Watch - "Ship Of Truth"

"Ship Of Truth"

"In my conversations about the ship with friends across the political spectrum, one question recurs: If this is what the Palestinians attempt now, with Israel in control of the borders and the seas, how will we enforce demilitarization in a sovereign Palestine? Barely anyone anymore even tries to provide an answer." (Yossi Klein Halevi)

News and commentary on the Israeli capture of the Karine A shipment of arms.

September 2002
"Israel: When Arafat's Ship Sailed" (Netty C. Gross, The Jerusalem Report, from the 2002/09/09 issue)

March 2002
"A Secret Iran-Arafat Connection Is Seen Fueling the Mideast Fire" (Douglas Frantz & James Risen, The New York Times, 2002/03/24)

February 2002
"Arafat takes blame for arms shipment" (BBC News, 2002/02/14)
"Why Arafat Must Go" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/02/08)

January 2002
"Shipping out - Why the 'Karine A' story failed to register on some radar screens" (Jonathan Tobin, Jewish World Review, 2002/01/21)
"Denial: A River in Egypt" (Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, New York Post, 2002/01/14)
"Anchors Away" (Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic, from the 2002/01/21 issue)
"Ship Of Truth" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/01/11)
"'Compelling evidence' Arafat knew of arms" (Andrea Koppel and Elise Labott, CNN.com, 2002/01/10)
"Blame it on the anti-Semitic media" (Yisrael Harel, Haaretz, 2002/01/10)
"Arafat's Implausible Denials" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2002/02/10)
"It All Points to Arafat" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/01/09)
"Arafat's ship of death" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/01/07)
"Terrorism on the high seas" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/01/06)
"Israel Seizes Ship It Says Was Arming Palestinians" (James Bennet and Joel Greenberg, The New York Times, 2002/01/05)

"Israel: When Arafat's Ship Sailed" (Netty C. Gross, The Jerusalem Report, from the 2002/09/09 issue)
An interview with Israel Navy operations chief Eli Marum about the eight-minute capture of the Karine A. Found via Little Green Footballs: "In the predawn hours of January 3, the force boarded the 4,000-ton cargo ship in the Red Sea, between the coasts of Saudi Arabia and Sudan, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Eilat. It turned out to be carrying 50 tons of Iranian weapons, valued at $15 million. ... "The whole thing took less than eight minutes. Quicker than we expected," he recalls matter-of-factly during a rare interview. ... Rear-admiral Marum, 47, believes the Karine A operation was a "great milestone in this conflict." Not only did it deny the Palestinian Authority a significant amount of weaponry, but it also highlighted its role in weapons smuggling, punching "a giant, if not fatal, hole" in Arafat's credibility, he says. ... The nature of the weapons, he asserts, also laid bare Arafat's intention to 'cause many Israeli casualties. We found two tons of C-4 explosives - a material used by suicide bombers - on board. Why would the PA need C-4? To build roads?'"

"A Secret Iran-Arafat Connection Is Seen Fueling the Mideast Fire" (Douglas Frantz & James Risen, The New York Times, 2002/03/24)
"American and Israeli intelligence officials have concluded that Yasir Arafat has forged a new alliance with Iran that involves Iranian shipments of heavy weapons and millions of dollars to Palestinian groups that are waging guerrilla war against Israel. The partnership, officials said, was arranged in a clandestine meeting in Moscow last May between two top aides to Mr. Arafat and Iranian government officials. ... In fact, Israeli and American officials believe that the 18-year struggle by Hezbollah in Lebanon, backed by tens of millions of dollars worth of arms from Iran, provided a model for what Tehran would like to recreate on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. "The strategy is to make the West Bank another Lebanon," said one senior American intelligence official."

"Arafat takes blame for arms shipment" (BBC News, 2002/02/14)
"The United States says Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has accepted responsibility for an attempt to smuggle arms on board a ship intercepted by Israel last month. Until now, Mr Arafat had denied any knowledge of the affair, which cast a shadow over US efforts to implement a ceasefire between the two sides. ... Mr Arafat's comments came in a letter to US Secretary of State Colin Powell. "He [Arafat] wrote me a letter three days ago on the Karine-A, accepting responsibility - not personal responsibility, but as chairman of the Palestinian Authority," Mr Powell told a Congressional committee." (Note that Arafat blamed the Karine A incident on the Israelis just a couple of days ago: "Retracting earlier comments blaming Hizbullah, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat said in remarks published today that Israel was behind an arms shipment captured by Israeli commandos last month. In an interview with Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper, Arafat said Israel's intelligence service, Mossad, had engineered the arms ship episode as a blow against the Palestinians, Iran and Lebanon's militant Hizbullah group."("Arafat: Israel behind Karine A weapons shipment", The Jerusalem Post/AP, 2002/02/12)

"Why Arafat Must Go" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/02/08)
"The Karine A, however, demonstrated that the Palestinian Authority had developed a military relationship with Iran, the country the State Department calls the single worst source of terrorism in the world. Hence, the awful outcome of the Oslo "peace process" finally becomes clear: not peace, not a demilitarized Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, but an Iranian client-state - a new member of the "axis of evil," well-armed, terrorist and violently anti-American - planted in the heart of the Middle East, destabilizing not just Israel but Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. That the United States cannot tolerate."

"Shipping out - Why the 'Karine A' story failed to register on some radar screens" (Jonathan Tobin, Jewish World Review, 2002/01/21)
"The answer to the problem could be found in the lead of an Associated Press wire story on the Palestinian captain's confession, that was published on The Philadelphia Inquirer's Jan. 4 front page. ... The story characterized that mission as one whose purpose was to "help the outgunned Palestinians defend themselves." Ironically, instead than dispelling the myth that Israel is attacking the Palestinians during Arafat's 16-month war, that line reinforced it. The ship story was thus distorted to look a bit like heroic Palestinian resistance to Israeli "occupation." Like some of the coverage on television, that story and many others seemed to approach it from a very different frame of reference. It didn't highlight the flagrant violation of the Oslo accords that showed the Palestinians preparing for further violence against Israel and an escalation of the war. Instead of a story of terror avoided, the coverage often appeared to start from the point of view that the Palestinians were justified in finding better ways to kill Israelis."

"Denial: A River in Egypt" (Daniel Pipes and Jonathan Schanzer, New York Post, 2002/01/14)
"But the Middle East media knows better. "The story of the arms ship is but a licensed fabrication by Israel," announces the editor-in-chief of the Egyptian government's daily, Al-Akhbar. Saudi media agree that the episode was a hoax, with Arab News calling it "an elaborate trap" and Ar-Riyadh alleging that it "was necessary to fabricate the ship story" to implicate other Arab and Muslim countries as sponsors of terrorism. Qatar's Ash-Sharq interpreted it as an Israeli "pretext for more oppression and terrorism against the Palestinians" and a story that "no sane person can believe." ... This pattern of avoiding unpleasant facts offers an insight into the problems of Muslim society. Turning defeat into victory, evidence into forgery, and terrorism into an "inside job" creates an alternate and more hospitable world. But this denial avoids problems rather than dealing with them. Not acknowledging who carried out the 9/11 atrocities, for example, means ignoring its many causes, from a radicalized school curriculum to the use of Islamic "charities" for money-laundering. Part of the U.S. war on terrorism, therefore, has to be working with Muslim governments and pressing them to face reality. This will not be easy, but so long as they remain in denial, the stage is set for fresh disasters."

"Anchors Away" (Yossi Klein Halevi, The New Republic, from the 2002/01/21 issue)
"In much of the international press, Arafat's denial of responsibility - his solemn word that he knew nothing about a 4,000-ton ship purchased by one of his operatives and manned by members of his navy - has been treated as a credible counterweight to Israeli claims. Not even the televised admission by the ship's captain that the weapons were loaded near the Iranian coast, overseen by a Hezbollah agent, and bound for the PA - a textbook example of President Bush's definition of what transforms a local conflict into global-reach terrorism - convinced foreign observers that Israel had uncovered a Palestinian-Iranian-Hezbollah triangle. ... In my conversations about the ship with friends across the political spectrum, one question recurs: If this is what the Palestinians attempt now, with Israel in control of the borders and the seas, how will we enforce demilitarization in a sovereign Palestine? Barely anyone anymore even tries to provide an answer."

"Ship Of Truth" (Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, 2002/01/11)
"Arafat is embarked on a strategy of war - and has been ever since he signed the September 1993 Oslo "peace" accords on the White House lawn. ... This strategy has been the declared PLO position ever since it adopted the "Phased Plan" in Cairo in 1974. Phase 1: Accept any territory offered of whatever size within Palestine. Phase 2: Make it the forward base for the war to destroy Israel. Our refusal to acknowledge this overwhelmingly obvious strategy is one of the great acts of self-delusion in diplomatic history. ... If we want peace, Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have to go. They must be de-legitimized, de-recognized, de-funded by the United States. And by Europe. And if that does not bring them down, Israel should be allowed to go in and do the job itself."

"'Compelling evidence' Arafat knew of arms" (Andrea Koppel and Elise Labott, CNN.com, 2002/01/10)
"Israelis have presented what the Bush administration believes is "compelling evidence" that Yasser Arafat knew about a shipment of weapons intercepted by Israel, a senior State Department official told CNN. ... "We have had extensive briefings from the Israelis, and at the moment there is quite a bit of compelling evidence that figures Fatah and the Palestinian Authority were involved in this shipment, and it is clear that Chairman Arafat has a responsibility at this point to provide an immediate and clear explanation," the official said. "We have concluded that part of these transactions and shipments were of such magnitude that we have to conclude that Arafat would have known," he said."

"Blame it on the anti-Semitic media" (Yisrael Harel, Haaretz, 2002/01/10)
"But it's feigning innocence to blame the IDF Spokesman for the "professional" reasons the world media is trying to evade reporting the main issue, which is Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's arms smuggling. ... But when [CNN] reports - even after the interview with the captain - that "Israel and the Palestinians continue to exchange accusations about the weapons ship," it in effect explains why CNN made no effort to go after the dramatic story. And that is the attitude of other news networks and of important newspapers, like The New York Times, which wrote that the weapons were ostensibly intended for the Hezbollah. ... The Arabs claim that Israel orchestrated an act of piracy in international waters, and that it's not the first time the country ignored international law. And we shouldn't be surprised if we soon hear that argument in Europe as well. Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish papers are full of hatred for Israel. ... Arafat continues to win world support, especially in the Scandinavian countries that carry the human rights banner on high, despite the destruction of human rights in the Palestinian Authority, widespread personal and public corruption, weapons smuggling, and in particular, personal responsibility for acts of mass terror."

"Arafat's Implausible Denials" (William Safire, The New York Times, 2002/02/10)
"The clear purpose of the 50 tons of Iranian arms, intercepted by Israeli commandos last week, was to help Yasir Arafat's coalition of terror win Iran's undeclared war on Israel. While the U.S. and Israel have for a decade been deluding themselves with a "peace process," Iran and its Palestinian proxies have been gaining ground in their war process. Caught red-handed, Arafat is denying any knowledge of what his chief lieutenants and other terror partners have been doing. His pretense of innocence calls to mind Chico Marx's line to a husband when caught in bed with the man's wife: "Who you gonna believe — me or your own eyes?" ... More central to America's security, however, is the strategic reality revealed by the capture of the Karine A: Tehran has again shown itself to be the world arsenal of terror. Iran's ayatollahs have been escalating their sponsorship of terrorist war — yesterday on the "Great Satan" of America, today on Israeli Jews, tomorrow on the whole non-Islamic world."

"It All Points to Arafat" (Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, 2002/01/09)
"The evidence is close to overwhelming that the Karine A mission was financed and organized at the highest levels of the Palestinian Authority, most likely sanctioned by Arafat himself - and that Arafat allowed the mission to proceed after he called for cessation of all armed actions against Israel on Dec. 16. ... Akawi said that he thought Arafat himself did not know of the mission. This seems more of a politic statement than a heartfelt one, given the amount of money involved and given that the men who commanded Akawi answered directly to Arafat. Not surprisingly, Arafat supports the rogue operation theory. He reportedly tried to sell it to U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni that the whole thing was a renegade affair, not under his control. The Jerusalem Post said Zinni was "very unconvinced." Yes."

"Arafat's ship of death" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/01/07)
"The most obvious significance of this enormous weapons cache is that Arafat's real intention is not only to escalate terrorist attacks (over two tons of explosives were found on the ship) but to move beyond terrorism. ... The idea Arafat might be building his illegal army for defensive purposes does not wash. Arafat's simplest defense is not to attack Israel in the first place, in which case none of the closures and incursions into PA-controlled territory would be necessary. A much more plausible explanation - which Israel has no choice but to assume - is bucking for a pivotal role in general Arab war for Israel's destruction. ... The primary message of Arafat's ship of death is it is not possible to trust any agreement with the Palestinian people so long as it is led by the current regime."

"Terrorism on the high seas" (The Jerusalem Post, 2002/01/06)
"Also on board the vessel were short- and long-range Katyushas, including 122 mm rockets with a range of some 20 kilometers, which would have put most of Israel's cities and industry at risk. That the ship is connected to the PA is beyond doubt - its captain is a senior officer in PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Naval Police, and the ship itself is owned by the PA. ... Equally worrisome was the presence of a Hizbullah officer on board the ship, which demonstrates the increasing level of cooperation among various Middle Eastern terrorist groups. ... That Iran would be willing to send a shipload of heavy weapons to the region for use by terrorists, just four months after the World Trade Center attack, obviously means the ayatollahs think they can act with impunity. It is time for America to disabuse them of that notion once and for all."

"Israel Seizes Ship It Says Was Arming Palestinians" (James Bennet and Joel Greenberg, The New York Times, 2002/01/05)
"The Israeli Army said today that it had seized a ship carrying 50 tons of rockets, mines, anti-tank missiles and other munitions meant for Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority, even as the Bush administration's envoy met with Mr. Arafat in the hope of strengthening his declared cease-fire with Israel. Palestinian officials denied any link to the ship, the Karine A, and dismissed the announcement a day after the seizure as propaganda timed to undermine Mr. Arafat. But Lt. Gen. Shaul Mofaz, chief of staff of the Israeli Army, said that the Karine A was owned by the Palestinian Authority, which governs Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and that its captain and several of its officers were members of the Palestinian naval police. "The P.A. is drenched from head to toe with terror," General Mofaz said."

"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

Articles of the week

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

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

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