To stop terror, first recognize its true source
By Walter Reich
Baltimore Sun July 26, 2002

WASHINGTON - As Congress is poised to approve the creation of a Department
of
Homeland Security to protect us from terrorism, we should make sure that our
leaders understand what terrorism now is and how they can - and cannot -
protect us from it.

What terrorism was it is no more. Political agendas once drove it. What
drives
it now is hate. This revolution in terrorism demands nothing less than a
revolution in how our government understands and responds to it.

That the country's anti-terrorism apparatus doesn't appreciate this
revolution
even after Sept. 11 - and is still responding to it as if it was politics
that
drove it and as if only terrorist networks carried it out - was reflected in
the FBI's initial response to the July 4 shootings at the El Al ticket
counter
at Los Angeles International Airport.

"There's nothing to indicate terrorism at this point," a spokesman said. He
acknowledged, however, that it could be an isolated hate crime.

If the FBI understood the revolutionized nature of terrorism, it wouldn't
hang
onto its old distinction between a terrorist crime and a hate crime.
Terrorist
crimes have become, quite simply, the quintessential hate crimes. Just
because
a terrorist acts alone doesn't mean he's not a terrorist.

The FBI's policy of distinguishing politics from hate and terrorist networks
from terrorist individuals is widely shared within our government and
outside
it, and is likely to be shared in the proposed Department of Homeland
Security. But it's shared at our peril.

If we continue to think that politics is the main motivation for terrorism
rather than hate, then we'll keep on believing that if only we changed this
or
that policy we'd stop the terrorism. But it's not our policies - our support
for Israel, for example, or the presence of our troops on Saudi soil, or our
support for one or another despised Arab regime - that engender the core of
the hate against us in the Arab-Muslim world, which is the source of most of
the terrorism that faces us.

It's who we are that engenders it. We are a uniquely powerful civilization
that projects around the world not only its political, military and
financial
might but also, far more offensively to some, a dynamic display of outlook,
values, ideas, openness and culture, both high and low, that intrudes
everywhere and that clashes sharply with recently heightened Islamist
sensibilities.

And if we continue to think of individual terrorist acts as only hate
crimes,
then we'll keep on responding to them as isolated, relatively nonthreatening
events, even if, as is quite likely, they grow into a drumbeat of such
events,
random in their location and timing, ever more deadly and, because of their
frequency and unpredictability, no less terrifying than the more spectacular
acts by terrorist networks.

Hate-filled shooters acting alone, as they escalate into suicide bombers
acting alone, murdering two innocents here and 30 there, in one city of our
country after another, will terrorize our society no less than will
terrorist
networks that dispatch suicidal operatives to crash planes into office
towers
in the service of the same hate.

We have no choice but to understand that if we continue to have worldwide
power and influence we'll continue to be hated and to be the target of
terrorism. And we have to understand that this hate is felt by so many
people
in the Arab-Muslim world that not only will terrorist networks continue to
have a plentiful supply of recruits ready to destroy through suicide, but
individuals, probably with increasing frequency, will engage, on their own,
in
spontaneous spasms of destructiveness.

We're not likely very soon to turn ourselves into an agrarian society that
disbands its economy and military, shuts down its universities and movie
studios and crawls into a meek mouse hole of international anonymity.

We therefore have to realize that, no matter how we change our foreign
policy,
those changes are not likely to reduce the hate, and therefore the
terrorism,
against us. And we have to gird ourselves against the likelihood that this
hate will engender ever more terrorism, not only by groups but also by
individuals.

This means that, in our foreign policy, we must stop trying to do what we've
convinced ourselves will placate our terrorist enemies. And it means that
our
new Department of Homeland Security will have to focus not only on threats
posed by terrorist networks but also on threats posed by individual acts of
murderous carnage.

This is the new age in which we must live. Better to understand and confront
this reality than to go on acting as if it were otherwise.


Walter Reich is the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International
Affairs,
Ethics and Human Behavior at the George Washington University. He was the
director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 1995 to 1998.

Former Libyan PM: Why Do Arabs Ignore Their Flaws

NYTImes July 31
$6 or $60
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Reading the papers lately, I've lost track of whether the Pentagon plans to invade Iraq from three sides or four, and whether we will be using Jordan, Kuwait or Diego Garcia as our main launching pad. But one thing I haven't seen much planning for is the impact an attack on Iraq would have on the world's oil market. Depending on how the war went, that impact could be very bad and lead to a sharp spike in oil prices, like $60-a-barrel oil. But — wait a minute — it could also be very good, and lead to $6-a-barrel oil that would weaken OPEC and, maybe, also weaken the Arab autocrats who depend on high oil prices to finance their illegitimate regimes and buy off opponents.

Raising this oil question is not an argument against taking down Saddam Hussein. He's a bad man, building dangerous weapons, who has raped the future of two generations of Iraqis. The whole region would be improved by his ouster. It is an argument, though, for thinking through all the dimensions of any attack on Iraq. We're not talking about a war in Tora Bora here. We're talking about a war in the world's main gas station.

"A proposed attack on Iraq is an extraordinarily high-risk economic adventure that could either destabilize the governments of one or more oil exporting countries by creating a prolonged period of low prices, or, if things went wrong, lead to a prolonged disruption of world oil supplies, which could be even more devastating," says Philip K. Verleger Jr., an oil expert and fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Let's start with the $60-a-barrel scenario. (The price today is in the mid-$20's.) While the Pentagon keeps leaking its war plans, no one ever writes about what Saddam's war plans might be. What if Saddam responds by firing Scuds with chemical or biological warheads at Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti oilfields? The world market could lose not only Iraq's two million barrels a day, but millions more. And what if the war drags on and we have as much trouble finding Saddam as we've had finding Osama?

Don't kid yourself: If prices skyrocket because of a war in the Persian Gulf, Venezuela, Iran, Nigeria and others will cut back their output and keep prices high to milk the moment for all it's worth.

The scenario that could produce $6-a-barrel oil goes like this: Iraq under Saddam has been pumping up to two million barrels of oil a day, under the U.N. oil-for-food program. Let's say a U.S. invasion works and in short order Saddam is ousted and replaced by an Iraqi Thomas Jefferson, or just a "nice" general ready to abandon Iraq's nuclear weapons program and rejoin the family of nations.

That would mean Iraq would be able to modernize all its oilfields, attract foreign investment and in short order ramp up its oil production to its long-sought capacity of five million barrels a day. That is at least three million barrels of oil a day more on the world market, and Iraq, which will be desperate for cash to rebuild, is not likely to restrain itself. (Now you understand why Saudi Arabia, Iran and Kuwait all have an economic interest in Saddam's staying in power and Iraq's remaining a pariah state, so it can't produce more oil.)

In addition, notes Mr. Verleger, if we invade Iraq in the late winter or spring, when world oil demand normally declines, OPEC countries will have to slash their own production even more to accommodate Iraq. This would be coming at a time when non-OPEC countries (Russia, Mexico, Norway, Oman and Angola) have been steadily boosting their output and will continue doing so. Most OPEC countries, however, can't cut back any more to make room for them. Venezuela is broke. Iran, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia need cash to deal with all their debts, their masses of unemployed and new infrastructure demands. (Watch Saudi Arabia. King Fahd is now gravely ill in a hospital in Switzerland, and the struggle to succeed him is in full swing.)

Bottom line: A quick victory that brings Iraq fully back into the oil market could lead to a sharp fall in oil incomes throughout OPEC that could seriously weaken the oil cartel and rob its many autocratic regimes of the income they need to maintain their closed political systems. In fact, give me sustained $10-a-barrel oil and I'll give you revolutions from Iran to Saudi Arabia, and throw in Venezuela.

If that scenario prevails, you could look at an invasion of Iraq as a possible two-for-one sale: destroy Saddam and destabilize OPEC at the same time. Buy one, get one free. But you better prepare for the consequences of both.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/31/opinion/31FRIE.html

May. 2, 2002 GUEST COLUMN: The Jenin Syndrome
By Raphael Israeli

On the eve of Pessah 1983, when Israel was still reeling from the trauma of Lebanon, and then- defense
minister Ariel Sharon was in the eye of the Kahan Commission storm - with the entire world pointing a
finger at us, a blood libel accusing Israel of "poisoning" Palestinian schoolgirls was concocted. In
Jenin, teenage girls who started fainting in their classrooms without apparent reason were evacuated to
hospitals. As soon as rumors of this began to spread, girls in other schools throughout the West Bank also
lost consciousness and were hospitalized. Some were hospitalized twice or thrice in succession, bringing
their numbers to close to 1,000. Immediately, the Arabs accused Israel of poisoning the
girls as part of a "scheme" to sterilize them. This, according to the libel, was done precisely at a time
when the girls were about to get married and bear children - as part of a sinister "plan to battle
against Palestinian demographic growth."
The UN, European countries and the world media jumped on the accusatory bandwagon - as they are doing today
- as if they had been waiting for the occasion. Even so-called "evidence" was found by journalists to
support the accusation. This "evidence" was a yellow substance on the windowsills of the Arab schools - a
substance which turned out to be pine pollen.
Horrible epithets were hurled at the Jews, claiming that these people who had survived the Nazi camps were
"now acting like their former persecutors." Then, as now, the sinister scheme was attributed to Ariel Sharon, the "monster" who was seen to be
pursuing a war of extermination against the Palestinians.

ISRAEL WAS as shocked as it was incredulous by this onslaught. Prof. Baruch Modan, Israel's leading
epidemiologist and then director general of the Health Ministry, conducted a thorough investigation into the
matter and concluded that there had been no poisoning. But foreign correspondents, under Palestinian
instigation, mocked Modan's findings and questioned his professional credentials.
The Palestinians, then in their Tunisian exile, realized the propaganda bonanza inherent in their
libel. Thus the supposedly "poisoned" girls writhed in pain in front of foreign TV crews, yet immediately
jumped out of bed jubilantly making V signs for the Arabs (and Israeli hidden cameras) to see.

THEN, AS now, the Palestinians revelled in their success at dragging in UN institutions, other Arab and
Muslim countries, and the international community to condemn Israel, before any fact-finding was done. Even
Israel's greatest friend, US Ambassador to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick (who happened to preside over the
Security Council during that month) added her castigation. This helped raise the demand for an
international investigation. It is this which set the precedent that whenever the Palestinians concoct any
accusation against Israel, the conscience of the international community awakens, and everyone wants to
investigate.
Delegations of the Red Cross and the World Health Organization found no evidence of poisoning, yet
issued vague communiques which left the issue hanging. (One can imagine how zealously they would have run to
the press had they been able to dig up any shred of positive evidence.)
The Israeli reference to the fainting as mass hysteria that is common among teenage girls (during rock
concerts, for example) was dismissed as ridiculous, much to the applause of the Arabs and the
international press. It was only after the International Center of Disease Control in Atlanta
performed a thorough investigation and confirmed the mass hysteria diagnosis that tempers began to calm
down. The Red Cross, however, declared that even if there had been no actual poisoning, the girls had
contracted a no less serious illness called "occupation." Sound familiar?
Evidently, no country or organization who bashed Israel relentlessly during that time found it
necessary to apologize (with the exception of the New York Times, which retracted its accusations in an
unnoticeable announcement on an inside page.)
As for the rest of the world, Israel will always be to blame unless it proves otherwise. And no apologies
will be necessary even if it does prove otherwise. Furthermore, Israel will always be expected to
cooperate with those who unjustly blame and condemn it, and any refusal on its part to submit to repeated
investigations will in itself constitute evidence of guilt.
The Jenin investigation of today corresponds exactly to the Jenin Syndrome that we have already lived
through. Who says that history does not repeat itself?
The author is a Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Hebrew University. His book Poison: Modern
Manifestations of the Blood Libel has just been released in the US by Lexington Books.

Hamas spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi made it quite clear today. He said that terrorist attacks will continue until all Jews leave Israel.

Rantisi made the remarks while claiming responsibility on behalf of Hamas for the slaughter of seven more people in Jerusalem this afternoon. A very powerful bomb exploded inside a school bag on a table inside a Hebrew University cafeteria shortly before 2 PM, killing the seven and wounding close to 90, including 12 people in serious and grave condition. Almost everyone in the cafeteria at the time was hurt to some degree. The wounded were taken to several Jerusalem hospitals, including nearby Hadassah-Mt. Scopus. While the general student population is currently on summer vacation, many foreign students, new immigrants and others are on campus for summer session courses and to prepare for the coming academic year.

Hamas claims that the attack is revenge for the liquidation of arch-terrorist Salah Shehadeh - but Jerusalem diplomatic sources are more than skeptical: "Was the Pesach Seder Massacre in Netanya also a response to Shehadeh's killing? Was the Sbarros slaughter [15 killed, a year ago almost to the day] also a response to Shehadeh's killing?"
More.

Malta police is pressing charges against Simone Zammit, a journalist, for speaking up against Palestinian suicide bombings and terrorism.

Haaretz Thursday, August 01, 2002
Coming to terms with the inconceivable
`It's not Holocaust or mini-holocaust; they're launching pogroms against us.'

By Nadav Shragai

Boaz Shabo with his still-recovering son Asael: "The only Arab I hate is the terrorist - and he's dead."
(Photo: Ariel Schalit)

Palestinian terrorism in the last two years has been marked, more than any other awful indicator, by random victims who happened to get into the terrorists' way. There have been whole families and parts of families, a grandfather and grandmother, mother and father, son and daughter, toddlers, infants and even fetuses.

Rabbi Mordechai Elon referred to one area of Mount Herzl as the burial area for the nation's unborn victims (as opposed to the section for nation's great leaders). Eyal and Yael Shorek, who was nine months pregnant when she was killed are buried there and next to them lie Gadi and Tzippi Shemesh, who were killed in downtown Jerusalem immediately after having a scan of their unborn twins.

Four members of the Gavish family are buried next to each other in Elon Moreh - a grandfather, his daughter, son-in-law and grandson. The attacks on the Park Hotel in Netanya and in the Beit Yisrael neighborhood in Jerusalem wiped out entire families. Ruti Peled and her granddaughter, Sinai Keinan, were murdered in Petah Tikva.

Noa Alon and her granddaughter Gal Eizenman were killed at the French Hill intersection in Jerusalem. This week will mark one year since five members of the Schijveschuurder family were killed in the bombing of the Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem.

This past Sunday, Hannah and Yosef Dickstein and their son, Shuvel were buried in Psagot. Boaz Shabo, who five weeks ago lost his wife, Rachel and three of their children, Neriya, 16 Zvi, 13 and Avishai, 5, in a terrorist attack in Itamar, feels as if this is a mini-holocaust.

"The Holocaust was the destruction of a people, entire communities were destroyed and whole families wiped out. The destruction this time is smaller in scale, the community will survive and so will the state, but there is destruction and just like in this terrible days, whole families are again being wiped out and the only motive for killing them is their Judaism, not where they live. The Jewish presence here is what disturbs them."

No answers

And perhaps, Shabo wonders, "the correct quantitative description of what's happening here is not Holocaust or mini-holocaust, but pogroms. They're launching pogroms against us. During the Cossack pogroms of 1648-49 whole families were wiped out. And that's what's happening now in the 2001-2002 pogroms." Five weeks after the tragedy he suffered, Shabo has a hard time talking. His sentences are brief. He thinks for a long time, his thoughts are a little scattered and he doesn't always have answers.

Boaz Shabo has a lot of questions on his mind, but is not willing to talk about all of them. Shabo and his four remaining children no longer live in Itamar.

They have moved into his brother-in-law's apartment in Kedumim. Soon, he'll rent an apartment there. Shabo also doesn't know if at some later point he'll go back to Itamar, where early yesterday morning a terrorist again infiltrated into the community and moderatly injured one of Shabo's neighbors.

The harsh memory that is always on his mind is the picture the public saw the morning after the tragedy - the Shabo family home in Itamar going up in flames and in front of the house, the bodies of his wife Rachel and their sons, Zvi and Neriya covered in black nylon. The body of Avishai was removed later. Shabo himself could be seen stooped over the bodies, burying his head in his hands and weeping.

Every subsequent terrorist attack recalls this scene for him, as well as the other difficult memories. Memories of the routine of a whole and happy family, which are sometimes pleasant for him to cling to and dwell on what was and is no longer, sometimes they only intensify his pain over what was and is no longer.

"Memories strengthen and memories weaken," he says. That is what has been happening to Shabo since the tragedy, in the most banal moments, when he goes with his kids to the Kupat Holim clinic or when he's shopping in the grocery store, while reciting the blessing over wine at the Shabbat table, as he leaves the house in the morning, or when he recently registered some of his kids in new schools for the coming school year.

"In this picture of a routine, which must continue, there used to be four more people and now they're missing and everything I did with them in the past that I do without them today is also a memory of what was, but even the routine of the present and this mix is very tough."

Human failings

Shabo also has a lot of anger in him "over human failings," which he won't discuss and also "anger at the Heavens," which he'll only talk about a little. "I find myself often talking to the Holy One Blessed Be He and asking Him - why did you take the kids, the wife? What bad did they do in the world You created? My faith," he acknowledges, "wavered. When I pray each morning, it's more for Rachel and the kids.

They appear to be watching me from above. I owe it to them. The rabbis tell me that the process I'm going through is normal; that a person who suffers such a devastating blow, has his faith shaken up and that the faith will return, especially since I've been religious my whole life. The kids have actually become stronger in their day-to-day observance. They need something to grasp at, maybe it's the hope for the resurrection of the dead."

On the night of the attack, when he came home to Itamar and saw the burned house, Shabo did not stop asking himself if he might have been able to change even a little bit of the course of events, to stop the terrorist, limit the killing, if he had only been there. "But on second thought, I said to myself, `Boaz, the Holy One Blessed Be He saved you because you were delayed at work and decided that your remaining kids will have a father; because if you had been there, you might also have been killed'."

Along with the memories and the anger, there is also fear. "The fear stems mainly from the worry over losing what is left. Worry for the remaining kids. Worry for myself, as their father. Fear surfaces during the ride from Kedumim to the hospital," where his son, Asael is still recovering. The fears surface during the day - "we make sure to lock the doors" - and at night as well.

Shabo has trouble falling asleep. He sleeps very little. Two of his kids are also still having trouble sleeping. "It's okay to be scared," he tells his kids, "it's legitimate, normal." Asael talks freely about what happened and unblinkingly describes the events of that night, but for weeks he was afraid to enter the burned house in Itamar. "Everyone went in except for Asael. He saw the house from the outside one time and then another time and then the third time, he went inside. Everyone moves at his own pace. My daughter, Aviya, also opened up more and the big kids, Yariv and Atara, did too, but each one has his own problems."

Better without news

In the meantime, Boaz Shabo has stopped listening to the news. "During the first month of mourning, it's halakhically forbidden, but it's also convenient. How can you recover from experiencing a terrorist attack if you're constantly hearing about the continuing terrorism? It's better not to listen." Nevertheless, Shabo was told about the death of his good friend Yair Gamliel's son, Yehonatan, in the terrorist attack on the bus at the entrance to Immanuel.

And Shabo summoned the strength, "I don't know from where" and went to the Hayarkon cemetery to cry on his friend's shoulder. For a long time, the two stood embracing without exchanging a word. "I'm crying for one, you're crying for four," Gamliel finally said to his friend. "Now I'm crying for five," Shabo corrected him, "I'm also crying over your son."

During the seven day mourning period after the funerals known as the shiva, thousands came to comfort the Shabo family, but there was one person, Shabo says, who he felt was missing - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Shabo would like to meet Sharon and ask him "how he feels, as prime minister, when a mother and three of her children are murdered. I'd like to ask him face to face. Does he really believe that the path he has followed until now was correct? Did he err somewhere? I'd ask him to some soul-searching and mainly, I'd beg him to signal the public about the justice of the path chosen, because without that, it's impossible and we are right."

Shabo opposes forming a commission of inquiry to look into the Oslo agreement. "There's no thing to investigate," he says, "everything's known. They brought murderers here, armed them, gave them money and authority and they continued murdering. It was so predictable. But the real crime was that they didn't hold a referendum on this agreement."

Plowing with blinkers

He compares Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin to a donkey plowing with blinkers on his eyes - "they were stricken with blindness." He is convinced that had Rabin been alive, he would have already halted the terrorism very aggressively and effectively months ago. Of those who refuse to see what's happening, Shabo says, "they chose to cut themselves off from reality. This is a country that for years has been fighting for its existence and they're busy with their hunchback."

Shabo supports fencing in settlements, but not Jewish ones. "Let them fence in the Arab settlements and towns." Here and there, he is also willing to put a fence around Jewish settlements, depending on security considerations, but he doesn't forget that the terrorist that murdered his family reached the fence around Itamar, easily crossed it and continued onward."

"Eretz Yisrael," says Shabo, "has belonged to us since the days of Genesis, but if one day a Jewish majority decides to withdraw from it, I will respect that decision. Moreover, today I don't have the emotional strength to fight against a withdrawal. I was taught to respect government decisions, whatever government it may be. Of the Palestinians: "Many of them, but not all, hate us." It's in their genes, he avers.

"Esau hates Israel from generation to generation, but we Jews are merciful and the descendants of merciful Jews; we weren't brought up on hatred of others. I was taught to love others and that all people are created in the image of God and are beloved. I was taught about human dignity. That is also how I raised my children and I hope that they don't hate now and that they won't hate in the future."

He says he does not hate Arabs. "There are good and bad ones among them just like in any group. The workers in the gas station in Alfei Menasheh, where I fill up my car, wanted to come to the shiva to console me, but they were afraid.

There are also some Arabs I work with in printing and when I came for the first time to visit the office, they hugged me and cried and said they were sorry about what happened. The only one I hate is the terrorist who perpetrated this horror, but he's dead now and the collaborator who has since been caught, after they traced the terrorist had dialed from his cell phone while he was inside our house in Itamar."

Even today, Shabo is convinced Israel will prevail in the conflict. "We cannot allow the other side to think that we've been broken. We can't give them that gift. We can't flee. We have to fight, struggle, but the public here must know that these times are not normal times.

The security situation is a disaster. People, mothers and fathers, have to watch over their children and themselves, to be careful. Be cautious. There's no shame in that."

Five weeks later and Boaz Shabo knows that the hard part is yet come. "After the shiva, after the warmth and love with which everyone envelops you, 24 hours a day, the family, friends and acquaintances, there's quiet and a huge void. I have no complaints against anyone. It's the way of the world and I'm grateful to all those who continue to strength, help and assist us, both from within the family and from the outside, but the reality that awaits us will never be able to be the reality that was. Now we have to rebuild our lives."

JPost Jul. 29, 2002
ANDREA LEVIN'S EYE ON THE MEDIA: When Editing Is Censoring at the New York Times
By ANDREA LEVIN

Professor Anne Bayefsky, noted scholar of international and human rights law, had a striking encounter with editors at the New York Times. An op-ed of hers critical of the United Nations and human rights groups for their distorted focus on Israel and their "diversion" from confronting actual rights abusers was accepted for publication on May 8. But so radically altered was the final column ("Ending Bias in the Human Rights System" May 22, 2002) that Bayefsky went public with the obfuscations demanded by the newspaper.

Her unexpurgated version as submitted to the Times has been reprinted in the June 2002 edition of Justice, the journal of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. Appended to it are some of the alterations required by theTimes.

The original is a detailed and spirited description of the challenges and failures of organizations in handling human rights issues, with particular emphasis on the disastrous effects of the continuous scapegoating of Israel, especially by the UN. Bayefsky names some of the worst offenders: "UN intergovernmental human rights machinery is not keen on specifics. Its members include some of the most notorious human rights violators in the world today: China, Cuba, Libya, Saudi Arabia, and Syria. Those countries prefer devoting UN funds, (22% of which are from the United States), to criticizing Israel - lest attention wander too close to home."

But this passage and others critical of the UN, human rights groups and nations manipulating these organizations to avoid inspection of their own wrongdoing had to be excised, and the "dynamic" of the article had to be modified, as a "condition" of publication in the Times.
Indeed, it took "six new drafts" and "four additional drafts with smaller changes and corrections, seven drafts from the editors and six hours of editing by telephone," before the neutered column was finalized for publication.

Deleted, for example, was reference to Human Rights Watch having rushed within weeks to publish a caustic report on Israel's military action against Palestinians in Jenin, while the organization's long-awaited report on suicide bombings of Israelis was "still coming" after 20 months of slaughter.

Throughout, Bayefsky's specific criticisms were blurred into generalities.

Similarly, Bayefsky was compelled to remove her observation that the incoming High Commissioner for Human Rights should be willing "to confront the UN's internal resistance to professionalism and transparency." Her emphasis on the corrupting effects of the focus on Israel was diluted to a single cautious and couched observation that avoids affixing any specific blame on anyone. The Times' only mention of Israel's gross ill-treatment by the UN read this way: "...in almost all cases [Human Rights] commission members seek to avoid directly criticizing states with human rights problems, frequently by focusing on Israel, a state that, according to analysis of summary records, has for over 30 years occupied 15% of commission time and has been the subject of a third of country-specific resolutions."

One phrasing suggested by the Times referred to members of the UN Human Rights Commission being "especially tough on Israel (which is both politically offensive to many member states and very weak at the United Nations) ..."

Bayefsky refused to put her name on this outrageous wording.

The Times' aggressive intervention to protect the United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International from criticism by an expert in the field of law and human rights, and to whitewash their scapegoating of Israel, will hardly come as a surprise to those who follow the Times. More surprising, and refreshing, is Bayefsky's exposure of the lengths of tortured editing to which the Times will resort to maintain its bias.

Since the episode recounted here, Amnesty International departed from its usual pattern of one-sided criticism of Israel and issued a report that characterized the mass murder of Israeli civilians by Palestinians as "crimes against humanity." But the New York Times remained true to form. Although it has routinely given prominence to Amnesty's allegations against Israel, in this instance the organization's 44-page report was relegated to an incidental mention at the end of one story and to a three-paragraph brief. Few readers would have any notion that the world's largest human rights group had issued a scathing review of Palestinian actions, and their remaining uninformed apparently suited the Times' editors just fine.

Andrea Levin is Executive Director of CAMERA, Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

The West's Anti-Westernism

JPost Jul. 4, 2002
From Teheran to Jerusalem
By LAUREN GELFOND

Two dozen Persian-Israelis are launching a Persian culture movement to celebrate their Israeli and Iranian roots, and join forces against the militant Shi'ite rule that has radically changed the face of their birthplace.

Everyone was smiling with that kind of happy, faraway look people have when remembering something special from long ago.

Manutcher Cohen, the newest member of the group, in Israel only three years since retiring, snapped his fingers and shook his head in time to the music, pausing only to readjust his kippa or wipe away what seemed to be a tear of joy.

Beside him in an easy chair, Manutcher Bala-Zadeh played a handmade tar, a Persian stringed instrument from the guitar family. "You left, but to where?" he sang along, grinning with his eyes closed. "You are still with me in my heart."

The others joined in, some singing, some banging the table, others using their hands as instruments. Daniel Dana, leader of the band Nir-Akhtar, played a santuv, a flat stringed instrument related to the piano and dating back 2,500 years.

The traditional Persian love song that they all knew speaks of a man's love for a woman. But in a Jerusalem living room that day, packed with Iranian expatriates, the words reflected a different kind of love.

As proud Zionists, they are expected to feel hostility towards their place of birth - a Muslim fundamentalist country that is not only hostile to Israel, but supports militant organizations committed to violence against Israelis and to Israel's destruction itself.

But for these Iranian artists, their love for Israel and Iran goes hand-in-hand and there is no contradiction. Persian culture is their glue. The majority of Iranian citizens, they say, are as opposed to Muslim militancy and its Shi'ite leaders as the Jews are. Behind the scenes there, Jews and Muslims in Iran are the best of friends, they say, both oppressed by their authoritarian leaders.

"When I went to the airport to come to Israel, my Muslim friends joined me and we all hugged and cried," said Cohen. "We miss each other so much and I speak to them on the phone all the time."

To show the world how "real" Iranians feel, and to help those Iranians who oppose their leaders to speak out, these artists have now come together as a band to use their talents towards telling this story. The group calls themselves Nil-Akhtar, Persian for "Blue Star," a name that reflects the Star of David, their guiding light.

When the group gives its first performances on Sunday in Jerusalem and July 24 in Holon, they hope their musical, poetic, dance and theatrical arrangements will introduce a new dialogue, where Persians of all faiths can come together and help improve Israel-Iran relations. They also hope simply to introduce Persian culture into the mainstream Israeli vernacular.

"We want to show that we don't hate Persians," says actor Haim Hakimi, who has lived 31 years in Israel. "We hope things will return to how they were before Khomeini."

Eventually, if they raise enough support, they will take their show and their message abroad to European cities with large Iranian Muslim populations.

Beyond these stated goals, another pointed one seems to emerge from between the lines.

The players speak with great frustration about the Shi'ite branch of Islam, and seem to hope they can lend a hand in its demise as the totalitarian ruling party in Iran, where it has been in power since the overthrow of the shah in 1979.

At the head of the group, and most vocal in his opposition to Shi'ism, Daniel Dana, the founder and director of Nil-Akhtar, is the only one who was not born Jewish.

DANA, 57, was born in Teheran as Jamshid Hassani, a Shi'ite Muslim, a fact that never gets buried, even under his kippa and new name. It is his Shi'ite past itself that has led him across the national, political and religious struggles that now define him.

During his college, military and graduate-school days in the late Seventies and Eighties, Dana dedicated his free time to underground activities working against the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic republic he introduced.

"I tried to convince other students and young people how dangerous the Islamic republic was. They [the Shi'ite fundamentalists] claimed they had to kill everyone who was an opponent and we had to stop them, and expose them as terrorists."

After receiving an LL.B. degree in Teheran, a master's degree in history of law and a PhD in constitutional law in Paris, he says, his resistance writings and activities back in Iran eventually led to the breakup of his marriage and the loss of his home and his faith.

"My wife supported the regime and I didn't. It was a horrible situation that led to divorce," he says. "I also received threats on my life."

In 1989, Dana fled to Australia and was eventually granted political asylum there. In Melbourne, he set to work studying theology as well as law, and became interested in Christianity. He converted, and even considered becoming an ordained minister. Through this transition period, he continued his underground writings against the Islamic republic and started a new project, he says, translating Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses into Persian.

"Intelligence told me to stop - that other translators had been killed by Islamic republic agents. But five million Iranians in exile would be interested to read this, and I wouldn't give up."

In late 1994, Dana's interest in theology and law led to a grant for collecting data in Jerusalem for eight weeks at the Hebrew University, for a research project comparing Shi'ite law and Australian common law.

But when it came time to head back to Australia, he says, his visa was denied. The embassy explained in a letter that he keeps on display: "The Australian authorities have assessed you to be a direct risk to Australian national security. As a result, any application which you might make for a visa would be refused on this basis." The UN also later rejected his plea for political-refugee status.

"I had no money left, no work, no papers, and nowhere to go," says Dana. "But the UN suggested I contact the International Christian Embassy, and met the Zionist Dutch minister Jan Willem van der Hoeven, who said that God had sent me to him."

The reverend was looking for a researcher to help him do comparative-religion studies, and Dana was hired on the spot, he says, spending five years at it.

Reading the Torah and studying Judaism was another life-changing experience.

"I understood that Judaism was the main source of monotheism. Christianity was the vessel that brought me into the light of Judaism and Israel, where I finally have found my home," he says.

Now that he's here to stay, in Israel and in Judaism (if the authorities let him; his conversion and naturalization are still pending) he feels he has a sacred mission.

"I need to express my love for Israel and Zionism, and to bring this message to five million Iranians in exile. To tell them, hey people - regardless of what the last 24 years of propaganda says - Israel is not Satan, but rather the twin sister of Iran, from King Cyrus until now."

"As a woman I am so proud to be Persian," says singer with the group and radio journalist Orit Hakkak. "I am proud of the culture I learned there. The people there are my friends - I never separated from them. We want peace again between Iran and Israel like there once was. It was so great, Israeli engineers came to Iran and helped with agriculture and doctors came and helped with medicine. We had a straight line between our two peoples and we both benefited from it.

"Now," she continued, "they live under a repression as bad as those who lived under the Taliban. Women are stoned every day. We don't want a fight between religions. We just want to find the legal basis to criticize the Shi'ite leaders."

Dana's legal background helps them to make their case. "Forty million Muslim Iranians hate Shi'ism. We can speak for them, they have no voice," said Dana. "God helped me to come here so I could help them."

HEADING their flyer for Nil-Akhtar, three words are listed in Persian, Hebrew and English: Awareness, Liberty, Self-Discovery.

The 90-minute performance to get this message out will be divided into three parts. A one-man play with a narrator will tell a parable about the life-line from Teheran to Jerusalem. Hebrew songs, including "Hatikva" and "Jerusalem of Gold," will be sung in Persian. And traditional and modern Persian song and dance will be performed by the whole troupe.

Every performance in Persian will be translated simultaneously into English and Hebrew on wall screens.

The troupe is supported in part by the Memorial Heritage Foundation of Judaism in Shiraz, and is affiliated with the Peace & Love International Movement, also founded by Dana to rally Iranians worldwide towards political and religious reform in Iran.

Troupe members say that the founding of Nil-Akhtar has given them a new purpose in life.

"We are like moths that look for and swarm around the light," says Hakimi of the Persians living in Israel. Pointing at Dana, he adds: "He is the light."

While the group says that Persian culture is one of their greatest joys in life, their Israeli identities are equally dear, and intrinsically linked.

Cohen, still only three years in the country, still remembers what it was to live as a Jew in Iran, despite his good relations with others there.

He raised his hands to the sky as if in thanks. "It is such fun to walk freely with a kippa every day. All my life I dreamed of returning to Zion." Now he's looking forward to singing his love song in public.

Nil-Akhtar, the Persian Culture troupe, is performing in Jerusalem on July 7, at 8 p.m., in Beit Tarbut Haamim on Emek Refaim 12; and in Holon on July 24, at 8 p.m., in Yad Levanim on Kogel 11.

A brief picture of Persian history - Cyrus, a Zoroastrian, conquered the Babylonian land that became Persia and later Iran. The Iranian musicians in Israel refer to him fondly as the true father of Persia. Before the arrival of the Muslim Arabs in the mid-seventh century, Persian language and culture had Indo-European roots.

Life improved for the Jewish and other minority communities in 19th-century Iran, when a constitution granted minority groups equal rights, and eliminated a Shi'ite clause that said all nonbelievers were unclean, or unholy. Later, in 1950, the shah recognized the State of Israel.

Since 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the shah and established an Islamic republic based on Shi'ite ideology, tens of thousands of Jews have fled Iran for Israel and millions of Muslims have fled to the West.

Most of the world's Muslims, including those in Israel, are Sunni. Though Shi'ites are a small world minority, they often have a lot of power through backing of such groups as Hizbullah, and militant factions fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. The US State Department, which considers the Islamic Republic of Iran to be one of the most active state sponsors of terrorism, charges the Shi'ite rulers with also backing Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

According to Dana and his colleagues, millions of Sunni Muslims in Iran continue to suffer today under the Shi'ite despot rule.
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