldn't you say?":
"Backdropped by a poster of Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, United Nations peacekeepers from France sit atop their armoured personnel carrier in the outskirts of the southern port city of Tyre, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2006."

"Final Reckoning" (Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic, 2006/08/15)
"However hard Ehud Olmert tries to spin it, the U.N. ceasefire that began yesterday is a disaster for Israel and for the war on terrorism generally. With an unprecedented green light from Washington to do whatever necessary to uproot the Iranian front line against Israel, and with a level of national unity and willingness to sacrifice unseen here since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, our leaders squandered weeks restraining the army and fighting a pretend war. Only in the two days before the ceasefire was the army finally given the go-ahead to fight a real war.
But, by then, the U.N. resolution had codified the terms of Israel's defeat. The resolution doesn't require the immediate return of our kidnapped soldiers, but does urgently place the Shebaa Farms on the international agenda--as if the Lebanese jihadists fired some 4,000 rockets at the Israeli homefront over the fate of a bare mountain that the United Nations concluded in 1967 belonged not to Lebanon but Syria. Worst of all, it once again entrusts the security of Israel's northern border to the inept unifil. As one outraged TV anchor put it, Israeli towns were exposed to the worst attacks since the nation's founding, a million residents of the Galilee fled or sat in shelters for a month, more than 150 Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed along with nearly a thousand Lebanese--all in order to ensure the return of U.N. peacekeepers to southern Lebanon."

"Palestinians seek 2 kidnapped reporters" (Diaa Hadid, AP/Yahoo! News, 2006/08/15)
"GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Palestinian security forces hunted for two abducted Fox News journalists Tuesday, and the Palestinian president and prime minister intervened in an attempt to gain their release.
President Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas-led government, scheduled meetings with the news organization's Jerusalem bureau chief, Eli Fastman, and its chief correspondent in
Israel, Jennifer Griffin.
The prime minister assured the Fox News representatives that Palestinian security forces would use all their power to "put an end to it soon," said government spokesman Ghazi Hamad said, without elaborating.
Investigators said the president's office was closely following the probe into the abduction.
American reporter Steve Centanni, 60, and New Zealand cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, were seized by masked gunmen Monday near the headquarters of the Palestinian security services."

"Assad defends the resistance to Israel" (Roueida Mabardi, AFP/Yahoo! News, OpinionJournal, 2006/08/15)
"DAMASCUS (AFP) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad hailed Hezbollah in its fight against Israel, describing resistance against the "enemy" as legitimate even as Israel said it should prepare for talks.
"I say to all those who accuse Syria of taking the side of the resistance that this is, for the Syrian people, an honor," he said in a wide-ranging speech that also took aim at Washington and anti-Damascus figures in Lebanon.
Assad, whose government the United States accuses of sponsoring Hezbollah, paid tribute to the "men of the resistance" in a reference to the Shiite guerrillas who fought Israeli soldiers on the ground in Lebanon and fired daily barrages of rocket fire over the border during the conflict.
"This resistance is a medal to pin on the chest of every Arab citizen, not only Syria," he said, adding that the Lebanese guerrillas had "shattered the myth of an invincible army."

"Iran cleric warns Israel to fear missiles" (Ali Akbar Dareini, AP/Yahoo! News, OpinionJournal, 2006/08/15)
"TEHRAN, Iran - An Iranian hard-line cleric warned Israel on Tuesday that Iran's long-range missiles will land in Tel Aviv if the Jewish state attacks Iran, state-run television reported.
Ahmad Khatami, a mid-ranking cleric, said Israel should bear in mind its monthlong war with Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas before considering any threats against Iran.
Boasting that Hezbollah's 40-mile range missiles "turned Israel into a country of ghosts," Khatami declared that Israel would face dire consequences if it "makes an iota of aggression against Iran."
"They must fear the day (Iran's) 2,000-kilometer (1,250-mile) range missiles land in the heart of Tel Aviv," he said. ...
Iran, like Hezbollah, viewed the end of fighting as a victory over Israel.
Iran's parliament speaker Gholam Ali Haddad Adel told a session of parliament Tuesday that 'Hezbollah's victory broke the image of Israel's non-defeatability.'"

"Liberal agonies" (The Guardian, 2006/08/15)
"Reports from Pakistan suggest that much of the intelligence that led to the raids came from that country and that some of it may have been obtained in ways entirely unacceptable here. In particular Rashid Rauf, a British citizen said to be a prime source of information leading to last week's arrests, has been held without access to full consular or legal assistance. Disturbing reports in Pakistani papers that he had "broken" under interrogation have been echoed by local human rights bodies. The Guardian has quoted one, Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who has no doubt about the meaning of broken. "I don't deduce, I know - torture," she said. If this is shown to be the case, the prospect of securing convictions in this country on his evidence will be complicated."

"East Enders" (Farrukh Dhondy, OpinionJournal, 2006/08/15)
"Tower Hamlets had, at the last count, 37 mosques within its six square miles -- more per square yard than Mecca. Though parts of the area have prospered because of its adjacency to the City of London, the community remains dedicatedly enclosed. The older citizens, even after 40 years in the U.K., don't speak English. ...
In perhaps 50 towns, the enclosed communities of mill-workers formed their own inward-looking societies, each a Little Lahore. The community's one possible contact with the outside world was Britain's compulsory schooling, but this was subverted by a policy that favored neighborhood schools and resisted dispersal. This resulted in majority, sometimes 100%, Muslim school populations. Democracy and the power of bloc voting forced the adoption of "Islamic" demands: halal school meals, headcovers for girls, gender seclusion, the introduction of Urdu, Arabic and a "multicultural" curriculum. ...
A survey of the Muslim community has uncovered that a third feel that mass murder of British civilians is justified because of Britain's participation in Iraq. This alienation is the most important political phenomenon in British politics today, yet no politician has stooped to try to understand it, preferring to mouth homilies about the "majority of Muslims being peace-loving." Opponents of the war crow about Tony Blair's foreign policy generating jihadis. Liberal opinion falls back on mantras about racism breeding alienation.
They ignore the fact that 9/11 preceded Iraq, and that other unemployed communities haven't resorted to mass murder. No, something else is happening. It is significant that 22 universities have been named as epicenters of jihadist recruitment. The leader of the latest terror attempt is alleged to be a biochemistry student. These educated young men have ventured the farthest from the enclosures of their communities: The well-fed bite the hand that feeds."

"'Birth Pangs' of What?" (Richard Cohen, The Washington Post, 2006/08/15)
"This zealotry, this ideology, this religious fervor is not something we in the West -- and that includes Israel -- know how to deal with. The sheer scale and number of suicide bombings in Iraq was once considered inconceivable. Iraq, after all, was extolled as one of the more secular Arab states, which was among the reasons why some otherwise sane people predicted an easy U.S. victory followed by the national singing of "God Bless America."
This seemingly abrupt shift to the ideological, to the religious, is the most noteworthy and ominous development of recent times. The fight is no longer over territory -- the West Bank, Gaza -- but over the very existence of Israel. The people who seem to hate Israel most, who will kill to kill it and die for it to die, are not reclaiming ancestral land -- no Iranian pines for his lost orange grove near Jaffa -- but instead cannot abide the very idea of Israel.
Democracies are in a fix. If your enemy will gladly die for his cause while you wouldn't think of dying for yours (not that you even know what it is: freedom? liberty?) then clearly the fight is not to the swift but to the suicidal. The obvious short-term remedy is cold, lethal technology. But the reliance on high-tech stuff has not subdued Iraq, and it utterly failed in Lebanon as well. These are the realities of the new warfare, and if they are the "birth pangs of the new Middle East," then what is being produced is not some cute, babbling democracies but a hideous monster.
Just wait until he reaches for a nuclear weapon."

"Israel humbled by arms from Iran" (Adrian Blomfield, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/15)
"Abandoned Hizbollah positions in Lebanon yesterday revealed conclusive evidence that Syria - and almost certainly Iran - provided the anti-tank missiles that have blunted the power of Israel's once invincible armour.
After one of the fiercest confrontations of the war, Israeli forces took the small town of Ghandouriyeh, east of the southern city of Tyre, on Sunday evening, hours before a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations took effect.
At least 24 Israeli soldiers were killed in the advance on the strategic hilltop town as Hizbollah fighters were pushed back to its outskirts, abandoning many weapons. ...
Outside one of the town's two mosques a van was found filled with green casings about 6ft long. The serial numbers identified them as AT-5 Spandrel anti-tank missiles. The wire-guided weapon was developed in Russia but Iran began making a copy in 2000.
Beyond no-man's land, in the east of the village, was evidence of Syrian-supplied hardware. In a garden next to a junction used as an outpost by Hizbollah lay eight Kornet anti-tank rockets, described by Brig Mickey Edelstein, the commander of the Nahal troops who took Ghandouriyeh, as "some of the best in the world".
Written underneath a contract number on each casing were the words: 'Customer: Ministry of Defence of Syria. Supplier: KBP, Tula, Russia.'"

Monday, August 14, 2006

News and commentary:

"HOLOCUST"
(Behrouz Mehri, AFP, 2006/08/14)
Holocaust denial is indeed forbidden in some Western countries, but what about Holocust denial?:
"Iranian women attend the international cartoon contest on the Holocaust in Tehran. An international contest of cartoons on the Holocaust opened in Tehran today in response to the publication in Western papers last September of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed. "We staged this fair to explore the limits of freedom Westerners believe in," Masoud Shojai, head of the country's "Iran Cartoon" association and the fair organizer, said."

"Iran Unveils Holocaust Cartoon Exhibit" (AP/FOX News, 2006/08/14)
"TEHRAN, Iran — An exhibition of more than 200 cartoons about the Holocaust opened Monday as Iran's response to last year's Muslim outrage over a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper.
The display, showing 204 entries from Iran and abroad, was strongly influenced by the views of Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who drew widespread condemnation last year for calling the Holocaust a "myth" and saying Israel should be destroyed.
One cartoon by Indonesian Tony Thomdean shows the Statue of Liberty holding a book on the Holocaust in its left hand and giving a Nazi-style salute with the other."

"Thoughts on the course of the war" (Michael Barone, USNews.com, 2006/08/14)
"Former chief Bush speechwriter and top aide, and my former U.S. News colleague, Michael Gerson, has an essay in this week's Newsweek, which is very much worth reading. The subject is how September 11 changed George W. Bush and how he has responded in the nearly five years since then. Gerson is one of the four or five people who have conferred most closely and frequently with Bush during that time, and he gives us a good insight into Bush's thinking. He also in the following four sentences suggests that Bush really is determined to see that the Iranian regime does not get nuclear weapons and that he is prepared to take military action to prevent it:

There are still many steps of diplomacy, engagement and sanctions between today and a decision about military conflict with Iran--and there may yet be a peaceful solution. But in this diplomatic dance, America should not mirror the infinite patience of Europe. There must be someone in the world capable of drawing a line--someone who says, "This much and no further." At some point, those who decide on aggression must pay a price, or aggression will be universal. If American "cowboy diplomacy" did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it.

A chilling thought. War is terrible, and military action against Iran might turn the Iranian people against us-the people who are probably, after Iraq's Kurds, the most pro-American people in the Middle East. Yet if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad really means what he says, I think we have to regard him as another Hitler. And Hitler, as Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt saw early on, and as Neville Chamberlain came to realize after bitter experience, was someone we simply could not live with. How do we live with Ahmadinejad and the mullahs if and when they have nuclear weapons?" (See also: "The View From the Top" (Michael Gerson, Newsweek, 2006/08/13))

"The Olmert government must go" (Caroline Glick, The Jerusalem Post, 2006/08/14)
"Diplomatically, in the space of five weeks the government managed to undermine Israel's alliance with America; to hand Syria, Hizbullah and Iran the greatest diplomatic achievements they have ever experienced; and to flush down the toilet the unprecedented international support that US President Bush handed to Israel on a silver platter at the G-8 summit.
The UN cease-fire that Olmert, Livni and Peretz applaud undercuts Israel's sovereignty; protects Hizbullah; lets Iran and Syria off the hook; lends credibility to our enemies' belief that Israel can be destroyed; emboldens the Palestinians to launch their next round of war; and leaves IDF hostages Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev in captivity. ...
Today we have 30,000 soldiers in Lebanon with an unclear mission. Because of the failure of this government, Israel now needs to contend with an emboldened Hizbullah protected by Kofi Annan. Already on Sunday, Annan sent a letter to Olmert instructing him that once the cease-fire is put into effect, the IDF will be barred from taking action even if it comes under attack. As far as Annan is concerned, resolution 1701 says that if Israel is attacked, all it is allowed to do is call his secretary."

"Nasrallah: We attained historic victory" (AP/The Jerusalem Post, 2006/08/14)
"Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Monday his guerrillas had achieved a "strategic, historic victory" against Israel.
"We came out victorious in a war in which big Arab armies were defeated (before)," the black-turbaned cleric said.
He further declared that now was not the time to debate the disarmament of his guerrilla fighters, saying the issue should be done in secret sessions of the government to avoid serving Israeli interests.
"This is immoral, incorrect and inappropriate," he said. "It is wrong timing on the psychological and moral level particularly before the cease-fire," he said in reference to calls from critics for the guerrillas to disarm.
Nasrallah, speaking on the day a cease-fire took effect - ending 34 days of brutal fighting between Hizbullah and Israel - called Monday "a great day."
"We are today before a strategic, historic victory, without exaggeration," he said in a taped speech on Hizbullah's al-Manar TV."

"'At War with Islamic Fascists'" (Daniel Pipes, FrontPageMagazine, 2006/08/14)
"In his first response to the major terror airline scare in London, President Bush said on Aug. 10 that “The recent arrests that our fellow citizens are now learning about are a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.”
His use of the term “Islamic fascists” spurred attention and controversy, especially among Islamists.
At a pro-Hizbullah rally in front of the White House, on Aug. 12, the crowd (in the Washington Post’s description) “grew most agitated when speakers denounced President Bush’s references to Islam.” In particular, the president of the Muslim American Society, Esam Omesh, won a massive roar of approval when he (deliberately?) mischaracterized the president’s statement: “Mr. Bush: Stop calling Islam ‘Islamic fascism.’”
Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called the term “ill-advised” and “counter-productive,” repeating CAIR’s usual conceit that violence in the name of Islam has, in fact, nothing to do with Islam. Even more preposterously, Awad went on to suggest that we “take advantage of these incidents to make sure that we do not start a religious war against Islam and Muslims.”
CAIR’s board chairman, Parvez Ahmed, sent an open letter to President Bush: “You have on many occasions said Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’ Today you equated the religion of peace with the ugliness of fascism.” Actually, Bush did not do that (he equated just one form of “the religion of peace” with fascism), but Ahmed inadvertently pointed to the evolution in the president’s – and the country’s – thinking away from bromides to real thinking."

"'Fascistic' is the right word for Islamic fundamentalism" (Janet Daley, The Daily Telegraph, 2006/08/14)
"First, the home-grown terrorist threat was the fault of racist Britain for denying opportunity and educational advancement to Muslim youth.
Then it turned out that most of those involved in the propagation of terrorism were middle-class and university-educated.
At least two of the suspects arrested in the latest alleged plot are converts to Islam: they cannot be said to have suffered a lifetime of embittering discrimination for their newly embraced faith.
This phenomenon is more reminiscent of Baader-Meinhoff than of the intifada - a fanatical cult of rebellious malcontents who are "alienated" (the word of the moment) by the actions of their government and the mores of their country.
This pernicious nonsense is treated by the BBC as if it were the height of reasonableness.
When a committee of Muslim spokesmen announces that, while it condemns violence etc, it nevertheless finds it somehow understandable that Muslim youth should be so "alienated" by the Government's foreign policy that they become willing recruits to a murderous lunatic sect, their statement is described as a bid for peace rather than a blatant piece of blackmail.
What exactly does it mean, this message of "peace": that you can only be safe if we get the foreign policy we want - otherwise some of us may feel justified in blowing you out of the sky?"

"They are in denial over terrorism" (Mary Ann Sieghart, The Times, 2006/08/14)
"WHEN YOU turned on the radio last Thursday morning was your first thought: “Phew! Great work by the security services”, or: “Here we go! Another stunt by the Government”? ...
Journalists such as Sir Simon Jenkins, formerly of these pages, belong to the latter group. He has written countless columns bemoaning the “climate of fear” and berating politicians and policemen for spreading panic by giving us warning of the terrorist threat or taking precautions against it. One classic of the Jenkins oeuvre, entitled “Nothing to fear but fear itself”, was published in The Spectator the very day that terrorists exploded 13 bombs on commuter trains in Madrid, killing 192 people and wounding more than 1,700. ...
These terrorists are not rational beings, though. They harbour a fantasy of Western democracies being intimidated into joining the Muslim world and living under Sharia. But they are not the only fantasists. There are far too many seemingly rational people — from Mr Blair to Sir Simon via a large swath of the Muslim community — who need to get real too."

Added today:
"Gaarder's article 'a hope for peace'" (Aftenposten, 2006/08/13)
"If you're a Muslim - It's your problem" (The Stevens Plan, News of the World, 2006/08/13)
"Welsh muslims say aircraft bomb plot 'a fake'" (Nathan Bevan, Wales on Sunday, 2006/08/13)
"U.S. Ambassador Says Iran Is Inciting Attacks" (Edward Wong, The New York Times, 2006/08/12)

 

See the archive for earlier news and commentary.

 

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Jacques Barzun

Articles of the week

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

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

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

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

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

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From the archives

Oriana Fallaci, R.I.P.

"The Rage, the Pride and the Doubt" (Oriana Fallaci, The Wall Street Journal, 2003/03/13)

"How the West Was Won and How It Will Be Lost" (Oriana Fallaci, The American Enterprise, from the January/February 2003 issue)

"On Jew-hatred in Europe" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2002/04/13)

"Anger and Pride" (Oriana Fallaci, dennisprager.com, 2001/12/19)

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