Nikita Article list

2002-10-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-08-08T14:41:00.000-07:00

Former Libyan PM: Why Do Arabs Ignore Their Flaws

2002-08-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

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

2002-08-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-07-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2002-07-31T20:01:00.000-07:00

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

2002-07-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

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."

2002-07-29T13:50:00.000-07:00

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

2002-07-25T01:09:00.000-07:00

The West's Anti-Westernism

2002-07-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

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.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1023716595737

2002-07-22T00:51:00.000-07:00

NYTimes
Iran Blew Up Jewish Center in Argentina, Defector Says
By LARRY ROHTER

BUENOS AIRES, July 21 — The Iranian government organized and carried out the bombing of a Jewish community center here eight years ago that killed 85 people and then paid Argentina's president at the time, Carlos Saúl Menem, $10 million to cover it up, a witness in the case has said in sealed testimony.

A 100-page transcript of a secret deposition, provided to The New York Times by Argentine officials frustrated that the case remains unsolved, supports long-held suspicions of Iranian involvement and adds to the questions surrounding the conduct of an inquiry that has been rife with irregularities from the start.

Evidence has disappeared, leads have been ignored and witnesses have been threatened and apparently bribed.

According to the witness, a high-level defector from Iran's intelligence agency who gave his name as Abdolghassem Mesbahi, Mr. Menem, who was president from 1989 to 1999, benefited for years from his ties to Iranian intelligence officials.

They courted him as a valuable contact, Mr. Mesbahi said, for his combination of rising political power, Muslim ancestry and connections to Argentina's small but influential Syrian-Lebanese community.

Mr. Menem, who is once again a leading candidate for president, has already been tainted by political corruption scandals and spent six months under house arrest last year on charges that he had overseen an illegal arms smuggling operation while in office.

But the bombing of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association on July 18, 1994, the worst terror attack ever carried out here, continues to haunt him and all levels of the Argentine government as a symbol of the absence of accountability that in recent months has brought this country to the brink of collapse.

Through intermediaries, Mr. Menem declined a request for an interview to discuss the case. But Alberto Kohan, his former chief of staff and now an important campaign adviser, suggested that the accusations were politically motivated and denied any official cover-up.

"Every intelligence agency in the world had free passage in Argentina to investigate this case," Mr. Kohan said. "We were completely open. We did everything that the courts asked for. There are people in custody, there is a trial and there is an inquiry under way. We would all like to know who did it. President Menem was totally clear about that at the time."

Iranian officials in Tehran have denied involvement in the bombing. Officials at the Iranian Embassy here declined to discuss the case by telephone and did not respond to a request for comment by fax.

Mr. Mesbahi, the Iranian defector who provided the testimony, met with Argentine investigators in Germany in 1998 and again in Mexico in 2000, speaking at various times in Persian, English, German and French with a Spanish-language translator present.

Argentine officials say that they are not sure of his current whereabouts, except that he remains under Germany's protection, and that they do not know if the name he gave is his real name.

Argentine and German officials describe him as a senior operative who has provided valuable information about Iranian terrorist operations in Europe and Asia through the mid-1990's. He defected to Germany in 1996, reportedly because he was upset at his agency's involvement in the killing of dissident intellectuals in Iran and abroad.

Mr. Mesbahi said the planning for the attack in Buenos Aires began in 1992, led by Mohsen Rabbani, cultural attaché at the Iranian Embassy at the time, and supervised by Hamid Naghashan, a senior official of the Iranian intelligence agency.

One cell focused on "cooperating with members of the Argentine police, corrupting them or threatening them to collaborate with the attack," Mr. Mesbahi said, according to the transcript. "Another devoted itself to obtaining the explosives" in Brazil, he said.

Nilda Garré, who led the Argentine government's antiterrorism unit in 2000 and 2001, and other Argentine officials said Mr. Mesbahi's account had been confirmed by another Iranian who had visited the Argentine Embassy in Tehran twice.

Immigration and Foreign Ministry records here confirm, the officials said, that several Iranians who were said to have been involved in the plot visited Argentina in the months preceding the bomb attack.

Mr. Mesbahi said that after the attack, negotiations took place in Tehran with an emissary, a bearded man of about 50, sent by Mr. Menem. The result was that "$10 million was deposited into a numbered account that Menem had indicated," Mr. Mesbahi said, paid from a $200 million Swiss account controlled by Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was Iran's president at the time, and by a son of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

In return, Mr. Mesbahi said, Mr. Menem agreed to "make declarations that there was no evidence against Iran that it was responsible."

The Menem government initially blamed Iran, but the cumulative effect of later statements, arguing that there was insufficient proof, has been to sow uncertainty about responsibility for the bombing.

Early this year the Swiss government acknowledged that it had been asked to look into information supplied by the Iranian informant. Eamon Mullen, the Argentine government's chief prosecutor in the case, said in an interview that investigators had confirmed that a deposit had been made into an account controlled by Mr. Menem at the bank named by Mr. Mesbahi and in the amount he had specified.

"But it is not known who made the deposit or on what date," Mr. Mullen said, leaving open the possibility that the payment could have been a payoff for other acts of corruption of which Mr. Menem has been accused or from some other source.

After the bombing, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Ayatollah Khomeini as Iran's supreme leader and still holds that post, publicly expressed his approval.

"By gathering together groups of Jews with records of murder, theft, wickedness and hooliganism from throughout the world," Ayatollah Khamenei said, "the Zionist regime has created an entity under the name of the Israeli nation that only understands the logic of terror and crimes."

In his testimony, Mr. Mesbahi said Iran's contacts with Mr. Menem began in the mid-1980's when he was the governor of La Rioja Province. Because Mr. Menem was of Arab descent and they believed him to share their anti-Jewish sentiments, the Iranians covertly funneled money to Mr. Menem in hopes that he would be elected president and pursue policies favorable to Iran, Mr. Mesbahi said.

"The companies that worked for Menem sold their products at a high price to Iran, which accepted those prices because it knew what those high prices were paying for," Mr. Mesbahi said, according to the transcript. "A lot of money went to the companies that supported the Menem campaign."

After Mr. Menem became president in 1989, he consolidated his power by packing the Supreme Court with close political associates including a former law partner and by placing loyalists in key posts in the national security and intelligence apparatus.

But he enraged the Muslim countries that hoped to take advantage of his rise, which included Libya as well as Syria, where he and his wife at the time both had relatives.

Mr. Menem instead pursued what he called "a carnal relationship" with the United States, apparently yielding to pressure from Washington not to sell weapons or advanced technology to Iran, Libya or Syria, and became the first Argentine head of state to visit Israel.

Argentine officials say the bombing at the Jewish community center was strikingly similar to an attack on the Israeli Embassy here in 1992, in which 28 people died. In both cases a car bomb was used, the targeted building was undergoing repairs and police officers on a security detail inexplicably vanished just before the explosion.

In what he said was a demonstration of his intention to get to the bottom of the Israeli Embassy attack, Mr. Menem put the Argentine Supreme Court in charge of the investigation.

But that inquiry was botched so badly that it now figures in the list of offenses in impeachment proceedings against the justices and, critics say, encouraged the attack two years later on the community center.

"The inaction of the Argentine state, the absolute absence of investigation, showed terrorists that they could act in Argentina without the slightest fear of consequences," Sergio Widder, South American representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in an interview here. He said the inaction had "inspired a level of confidence" that made the attack on the commnity center possible.

After the second attack, Mr. Menem had the cases handed over to an investigative magistrate, Judge Juan José Galeano, rather than the Supreme Court.

But Judge Galeano's conduct of the inquiry, which is continuing, at least on paper, has been so bizarre and brought so much criticism that he is now himself being investigated on charges of improper behavior that could lead to his removal from the bench.

"From the start the Argentine government, especially in the person of Judge Galeano, has never shown a will to investigate and clear up this matter," said Alberto Zuppi, a lawyer and former Justice Minister who now represents Memoria Activa, an association of the families of bombing victims.

"Everything has been done so as not to get to the bottom of this matter," Mr. Zuppi said, "and the result is that much time and evidence have been lost."

Questions have been raised in particular about an unusual videotape of a meeting between Judge Galeano and Carlos Alberto Telleldín, a car thief who was jailed shortly after the community center attack because he had briefly owned the van used in the bombing.

The videotape, stolen from Judge Galeano's office and later broadcast on television, shows the two men discussing a $400,000 payment that Mr. Telleldín says he received.

At various times officials have said Judge Galeano and Mr. Telleldín were negotiating a book contract or discussing a reward for information. But in testimony in open court in May, Mr. Telleldín said that "Judge Galeano had promised to free me by October 1997" and to give him the money if he would agree to accuse a group of Buenos Aires Province police officers in the case.

Judge Galeano declined numerous requests for an interview. But Claudio Lifschitz, formerly Judge Galeano's chief investigator, said the judge Galeano had been acting to protect his patrons in the intelligence service, who reported to Mr. Menem, particularly from the testimony of the Iranian defector, Mr. Mesbahi, who was known as Witness C.

"That's why Mr. Galeano has made the testimony of Witness C secret and refuses to allow any follow-up interviews with the Iranian, because that testimony became dangerous the minute it implicated Menem," said Mr. Lifschitz, a lawyer who is the author of a book called "Why the Investigation Was Made to Fail."

"There are another 300 files that he is keeping apart from the main proceeding and that no one but he has access to," Mr. Lifschitz added.

According to Ms. Garré, a former deputy interior minister who is now a member of Congress, 66 cassettes of intercepted telephone conversations disappeared simultaneously from the offices of the Federal Police and intelligence services.

She also said police logbooks had been altered and electronic address books and planners of various suspects erased as part of an official cover-up.

"Not only has there been no support for getting to the bottom of this case, you can also say that some government organs have actively sabotaged the investigation," Ms. Garré said.

"State intelligence and the federal police are clearly involved," she added, "but there is also evidence pointing to the involvement of agencies ranging from Immigration to the Foreign Ministry."

In addition, Judge Galeano appears to have steered away from some areas of inquiry that other investigators think might have yielded useful information.

"If the Iranian track has hardly been looked at," said Ariel Said, the lead investigator of a congressional committee looking into irregularities in the case, "the local Islamic community, which is predominantly Syrian-Lebanese and directly linked to Menem, has been looked at even less."

After more than seven years of delays, a trial finally began here last September and is expected to continue until the end of this year. But of the approximately 20 people who could face long prison terms if convicted, not one is accused of having organized or of having been directly involved in the attack.

Instead all, like Mr. Telleldín, who maintains that he is innocent, are charged in connection with the theft of the van or the alteration of its engine and identifying documents.

Several others are low-level members of the Buenos Aires provincial police, a force that has often been at odds with both the national intelligence service and the Federal Police.

In his testimony in early May, Mr. Telleldín said he had been subjected to "pressures coming directly from the Casa Rosada," the seat of government. Mr. Menem, he contended, sent an emissary in 1995 who offered him a $2 million payment if he would blame a group of Lebanese immigrants then being detained in neighboring Paraguay in conection with the attack.

"Menem was running for re-election, and he wanted to close the circle," Mr. Telleldín said of the visit from a former military officer with close ties to the presidential palace.

Mr. Telleldín said he had also been visited by representatives of the national intelligence agency who urged him to shift some blame to the Buenos Aires provincial police so as to damage Mr. Menem's main rival, Eduardo Duhalde, who was then governor of the province but is now Argentina's president.

Even as the trial and the investigation have dragged on, survivors of the attack and relatives of the victims assemble every Monday morning just before 10 o'clock in front of the main courthouse here.

After a minute of silent prayer, a shofar is blown, speeches honoring the dead are offered and protesters waving placards and photographs of the victims chant, "We demand justice!"

"Argentina has lost an opportunity to contribute to the international body of knowledge about terrorism that could have helped other countries avoid or better confront terrorist actions," Mr. Widder said recently after one such gathering. "What happened here is the model of what not to do in confronting international terrorism, and it leaves the door open to a third attack."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/22/international/americas/22ARGE.html

2002-07-21T23:29:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 10, 2002
The Mightiest Weapon
By SUE FISHKOFF

A Beduin in a wheelchair - one of 22 children of illiterate parents - is studying nuclear physics at Ben-Gurion University in an effort to break the cycle of poverty.

Ramadan Abu Regila looks younger than his 19 years. His shyness, the almost-whispered voice that comes out from behind a diffident smile, combined with the painfully twisted torso and useless legs that have confined him to a wheelchair since boyhood, cause people to glance away and hurry past the small, dark youth in their path.

But beyond that feeble body, crippled by a degenerative disease that is slowly eating away his bones and muscles, lies a mind sharp enough to get him admitted as a first-year student in nuclear engineering at Beersheba's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the second Arab and first Beduin in the country to begin such a course of studies.

"I was a good student in high school, and I always wanted to continue my studies," Abu Regila says. "My father and mother always told me I needed to go to university."

They said the same to his brothers and sisters - all 21 of them. This despite the fact that his father, a 47-year-old truck driver, and his 40-year-old mother, his father's second wife, are both illiterate.

Abu Regila is from the al-Harub tribe of Negev Beduin. He spent the first seven years of his life in a tent city, often waiting three or more hours for the local bus that would take him to school. By the time his family was moved into Segev Shalom, a government-created "recognized" town on the outskirts of Beersheba, he was beginning to lose the use of his legs. In a few more years he could no longer walk. The doctors didn't tell his parents, or him, what is causing his disability. "We didn't want to know," he says with a shrug. "The doctors said there's nothing they can do, anyway."

As Abu Regila took to his wheelchair, the other children began to make fun of him. "It hurt a lot," he says. "I thought that if I studied hard and was good at school, I could show them that I was worth something."

Last year, Abu Regila was plucked out of his regional Beduin high school along with 44 other promising young students to take part in "Budding Scientists," an enrichment program for local Beduin youth sponsored for the past four years by the university's Center for Beduin Studies and Development. The students spent every Friday of their senior year at the university campus, receiving special tutoring in math, physics, Hebrew grammar and English, to bring them up to the academic level of the incoming freshman class. An intensive three-week, six-hours-a-day summer course completed the pre-university preparation.

"It's a kind of affirmative action," says Dr. Alean al-Krenawi, who took over as the center's director a year ago. "We provide ongoing academic support to help them cope with the academic difficulties they face here at the beginning."

Fifteen of the 45 "budding scientists" from Abu Regila's senior year have enrolled at BGU, where they are among the newest of the university's 363 Beduin students. Twelve others enrolled at local colleges or foreign universities. This past year, the center expanded the Budding Scientists program to high schools in three Beduin towns, and recruited 128 pupils. The center also brought 500 Beduin 12th graders, virtually every high-school senior in the region, to a one-day conference on higher education in the Beersheba area. Representatives from the university and other technical and vocational colleges explained how the students could enroll in their schools, and what kinds of jobs they could expect to get after graduation.

Al-Krenawi and his fellow outreach workers believe higher education is critical if the 130,000 Beduin of the Negev are ever to lift themselves out of their crushing poverty and carve out a niche for themselves in Israeli society.

Beduin make up 25 percent of the Negev's population, but are at the very bottom of the country's socio-economic ladder. They have the highest unemployment rate of any ethnic community, not helped by the fact that just 30 percent of them complete high school. Of those, few actually matriculate.

In the late 1960s and early '70s the government began large-scale plans to relocate the semi-nomadic Beduin tribes roaming freely in the Negev into seven newly constructed towns. The plan was only partially successful. Less than 60 percent of the Negev Beduin live in those towns today. The rest continue to live in unrecognized villages and shantytowns where they receive no municipal services, and eke out a marginal existence.

Getting those young people into universities or training courses so they can return to their home communities with the tools to help their own people is a major goal of the Beduin Center.

Ben-Gurion University has long prided itself on its outreach to this sector, but Beduin enrollment in the university languished until 1998. That was the year American philanthropist Robert Arnow, a member of BGU's board of governors, agreed to fund 10 scholarships a year for Beduin women students, and spurred the creation of the Beduin Center. Last July, Arnow established a $2 million permanent endowment for Beduin education at BGU, and challenged the government to match his gesture.

Six years ago, just eight Beduin women were studying at the university. This year there are 146, including 26 studying for their master's or doctorate degrees. The number of first-year Beduin women students has jumped from 20 two years ago to 41 in the just-concluded academic year.

The Beduin Center acts as a "home away from home" for these students, and provides academic and personal counseling. It offers financial aid - but just to young women; in the Beduin world, it's the girls who are most often left behind.

"You're talking about a traditional culture," says al-Krenawi. "Fathers don't want to invest in their girls, who they feel will get married and move away. We at the center believe deeply that by educating Beduin women, there will be a chance to change the society, to break down the psychological barriers. They will be role models for the next generation."

As Abu Regila is a fully disabled Israeli citizen, his tuition and transportation expenses are covered by the National Insurance Institute, but again, it's al-Krenawi and the Beduin Center who help him fill out the forms, and who badger the authorities to ensure he receives what he's entitled to. As with most of their Beduin students, al-Krenawi and the center's small staff act as surrogate parents, offering encouragement, advice and a shoulder to cry on for students whose own parents are ill-equipped to deal with the world of universities and government bureaucracies.

"Once they're here, they need psychological and social support as well as academic help," al-Krenawi says. "It's more difficult for the young women. Some of them cry at the beginning, they say it's too hard and they want to leave. We call their parents, we talk to them. We help however we can."

"I hesitated to apply to university, because I thought with my handicap, it would be too difficult," Abu Regila says. His younger brother goes everywhere with him, pushing his wheelchair to and from classes, and back home at the end of the day. Al-Krenawi hopes to persuade the NII to pay for a mechanized wheelchair for Abu Regila, so he can get around by himself.

Abu Regila has an older brother studying to be a computer technician in a Beersheba vocational institute, but he's the first in his family to go to university. "I have little brothers and sisters who want to go, too. I help them with their lessons, and try to encourage them."

The extra academic support provided by the Beduin Center was critical in getting Abu Regila through his first few months at BGU, he says. Although he's studied Hebrew since third grade, it's not his first language. And he'll be expected to read engineering texts in English this coming year, a language he barely knows.

"If the Beduin Center hadn't been there to help me, I would have had to stop studying," he says. "Now I hope to go on for my PhD and maybe be a researcher here some day, with God's help."

In addition to educating the next generation, the Beduin Center helps keep educated Beduin in the Negev by providing jobs for them at the university. "We hire Beduin lecturers who might otherwise have left the Negev," al-Krenawi says.

And he is one of them. A native of a Negev tent city, al-Krenawi remembers riding a donkey 10 kilometers to school every day, then rushing home to tend the family's sheep. The rambling tent his family lived in had no electricity or running water. He attended a high school in the Galilee Arab town of Tira, where he says he encountered educated Arabs for the first time in his life.

"I gradually came to see myself as part of this world, and on my monthly visits home, I felt increasingly distant from my family and their way of life. We saw things differently, and I felt that they didn't understand my needs."

Unlike Abu Regila's parents, al-Krenawi's parents did not want him to go to university. They urged him to come home after high school and teach in their local elementary school. Instead, al-Krenawi went to Ben-Gurion University, earning his BA and MA in social work, and eventually went on to get a PhD in clinical social work from the University of Toronto.

Al-Krenawi learned his field "before the days of cultural sensitivity," he remarks. "It did not occur to me or, probably, to anyone else at the university that the [social-science models] we used might not be entirely suited to work with non-Western peoples. I assumed that I would go back to the Negev and simply apply my new and shining knowledge."

From 1981 to 1992, the enthusiastic young al-Krenawi was the sole Arab mental-health worker at Beersheba's Soroka Hospital, and ran the mental-health clinic in the Beduin city of Rahat. As the years went by, he slowly lost his impatience with the old-fashioned mind-set of his patients, and gradually came to understand how Beduin traditions could be incorporated into a comprehensive mental-health approach.

That same attitude - that Beduin students should be educated in ways that empower them to return to their Negev communities and help their own people - drives the Beduin Center that al-Krenawi now heads. "If we bring in these students and help them survive the university experience, they'll stay in the region after graduation," he says.

The Beduin Center sponsors academic conferences on Beduin issues throughout the school year, and is carrying out several surveys and statistical studies on the Negev Beduin population. As part of the center's goal of improving relations with the unrecognized Beduin villages, the center completed a developmental report on the villages' needs in the areas of jobs, education, health, welfare and infrastructure. Copies of the report were sent to every Knesset member, and center representatives met with several cabinet ministers, but nothing concrete has come of it yet, al-Krenawi says.

'It's amazing the way our North American donors understand that education is the way out of poverty for the Beduin," he remarks, implying that some people closer to home might learn from that example. "This center plays a major role because of its neutral position. It doesn't belong to Rahat or to another village [with specific tribal loyalties]. It's not part of the government. It's part of a university, a neutral body, and that gives us some power in the community."

The Negev Beduin suffer from a lack of social workers, psychologists, nurses and educational counselors. To that end, the center wants to launch a new project this fall to bring 12th-grade students to the university for a year of training that will enable them to go right into the helping professions. Al-Krenawi estimates the first year of the project will cost $60,000, and he's trying to raise the funds over the summer so class can begin in October.

"This is a society in transition, facing social and psychological challenges," he notes. "We can't just send Jewish people to work with them. You don't speak the language, you're not part of the culture. We need our own people to work in our community."
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2002-07-21T23:28:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 18, 2002
GUEST COLUMN: From Oslo to Ground Zero By RUTH WISSE

On September 2, 1993, I got a call from Richard Bernstein of The New York Times, asking me to comment for an article on the "peace agreement" that was about to be signed by Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister of Israel, and Yasser Arafat, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

As it happened, I was in Jerusalem, where my daughter was then living, and along with everyone else in the country we had been watching the evening news.

My foreboding was registered in the next day's paper: "Ms. Wisse's concern is that in dealing with Mr. Arafat, the Israelis are, in effect, intervening in Arab politics, choosing the PLO chief, whom she called 'a killer,' to be the leader of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

If things go wrong and she believes there is a good chance they will it is Israel that will bear responsibility, she said. 'It's the first time that an Israeli government is doing something for which I, as an American Jew, would not like to bear moral responsibility.'"

Bernstein's gentle summary barely conveyed my anguish. The reestablishment of a Jewish state was, to my mind, the most hopeful achievement of the 20th century, and the noblest proof if proof was necessary of the high worth of Jewish civilization.

Because of the many difficulties the country still faced, I believed that Israel had the right to ask of Jews like myself who lived outside its borders every kind of economic, political, and spiritual support.

However, I did not believe that Israel could claim my support for putting into power a mob of professional murderers and extortionists. As a non-citizen, I could do nothing to stop the leaders of Israel from carrying out this plan. But as a citizen of the world, I knew that this was the worst possible move they could have made.

The physical threat to the country was then uppermost in the minds of many other American opponents of the Oslo Accords. Norman Podhoretz, Frank Gaffney and others predicted that hostilities against Israel would likely increase if Arafat were installed as head of a proto-Palestinian state. For the same reason, the voters of Israel had elected Rabin on a platform that explicitly rejected overtures to the PLO.

Military experts in Israel pointed out that the overhasty agreement had not taken account of security needs or developed a set of fall-back procedures should Arafat fail to keep his side of the bargain.

Although the intifada was claiming many Israeli lives in stabbings and other such random attacks, friendly columnists warned that things could get much worse if Israel compromised its policy of deterrence.

I FULLY shared these apprehensions for Israel's safety. The Arab war against Israel, which began formally on the day of its creation in 1948, was the most lopsided war in modern history prolonged by the preposterous asymmetry of fast-growing Arab Muslim populations and a Jewish people already decimated by the destruction of its European population.

Arab dictators and monarchs, none of whom rules democratically, had refused to accept the reality of a sovereign Jewish people in its historic homeland.

In rejecting the partition of Palestine, they had also condemned its Arabs to the status of permanent refugees to provide enduring "evidence" of Jewish liability.

Israel had been defending itself on the axiomatic premise that peace could only come if the Arabs stopped their aggression against it. It was now about to reverse that sensible policy by rewarding its most virulent enemy.

Arafat was before Osama bin Laden the world's leading terrorist. As confounder of Al-Fatah in the late 1950s and head of the PLO since 1969, Arafat had spearheaded an "armed Palestinian revolution" against Israel. The PLO's targets were always civilians: The murder of the Olympic athletes at Munich in 1972 was but the most notorious example of its methods.

Moreover, this terrorist network was paid by Arab governments to act as their proxy their hit man in the ongoing war against Israel. The PLO was tolerated, supported, and encouraged by Arab rulers only to the extent that it furthered the war against Israel and bought protection for their own regimes.

Yet Israel was now prepared to recognize the PLO terrorist network as the representative of the Palestinian people, entrusting its 20,000 armed "policemen" with the protection of Israel from terrorists.

Although Rabin said he expected Arafat to end the violence against Israel unrestrained by the human rights concerns of a democratic society, Arafat was much likelier to use his dictatorial powers to increase the violence of Palestinian aggression against Israel.

The risks of this so-called peace process far exceeded questions of security. The PLO founded in 1964, before Israel gained the disputed territories was the most dedicated ideological font of anti-Semitism since Adolf Hitler's Nuremberg Laws institutionalized Aryan racism.

The PLO "Covenant" a term that parodied the sanctity of God's brit (convenant) with Abraham was not a summons to national self-liberation, such as Zionists or other modern national leaders issued in their time. The PLO denied Jews their history and peoplehood in order to claim national legitimacy in their stead. It did not simply oppose the Jews as occupiers of part of the land it claimed for its own, but rejected the historical reality of a millennial-old Jewish people.

The PLO charter read in part: "The claim of historical or religious ties between Jews and Palestine does not tally with historical realities or with the constituents of statehood in their true sense. Judaism, in its character as a religion, is not a nationality with an independent existence. Likewise, the Jews are not one people with an independent identity. They are rather citizens of the states to which they belong."

Whereas anti-Semitism in Europe had stigmatized the Jews as an alien and unassimilable people, the PLO brought Palestinian nationalism into being as a replacement for a Jewish people it said did not exist.

Consider, then, what it meant for Israel to give the PLO responsibility for governing the Palestinian Arabs on the basis of a letter that promised to inaugurate "a new epoch of peaceful coexistence."

First, Israel was capitulating to Arafat because it felt it could no longer tolerate the toll of terrorism, yet asking the terrorists to renounce the methods that had handed them this major triumph. Surely, the evidence entitled Arafat to believe that terrorism had vindicated his professional calling.

Second, all that Israel extracted from him in return was a promise that "those articles of the PLO Covenant which deny Israel's right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and longer valid."

Arafat would submit (note the future conditional tense) the necessary changes to the Palestinian National Council for approval. But if the PLO covenant was predicated on

Jewish illegitimacy, what possible import could Arafat have ascribed to an agreement with the people he intended to supplant?
Third, the precipitous deal with Arafat, based on secret negotiations conducted by non-elected Israelis, had the hallmarks of a revolutionary act rather than a considered democratic process. Declaring Arafat an ally over the objections of many patriotic citizens and overseas supporters had the absurd effect of repudiating friends with the expectation of gaining security from enemies.
The self-styled "fixers" who thought they were reforming Arafat actually furthered his agenda. They did not even require as a precondition of his reign public disavowal of the entire PLO Covenant and the articulation of a new set of ideological principles for cooperation with a sovereign Jewish state. Just as no new vocabulary of coexistence was extracted as the minimal test of reconciliation, so Arafat's flagrant violations of the accords were ignored from the day after its signing in Washington. In the ensuing months, instead of requiring that the US and Europe help to monitor every PLO action and communication within the disputed territories in acknowledgement of the enormous risk Israel had taken, Israel's officials threw all their diplomatic resources into promoting financial and diplomatic assistance for the PLO. The hate message of terrorist extremists became the daily fare of an entire generation of Palestinian schoolchildren.
A RECENT article by Dan Polisar ["The Myth of Arafat's Legitimacy," Azure, summer 2002] documents the regime of corruption that was created by Arafat "a regime characterized by a massive police force whose specialty was intimidation of political opponents; an executive branch in which Arafat alone made all major decisions and in which the civil service was reduced to a corrupt patronage machine; the institutionalized absence of the rule of law, and a judiciary that lacked any independence; and the intimidation of the media and human rights organizations ."
Polisar challenges the "myth of legitimacy" that Arafat acquired as leader of the Palestinian Arabs, without mentioning Israel's role in granting him that legitimacy. When Israel empowered a terrorist on the basis of promises it had no rational cause to expect him to keep, it freed him to rule as he wished, and allowed him to do so as a trusted leader. There has rarely been so keen an example of the Talmud's teaching that kindness to the cruel becomes cruelty to the kind.
The effect of Oslo on Israel's reputation was also exactly the opposite of what its architects promised. To be sure, public opinion initially applauded the treaty and the Nobel Peace Prize seemed to grant it the seal of approval. By plucking Arafat out of Tunis and placing him in charge of a Palestinian Authority, Israel had implied that it could put an end to Arab aggression; the term "peace process" suggested that Israel's concessions would bring an end to the war against it. But since Israel could no more impose peace on the Arabs through concessions than it had by winning wars, this charade only meant that Israel would be blamed more relentlessly when it turned out that the conflict had never ended at all.
The painful truth of the so-called "Arab-Israeli conflict" is that only the Arabs have the power to stop it. Oslo did great damage inside Israel by encouraging the false hopes of an anxious society. Tenfold greater was its damage in the international arena by conveying the misimpression that Israel could put an end to Arab belligerence if only it were more forthcoming.
When the Arabs resumed their vilification of Israel, Europe joined in with a vengeance. Once Israel had fostered the impression that its concessions could bring peace to the Middle East, Europeans could blame Israel on the pretext that it had not made enough concessions. The political and economic balance between Israel and its enemies is anyhow tipped so strongly in favor of the Arabs that Europeans would normally court Arab oil and markets at the expense of Israel's security.
Many European politicians look for an excuse to hold Israel responsible for the aggression against it. This excuse seemed on hand when Israel said that peace could be won by yielding Arafat authority. In truth, the resurgence of European anti-Semitism has been the most shocking outcome of the Oslo accords. Israelis feel that they should be respected for having given such obvious proof of their good will. Instead, the country has been increasingly slandered as the obstacle to peace.
This brings us to the third, and by far the most damaging, consequence of Oslo: the creation in Gaza and the disputed territories of a terrorist polity. President Bill Clinton was not thinking of the danger to America when he hosted Israel's signing of the treaty with Arafat on the White House lawn.
But the legitimation of Arafat was a boost to the coalition of all anti-democratic forces ranged against the West. Those forces may have used Israel as the excuse for anti-Western aggression, but Israel was only the most vulnerable target of hostility aimed at democracy entire.
How many of the terrorists freed by Israel at the behest of America and Europe as part of the "peace accord" have since plied their trade against democracies other than Israel?
How much anti-Western propaganda did Arafat pump into the region, and how much did his perceived triumph over Israel help to inspire al-Qaida and other Islamists in their wars against America?
How much help and encouragement did Arafat's troops provide to other terrorist groups and Middle Eastern dictators?
How straight or crooked is the road between September 1993 and September 11, 2001?
Although placing Arafat in charge of a Palestinian Authority was hailed as a "peace initiative," it actually opened the door for anti-Western propaganda and conspiracy on an unprecedented scale. The terrifying spread of suicide bombers signals the creation of an Arab-style Hitler youth that is being trained to sacrifice itself for a murderous ideal. Just as the Jews were merely the first, but by no means the only intended victims of German conquest in the 1930s, so the Jews are merely the first, but by no means the only intended victims of those who have declared war on Western civilization. The perceived capitulation of Israel to Arafat endangered democracy no less than it endangered the country itself, for it seemed to prefigure the way any democracy might act if confronted by terrorism for long enough.
It is not pleasant to think back on a political blunder that could have and should have been avoided. No one wants to pour salt into Israel's open wounds. Foresight would have been an advantage only if the opponents of Oslo could have prevented catastrophe. Yet we must face up to the damage of what the American columnist Charles Krauthammer rightly called "the most catastrophic, self-inflicted wound by any state in modern history."
As the current government of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces try valiantly to undo some of the disaster of the "peace process" that brought Arafat and the PLO into power, the most important task facing champions of democracy is to examine and weigh the false premises that allowed for the false promises of Oslo.

The writer is Martin Peretz professor of Yiddish literature at Harvard University.
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2002-07-21T11:34:00.000-07:00

Column One: Israeli victims don't count at State
CAROLINE B. GLICK The Jerusalem Post May. 24, 2002

Americans this week have been swamped with dire pronouncements by their
leaders warning that additional terrorist attacks on US soil are a foregone
conclusion. From Vice President Richard Cheney to FBI Director Robert
Mueller, Americans this week were told it is only a question of time before
they will again experience mass murder similar in scale to the September 11
attacks.

Also this week it surfaced that on March 27, the very day the Arab League
convened in Beirut to discuss the much touted Saudi "peace plan," a
clandestine conference of leading al-Qaida, Hizbullah, and Hamas operatives
took place in the Lebanese capital. Given this confluence of discoveries and
warnings, one could have reasonably expected that the State Department's
annual "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, released on Tuesday, would be
a no-holds barred explication of the threats posed by terrorist
organizations and their sponsors against which the US is currently at war.

Secretary of State Colin Powell himself gave cause to believe the report
would meet this expectation when, in releasing the document, he announced,
"This report, mandated by Congress, is the 22nd such annual report to
chronicle in grim detail the lethal threat that terrorism casts over the
globe."

Sadly, at least with regards to Palestinian terrorism against Israel, the
report is a painful disappointment. Far from detailed, and a football field
shy of the truth, it paints a muted, almost apologetic picture of
Palestinian terrorism. So far from accurate is the version of events that
one is given pause to consider whether the State Department is committed to
playing a helpful role in winning the war against terrorism.

An examination of the report must first begin with its reporting on
terrorist attacks. Its "Chronology of Significant Terrorist Incidents, 2001"
lists all terrorist incidents that occurred worldwide during 2001 that the
department deems "significant." According to the report, "An International
Terrorist Incident is judged significant if it results in loss of life or
serious injury to persons, abduction or kidnapping of persons, major
property damage, and/or is an act or attempted act that could reasonably be
expected to create the conditions noted."

As Aaron Lerner of Independent Media Review Analysis news service notes, the
chronology contains only nine incidents of Palestinian terrorism against
Israel in all of 2001. It is far from clear how the State Department chose
which attacks to mention. Some of the nine took place within Israel's
pre-1967 borders, and others took place outside of them. Some were
large-scale massacres, while others were isolated drive-by shootings. The
most likely explanation is that the State Department considered significant
only attacks in which non-Israelis were killed or wounded, as in all but one
of the nine, foreign nationals were among the victims.

While not included in the department's own definition, a determination that
the only "significant" terrorist incidents are those which involve harm to
non-citizens of the state in which the acts are perpetrated could perhaps be
defended if it were applied across the board. But going over the list, it is
clear that this is not the case. The State Department provides relatively
detailed accounts of 37 terrorist incidents in India, none of which involved
any non-Indian victims.

Thankfully, the massacres at the Dolphinarium discotheque and Sbarro
restaurant make the list. The Dolphinarium massacre apparently warranted
note because among the 21 victims was Sergei Pancheskov of Ukraine.
Similarly, Sbarro presumably receives notice because among the 15 dead were
two American citizens and five members of the Schijveschuurder family, who
held dual Israeli-Dutch citizenship (although the State Department mentions
only that they were Dutch). Again this is unclear, because the report fails
to mention that another victim of the Sbarro attack was a tourist from
Brazil.

The Foreign Ministry, which lists victims murdered in terrorist attacks
since the start of the Palestinian terrorist war on its Web site, counts 95
terrorist attacks in 2001 that resulted in 191 fatalities. The total death
toll from attacks noted by the State Department is 56.

Among the 86 terrorist attacks and 146 victims the State Department deemed
insignificant were the assassination of tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi on
October 17; the massacre of 15 (including one Philippine national) on an
Egged bus in Haifa on December 2; the murder of 10 Israelis in an attack on
a Dan bus outside of Emmanuel on December 12; the March 26 murder of
10-month-old Shalhevet Pass, gunned down by sniper fire while being wheeled
in her baby carriage at a playground in Hebron; or the murder of five and
wounding of 100 Israelis blown up by a Palestinian terrorist outside a
shopping mall in Netanya on May 18 to name just a few examples.

Then there's the problem of characterizing Palestinian terrorism. Although
the Aksa Martyrs Brigades made the list of foreign terrorist organizations,
the report claims that sources of external aid to the group are unknown.
This even though Israel provided documentary evidence to the State
Department proving that Yasser Arafat personally authorized payment to the
group; that the brigades are indistinguishable from Tanzim and work closely,
if not seamlessly, with Tawfik Tirawi's General Intelligence Service in the
West Bank; and that members of Arafat's security forces double as members of
the Aksa Brigades.

As regards Tanzim, in the country report concerning Israel and the PA, the
State Department claims that Tanzim "is made up of small and loosely
organized cells of militants drawn from the street-level membership of
Fatah." Here too, the State Department ignores the facts. The fact is that
Tanzim itself has claimed that Arafat is the organization's supreme leader
and that Marwan Barghouti, the head of Fatah in the West Bank, is its field
commander. Israel, again, has provided documentary evidence proving
conclusively that Arafat siphoned funds from the PA budget, to the tune of
$200,000 per month, to each of the Tanzim regional commanders in the West
Bank.

When questioned about the documents provided to the US government by Israel,
Ambassador Francis Taylor, the State Department's coordinator for
counter-terrorism, stated, "We don't have any question about the
authenticity of the documents provided by the Israeli government. We are
continuing to study those documents and to draw our own conclusions about
what they mean."

Clearly, the documents meant nothing for those who wrote and approved the
State Department's 2001 report.

The terrorism report also notes and to a certain degree draws conclusions
about international links among terrorist organizations and between these
organizations and states that support their actions. Yet somehow, when it
comes to state support for terrorism against Israel, no conclusions are
drawn. For instance, there's the problem with arms smuggling. While the
State Department applauds Egypt's actions in combating terrorism, it makes
no mention of the rampant arms smuggling taking place along the Egyptian
border with the Gaza Strip. Very rarely does a week go by without an IDF
announcement about another tunnel for arms smuggling at Rafah being exposed
and destroyed. Only this past week, the IDF exposed a massive tunnel,
complete with electric lighting and a telephone cable connecting Palestinian
Rafah with Egyptian Rafah. The Egyptian government has done nothing to stop
this illicit flow of arms, and on several occasions Egyptian soldiers have
fired on IDF troops patrolling the international border.

Further, the report contains bizarre accounts of Israel's capture of the
Santorini and Karine A weapons ships. Of the Santorini capture, the report
states, "In early May, the Damascus based Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC) tried to smuggle weapons into Gaza
aboard the Santorini." While no doubt an accurate description, the report
makes no mention of the fact that the arms were destined for PA forces.

The account of the Karine A capture is even more incomprehensible. Given
that the interdiction occurred in January 2002, the State Department was not
obliged to make mention of the episode at all, but since it did, one could
expect for it to do so accurately. And yet, here too, underplay was the
order of the day. According to the report, "In January 2002, Israeli forces
boarded the vessel Karine A in the Red Sea and uncovered nearly 50 tons of
Iranian arms, including Katyusha missiles, apparently bound for militants in
the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

Apparently? The captain of the ship, Omar Achawi, was the deputy commander
of the PA's Naval Police. Its crew was Palestinian. The commander received
his orders from Arafat directly, and the entire operation was reportedly
agreed upon last May when Achawi accompanied Fuad Shubaki and Arafat to
Russia and met secretly with Iranians, while Arafat met with President
Vladimir Putin.

President George W. Bush himself implicated Arafat directly. Briefing
reporters after meeting with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on February 7, the
president said in response to a question about maintaining contact with
Arafat, "Mr. Arafat has heard my message... that he must do everything in
his power to reduce terrorist attacks on Israel. And that at one point in
time, he was indicating to us that he was going to do so, and then all of
the sudden a ship loaded with explosives shows up that most of the world
believes he was involved with." "Most of the world" apparently does not
include the State Department.

Saudi support for Palestinian terrorism is similarly downplayed and
distorted. While Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayaf personally set up a
fund paying the families of dead terrorists $5,333 each after September 11,
the State Department limits its characterization of Saudi support for Hamas
to funding from "private benefactors in Saudi Arabia."

This past week, terror warnings caused traffic halts on the Brooklyn Bridge,
as New Yorkers were forced to wait until police investigated a "suspicious
package." New York police officers came over here to learn from the Israel
Police how to deal with suicide attacks in population centers. Since
September 11, the fact that the forces attacking Israel and the US are one
and the same has become obvious. The State Department terrorism report's
whitewash of this reality jeopardizes the ability of both nations to destroy
this threat to their countries and citizens.

2002-07-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 11, 2002
Oliver's twist
By ELLI WOHLGELERNTER

Oliver North, the decorated Marine who ran unsuccessfully in 1994's most prominent Senate race after having become an American household name for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, was in Jerusalem this week in his second-career capacity as a successful radio talk-show host.

Nobody is neutral when it comes to Ollie North, who spent a week broadcasting from
Jerusalem to the States his radio show as part of the America's Voices program from the studios of The Jerusalem Post. He spoke with Elli Wohlgelernter.

Q - How far back is your connection with Israel?

A - "The first time I was here was 1967, I was a midshipman in the US navy, The ship I was assigned to - we were a destroyer and had been in Beirut, we came down to Haifa - was the USS Davis that actually towed back the USS Liberty. Then again in 1973, I was over here with the survey unit that came over after the war. I was an infantry officer, I was up in the Golan, and that is when I first concluded as a young captain that there was no way Israel was going to be able to give up this strategic terrain, this is essential to the security of Israel. And of course as everyone now knows, I was over here many times during my tenure on the National Security Staff."

Q - Do the American people understand what is going on here, or is there a sense of weariness?

A - "No, part of the purpose of my being here is to make sure that people do not get weary. And No. 2, they are getting smarter, they are not as naive as they use to be. I am confident the American people are behind Israel."

Q - What is your explanation for the media bias against Israel?

A - "If you look at the American media coverage of Israel up through the 1967 or 1973 war, it was very pro-Israel, because the American media is this Mark Twain/Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn/America is always for the underdog. Israel was the underdog, now Israel is the bad guy - you win, and now you are the bad guy. We have had a portrayal in the media, very successfully, by those who, if you will, are sympathizers with Arafat, that he is the maligned party in all of this. There is also a romantic attachment in the media to the Che Guevara revolutionary and Arafat has done a wonderful job at portraying himself as such. All of those things have cascaded since 1967, or 1973, to the point where people are now saying that Israel is the big guy on the block, they are too rough, they are bullies. So there is the bias. It's mistaken, they have never walked the ground - I would bet you that most of the ones writing articles written condemning Israel have never walked on Ammunition Hill, have never walked to what they call a 'settlement.' It's the mistaken idea is that there is a handful of people in log cabins with a cow out in the pasture, and there is no reason why you cannot bring them back and put them in Tel Aviv."

Q - You were involved in the capture of the terrorists who attacked the Achille Lauro. How did Israeli intelligence help in that operation?

A - "I will be the first to acknowledge that we could never have captured the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro had it not been for the relationship that I personally had, and my government had, the Reagan administration had, with the Israeli government. They were invaluable in that effort. The intelligence was accurate, and in spite of the lies that were told to us by the Egyptian government, and the fact that it was communicated directly to the president of the United States by the president of Egypt

Q - Out and out lies?

A - "Out and out lies, Mubarak flat-out lied. He said that he didn't know that murder had occurred, he didn't know that Leon Klinghoffer had been shot and thrown over the side. He said he didn't know they had done anything and that they had escaped, and he told that to President Reagan on the telephone immediately thereafter. I got a call from the Israeli Embassy, my friends in the military liaison, and they said 'that is not true, we know the four of them are still there, the three murders plus Abu Abbas, who is one of Arafat's principal henchmen, and that they are still in Egypt and that they are getting on an Egypt Air flight taking off tonight.'

"And I said get me the tail number of that airplane and we will take care of it. They were in direct communication with someone here, and they were in communication with someone on the runway in Egypt who knew that all the civilian passenger had been taken off the airplane, they knew the tail number on the airplane, they knew exactly what time they took off, and they knew the transponder codes for that particular DC-8. We passed it out to the fleet, and the US navy intercepted it, forced them down, in Sicily, as they were going to Tunis.

"Why would they be going to Tunis? Who the hell was in Tunis in 1986? Yasser Arafat. And so I give you that example as one of the close relationship that I have personally with the Israeli military intelligence services, second, the relationship between our government and Israel, and third, the duplicity of many of the Arab leaders when it comes to dealing with Yasser Arafat, and the duplicity of Arafat himself, who says he has never been involved in terrorism. Why then was Abu Abbas trying to take three murderers who work for him to Tunis? Why? Because who was in Tunis? Yasser Arafat, and so I concluded a long time ago that he was a liar. Yasser Arafat has never been a credible person, he has been a terrorist from the beginning. But he has somehow been able to capture the affections of many of the Europeans and the last president of the United States, who had him in the Oval Office 11 times, more than any other foreign leader."

Q - On Iran-Contra, what perceptions or misperceptions bother you?

A - "I do not dwell on it. My answer is, get over it. We won, the good guys won. It was a long and difficult four-and-a-half years in my life. I had my family threatened by terrorists, I had to move out of my house, I had to live with 35 FBI agents - one of the reasons I retired from the Marines is that I got tired of living with 35 guys with Uzis in my front yard."

Q - Has the shift toward conservative politics in the US made you more popular, especially among former liberals?

A - "Let's take the personality out of it a little bit. There has been a reawakening, to the extent that a lot of the liberal theology has just been proven to be totally wrong. If you look at the things that were being said about Ronald Reagan - he said tear down the wall and people laughed at him; he calls it an evil empire and they snicker; he says the last days of Communism are within our grasp, and they mock him. And it turns out he was right. What Ronald Reagan was, was a committed student of human behavior and a good student of history. He could see the fatally flawed policies of the Soviet Empire for what it was, he was able to motivate people in the US and elsewhere to go along with some tough things - putting patriot missiles in Europe, building an SDI, committing to a whole new generation of stealth weaponry and things like that, all of which, with the exception of SDI, we have now used to the good of the world. I do not look at it as a vindication. Look, I know what I did, I know why I did it, I know who I am, where I am going, and why I am going there, in a theological sense, and I do not spend a lot of time dwelling on what this liberal or that liberal thinks of Oliver North."

Now that you've read North being interviewed, click here to listen to his interviews with former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Deputy Prime Minister Natan Sharansky and others.

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2002-07-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Imam at German Mosque Preached Hate to 9/11 Pilots
By DOUGLAS FRANTZ and DESMOND BUTLER NYTimes

HAMBURG, Germany, July 11 — The German police are examining the activities of a former religious leader at a small mosque here who preached murderous hatred of the United States to Mohamed Atta and others who planned and executed the attacks on Sept. 11.

The police and intelligence officials said the imam, whom they know only by his surname, al-Fazazi, preached an unusually heated stream of anti-Western and anti-Jewish abuse at the mosque, called Al Quds. Mr. Atta, the presumed organizer of the attacks and pilot of one of the aircraft that hit the World Trade Center, attended the mosque, as did other members of the Hamburg cell.

The German police have no evidence that Mr. Fazazi was involved in the attacks on Sept. 11. But investigators are intrigued by the number of paths that cross his door. His hate-filled message, the fact that he left Hamburg before Sept. 11 and his ties with people involved in the attacks have all attracted the attention of the German police.

Mr. Fazazi said that "Christians and Jews should have their throats slit" and called on followers to "fight the Americans as long as they are keeping Muslims in prison," according to videotaped sermons seized earlier this month in raids by the Hamburg state police on a bookstore two blocks from the mosque, the police said.

Andreas Croll, a senior antiterrorism officer with the Hamburg state police, said that in the light of the videotapes, "It is fairly easy to make the conclusion after these excerpts that this was a fundamentalist group, and this was the environment that Atta and his roommates were from."

Mr. Fazazi's name has not surfaced previously in the worldwide investigation of the attacks on Sept. 11, and he remains a mysterious figure. German authorities said he was gone before they knew who he was, and American investigators said they had little information about him. It is not known whether Mr. Fazazi ever met with Mr. Atta, or other members of the Hamburg cell, outside the mosque. The plotters are known to have attended the mosque in 1998 and 1999 before Mr. Atta's departure for the United States in 2000.

Mr. Fazazi has not been implicated directly in the attacks or charged with a crime. His exhortation to slit the throats of Americans and Jews would almost certainly be prosecutable under German laws against racist incitement, but German authorities were not aware of his call to murder at the time. Mr. Croll said Mr. Fazazi left Germany, possibly for Morocco, sometime before Sept. 11. He could not be more precise.

Interest in Mr. Fazazi, who is believed to be Moroccan, grew out of raids on July 3 in which the police detained an Atta roommate and six other men thought to be planning new attacks, Mr. Croll said. Videotapes of Mr. Fazazi's sermons were confiscated from a bookstore two blocks from Al Quds mosque as part of the raids.

The police said they believed that the sermons offered a religious justification to the extremists who organized the attacks. Mr. Atta and two other suspected pilots of hijacked aircraft were among five Arabs implicated in the attacks who attended Al Quds.

Like some of the other conspirators, Mr. Atta came to Hamburg as a university student in 1992 and gradually embraced a radical brand of Islam, people who knew him said. Authorities now believe that Mr. Fazazi may have played a role in Mr. Atta's transformation into a suicide pilot, but the stages of Mr. Atta's conversion from student to plotter remain unclear.

The raids in which the sermons were discovered were a result of an innovative computerized profiling technique being used by the Hamburg police to identify hundreds of potential militants, some associated with the Hamburg cell and Osama bin Laden's network, Al Qaeda. There is no evidence that Mr. Fazazi himself had any link to Al Qaeda.

Profiling, or singling out people on the basis of ethnicity, religion or race, is banned in some countries. The practice has raised concern among civil libertarians in the United States who criticized authorities for rounding up 1,200 Muslims after Sept. 11.

But profiling is legal in Germany, and it is playing a major role in the broader investigation by the police in Hamburg and elsewhere.

The scope of the inquiry in Hamburg was conveyed on a large wall chart in a room next to Mr. Croll's office at police headquarters. The chart displayed photographs and names of about 30 Arabs suspected of ties to militants. Red lines diagramed their various connections, with Mr. Atta and his Hamburg apartment at the top of the chart.

Mr. Croll said the police thought Mr. Fazazi was an imam at Al Quds mosque from the late 1990's to at least 2000.

A German intelligence official involved in the investigation said Mr. Fazazi was emerging as a figure in events leading up to the attacks, but he said the religious leader had not come under suspicion before Sept. 11. "We had a general lookout on the mosque, but what he was preaching came to us after he was gone," said the intelligence officer.

German law imposes sharp restrictions on the ability of authorities to investigate religious groups. Even when restrictions were eased after Sept. 11, officials said such monitoring remained difficult. Mr. Fazazi, as an imam, was a public figure, and videotapes of his message were openly on sale until earlier this month. Yet he came to the attention of the German police only after the raids on July 3.

Mr. Fazazi must have been known within Hamburg's Islamic population, but no one wants to talk about him now. Questions about the former imam were met with blank stares at Al Quds mosque and in the cafes and other mosques frequented by Muslim immigrants. Many Muslims here are wary because of the attention from reporters since Sept. 11.

The Attawhid bookstore, where Mr. Fazazi's anti-Western sermons were found, has remained closed since the police raided it on July 3. A sign taped to the window said the store was closed "without justification."

The bookstore owner was among seven men from Morocco, Egypt and Algeria questioned by the Hamburg police after the raids because of suspicions they were planning unspecified new attacks.

One of them, Abdelghani Mzoudi, 29, a Moroccan student, had come to the attention of the police earlier because he shared the apartment where Mr. Atta and two other suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks lived. The police said Mr. Mzoudi attended Al Quds and supported Mr. Atta's group, but he has not been charged with a crime.

The men were identified through the computerized profiling technique introduced in Hamburg after Sept. 11, said Mr. Croll, director of the profiling unit here.

The police in Germany first used profiling in the 1970's to try to find members of the left-wing Red Army Faction, which committed a series of robberies and killings. But, coupled with a toughening of antiterrorism laws, its use against a particular religion has elicited caution this time around.

"We need to pay attention very carefully that, in fighting this form of crime, we do not corrupt ourselves," said Dieter Wiefelsputz, a member of Parliament from the governing Social Democrats. "This is a ride on the razor's edge."

Mr. Croll said the technique played an essential role in discovering potential terrorists in a population of about 120,000 Muslims in Hamburg.

With information about the suspects in the attacks on the United States as a base line, Mr. Croll and his team created a profile of a potential militant. He is a Muslim man, a student age 18 to 40, with legal residence in Germany and origins in a country where religious militancy is rife.

Using data from universities, the central registry of German and foreign residents of Hamburg and other sources, Mr. Croll said the computer program said 811 people matched the profile.

Further analysis of where people lived and with whom they associated narrowed the list of suspects. Among them were the seven men detained on July 3, all of whom attended Al Quds and often met together at the bookstore.

The police monitored their activities and conversations for weeks. They said the men expressed a willingness to die for Islam and discussed plans to travel outside Germany. The police picked them up for questioning though they had not yet discussed concrete plans for attacks.

Three of the men refused to answer questions, and those who did said they were only strong believers, Mr. Croll said. They were released without charges and remain under investigation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/16/international/europe/16GERM.html

2002-07-16T09:15:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 15, 2002
Zionism as it was meant to be by RUTH GAVISON

It is a good thing the government has decided to have another discussion of MK Haim Druckman's bill that aims to establish settlements for Jews only. It is very important that the discussion delve deep and not remain at its current level, with the bill's opponents saying it is "racist" or circumvents the High Court of Justice, and its supporters saying it is vital for the future of Zionism.

Enactment of this bill would deviate from legislative practice consistent throughout Israel's history, by which with the sole exception of the Law of Return the state's laws apply equally to Jews and non-Jews. It is vital to maintain a tradition that stresses the equality of citizens in the eyes of the law, and to avoid legislating the proposed bill.

On the other hand, not every arrangement that distinguishes between national communities is racist and unjustified.

Given the complexity of Israel's situation, any attempt to completely ignore differences of national origin, language, religion and culture is doomed to fail because such differences, closely linked to the identity of the citizens of this country, are in many cases more important to them than their common citizenship.

Druckman's proposal didn't come out of the blue. It was a response to the High Court of Justice's decision in the matter of the Ka'adan family's demand that they be allowed to buy a plot in the communal village of Katzir.

The proposal is based on a reading of the decision, according to which the (agreed) commitment to forbid discrimination between Jews and Arabs prevents the creation of settlements whose goal is to strengthen the Jews' presence in regions of Israel and declares illegitimate the wish of Jews to choose to live in a communal village whose public culture is Jewish-Hebrew.

According to this reading, the Ka'adan decision requires a "color blindness" to national, religious or cultural identity in decisions to admit residents to communal settlements at least when it comes to the majority group in Israel, non-religious Jews.

Minorities such as Arabs, haredim, Beduin or Druse can demand homogeneity in their settlements in order to conduct their distinct way of life and protect themselves from assimilation.

The nonreligious Jewish majority does not share that concern, and therefore cannot demand the prohibition of cultural and nationalist elements different from itself without that being considered improper discrimination (and even racism).

IF THE Ka'adan ruling really does mean all that which is not clear I think it is wrong.
Jews may be the majority in Israel, but they are a small minority in a hostile region. Within this country there is a large minority that belongs to the Arab nation, which is the overwhelming majority in the region.

The desire to establish control in Israeli territory, as long as it does not impinge on inherent Arab rights, is a legitimate interest. It requires planning and legislative possibilities to increase the Jewish presence even in areas with a concentrated Arab population.

Precisely because Jews and Arabs are not eager to live together, there is need for a mechanism to ensure that the settlements of one group do not become binational or taken over by a majority of the other group.

This requires a legal means to prevent massive Arab infiltration of Jewish settlements, and vice versa. It cannot be reconciled with a "color-blind" approach.

Nor do the Arabs want "color blindness." They oppose the settling of collaborators among them. Druse object when non-Druse settle in their villages in large numbers. The opposition to selling land to Jews has existed from the start of Zionism and goes on to this day. It is part of a national struggle, not a show of racism.

Israel is the only country in the world where Jews are the majority and can enjoy the advantages of living in a state whose language, holidays and symbols are their own. They can ask to live in their state without fearing they will become a cultural and national minority in their settlements.

I therefore agree with the proponents of the bill that the implications of the Ka'adan ruling are undesirable. Nor do they stem from the correct and important principle it sets, non-discrimination of Arabs.

But it does not follow that a bad law needs to be legislated. As in the past, the attempt to correct legal rulings with laws may cause bigger problems than the ones the law aimed to correct.

More importantly, the dispute over the law distracts attention from the real problem raised by the Ka'adan affair. If Arabs had varied choices of good-standard housing in Arab settlements, they would prefer to live in their own cultural environment, for obvious reasons.

In such circumstances, the few who might still prefer to live in Jewish settlements would not pose any practical problem.

Under the circumstances, prohibiting them from living in Jewish settlements that offer a better standard of housing can certainly be construed as discrimination.

The correct way to deal with the Ka'adan issue is not legislation that explicitly permits establishing Jewish settlements, but the designing of a comprehensive settlement and housing plan offering varied and satisfactory solutions to all sectors.

Within such a plan one could surely defend the establishment or expansion of settlements that allow each sector of Israeli society to live in its own cultural environment, along with opportunities to choose living in a multinational community.
This would be Zionism well-reconciled with full political and social equality regardless of religion or nationality as Israel's Declaration of Independence promises.

The writer is a Hebrew University law professor.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1025787792464

2002-07-09T17:56:00.000-07:00

NYTimes July 9, 2002
Aid for Farmers Helps Butterflies Too
By CAROL KAESUK YOON

ONACIANO OJEDA, Mexico — Standing in the small kitchen of her rustic house in this remote community of Mazahua Indians, Celia Isidoro is singing the praises of her new, efficient wood-burning stove.

"It's much easier to cook on," she says, pointing out the large surface of the enclosed stove and recalling how she used to cook while kneeling over an open, smoky fire on the floor of the same room. "We had to cut four horseloads of wood a week. Now I can burn scraps, anything."

But this is more than a tale of a happy housewife in this village 100 miles west of Mexico City. Mrs. Isidoro is one of some 200,000 people living in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a stretch of mountain forests that includes the protected areas where millions of monarchs migrate each winter. Her stove uses half the wood of an open fire, a potentially huge benefit here, where forests are quickly disappearing and where researchers estimate that two-thirds of the logging is illegal.

Introduced by a small group known as Alternare (from the Latin for alternative), the increasingly popular stoves are just one part of a quiet revolution to teach rural farmers how to tread more lightly in this delicate environment.

Working in eight different poor, rural communities around the butterfly's roosting grounds and with nearly no talk of monarchs, Alternare is succeeding by providing villagers with knowledge they actually want. The group is teaching farmers how to build a house of longer-lasting adobe using one tree rather than a faster-decomposing home that requires 25, how to farm without chemical fertilizers and how to keep this rugged land productive so farmers need not continually move to newly logged territory. While improving the farmers' lives, Alternare, by no coincidence, is improving the situation of the butterflies as well.

"For the butterfly to live you have to have integration with human beings," said Guadalupe Del Río, president and co-founder of Alternare along with fellow biologist and co-founder Ana María Múñiz. "We're proving that this can be done."

Many are applauding Alternare's efforts, including the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, which has provided financing for the group since it began its work five years ago. But there were those, particularly in the beginning, who had their doubts, including the farmers themselves.

Walking from his now flourishing pumpkin fields to his huge composting pit, dressed in a Coca-Cola T-shirt and cowboy hat, Santos Espinoza speaks earnestly.

"I wasn't sure at first," he said, referring to Alternare's suggestion to switch from the standard half ton of chemical fertilizers on every acre of farmland to the untested novelty of using compost made from what he used to burn as garbage — corn stalks, grass, horse manure, leftovers. "We didn't see any difference in the first two years."

Mr. Espinoza had reason for concern. Here, in the Chivati-Huacal monarch sanctuary, one of the most severely devastated of the monarch roosting areas, government programs and international groups have arrived with great fanfare to dictate to these subsistence farmers how they should and shouldn't live for the good of the world's beloved monarch. Over the years, these communities, many of which own land in the reserve, have had their logging rights eliminated or drastically reduced.

"They think they have been really discriminated against and that people are more concerned about butterflies than them," Mrs. Del Río of Alternare said. "People here are tired of others telling them what to do."

So the founders, two Mexican biologists, teamed with Gabriel Sánchez and his wife, Elia Hernández, farmers who shared the women's vision but who could prove, on their own land, that implausible ideas — like having one family live on the harvests of just two and a half acres — were possible.

Now Mr. Espinoza speaks like a convert. "Now the plants are stronger and give more fruit," he said, running his hands through his compost. "I'm completely convinced that the earth needs this nutrition to give more food."

And so it went, in one heartfelt testimonial after another. Farmers working under Alternare's tutelage explained how they were taking simple steps to improve their farms and their lives.

"We couldn't grow anything here before," said Perfecto Espinoza, yanking a huge beet from his garden. "It was pure rocks." Now his land bursts with color, as do other gardens in this village where monocultures and fallow fields are being replaced by broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, cilantro, garlic, radish, onions and the all-important chiles.

"Before, the fields were corn, corn, corn," said Mrs. Del Río. "Nutrition here has been really bad."

Two women display herbal medicines they are learning to make: eucalyptus leaves and lime rind for coughs and a fever-reducing medicinal made from a plant called cow's tongue. Erasmo Cortes, who has recently built himself a new adobe house, gives a tour of his rustic nursery in which he is raising seedlings of native trees to reforest around his home and which villagers plan, in the future, to use to reforest the protected areas of the butterfly sanctuaries.

Another man explains how he learned to enclose his chickens and cows, making it possible for him to locate his animals easily and to collect valuable eggs and manure. Others point out how they now dig canals and terrace the land to prevent erosion and preserve the soils. And all around there is great excitement about toilets — a novelty here — soon to be brought by Alternare. These special devices separate solid from liquid waste and allow collection of both to be used, ultimately, as fertilizer for the soils.

The farmers are used to discussing their work. Once people have been trained in particular techniques or skills, they begin training others, in the farmer-to-farmer method of conversion which has worked so well for Alternare.

Despite the local enthusiasm, Alternare has its detractors, some of whom complain that the work is not really about butterflies.

"Some people say this is social development," said Mrs. Del Río, shaking her head. "No, this is conservation."

She insists that every step, whether as indirect as teaching farmers to organize so they can work together more effectively or as direct as teaching reforestation, makes the farmers less dependent on cutting the forest to make their way.

Then there are those who worry that Alternare's process of changing rural traditions one farmer at a time moves too slowly to save the forests of the monarch butterfly. One study found that in the last 30 years, nearly half the intact forest in the wintering areas had been degraded or destroyed.

Mrs. Del Río acknowledged that Alternare did struggle even to move at its slow pace. The group only recently was able to patch together enough funds to buy a reliable truck, critical for reaching one remote village after another on these rugged roads. And Alternare does need to extend its reach. Organizations within Mexico and from other countries, including Guatemala, have asked to be trained in Alternare's methods, but without a training center that has been impossible.

Despite the pace, Mrs. Del Río, who is trying to raise $150,000 to build a training center, said she believed there was no other way.

"No law can change these things," she said of ending the logging. "You can't conserve anything if you don't have enough to eat."

At the end of the day, in the dining room of one of the newly built adobe houses, a group of farmers sits down at a rough wood table to a feast of chicken, spicy green salsa and freshly cooked tortillas, all the work of their own hands using farming methods recently put into place and all piping hot off a new wood-burning stove.

But as distractingly fine as the food is, the ecological significance of the meal is not lost on these men and women. Mrs. Isidoro, speaking of the fruits of their labors laid out before them, said, "We're protecting the forest."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/09/science/life/09MONA.html

2002-07-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

The Coming Saudi Showdown
By Simon Henderson
Weekly Standard
July 15, 2002

Deliberately but without fanfare, Saudi Arabia has altered
its relationship with the United States. Quite logically,
and dangerously, the House of Saud has decided the proper
reaction to the events of September 11 is to distance itself
from Washington, seeking instead to firm up its support
among the Saudi populace. Once this change is recognized,
Saudi behavior of recent months stops seeming bizarre and
becomes almost rational. When an unnamed senior Saudi
official told the Washington Post in February that U.S.
forces in his country had "overstayed their welcome," he was
directing his remarks not to the United States but to the
Saudi people. The same goes for the statement from possibly
the same unnamed official to the New York Times in April
threatening cut-offs in oil unless Washington changed its
policy toward Israel.

In case the Bush administration failed to notice Riyadh's
attempt to put some space into the relationship, the de
facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah played a more obvious card
at the end of May. He sent one of his sons, Prince Mitab, to
Pakistan to witness the test launch of a Ghauri surface-to
surface missile with a range of 900 miles. Also present at
the launch site were North Korean scientists (the Ghauri is
a version of their Nodong missile) and a delegation from
Libya. Mitab's visit was unannounced, but Crown Prince
Abdullah must have known that his son's presence would be
noted by American intelligence within days, if not hours.

The Bush Doctrine of "you're either with us or against us"
can accommodate perhaps a little nuance. But putting a
positive spin on this confab of notables from the "axis of
evil," "state supporters of terrorism," and America's
"friend" Pakistan would tax the verbal dexterity of anyone
delivering the daily intelligence briefing to the president.
This is probably why the long-awaited Bush vision for
progress in Middle East peace turned out to owe so little to
Crown Prince Abdullah's peace plan, revealed earlier this
year in the columns of the New York Times. A major question
had been whether Saudi Arabia could deliver the endorsement
of the Arab world if the United States put pressure on
Israel. President Bush always knew the answer was probably
"no." He soon concluded that the House of Saud never really
intended to put itself on the line.

The new Saudi policy appears to represent a consensus among
the leading princes, now that the strongly pro-American 81
year-old King Fahd has gone to Switzerland for what insiders
describe as "last-gasp" medical treatment. It appeals anyway
to Crown Prince Abdullah's Arab-nationalist instincts. The
next in line after Abdullah, defense minister Prince Sultan,
is in no position to argue. He wants to be king.

The policy shift has not stopped a continuing PR campaign in
the United States emphasizing Saudi Arabia1s "strong
support" for the war on terror. Some, however, in the chorus
of the kingdom's supporters among oil-types and ex-
ambassadors are bright enough to realize that even if the
song sheet hasn't changed yet, things are different.

Where will all this lead? One of the more thoughtful people
in the British Foreign Office mused last month that Saudi
Arabia was changing by "drift rather than revolution," but
that the result would be a strict Islamic state as
antagonistic to Western interests as Iran. Short of Osama
bin Laden, it's the worst outcome possible.

Within a few years, perhaps months, the military facilities
in the kingdom will be closed to U.S. and British forces.
The Combined Air Operations Center that controls operations
over Afghanistan from the Prince Sultan air base is only a
temporary structure anyway. The big question is whether the
smaller Gulf states, nominally close allies of Saudi Arabia
like Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and
Oman, will fill the void. Happily for the United States,
they may well.

But with Saudi Arabia sitting on a quarter of the world's
oil reserves and being the largest exporter, the question
always comes back to oil. Before the Crawford summit at the
end of April, Saudi officials let it be known that the
kingdom was prepared to cut off oil supplies for two months
unless American policy stopped being so sympathetic to
Israel. Panicked but angry, State Department officials
persuaded the Saudis to back off.

Given Saudi truculence, anyone preparing contingency plans
to secure the Saudi oil fields in times of crisis might want
to dust off their work. If Saudi Arabia did cut off oil
exports for two months, much of the world might beg the
United States to intervene to secure supplies. And with
Saudi policy moving in an uncertain direction, it could
happen soon.

Simon Henderson is a London-based adjunct scholar of the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

2002-07-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

NYTimes June 30, 2002 A Cork Pops, People Duck and Israel Laughs
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

TEL AVIV
AFTER a week in March when 25 Israelis had been killed in terrorist attacks, nearly half in the suicide bombing of a Jerusalem café, the television show "Only In Israel" presented a skit in which its two stars went out on a date. They sat at a table guarded by a rifle-toting sentry and ordered a full meal with champagne. When the waiter popped the cork, they flung themselves to the ground for safety. "Are you mad?" screamed the woman. "What do you think you're doing, going around opening bottles?"

The couple climbed back into their chairs and tried to calm themselves by singing a folk song about the beautiful night. The man accidentally knocked a glass off the table, and as it shattered, they dived again. Seated anew, they launched into a famous anthem of the Israeli peace movement, waving a balloon all the while. It popped. Once more they crumpled and shrieked. "Don't leave me alone!" the woman called as her boyfriend fled. "I can't move, my knees are shaking."

In its audacity, the sketch typified the satire and gallows humor that have made "Only in Israel" the top-rated show in a nation reeling from nearly two years of attacks that have cost more than 500 Israeli lives. As suicide bombers detonate their charges, ambulances ferry away the wounded and burial societies locate the shredded bodies of the dead, "Only in Israel" finds improbable yet cathartic humor in what Jews here call the "matzav," the situation.

"We're offering relevant escapism," said Erez Tal, the 41-year-old creator and co-star of the show. "You don't escape to something not relevant. You escape to a twisted perspective on the reality we live in, which allows you to cope with it. When you're scared of something, very tense, you have to take what scares you most and use it in funny ways until it scares you less."

The show's formula of skits, sight gags and mock newscasts has created a pop-culture sensation. "Rak b'Yisrael," as the hourlong show is called in Hebrew, draws an average of 500,000 viewers in a country of just 6 million people. The number is more astonishing considering that "Only in Israel" is broadcast on Friday night, the beginning of the Sabbath, when at least 1 million Orthodox Jews cannot watch it. On April 12, the show was broadcast only five hours after a suicide bombing had occurred in Jerusalem; it drew its largest audience ever, 750,000.

To American eyes, the episodic structure and timely humor of "Only in Israel" bring to mind "Saturday Night Live," while its almost total reliance on two stars, Mr. Tal and the actress Orna Banai, is reminiscent of Tom and Dick Smothers or George Burns and Gracie Allen in their television shows.

In most other ways, though, "Only in Israel" defies ready parallels. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, while ultimately inspiring much ridicule of Osama bin Laden, created a climate in which political humor seemed inappropriate, if not unpatriotic. Jay Leno and David Letterman stopped hurling their nightly barbs at President Bush, while Bill Maher was assailed for having said on "Politically Incorrect" that the hijackers were not cowards because they had willingly killed themselves. Even now, nearly 10 months after the World Trade Center attacks, a comedy routine mocking people's fears of tall buildings or airplanes would be anathema.

Here, however, the Israeli newspaper Maariv recently declared that the show "reflects the national mood even more than the news shows." Moreover, it exemplifies a style of Israeli humor that, as the Israeli social critic Gadi Taub put it, "is able to laugh at the greatest hardships, and to understand laughing at them is part of getting back up on your feet and going on with your life."

Israeli humorists have used every subject as raw material, with the sole exception of the Holocaust. Before statehood in 1948, the poet Natan Alterman satirized Zionist leaders in cabarets at the Broom Theater. On the eve of the 1967 war, when ordinary Israelis were digging trenches and parks were being prepared to serve as cemeteries, a running joke here went, "The last one to leave Israel should turn out the lights." The playwright Hanoch Levine famously skewered Prime Minister Golda Meir in "The Queen of the Bathroom." A popular mid-1970's television show — "Nikui Rosh" or "Brainwashing" — lampooned the government investigation into Israel's nearly fatal military and intelligence failures in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Amid the current turmoil, the television personalities Shay Goldstein and Dror Rafael placed crank calls to Hezbollah and the Iranian parliament. Eli Yatzpan, the star of a nightly show on cable television, has specialized in withering impersonations of political leaders; his send-up of Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, led Egypt to lodge a formal diplomatic complaint.

Mr. Tal, the son of a civil-servant mother and a father in the top echelons of the national-security apparatus, started his career on "Ma Yesh" — loosely translated, "What's Up?" — a daily army radio show during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. During the Persian Gulf war in 1991, he created an iconoclastic television show, "The World Tonight," which made light of Iraq's missile attacks on Israel. His influences ranged from the Israeli social satirist Efraim Kishon to John Cleese of Monty Python to David Letterman, whom Mr. Tal watched avidly while living briefly in New York in 1986. Israeli television, meanwhile, was expanding from a single government-controlled network to a competing array of commercial, cable and satellite services.

When "Only in Israel" first went on the air five years ago, however, it was neither as daring nor as popular as it is today. The show, on commercial Channel 2, essentially consisted of Mr. Tal as Shimon, a deadpan talk show host, and Ms. Banai, 34, as his sidekick Limor. With her piles of hair, skintight pantsuits and malapropisms, Limor embodied what Israelis call a "frecha," a bimbo. Much of the show poked fun at her marriage to a cabdriver in the blue-collar town of Holon. (In reality, Ms. Banai hails from one of Israel's most renowned families of performing artists.)

The mild tone suited the political climate. When "Only in Israel" ended its third season two summers ago, Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister at the time, was headed to Camp David, presumably to complete a peace agreement with Yasir Arafat.

After going on hiatus in the 2000-2001 television season, "Only In Israel" returned to the air in November in a far different Israel. By now, viewers learned, Limor had divorced the cabbie, moved to Ramat Aviv, the nouveau-riche suburb of Tel Aviv, and started a love affair with Anthony Zinni, President Bush's special envoy to the Middle East.

Mr. Arafat, no longer a peace partner, resumed his pre-Oslo role in Israel as the butt of jokes. In one show, Limor read a headline from an Israeli newspaper saying, "George Bush: `I don't like Arafat."

"He's the only one," Limor said with guileless sincerity. "Everyone else loves him. What's not to love? He's handsome. He's smart. In Israel, we all die for him."

But Mr. Tal and his creative team — the producer Ruth Nissan and the writers Uri Gross and Tamar Marom — have not contented themselves with such obvious targets. Last year, the Israeli defense minister, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, insisted in a television interview that Israelis, far from being tense and anxious, were celebrating. "Only in Israel" replayed the sound bite, accompanied by a cheery song, against video of ambulances streaming to the scenes of terrorist attacks.

Israel's sense of standing alone against a hateful world also comes in for regular barbs. In the annual Eurovision song contest this spring, the nation's entry fared poorly, an outcome many Israelis attributed to European sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Limor led a quartet of back-up vocalists in this ditty: "In Jenin, there are no more streets/ And that is why we'll get no more points/ We should've thought about this in advance/ Why didn't we wait with stupid Operation Defensive Shield?"

When Jewish schoolchildren in America raised money to send pizza to Israeli soldiers during the operation, "Only in Israel" skewered the goodwill gesture. A routine had Aharoni, Israel's most famous television chef, delivering a pie in mid-battle. "Pizza break!" declared Mr. Tal, dressed in a helmet and uniform. "We'll continue the fighting later."

For all its fearlessness, "Only In Israel" proceeds with a certain wariness as well. After each episode is taped late Friday afternoon, Mr. Tal and Ms. Nissan maintain close contact with their network's newsroom until the show is broadcast at 9 that night. When a suicide bomber struck outside the crowded Mahane Yehuda market in Jerusalem on April 12, killing six and wounding dozens more, the creator and producer very nearly canceled that night's show.

Ms. Nissan and Mr. Tal ultimately decided to excise the fiercest satire and postpone the show by 15 minutes to accommodate continuing coverage of the attack, but otherwise the episode went on the air. For such occasions, "Only in Israel" broadcasts a lead-in informing viewers that "the program was taped before the last terrible events happened."

"We always think a lot about how people will react," Mr. Tal said during an interview in a restaurant next door to the studio. "You have to be very, very sensitive. This season, we're the leading show. Friday night is a big family night in Israel. And we know some people who watch the show have friends in the hospitals or dead because of the attacks. But the situation is so terrible, all you can do is try to laugh. We've had a lot of reaction. People saying: `How can you do that? People are getting killed.' But, more, we heard that people were glad to exorcize those fears."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/30/arts/television/30FREE.html?pagewanted=1

2002-07-07T14:02:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 1, 2002
Israeli Muslims launch opposition to Islamists
By LAUREN GELFOND

Ten Muslims from villages in the Galilee have launched the first Orthodox Muslim movement in the region to oppose Muslim militancy and extremism.

Calling themselves The Prophetic Tradition Helpers Association (PTHA), their goals include providing a platform for moderation and nonviolence and educating the Muslim public about how extremists are misinterpreting Orthodox Islam.

"We have watched the situation deteriorate at the hands of extremists," said Khalid Abu Ras of Ilut, near Nazareth, an Arabic teacher and founding member. "We are unhappy that they talk in the name of Islam, and we think their stands are wrong. They are hurting Islam and our people."

The group is the first to publish an anti-extremist essay in Arabic from a religious point of view. A recent op-ed in the Arabic daily Al-Ayn told a parable of warring brothers in ancient times who learned to build bridges instead of fences. It went on to explain Islamic teachings that urge tolerance, dialogue, nonviolence, and moderation.

Another essay is scheduled to run in Al-Ayn today, citing Sunni scholars who forbid the widespread use of the word heretic being used to discredit those Muslims who hold moderate ideas. The group is working to publish other documents in Arabic and plans to hold talks in Arab villages across Israel.

"People think all Muslims are the same, but they are wrong. So many people disagree with the extremists, but they have nowhere to speak. We want to give them a voice," Abu Ras said.

PTHA stands apart from those Muslims included on a list of Palestinians who published an ad in mid-June opposing terror attacks, saying they undermine Palestinian aspirations. Rather than focusing on political efficacy, PTHA looks at extremist activities through a moral lens, based on what they call misunderstood Koranic tradition.

"They base their approach on solid religious text," said Yehuda Stolov, the Orthodox Jewish director of the Interfaith Encounter Association. "They are combating negative attitudes that come out of Islam from within. That gives them a lot of strength that other groups don't have."

Although PTHA will also focus on developing relations with Jewish and Christian groups, like dozens of Muslims involved in interfaith and coexistence activities here, it is the only such group to be Muslim-based and founded, with a primary focus on internal dialogue, education, and change in Muslim society.

Rabbi Dov Maimon, who is familiar with the group, described its launch as an "intellectual war" against extremism. "We never imagined such an effort. It is very real, very impressive, very brave, and for them, very dangerous."

Rabbi Shmuel Slotsky also supports the groups' efforts but is more cautious. "It seems like a drop in the sea. But I hope it helps they are a good group of people and we must support them."

Among the group's founders are nine men, including a journalist, a Sufi sheikh, educators, and merchants, and one woman, a homemaker. They claim supporters across Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Israel, and the US.

"I have more than 100 students and imams who study Islam with me and support our ideas from a religious point of view," says Sheikh Abdel al-Salaam Menasra of Nazareth. "We agree that we have to be moderate not hard-hearted, that we have to understand the other, that we must speak out for what we believe and not sell ourselves. Now we are working to spread the word."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716579181

2002-07-07T13:52:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 7, 2002
Local orthodox priest: Suicide bombings part of liberation
By HAIM SHAPIRO

A local Greek Orthodox priest, Father Hanna Atalla, a Palestinian, was last quoted in the Gulf News saying that "martyrdom" by Palestinian men and women is a part of the intifada, and can not be separated from their liberation movement.

"Some freedom fighters adopt martyrdom or suicide bombing, while others opt for other measures. But all these struggles serve the continued intifada for freedom. Therefore, we support all these causes," Atalla said in a speech in Dubai on June 20, according to the report.

The Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem this weekend distanced itself from Atalla's statements.

Atalla was identified by the paper as the official spokesman of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem.

However, the Greek Orthodox Synod in Jerusalem said Atalla has never been a spokesman for the church.

"The opinions of this reverend clergyman are his own, and have no official standing in the patriarchate, the patriarchate's office of media relations said in an official statement.

Atalla, a senior Palestinian churchman in a church in which almost all high officials are Greek, has also been quoted by a local Palestinian paper saying the patriarchate has contacts with all the Islamic movements and describing suicide bombers as heroes.

On June 19, following a series of suicide bombings, the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem, Irineos I, sent a letter to President Moshe Katsav expressing the condolences of the patriarch, the synod, and the entire Orthodox community.

"I, Jerusalem Patriarch Irineos I, in a heartfelt appeal, call upon the leaders of all the religions to unite in a full and clear condemnation of this act and ask that all work together to stop similar shocking incidents in the future before we all sink," the patriarch said in his letter.

The letter, in Hebrew, ended with the traditional words to mourners to be consoled with all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Irineos was elected in September by the Synod of the Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, but his election has yet to be approved by the Israeli government. According to church regulations, his election must be approved by the local ruler.

Following the election, the synod received approval from the Palestinian Authority and the Kingdom of Jordan, but Israel did not respond until April, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appeared to be preparing the way for the approval. A few days late, however, the cabinet decided to review the matter; no decision had been made.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1025787710837

2002-07-07T13:04:00.000-07:00

Fury as academics are sacked for being Israeli
By Charlotte Edwardes
(Filed: 07/07/2002)

A British academic has sparked worldwide protests after sacking two scholars from her highly respected international journals because they are Israeli.

Mona Baker, a professor at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), admitted yesterday that she had dismissed Dr Miriam Shlesinger and Prof Gideon Toury because of their nationality.

Despite a storm of complaints raised by her action, Prof Baker stood by her decision, telling The Telegraph: "I deplore the Israeli state. Miriam knew that was how I felt and that they would have to go because of the current situation."

Prof Baker asked Dr Shlesinger and Prof Toury to resign from the boards of two academic journals she owns, after signing a website petition last month calling for academics to boycott Israel. When they refused to resign she sacked them.

The dismissals raised no public opposition from within British universities. International academics, however, led by Prof Stephen Greenblatt, a world-renowned Shakespeare scholar at Harvard University, have now condemned the decision and called on British academics to stand up for intellectual freedom.

Prof Greenblatt, who flew to England last night to collect an honorary degree from London University, said that Prof Baker's actions were "repellent", "dangerous" and "intellectually and morally bankrupt".

He described any policy of singling out a group for collective punishment as "grotesque". He added: "Excluding scholars because of the passports that they carry or because of their skin colour, religion or political party, corrupts the integrity of intellectual work."

Both of the sacked scholars had worked for the periodicals for three years. Dr Shlesinger, who enjoyed a friendship with Prof Baker and was even a guest at her house in Manchester, worked for the editorial board of The Translator. Prof Toury, who teaches at Tel Aviv University, held an honorary advisory role at Translation Studies Abstracts.

Dr Shlesinger, a respected American-born academic at the Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, is also a former chairman of Amnesty International in Israel and has criticised her country's policies in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Prof Baker, who is the director of the centre for translation and intercultural studies at UMIST, was unrepentant, however. Although the boards of the journals remained split over the dismissals, Prof Baker said: "I am not against Israeli nationals per se; it is Israeli institutions as part of the Israeli state which I absolutely deplore.

She said that her actions were "my interpretation of what a boycott of Israel means". Prof Baker added: "Many people in Europe have signed a boycott against Israel. Israel has gone beyond just war crimes.

It is horrific what is going on there. Many of us would like to talk about it as some kind of Holocaust which the world will eventually wake up to, much too late, of course, as they did with the last one."

She conceded, however, that the pair would not have been sacked had they lived in Britain and severed their ties with Israeli institutions.

The petition that Prof Baker signed claims that Israel should be boycotted because it is "racist." Prof Baker, who refused to disclose where she was born, claimed that her actions were supported by a growing number of academics across Britain and in Germany. She alleged that since the sackings she had been the victim of a hate campaign.

"My husband and I receive hate mail every day, up to 50 [letters] a day, some of it extremely obscene," she said. "I can't read it out it is so obscene and very threatening. It is also sent to my university, to my vice-chancellor and to some of my colleagues, and they threaten people who want to stay on the board. The Americans are the worst offenders.

"There is a large intimidation machine out there which is waiting to intimidate anyone that it doesn't approve of."

In an open letter to Prof Baker, however, Prof Greenblatt, the president of the Modern Language Association of America, described the "chilling shadow" cast by her actions. "An attack on cultural co-operation, with a particular group singled out for collective punishment violates the essential spirit of scholarly freedom and the pursuit of truth," he wrote.

"The pursuit of knowledge does not suddenly come to a halt at national borders. This does not mean that serious scholars must be indifferent to the world's murderous struggles, but it does mean that they are committed to an ongoing, frank conversation . . . [that] often includes passionate disagreement."

The letter is understood to have the backing of other senior academics at Harvard. Following calls from The Telegraph, a number of leading academics in Britain lent their voice to Prof Greenblatt's condemnation.

Francis Robinson, a professor of history at London University, said: "Whatever anyone feels about Israel, this is absolutely appalling. Certainly there are strong feelings, not often spoken but nevertheless strongly felt, shared by the majority of British liberal intellectuals about the problems with Israel. Nonetheless, this sounds dreadful. It runs counter to the very principles of academic freedom."

Prof Greenblatt's intervention was welcomed by Lord Janner, the chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust. He said that the sackings set a worrying precedent: "This is disgraceful and dangerous. You should no more sack an Israeli academic for his nationality than you should a Palestinian in the same situation.

"I do not buy this argument that, just because there are more fee-paying Arab students at UMIST and elsewhere, their views should prevail. In every university in the UK today there are problems between the two groups. They must try to insulate themselves from what is happening in the Middle East or else you are going to get the most terrible conflicts seeping into our university campuses."

Prof John Garside, the vice-chancellor of UMIST, distanced himself from the debate. Even though Prof Baker uses UMIST's logo in her promotional material for the journals, he said: "The position of UMIST is that the two journals Prof Baker is involved with have nothing to do with UMIST.

"These are activities that she is involved with in her own time. What happens on those journals and the editorial policy on those journals are entirely a matter for those journals. It's an issue that we are dealing with internally and not something I want to make any public statement about at this stage."

A spokesman for the Israeli embassy said: "We think the Palestinian cause is not helped in any way by people trying to shut down those who communicate across boundaries through dialogue and the exchange of ideas. It's the rejection of the legitimacy of the state of Israel itself which lies at the core of the Israeli-Arab conflict."
http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2002/07/07/nisr07.xml&sSheet=/news/2002/07/07/ixnewstop.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=187237

2002-07-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 7, 2002
Ticket agent's wedding plans doomed by airport attacker
By TOM TUGEND

LOS ANGELES Friday was to have been one of Victoria Hen's happiest days. Her family had planned a surprise party at which Victoria's fianc e would formally propose marriage to the 25-year-old Israeli-American woman.

Instead, her parents, Avinoam and Rachel Hen, and her brothers Nimrod and Udi, spent the day planning her funeral service, set for 2 p.m. today at Eden Memorial Park in suburban Mission Hills.

Hen, who had worked as an El Al ticket agent for only six weeks, was one of the victims slain when an Egyptian-born gunman opened fire Thursday noon in a line of passengers waiting to board Flight #106 from Los Angeles to Tel Aviv.

Contrary to earlier reports, the gunman, Hesham Muhammad Hadayet, did not face and argue with Hen before the shooting, but opened fire while still standing in the passenger line, some 20 feet away from the check-in counter, according to the FBI. Two bullets hit Hen in the chest.

At the Hen family home in suburban Chatsworth, Victoria's uncle, Yaron Ochana, remembered the attractive young woman as "a princess who only wanted to do good." Family spokesman Joseph Knoller said that the family had moved in 1990 from Tel Aviv to the Los Angeles area, where the father established an automotive parts business, and that Victoria graduated from Birmingham High School in 1995.

She eventually hoped to attend college, but worked in the meantime as an office manager and in public relations, before taken the position with El Al. There, "her main job was to actually smile at people, to actually make them feel comfortable when they come up the line, and she definitely did that," said Knoller.

The spokesman also conveyed the family's anger at the perceived reluctance of the White House and US law enforcement agencies to describe the double murder as an act of terrorism.

Reading from a prepared statement, Knoller said that the victim "was taken away from us with an act of hate. Vicky was the center of this family, a true angel, and anyone who came in contact with her was touched by an angel.

"The grieving family and relatives oppose the government's initial statement that this was not an act of terror. This was a murder.

We believe that this was an act carried out by a terrorist against Israelis and Americans on American soil. We wish the American government will once and for all take a clear stand on this issue of terror and will act on it."

Jacob "Ya'acov" Aminov, the second victim, was a man known in the community as "exceptionally giving and generous, one who would always help a friend or a stranger," noted Rabbi Aron B. Tendler, a family friend.

So it was in line with his character that Aminov offered to drive a friend to the airport on July 4, despite warnings of possible terrorist attacks on America's Independence Day.

His family was also worried and his son begged Aminov, "Don't go. It's dangerous," reported Aminov's brother-in-law, Mark Ezerzer.

While standing with his friend in the El Al check-in line, Aminov was hit in the chest by the gunman's bullets and, despite frantic efforts to save him, died one hour later. His wife, Anat, who is pregnant, fainted on hearing the doctor's final verdict.

Aminov, 46, moved 14 years ago from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, where he became a diamond importer and owned a jewelry distribution company in the city's downtown center.

He was deeply devoted to his family, which included his wife, who runs a hat shop, and five children, ranging in age from two to nine years.

There are three additional children, living in Israel, from Aminov's first marriage.

His body was to be flown today aboard El Al to Israel for burial, preceded by a eulogy service at Congregation Yad Avraham in North Hollywood, one of a number of Orthodox synagogues where the devout Aminov prayed daily.

Dozens of friends in the Sephardic community, who arrived at the Aminov home as news of the shooting spread, remembered him as an honest, spiritual, and soft-spoken person.

"He would not speak one word unnecessarily," a friend told the Los Angeles Times.

Others fondly remembered the regular open houses at the Aminov home on Saturday nights, where there was always plenty of food and the vodka flowed freely.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1025787710885

2002-07-07T10:14:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 6, 2002
No 'isolated incident'

CNN's coverage of Thursday night's attack on the El Al counter at Los Angeles Airport must have puzzled local viewers.

The obvious first assumption, given the timing and location of the incident, would surely be that it was a terror strike as was indeed stated immediately by Israeli officials. Yet CNN's broadcaster seemed at pains to stress that no such evidence was yet available (as if it could be) to draw such a conclusion. Instead, several other theories were floated. Perhaps it was a "work dispute," since early eyewitness accounts supposedly had the attacker shouting out "They cost me my job!" Others apparently described it as an "altercation that got out of hand," and CNN's newscaster even helpfully reminded viewers that "California is a place where a lot of people walk about carrying around guns."

This wasn't just a media line. US law enforcement officials also seemed to reluctant to label the incident a terrorist attack, instead saying that at first glance it appeared to be an "isolated incident." One American security expert appeared on the air confidently declaring that it was unlikely to be the forewarned al-Qaida strike on July 4, because that group prefers committing "large-scale terror attacks" as if al-Qaida operated only according to some kind of strictly followed playbook.

Even after the assailant was identified as Hesham Muhammad Ali Hadayet, an Egyptian national who has spent the past 12 years in the US, local law enforcement officials continued to resist drawing the obvious conclusion. Because Hadayet had no prior known links with terrorist groups, Richard Garcia, the FBI agent in charge of the investigation, told The New York Times it just as well could have been a "hate crime," or perhaps Hadayet "might simply have been despondent for some as yet unknown reason, perhaps a financial problem or a family dispute, and that despair drove him to violence."

It may well be that Hadayet had personal problems. It is also clear that he was capable of hate. "He had hate for Israel, for sure," the Times quoted one former employee in Hadayet's limousine service, who added "He [Hadayet] told me that the Israelis tried to destroy the Egyptian nation and the Egyptian population by sending prostitutes with AIDS to Egypt."

The Israel/AIDS conspiracy is a fantastic anti-Semitic canard widely circulated in Arab circles during the past decade. Perhaps Hadayet read about it in Egyptian newspapers sent from home, or saw it on anti-Israeli Internet sites, or heard it discussed in the local mosques near his home in the Los Angeles suburb of Irvine, described by an Israeli official in one report as "a problematic center of anti-Israel rhetoric recently."

The notion that an individual like Hadayet necessarily needed a direct personal order from the likes of Osama bin Laden to carry out his nefarious deed for it to be characterized as a "terror attack" rather than "isolated incident," "hate crime," or "despondent act" is a dangerously misguided one. It is misguided about the nature of terrorism in general, and about the nature of the enemy America is facing in specific. Haven't bin Laden and other Islamic terrorist leaders publicly called on individual Muslims like Hadayet to commit such acts? And when they do, isn't that terrorism, pure and simple?

Why the reluctance on the part of some in the US to acknowledge that this was clearly a terrorist attack on American soil? Because to do so would grant a victory to al-Qaida? Or because it would mean admitting that letting such a heavily armed man inside an airport terminal on a day when the nation was at the highest state of alert was a clear lapse of security? (Had Hadayet attacked any counter other then El Al, one wonders if he would have been stopped so quickly and prevented from killing many others).

Or is this a sign that even after 9/11, many Americans are still grappling with the mind shift needed to wage an extended war on terrorism both at home and abroad?

Even the early characterizations of the victims as Israelis Victoria Hen and Ya'acov Aminov were Israeli-Americans seemed intended to somehow shift the definition of the crime away from an act of terrorism against the US, to some kind of transplanted offshoot of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

No wonder that Hen's family felt compelled to issue a statement flatly declaring: "We the family believe that this was a murder, an act carried out by a terrorist against Israelis and American Israelis on American soil. We wish that the American government will once and for all take a clear and present stand on the issue of terror and will act on it."

The intention here is not to criticize the US war on terrorism from an Israeli perspective. Israel has its own problems, both in psychological and practical terms, in dealing with terrorism. The US, with its rich tradition of civil liberties and proudly multi-ethnic society must find its own, very different path, to fighting and defeating this scourge.

But echoing the Hen family, one thing needs to be stated loud and clear about last week's attack at LA airport. This was no "isolated incident." The enemies of America vowed to commit a terror strike on American soil on July 4 and they succeeded. America needs to clearly acknowledge this fact, draw the necessary conclusions, and then act on them as swiftly as possible
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1025787710717

2002-07-06T17:24:00.000-07:00

NYT July 6, 2002
Pakistani Woman Recalls Jury-Ordered Rape
By REUTERS

UZAFFARGARH, Pakistan, July 5 (Reuters) — A Pakistani woman said today that she had begged for mercy as four men dragged her to a room and raped her on the order of a village jury, but none of the hundreds of bystanders would help her.

The woman and her father said no one from the crowd dared to object to the verdict of the traditional jury of village elders because they feared for their lives. "They kept dragging me toward the room," the woman said, speaking in a television interview from Muzaffargarh, a town near Meerwala, her home village in the central province of Punjab. "My father, uncle and myself begged for mercy from them and the people sitting there but no one came to our help."

The police said today that they had arrested one of the four suspects in the rape and were hunting for the others. The incident, in which the woman was raped as a punishment for what the jury said was a sexual relationship her brother had with a girl of a high-class tribe, has set off an outcry throughout Pakistan. The brother's age is now in dispute, with one report saying he is only 11.

The Pakistani government has vowed to pursue the case and on Thursday gave the victim a check for about $8,200.

"They raped me for one hour and afterward I was unable to move," the woman said in the television interview. "After one hour, I called my father and uncle to take me home."

The woman's father said, "We begged for mercy in the name of God, but they held guns on us and we were helpless."

The rape occurred on June 22, but was registered as a complaint by the police only about a week later.

Local newspaper reports had originally said the woman was 18, but the Punjab provincial police chief, Malik Asif Hayat, told the Supreme Court she is 30.

"I would have committed suicide if the government had not come to my help," the woman told Pakistan's women's development minister, Attiya Inayatullah, who gave her the check.

Ms. Inayatullah said the government was considering setting up a summary court to deliver quick punishment to those responsible for the rape.

Newspaper reports said today that another young girl of the same area committed suicide a few days ago after being raped. The authorities have confirmed the report.

A recent report issued by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan, but it said most sexual assaults went unreported because of the social stigma attached to such charges and the difficulty in proving them. In Punjab a woman is raped every six hours and a woman is gang-raped every four days, yet only 321 rape cases were reported to the police last year, the report said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/06/international/asia/06RAPE.html?pagewanted=print&position=top

2002-07-06T14:45:00.000-07:00

Michael Gove
June 25, 2002 Times Online

These killers are neither hopeless nor victims
Sympathy for suicide bombers is a sign of Western moral failure

Jack Straw takes his cue from John Donne. Asked by The Times last week what lesson could be drawn from the killing of 20 Israelis by a Palestinian terrorist, the Foreign Secretary invited observers to feel “a degree of compassion” for suicide bombers. Any man’s death diminishes me, Donne wrote, because I am involved in mankind.
My colleague Matthew Parris takes his cue from another poet. In seeking to argue that there was something “ennobling” in the suicide bombers’ self-sacrifice, he quoted from Horace — Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Both Parris and the Foreign Secretary are seeking to do what a certain type of civilised Englishman has long sought to do in the face of wickedness — bring the protagonists within the pale of civilised understanding. They, and Cherie Blair, urge us to feel the suicide bombers’ pain. Consider yourself without hope, and imagine to what ends you might be driven.

The cumulative effect of these interventions has been to make the “desperation” which “drives” these bombers to blow themselves up the central question for observers of the conflict in the Middle East. How, we are invited to ask, can we remove the “hopelessness” which leads to “self-sacrifice”? Powerful as this line of argument can be, it is also a profound, and dangerous, moral evasion. What these arguments evade is the reality of the bombers’ motivation.

Their acts are not expressions of despair or hopelessness, “cries for help” as the West has come to understand suicide. Nor are they the noble stands of outnumbered warriors, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, or Samson in the Temple. They are the calculated acts of men and women whose ideology celebrates death in a fashion which almost defies Western comprehension. Indeed, these acts are designed to elicit compassion in the West for the killers, a sentiment which the bombers know undermines the West’s capacity to resist barbarism.

The terrorist responsible for the bus bombing which killed 20 Israelis last Wednesday, Mohammed al-Ghoul, was explicit in his motivation. “How beautiful it is to make my bomb shrapnel kill the enemy,” he wrote immediately before he did just that, “how beautiful it is to kill and be killed.” These are not the words of one in despair, but on the verge of exultation.

Al-Ghoul was not a wretched, hopeless, outcast but a student pursuing a master’s degree in Islamic studies. His act was not a cry for help but the culminating affirmation of an ideology which holds sway in the Palestinian Authority and other centres of Islamist fundamentalism across the world. It is an ideology inculcated in children from their earliest years.

At a recent “graduation exercise” in a Gaza kindergarten children burnt an Israeli flag and a young girl had her hands dipped in red paint to celebrate the lynching of two Israeli soldiers. Another child dressed as the Hamas leader, Hassan Nasrallah, recited lines praising Hezbollah for its fight against the Israelis, a struggle that would win rewards “from above”. Other children carried toy rifles.

What, I wonder, is “ennobling” about such a ceremony? There is a moral gulf of almost unbridgeable proportions between the stand which we in the West can admire, of taking one’s life in one’s hands against formidable odds, the stand of the rearguard action, of Horatio on the bridge or the Coldstreamers at Dunkirk, and the deliberate grooming of kindergarten children for their place in a death cult.

This culture of death has not taken root in an arid desert of despair but a land irrigated by outside money. EU cash has helped to fund an education system which twists minds with anti-Jewish propaganda. The Saudis and Iraqis have created a perverted “welfare” system which rewards the families of suicide bombers with significant wealth. The Palestinian Authority has used its autonomy, and the period of negotiation which followed the Oslo agreement, to build an infrastructure. It is not, however, one of a state pledged to peace, but a society configured to kill. Both its Jewish neighbours and its own.

This ideology of death is not then the product of hope denied, but hope fed. Fed not just by money and arms from neighbours, but fed, above all, by the folly of the West. The hope that terror will bring concessions, the hope that the West is weakening, the hope that fanaticism will prevail, is daily reinforced. That hope is nurtured by movement towards a Palestinian state which is accelerated, not delayed, by bombing. It is encouraged by news that decisive action against one sponsor of terror, Iraq, has been delayed. It is supported by news that the world’s most energetic sponsor of terror, Iran, is to be appeased by the granting of EU trade privileges.

It is also advanced by the moral confusion which suicide bombing has produced among Western elites. The campaign has been designed to obscure the wickedness of ethnic mass murder by seeking to place the killer on the same moral plain as his targets — both are to be seen as “victims”.

But that is only true in the sense that a Khmer Rouge, Waffen SS or Interahamwe footsoldier and those he slaughters are “equally” victims of totalitarianism. One is implementing an ideology of death, the others are that ideology’s necessary sacrifices. To contextualise the acts of the killers by arguing that they have no hope, to see “nobility” in their blitheness about the consequences as they take others’ lives, is to locate moral reasoning in individuals who wish to erase the most fundamental moral principle — respect for life itself.

It is difficult for the civilised man or woman to admit that barbarism can take possession of a soul, or a society. But unless we do, we cannot stop its advance.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1055-337310,00.html

2002-07-06T11:27:00.000-07:00

Jul. 4, 2002
GUEST COLUMN: France's Jewish problem
By MICHEL GURFINKIEL

In 1928, the young New York intellectual Sidney Hook embarked on a tour of Europe that included several months in Germany. More than a half-century later, he would write in his memoirs, Out of Step: "As incredible as it may sound to most people today, anti-Semitism was much less apparent at the time in Berlin than in New York City."

Indeed, in the Weimar Republic that had been established in 1919, both Jews as individuals and the Jewish community as a whole were flourishing; in the United States, by contrast, nativist prejudice in the late 1920s was on the rise and free immigration had been sharply curtailed.
It took no more than five years after Hook's visit, however, for Germany to become the most murderously anti-Semitic nation in history.

It is always perilous to draw strict parallels in history, and in any case both the Nazi regime and the genocide it engineered - the Holocaust - were exceptional in too many respects to bear recounting. Still, what remains striking in light of Hook's observation is the sheer rapidity with which Nazi anti-Semitism established itself in a seemingly peaceful and open society. Could such a reversal happen again in a Western nation, even if at a less lethal level? This question, which has haunted many Jews since 1945 and until recently seemed largely theoretical, took on new significance over the past year in France.

The latter half of the 20th century constituted a kind of golden age for French Jewry. A community whose numbers stood at around 300,000 at the end of World War II had by the 1990s increased enormously. Demographic growth provided the critical mass necessary for cultural revival.

As it has become easier to lead a Jewish life in France, many Jews have become more traditionalist in their habits and practice. Study groups in Talmud or Jewish thought have burgeoned, and some have evolved into real centers of learning. Distinct Orthodox neighborhoods have grown up in greater Paris as well as in Marseilles, Nice and Strasbourg; in a number of places, Liberal (Reform) and Conservative congregations have been founded as well. Even secularist Jews have organized themselves here and there in self-conscious efforts to preserve a Jewish way of life.

All in all, contemporary French Jewry has begun to look somewhat like American Jewry.

THAT IS in social terms. In political terms, the situation in the two countries is very different. France's is not a federal system, nor is government rooted so thoroughly in electoral politics as in the US; the country is less a "republic" ruled by its citizens than a "state" administered by a professional class of civil servants. Lobbying for special interests, while widespread in fact, is still considered not quite legitimate, and religion- or community-based activism is frowned upon.

This is not to say that the influence of French Jews in public life has been insignificant. With regard to Israel, although it has so far proved impossible to change the frankly pro-Arab stance first charted by Charles de Gaulle in the wake of the Six Day War, efforts to mitigate that stance over the decades have met with periodic success. Elsewhere, in matters pertaining to civil rights or religious observance, Holocaust memorials or the prosecution of Nazi criminals, Jewish interests have been readily accommodated.

But as the whole world knows by now, the golden age is over. Were there a worldwide Richter scale of anti-Semitism, what has happened in France would qualify as an earthquake.

On October 3, 2000, the synagogue of Villepinte, a suburban neighborhood in northeastern Paris, was all but destroyed by arson in practically the first such case in France since the late Middle Ages. (The single exception had occurred in 1940 when the Nazis blew up the Central Synagogue of Strasbourg.) Following Villepinte, four more synagogues were burned over the next 10 days, all in greater Paris, while in the whole of France, 19 further attempts at arson were recorded against synagogues or other Jewish buildings, homes or businesses.

The week of October 7 also witnessed four incidents of vandalism or desecration, three involving synagogues, and 18 more cases of anti-Jewish violence, from stone throwing to beating. Most occurred in neighborhoods with both Jewish and Muslim residents, and were connected in some way with the organized riots by Palestinians against Israel that had begun in Jerusalem in late September.

Anti-Jewish violence flared up again a year later after the September 11 terrorist attack on the US, which generated a wave of pride among French Muslims. A third peak occurred around Pessah and Easter of this year, as the Palestinian intifada against Israel turned into open warfare.

Then there was the increasingly open and uninhibited expression of anti-Semitic sentiment. Although no French political party of significant size called for anti-Jewish policies as such, the Green party and related groups on the Left denounced "Jewish religious fundamentalists" and pro-Israel activity. (On the other side of the political spectrum, the far-Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen had indulged for years in anti-Semitic innuendo, but in the current crisis mostly held his tongue.) At pro-Palestinian rallies, calls to kill the Jews were raised again and again; anti-Jewish invective-laced sermons were preached in church; and there were anti-Jewish cartoons in the mainstream press.

Of even deeper concern, and not only to Jews, was the refusal or unwillingness of the powers-that-be in France - the ruling parties of Right and Left, the mainstream political class, the mainstream media, most social institutions, even the Church - to treat the new situation with anything like the seriousness it deserved.

This was hardly a case of neglect. Rather, there was a conscious effort on the part of the authorities to downplay the extent of the crisis and/or to present it as a symptom of some broader problem like intercommunal strife or "racism."

The judiciary played its part as well. Thus, in a ruling issued in March 2002 after almost 18 months of investigation, a synagogue fire at Trappes in October 2000 was declared to be not a criminal act. In still another proceeding, concerning an attack on a synagogue and school in Creteil, near Paris, in which three men were caught redhanded, the judges issued a reduced penalty on the grounds that motivations other than anti-Semitism may have come into play.
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2002-07-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

JPost Jul. 4, 2002
Bret Stephen's Eye on the Media: Fear and loathing at 'The Economist'
By BRET STEPHENS

"Israel is a superior country with superior people: its talents are above the ordinary. But it has to abate its greed for other people's land." The Economist, October 7, 2000

Is there a newsweekly smarter, better written, or more globally influential than The Economist? Its worldwide print circulation runs to 838,000. The average subscriber brings in $151,400 a year in personal income. Fifty-two percent of readers work in senior management, and another 27% own a car costing upwards of $40,000. Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger does cameos for the magazine's TV ads. Vice President Dick Cheney even took a copy of The Economist with him down to the White House bunker on September 11, apparently in case he'd need to idle away the time between phone calls to the president and warnings of imminent kamikaze attacks.

I would have taken a copy, too, had I been in his shoes. For sheer intelligent entertainment, there is nothing like it. It is equally interesting when delving into the science of migraine headaches, the life and times of fashion designer Bill Blass, electricity deregulation in China, or the quality of German wines. It regularly supplies lengthy explanatory surveys on everything from the future of Zionism to the future of the universe. The Economist's hard news coverage can be quirky -- it goes for stories on elections in Lesotho and land shortages in Vietnam -- but these somehow are usually worth reading. At the same time, the magazine stays well-focused on its main beats -- politics, economics, business, social trends -- and most of the time it tells the story straight. Its editorials, too, tend to be sensible and fair.

STRAIGHT, SENSIBLE and fair, that is, except when it comes to Israel.

For years, Jewish groups and media critics have aimed their fire at CNN, National Public Radio, the BBC and The New York Times. They don't know what they're missing. To the editors of The Economist, Israel is America's "often awkward" (June 27) and "pampered ally" (April 6). Israel's defenders, notably Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, are prone to "scatological excess and testicular obsession." Prime Minister Ariel Sharon represents Israel's "uglier face" (October 7, 2000); he is a calculated liar (April 21, 2001), whose modus operandi is "calculated brutality" (March 10, 2001). In electing him last year, Israelis were in a "bolshie mood" (February 3, 2001).

The right-wing parties in the national unity government are "scary"; indeed, they are "wolves" (February 2). The only way to prevent the Middle East from "burning" is for the US to intervene "swiftly and much more neutrally in the conflict." Which is to say, on the side of the Arabs.

For The Economist to take this line may seem a surprise. In the main, the magazine champions laissez-faire economics and veers right politically. (It endorsed, albeit with reservations, George W. Bush's presidential candidacy.) What's remarkable about The Economist's coverage of Israel, however, is that while other right-leaning British publications -- The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator in particular -- have taken a broadly pro-Israel line, The Economist has gone the way of The Guardian and The Independent, the country's far-left broadsheets.

Stranger yet is that it does so not for traditionally Tory Arabist reasons -- Britain's interest in cultivating good relations with the Arab states -- but instead on the ostensibly humanitarian grounds championed by the European left. Thus the magazine, citing Amnesty International, alleges in its June 29 issue that Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti (whom it describes as "an inspiring resistance leader") is "being tortured" in an Israeli jail. What The Economist does not say is that the Amnesty claim is in turn based on one unverified allegation from the Palestine Media Center. Nor does the magazine mention that Barghouti was wanted in connection to his involvement in the January 17 Bat Mitzva terror attack in Hadera that killed six, the January 22 attack in downtown Jerusalem that killed two, and the March 4 attack at the Tel Aviv Seafood Market restaurant that killed three.

Similarly, the magazine, although not alleging outright that a massacre took place in Jenin, gave great credence to the accusations with its surprisingly melodramatic dispatches. "In the razed heart of Jenin refugee camp," it reported on April 27, "Palestinians were shovelling out their decomposed dead.... The danger of epidemic is real." "Like earthquake victims," it added, "the Palestinians in Jenin, Nablus and elsewhere in the West Bank need massive humanitarian help." But that help, it reported, "is hindered by the Israeli army's sieges."

The Economist did not, however, subsequently note that no epidemic took place, much less acknowledge that the removal of 56 corpses from the scene of the fighting hardly requires "shovelling." Then too, the magazine has yet to mention that Palestinians have used Red Crescent ambulances to ferry explosives.

The Economist has also shown remarkably little interest in the humanitarian tragedies endured by Israelis. Having reviewed dozens of stories, I have yet to see one that names a single victim of terror, or dwells on the consequences for the victim's family, or allows an Israeli voice to have the last word in the story. A January 26 piece that begins with the January 22 terror attack moves swiftly to an allegation that the IDF "executed" four Palestinians "in their beds or the bathroom, or shot them through the head," before concluding the piece with a line from Ahmed Abdul Rahman, an Arafat minion. Another story, pegged to the Dolphinarium attack, also concludes by bemoaning the "dreadful decades of Israeli gradualism" under which Palestinians have suffered.

Indeed, to get a sense of the pervasiveness of the bias in The Economist's coverage, it's enough to quote passages at random.

* "[Sharon] could not, when he was elected prime minister a little over a year ago, turn the clock back immediately. Instead, he joined the diverse and powerful army of spoilers, led on the Palestinian side by militant Islamists, who have managed between them to sabotage the hopes of a permanent settlement along Oslo lines." (April 6)

* "Ariel Sharon was elected Israel's prime minister in February on the double premise that he would make his people safer, and would not talk to the Palestinians until they were. With strong support for this stand, his army set about bringing the Palestinian leaders to heel by means that included bombing from helicopters, shelling from tanks, kidnapping senior security men and killing suspected terrorists. Unremarkably, the uprising continued...." (April 7, 2001)

* "Although Israel has transformed itself into a lively high-tech society, there are nowadays echoes of the same misconceptions about peace coming cheaply on Israel's terms. If Mr. Sharon is a snake-oil salesman, many Israelis, battered by Mr. Barak's shot-gun approach, are prepared to allow themselves to believe him." (February 3, 2001)

* "If there is one single Israeli who inspires violent feelings, it is the prime minister-elect. Jordanians recall the time in 1953 when a force led by Mr. Sharon destroyed the village of Qibya, leaving 69 civilians dead. Egyptians remember that it was Mr. Sharon who flouted a ceasefire during the 1973 war, counter-attacking across the Suez Canal to turn Egypt's initial success into near-defeat. Syrians, Lebanese and Christians all know him as the mastermind of Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, an act that led to the loss of 40,000 Arab lives and to Israel's 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon." (February 2, 2001)

The picture drawn here is, of course, a familiar one -- a demonic one. Sharon, the Jewish counterpart to Hamas's Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Sharon, the brutish but ineffectual hardliner. Sharon, the quack. Sharon, the mass killer of Arabs. Indeed, reading the news coverage of The Economist, one almost suspects it cribs its lines from Arab press, complete with gross errors of fact. Sharon, for the record, crossed the canal on October 16, 1973, six days before the ceasefire was declared.

Now consider The Economist's portrait of Yasser Arafat. True, the magazine has described him as a "terrorist recidivist" who has "pocketed what Oslo gave him and relaunched a liberation war." Arafat also comes in for criticism for his "lamentable bungling as chief executive of the Palestinian Authority." But in the main, The Economist lets him off with a light slap. Arafat "probably did not plan the intifada." His "brilliance" as a "wily old-time resistance leader" kept "the gleam of Palestinian nationalism against all adversities." He remains, in the magazine's judgment, "unsurpassed at representing his people's aspirations -- and is probably the only one who might, just might, persuade them to do something they do not like."

Not a bad epitaph, one might say, were things to end right there. Yet even by the evidence of The Economist's own reporting, it's a strange judgment. "How" the magazine quotes one Hamas leader as asking, "can Arafat arrest Hamas people for 'violence' when everybody knows that Fatah people led the 'violence'?" The magazine also took note last month that "Islamist and radical national groups have all turned down places in a new Palestinian cabinet." But it failed to explain to readers that this fact owed to Arafat offering these Islamists and radicals places in the cabinet to begin with.

IT WOULD BE an insult to the editors of The Economist not to suppose that a logic informs their reporting and editorial writing. Indeed one does. And it is not the belief that "there is no quick fix, and certainly no military fix, to violence," although this is a theme that recurs frequently in the magazine's pages. Rather, as the editors wrote on April 6:

"Palestine does not fit the September 11th template. For this is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause: the independent statehood that America itself has taken pains to say it supports."

Put another way, The Economist does not want to see a Palestinian state created in order to end the violence. For them, the end game is not peace in the Levant, nor even democracy for an eventual Palestine. The end is "justice" for the Palestinian people, justice virtually by any means necessary, and justice at the expense of Israel. "The notion that the Palestinian refugees and their families should still, after 52 years, contemplate returning to Israel outraged the nation," clucked one report, in obvious sarcasm.

"The intifada's leaders," added a magazine editorial in April 2001, "mainly members of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, have set their sights, and their guns, at the army-protected settlers who compete for the hills and valleys that may one day be a Palestinian state."

Given the scorn the magazine pours upon the "settler zealots" and their "Jewish nationalist extremist" champions in the Knesset, it isn't difficult to detect where the weight of editorial sympathy lies in that conflict.

Yet never has the magazine expressed itself more plainly than in its June 27 editorial on Bush's Mideast speech. Nor, in my recollection, has it ever expressed itself so angrily about anything. The speech was "the dampest of damp squibs," which could "just as well have been written by... Ariel Sharon." The speech, wrote the editors, was also a puzzle, since "Mr. Bush is after all no Zionist," and "oil has been good to the Bush family."

Coming from a magazine that had endorsed the president, the line contained all the rage of a betrayed spouse.

Most telling, however, was the question the editorial openly posed: "Who are the bad guys?" President Bush, the editorial complains, plainly thinks the bad guys are Palestinians "compromised by terror." The Economist, plainly, thinks they are Israelis, compromised by settlements.

I BEGAN this piece by citing what in my view is the single most egregious line published in any mainstream magazine about Israel in recent memory. The implication is clear. Israelis - Jews - are unusually clever. And Israelis - Jews - are also unusually greedy. This is, of course, a transparent anti-Semitic canard, the most enduring and the most obvious. The editors of The Economist could not but have known what they were doing when they wrote those words.

It is, of course, always important not to jump to damning conclusions on the strength of a couple of sentences. But as novelist Cynthia Ozick has noted in this context, "It all adds up."

"Some Israelis disagree strongly with the policy of collective punishment. Most neither know nor care."

"The election of Mr. Sharon... invites alarming speculation."...

"Mr. Arafat built up shadowy armed groups alongside the official police, and these groups now conduct 'terror' against Israel."...

"This is terrorism harnessed to a deserving cause."...

"Mr Bush is no Zionist."...

"Israel is a superior country with superior people: its talents are above the ordinary. But it has to abate its greed for other people's land."

It all adds up.
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2002-07-03T10:03:00.000-07:00

Anti-Semitism in Europe
by Oriana Fallaci,
Panorama, April 18, 2002
(Unofficial) Translation from Italian by
David A. Harris, American Jewish Committee

I find it shameful that in Italy there was a procession of
individuals who, dressed as kamikazes, uttered vile insults at Israel,
held up photos of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they had drawn a
swastika, inciting the populace to hate the Jews. And in order to see the
Jews again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the
crematoria of Dachau, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, etc., they
would sell their own mothers to a harem.

I find it shameful that the Catholic Church permits a bishop,
moreover one housed in the Vatican, a "saintly" bishop, who, in Jerusalem
was found with an arsenal of weapons and explosives hidden in special
compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and
to place himself in front of a microphone to thank, in the name of God,
the kamikazes who massacre the Jews in the pizzerias and supermarkets. He
called them "martyrs who go to death as to a party."

I find it shameful that in France-the France of "Liberty, Equality
and Fraternity"-synagogues are torched, Jews are terrorized, and their
cemeteries profaned. I find it shameful that in Holland and Germany and
Denmark youngsters show off the kaffiyeh like the vanguard of Mussolini
displayed the stick and the Fascist emblem. I find it shameful that in
almost every European university Palestinian students take over and
nurture anti-Semitism; that in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace
Prize given to Shimon Peres in 1994 be withdrawn, and left solely in the
hands of the dove with the olive branch in his mouth-that is, Arafat. I
find it shameful that the esteemed members of the (Nobel) Committee, a
committee that it seems makes choice based on politics and not merit, are
taking the request into consideration and thinking of fulfilling it. To
hell with the Nobel Prize and hooray to those who don't receive it.

I find it shameful (we are back in Italy) that the
government-controlled television stations contribute to the revival of
anti-Semitism by crying over Palestinian deaths only, minimizing the
importance of Israeli deaths, speaking in a brisk and dismissive tone
about them. I find it shameful that in television discussions the
scoundrels with the turban or kaffiyeh, who yesterday extolled the
slaughter in New York and today praise the massacres in Jerusalem, Haifa,
Netanya, and Tel Aviv, are received with such deference. I find it
shameful that the press does the same-gets indignant because in Bethlehem
Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity, but doesn't get upset
that in the same church 200 Palestinian terrorists (among them various
leaders of Hamas and Al-Aksa), well-armed with machine guns and
explosives, are not unwelcome guests of the monks (and then accept from
the tank soldiers bottles of mineral water and baskets of apples.) I find
it shameful that, given the number of Israeli casualties since the onset
of the second intifada (412), one well-known daily felt it appropriate to
emphasize in bold headlines that more Israelis die in road accidents (600
per year).
I find it shameful that l'Oservatore Romano, that is, the newspaper
of the pope-a pope who not too long ago left a note in the Wailing Wall
apologizing to the Jews-accused a people exterminated by the millions by
Christians, by Europeans, of extermination. I find it shameful that the
survivors of this (Jewish) people-people who still carry a number on their
arm-are denied the right to react, defend themselves, avoid being
exterminated again, by that same newspaper. I find it shameful that, in
the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom they would all be
unemployed), priests from our parishes or social centers or wherever flirt
with the murderers of those who in Jerusalem cannot go to eat a pizza or
buy an egg without being blown up. I find it shameful that they choose the
side of the very people who launched terrorism by killing us on planes, in
airports, at the Olympics; and today these same people make sport of
killing Western journalists-shooting them, kidnapping them, slitting their
throats, beheading them. (After the publication of my piece "The Anger and
the Pride," someone in Italy wanted to do the same to me. Citing Koranic
verses, he exhorted his "brothers" in the name of Allah to kill me.
Actually, to die with me. Since he is someone who speaks English well, I
respond to him in English: "F--k you.")
I find it shameful that virtually the entire Left, that Left which 20
years ago permitted a trade-union procession to place a coffin (a
Mafia-like warning) in front of the synagogue in Rome, has forgotten the
contribution of the Jews to the anti-fascist struggle: of Carlo and Nello
Rosselli, for example; of Leone Ginzburg, Umberto Terracini, Leo Valiani,
Emilio Serani; of women such as my friend Anna Maria Enriques Agnoletti,
shot in Florence on June 12, 1944; of 74 of the 335 victims of Fosse
Ardeatine; of the infinite other deaths under torture or in combat or in
front of the firing squads; the friends, the teachers of my childhood and
of my early youth. I find it shameful that, in part because of the fault
of the Left-no, especially because of the fault of the Left (think of the
Left that begins its congresses applauding the PLO representative in
Italy, who represents here the Palestinians who seek Israel's
destruction)-the Jews in Italian cities once again are frightened. And in
French and Dutch and Danish and German cities, it is the same. I find it
shameful that when the scoundrels dressed as kamikazes march, (Jews)
shudder as they trembled in Berlin during Kristallnacht, that is, the
night on which Hitler began the hunt of the Jews.
I find it shameful that, obeying the stupid, vile, dishonest, and,
for them, the extremely opportunistic fashion of political correctness,
the usual opportunists-no, the usual parasites-exploit the word "peace."
In the name of the word "peace," now more devalued than the words "love"
and "humanity," they absolve just one side of hate and bestiality. In the
name of pacifism (read conformity) from the mouths of shrill voices, the
same voices that earlier genuflected to Pol Pot, they now incite people
who are confused, naïve, or intimidated. They cheat them, corrupt them,
take them back half a century, that is, to the yellow star on the coat.
These charlatans care as much about the Palestinians as I care about them
(the charlatans), i.e., not at all.
I find it shameful that so many Italians and so many Europeans have
chosen as a role model Mister-and I use the word advisedly-Arafat, this
nonentity who, thanks to the money of the Saudi royal family, acts like
Mussolini in perpetuity and in his megalomania believes he will go down in
history as the George Washington of Palestine. This uneducated man who,
when I interviewed him, could not even put together a complete sentence,
an articulate thought. Therefore, to put a piece together, to write it, to
publish it, is such a hard ordeal that one concludes that, compared to
Arafat, even (Libyan leader) Gadhafi becomes Leonardo da Vinci. This fake
warrior who always goes around in uniform like Pinochet, who never wears
civilian clothes, and yet who has never participated in a single battle.
He leaves war, and has always left war, to others, in other words, to
those unfortunate ones who believe in him. This pompous incompetent who,
playing the role of head of state, caused the failure of the Camp David
negotiations and the mediation efforts of Clinton. "No, no, I want all of
Jerusalem to myself." This eternal liar who has a flash of sincerity only
when (in private) he denies Israel's right to exist, and who, as I wrote
in my book, lies every five seconds. He always plays a game of duplicity;
he lies even if you ask him what time it is, and, therefore, you can never
trust him. Never! One is systematically betrayed by him. This eternal
terrorist who only knows how to be a terrorist (from a safe distance), and
who in the 1970s-that is, when I interviewed him-also trained the
Baader-Meinhof terrorists. And now with them, he trains (Palestinian)
children who were ten years old. Poor kids. (Now they are trained to
become kamikazes. One hundred baby kamikazes are ready for action: 100!)
This opportunist who keeps his wife in Paris, cared for and revered as a
queen, while he keeps his people in the shit. From the shit he removes
them only to send them to die, to kill and to die, like the 18-year-old
girls who, to achieve equality with men, have to fill themselves with
explosives and blow themselves up together with their victims. And yet so
many Italians love him-yes, just as they loved Mussolini. And so many
other Europeans do as well.
I find it shameful, and I see in all of this the growth of a new
fascism, of a new nazism-a fascism, a nazism, so much more malevolent and
repulsive because it is conducted and nourished by those who
hypocritically play the part of the good guys, the progressives, the
communists, pacifists, Catholics and even more, the Christians, who have
the gall to call those like me who shout truth at them a warmonger. I see
it, yes, and therefore I will state the following: to the tragic and
Shakespearean Sharon, I never gave him a break. ("I know that you came to
add a scalp to your necklace," he murmured almost with sadness when I went
to interview him in 1982.) With the Israelis, I've argued often and
bitterly, and in the past I defended the Palestinians quite a bit, maybe
more than they deserved. But I am with Israel, I am with the Jews. I am
with them now, as I was with them as a young girl-in other words, from the
time when I was in the trenches with them and the Anne Maries were shot to
death. I defend their right to exist, to defend themselves, to avoid a
second extermination. And disgusted by the anti-Semitism of many Italians,
of many Europeans, I am ashamed by this shame that dishonors my country
and Europe, in the best of cases, not a community of nations (e.g.,
Europe) but a well of Pontius Pilates. And even if all the inhabitants of
this planet think differently, I will continue to think this way.

2002-07-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

165 UC professors petition for divestment from Israel
DAILY BRUIN ONLINE - Tuesday, June 25, 2002
By Andrew Edwards
DAILY BRUIN CONTRIBUTOR
aedwards@media.ucla.edu More than 100 University of California faculty are
petitioning the university system to divest from Israel, on the grounds of
protecting Palestinian human rights. The petitioners are asking the UC,
which currently has about $54 million invested, to use its political and
financial weight to take a stand against U.S. military aid to the Israeli
government and Israel's role in the Middle East crisis. "The main culprit
in this situation, and the side that can deliver the goods, is Israel,"
said history Professor Gabriel Piterberg, who signed the petition. The
petition, signed by 165 UC professors, condemns attacks on Israeli
citizens while comparing Israeli actions to the South Africa's Apartheid.
Many, however, find such a comparison ridiculous. "The analogy with South
Africa is absurd," said political science Professor Steven Spiegel, who
finds the petition "reprehensible and unwise." "It does nothing to solve
the present conflict," Spiegel said. The UC campaign is similar to
initiatives at other U.S. universities, including Harvard University, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton University. Opponents
of the initiatives have circulated counter-petitions throughout the UC, as
well as at Harvard and MIT. The counter-petition at UCLA asserts that the
divestment initiative "pours scorn on Israel alone." "The impetus (of the
divestment petition) appears to be anti-Israel," said Rabbi Chaim
Seidler-Feller, of UCLA Hillel House, who does not agree with the
petition, but said he is opposed to Israeli occupation of the West Bank.
History Professor James Gelvin, meanwhile, signed the divestment petition
because he said: "(Israel) is a government that is now committing an
invasion." Those in favor of divestment do not want their protest of
Israeli policy to be construed as sympathy or support for terrorism. "In
no way should it be interpreted that any of us signing this petition
support the suicide bombers," Gelvin said. Not all signatories of the
divestment petition are siding with either camp. "It's a very difficult
situation for both sides ... Israel is not the aggressor," said cardiology
Professor Mohamed Navab. "Both are equally wrong," he said. The UC has not
yet taken any action regarding divestment. A press release issued by John
Moores, chair of the UC Board of Regents, states that while the proposals
of the faculty are welcome, the board is obligated to take care regarding
funds. The board will discuss divestment at a future meeting, said Trey
Davis, spokesman for the UC. The petition will be presented this fall or
next spring. This divestment campaign follows other "human rights" efforts
against UC stock in Burma and Tibet.
Copyright 2002 ASUCLA Student Media

2002-07-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

Making Sense of the Six-Day War
A Middle East Forum Wire

Michael Oren is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem. He has served as director of Israel’s Department of Inter-Religious Affairs and as advisor to Israel’s delegation to the United Nations. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and has written extensively on Arab-Israeli affairs, notably on the USS Liberty affair. Recently, using newly-declassified documents from Israel, the United States, Russia and the Arab world, he published the critically-acclaimed Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oxford University Press, 2002). He discussed his research with the Middle East Forum on May 6, 2002.

A Familiar Scenario
Thirty years ago, just before the 1967 Six Day War, a Palestinian terrorist organization, Fatah, headed by Yasir Arafat, conducted terrorist acts within Israel with the dual purposes of inflicting as much damage as possible on Israeli civilians, and of bringing the Arab world into a war against Israel.

Israel’s retaliation against this terrorism triggered violent protests throughout the Arab world. Radical Arab regimes, such as Syria, called for war. More “moderate” Arab states, afraid of confronting Israel’s military, stopped short of declaring war. Meanwhile, the Europeans, led by France, condemned Israel’s acts of self-defense, and the United Nations condemned Israel’s actions almost daily. The United States, for its part, was embroiled in its own war in the East (Vietnam), and was reluctant to become directly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

At home, Israel experienced a difficult economic crisis. With no one else to turn to, Israel’s main support came from Diaspora Jews, who worked tirelessly to ensure the Jewish state’s survival.

Today, amidst the so-called Intifada al-Aqsa, Israel is revisiting its past. Arafat has inflicted untold damages on Israel via terrorist groups under this control, while simultaneously drawing Arab states closer to war. The international community regularly chastises Israel, and until recently, America was reluctant to get involved due to its war in Afghanistan. Israel, all the while, must endure a grave economic crisis as it works to avoid another war.

The Countdown to the Six-Day War
The countdown to the Six-Day War began in November 1966, when a terrorist attack by Fatah against three Israeli soldiers prompted an Israeli reprisal. A large Israeli force entered the Jordanian-occupied West Bank village of Samua, and encountered a battalion of Jordanian soldiers, leading to a firefight that left 15 Jordanian soldiers dead.

Arabs in the West Bank and Jordan reacted violently, demanding that Jordan’s King Hussein make greater efforts to protect his people. Hussein, in turn, made scathing remarks about Gamal Abd al-Nasser, Egypt’s president, suggesting that he needed to do more to “liberate Palestine” and that he was hiding behind the UN, which had stationed troops in the Sinai Peninsula (between Israel and Egypt) since the 1956 Arab-Israeli war.

Thus, Nasser needed a pretext to eject the UN peacekeepers from Sinai and save face. His pretext came on May 12, 1967, when the USSR misinformed the Egyptians that Israeli forces were massed on Israel’s northern border, ready to destroy Syria. With the threat of war looming, Nasser, evicted the peacekeepers from Sinai, closed the Straits of Tiran, thereby blocking Israel’s oil imports.

The degenerating situation put Israel in a dire situation. A deepening economic crisis grew, while many in Israel criticized the government for not doing enough to protect the country. This prompted Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to form a national unity government. This helped ease some societal tensions, but did little to help Israel with their security problem and increasing international isolation. The pressure was building towards war.

An Arab Attack Averted
Recently declassified documents reveal a number of Arab countries had extensive plans to attack Israel several days before the Six Day War began. The Egyptian attack plan, “Operation Dawn” called for strategic bombings of major ports, airfields, cities and the Dimona nuclear reactor. The Arab armies would then effectively cut Israel in half with an armored thrust from northern Sinai, through the Negev desert.

Nasser was intent on reversing the humiliating Arab defeats of 1948-49 and 1956. He had provoked Israel when he closed the Straits of Tiran. In the weeks leading up to Israel’s preemptive strike, he had mobilized the Egyptian army in Sinai, and was poised to launch what he called “the operation that will surprise the world.” Abdel Amer, an Egyptian general who sought to augment and consolidate his power in Egypt, planned the operation, set to take place on May 27, 1967.

Unaware of this development, on May 26, 1967, Israeli foreign minister Abba Eban arrived in Washington to determine America’s position if war broke out in the Middle East. Upon his arrival, however, Eban received a secret telegram from Eshkol directing him to convey to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that Israel had just learned of the Arab attack plan.

When the two met, Johnson said he had no evidence of an impending attack. In the event that Israeli intelligence was correct, Johnson instructed the Egyptian ambassador to send a cable warning Nasser to not attack Israel. Additionally, the administration warned the Soviets that if Egypt attacked Israel, the U.S. would hold them responsible. Indeed, U.S. and Soviet pressure forced Nasser to cancel the attack planned for the next day.

Six Days of War
In the weeks leading up to June 5, Israel found itself surrounded by large armies in Syria, Jordan and Egypt. The combined military forces on these three fronts gave Israel a distinct disadvantage in all areas of military readiness. In the face of what must have looked like overwhelming odds, Israel planned to strike the Egyptian air force while still on the ground. When Israel did strike, on June 5, 1967, it destroyed this air force in hours.

In just Six Days, Israel’s defense forces successfully pushed back the Syrians on the Golan Heights, the Egyptians in Sinai and the Jordanians in the West Bank. It was only Israel’s self-restraint – a restraint shown in 1956 and later in 1973 – that kept them from further advancing into Amman, Damascus and Cairo.

The Jordan Factor
The Six Day War was the result of miscalculation and misunderstandings. For its part, Jordan wanted to avoid a war. Declassified documents reveal that King Hussein had even attempted to send Prime Minister Eshkol a letter expressing sorrow for the death of the three soldiers in Samua. This letter was received on a Friday afternoon by U.S. Ambassador Walter Barbour, who decided to wait to deliver the letter after the Jewish Sabbath. Unfortunately, Israel struck before he did. Thus, if not for an American ambassador’s procrastination, the Six-Day War may have been avoided.

The war also might have been avoided if King Hussein had not feared a backlash from the Arab world for abstaining from the conflict. In an attempt to absolve Jordan of culpability, Hussein gave control of his army to Egypt, protecting Jordan from possible Egyptian recrimination, but allowing his country to descend into war.

When the war began, Israel did its best to avoid conflict with Jordan. But on the morning of June 5, 1967, the Jordanian army bombed West Jerusalem, the suburbs of Tel Aviv, as well as targets in the Galilee. Eshkol sent Hussein a letter stating that Israel would take no actions against him if he ceased hostile activities. Jordan, however, received misinformation of Arab victories emanating from Cairo, and pressed forward. They sent troops to Mount Scopus and government hill ridge in Jerusalem. The Jordanian forces might have faired better, if not for the Israeli discovery of a major Jordanian intelligence blunder. Indeed, Jordanian radio broadcast its military plans roughly an hour ahead of the actual deployment.

After several decisive victories on the battlefield, Eshkol made one final attempt to end Jordanian-Israeli hostilities. He sent Hussein a letter asking that he recall his troops. If Hussein would comply, Israel would not take control of the old city of Jerusalem. Eshkol’s call went unanswered. Israeli paratroopers subsequently entered the old city through the Lion gate and took control of the Temple Mount, and Jerusalem has been in Israeli hands ever since.

Conclusion
In spite of its short duration, the repercussions of the Six Day War were far reaching. The Israeli conquest of the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem led to quandaries that lie at the heart of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Whereas the basis of the Arab-Israeli conflict prior to 1967 was simply the Arab desire to destroy Israel, the Six Day War created a more complicated conflict. Issues resulting from the war now include settlements in the disputed territories, the Palestinian refugee question, and sovereignty over Jerusalem.

Still, most Arab countries have adopted a position towards Israel of “no negotiation, no recognition and no peace.” Most Arab nations have either continued to denounce Israel and her right to exist, or actively work towards hastening Israel’s destruction by fueling the flames of hatred and funding terrorist operations.

In the Middle East, Israel is a strong military power. However, because of its size and its hostile neighbors, Israel is mortally vulnerable as well. The same type of tinderbox situation that precipitated the 1967 is happening in Israel today, as the 20-month old intifada rages. Even today, it may only take a spark to set off another regional conflict on the scale and gravity of the Six-Day War.

Summary account by Gil Marder, research associate of the Middle East Forum.

2002-07-02T18:15:00.000-07:00

Anthrax? The F.B.I. Yawns
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF NYTimes July 2, 2002

The F.B.I.'s bumbling before 9/11 is water under the bridge. But the bureau's lackadaisical ineptitude in pursuing the anthrax killer continues to threaten America's national security by permitting him to strike again or, more likely, to flee to Iran or North Korea.

Almost everyone who has encountered the F.B.I. anthrax investigation is aghast at the bureau's lethargy. Some in the biodefense community think they know a likely culprit, whom I'll call Mr. Z. Although the bureau has polygraphed Mr. Z, searched his home twice and interviewed him four times, it has not placed him under surveillance or asked its outside handwriting expert to compare his writing to that on the anthrax letters.

This is part of a larger pattern. Astonishingly, the F.B.I. allowed the destruction of anthrax stocks at Iowa State University, losing what might have been valuable genetic clues. Then it waited until December to open the intact anthrax envelope it found. The F.B.I. didn't obtain anthrax strains from various labs for comparison until March, and the testing is still not complete. The bureau did not systematically polygraph scientists at two suspect labs, Fort Detrick, Md., and Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, until a month ago.

Perhaps it's a cheap shot for an armchair detective to whine about the caution of dedicated and exceptionally hard-working investigators. Yet months pass and the bureau continues to act like, well, a bureaucracy, plodding along in slow motion. People in the biodefense field first gave Mr. Z's name to the bureau as a suspect in October, and I wrote about him elliptically in a column on May 24.

He denies any wrongdoing, and his friends are heartsick at suspicions directed against a man they regard as a patriot. Some of his polygraphs show evasion, I hear, although that may be because of his temperament.

If Mr. Z were an Arab national, he would have been imprisoned long ago. But he is a true-blue American with close ties to the U.S. Defense Department, the C.I.A. and the American biodefense program. On the other hand, he was once caught with a girlfriend in a biohazard "hot suite" at Fort Detrick, surrounded only by blushing germs.

With many experts buzzing about Mr. Z behind his back, it's time for the F.B.I. to make a move: either it should go after him more aggressively, sifting thoroughly through his past and picking up loose threads, or it should seek to exculpate him and remove this cloud of suspicion.

Whoever sent the anthrax probably had no intention of killing people; the letters warned recipients to take antibiotics. My guess is that the goal was to help America by raising preparedness against biological attacks in the future.

So it seems fair to ask the F.B.I. a few questions:

Do you know how many identities and passports Mr. Z has and are you monitoring his international travel? I have found at least one alias for him, and he has continued to travel abroad on government assignments, even to Central Asia.

Why was his top security clearance suspended in August, less than a month before the anthrax attacks began? This move left him infuriated. Are the C.I.A. and military intelligence agencies cooperating fully with the investigation?

Have you searched the isolated residence that he had access to last fall? The F.B.I. has known about this building, and knows that Mr. Z gave Cipro to people who visited it. This property and many others are legally registered in the name of a friend of Mr. Z, but may be safe houses operated by American intelligence.

Have you examined whether Mr. Z has connections to the biggest anthrax outbreak among humans ever recorded, the one that sickened more than 10,000 black farmers in Zimbabwe in 1978-80? There is evidence that the anthrax was released by the white Rhodesian Army fighting against black guerrillas, and Mr. Z has claimed that he participated in the white army's much-feared Selous Scouts. Could rogue elements of the American military have backed the Rhodesian Army in anthrax and cholera attacks against blacks? Mr. Z's résumé also claims involvement in the former South African Defense Force; all else aside, who knew that the U.S. Defense Department would pick an American who had served in the armed forces of two white-racist regimes to work in the American biodefense program with some of the world's deadliest germs?

What now? When do you shift into high gear?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/02/opinion/02KRIS.html

2002-07-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

By JONATHAN D. SALANT
.c The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (July 1) - Fake guns, bombs and other weapons got past security screeners almost one-fourth of the time at 32 major airports last month, a Transportation Security Administration official said Monday.

At three airports - Cincinnati, Las Vegas and Jacksonville, Fla. - undercover testers got weapons past security at least half the time, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said the findings were incomplete and the testing period ended Monday.

In February, the Transportation Security Administration, rather than the airlines, began supervising airport checkpoints, but the screeners continue to work for private companies. Federal employees are supposed to replace them by Nov. 19.

Transportation Department spokesman Leonardo Alcivar said the security agency is going to retrain screeners at airports with high failure rates.

``The preliminary results of the testing of security screeners are unacceptable and reflect the failures of the aviation security system inherited by the federal government,'' Alcivar said. ``The TSA will subsequently return to these airports and conduct unannounced retesting of security screeners at those airports.''

Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Mari K. Eder said the agency continues to test how well the screeners find weapons and explosives to help the agency improve security.

The test results were first reported Monday by USA Today.

Currently, government employees are screening passengers at only three airports - Baltimore, Louisville, Ky., and Mobile, Ala. - but the security agency said last week it will begin overhauling checkpoints at more than 130 other airports this month. That's the first step toward replacing the private screeners with an all-federal work force.

But progress toward hiring screeners may be delayed unless Congress approves a supplemental spending bill that includes some $4 billion for the agency, said Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta.

In a letter to lawmakers, Mineta warned it would be ``nearly impossible'' to meet the Nov. 19 deadline if the money was not approved. In addition, he wrote, the security agency would have to suspend purchases of explosive detection equipment and delay reconstruction of airport checkpoints.

Office of Management and Budget spokesman Trent Duffy said the White House would transfer at least $250 million to the Transportation Security Administration until the supplemental bill passes. In May, President Bush transferred $760 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The airport tests revealed screeners found hidden simulated weapons or explosives at least 90 percent of the time in Miami, Newark, N.J., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Honolulu. They missed the weapons 41 percent of the time in Los Angeles.

Overall, the screeners failed to detect prohibited items 24 percent of the time.

The Transportation Department's inspector general office earlier conducted its own undercover tests of 32 airports after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and found screeners missed knives 70 percent of the time, guns 30 percent of the time and simulated explosives 60 percent of the time, said a person familiar with the report. Those tests were conducted before February, when airlines still supervised security checkpoints.

07/01/02 17:38 EDT

2002-07-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 30, 2002
Philosopher rising
By MICHAL MEYER

The French Jewish thinker Emmanuel Levinas, who sought to bridge the gap between the secular and religious, remained largely unknown in Israel during his lifetime. But seven years after his death, Michal Meyer finds a growing circle of admirers here who view him as 'perhaps the greatest Jewish philosopher since Maimonides'

In 1963, 18-year-old Benny Levy went skiing for the very first time. But it was difficult, and the boots were heavy and uncomfortable. So, instead, he sat down in front of the mountains and traded in his skis for a book. The book was a translation of a German philosopher's work by French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

Levinas's explanations struck a chord in Levy. "I asked myself, 'who is this guy?' and I remembered I had read something else by him," says Levy. "It was strange, it impressed me, but I had other things to do." These other things included becoming a leader of the 1968 student protest movement in Paris. "So I said farewell to Levinas until 1975, when I finished with the revolution."

Today the ex-student leader and secular firebrand has recreated himself as an observant Jew and is a teacher of Levinas's work. He moved to Jerusalem in 1995, and two years ago opened the Levinas Center, where he gives lectures and seminars.

"When I arrived in Jerusalem, I saw that the key figure was Levinas," says Levy. "Since he brought me, a secular Jew, to where I am, I thought he would have the same effect on secular Jews here."

Levy's vision may yet bear fruit, as this once obscure French-Jewish philosopher is slowly becoming part of the Israeli cultural landscape. The followers of Levinas - who died in 1995 - say he provides a way of bridging the gulf dividing Israelis. But it has been a long journey for the man whose works were translated into many other languages, even Japanese, before he was translated into Hebrew.

Last month, the first conference in Israel dedicated solely to Levinas was held at the Hebrew University, one evening drawing almost 1,000 people to the Mount Scopus auditorium. There were religious and nonreligious, young and old, and even a scattering of army uniforms in the crowd.

Many, if not most, of those in the auditorium were not academics. They may have been intrigued by Levinas after hearing that his Nine Talmudic Readings - the Hebrew version was published only in December - had hit the best-seller lists. They may even have read the book. Or they might have come because popular Israeli singer Barry Sakharov's album Aher ("The Other"), was inspired by Levinas. Or they might have been some of those studying Levinas in small groups in Hebrew or French over the past few years.

"Levinas stands almost alone at the crossroads between cultures," says Rabbi Daniel Epstein, the translator of Nine Talmudic Readings. "He was born and raised in Lithuania in a modern religious family, he learned Hebrew and Russian, and studied philosophy in Germany and France. He is the heir of more than one culture, and he combines all this in his teachings and dialogue."

Levinas still remains less known in the English-speaking world than more academically fashionable French philosophers such as deconstructionist Jacques Derrida. But in France he is now considered one of the great thinkers of the 20th century.

"Derrida doesn't have the breadth or the depth," asserts Shalem Kulibali, a French-Israeli now writing a book on Levinas. "It's like the difference between a first- and a second-division soccer team."

As to his role as a Jewish thinker, Levinas's followers have no doubt: "He was one of the greatest Jewish philosophers," asserts Georges Hansel, Levinas's son-in-law and the creator of a database of Levinas's works. "Perhaps the greatest since Maimonides."

IT'S AN unlikely trajectory to a life that began in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1906. Levinas's daughter, Simone Hansel, says he came from a well-off, modern religious family where he learned Hebrew, but not Talmud. Along with many educated Jews of his generation he headed west and studied at the University of Strasbourg. Later he moved permanently to France and became a naturalized citizen in 1930.

Despite such a strong secular education, his grandson, David Hansel, says Jewish ritual was always vital to him.

"It was the framework from where everything started. He used to pray every day and for him putting on tefillin every morning was very important."

The Holocaust had a huge impact on Levinas and his Jewishness. All his family, apart from his wife and daughter who were safe in a French convent, were wiped out. It was only his French army uniform that saved Levinas from the same fate, as the Germans treated him as a POW rather than a Jew.

The war left Levinas with two monumental tasks; recreating a Jewish future among a people so traumatized that many French Jews reacted by converting to Christianity, and coming to terms with a Judaism in which the Holocaust existed.

He reacted to the first by helping to reestablish the Ecole Normale Isra lite Orientale (ENIO), a Jewish school, and he spent much of his life teaching Jewish children there.

"He taught French intellectual Jews that it was important to educate Jewish children to face the Holocaust," says Kulibali. "There was a need after the six million were killed. How would they create a nation? How would Jews continue?"

In a video made when he was 80, Levinas discusses that point.

"After Auschwitz I had the impression when I established the school [ENIO] that I was answering a call."

Levinas's Jewish faith was revitalized through Shushani, a mysterious contemporary scholar (also credited by Elie Wiesel as one of his major Jewish inspirations), says Salomon Malka, an ENIO student of Levinas's.

"Nobody knew where Shushani came from," says Simone Hansel. "He was an old man, and nobody even knew what his mother tongue was." Nonetheless, Shushani restored Levinas's faith, introducing him to Talmud study in the years after the Second World War, and turning the philosopher into a Jewish scholar.

For Levinas, Judaism was the wellspring of his life. As an Orthodox Jew he followed the traditional view of looking at the Bible through the lens of rabbinical thought, while interacting fully with the secular world. He also followed in the footsteps of the biblical prophets in his emphasis more on justice than ritual, an aspect of his work that comes through clearly in his book of essays, Difficult Freedoms.

"One follows... God by drawing near to one's fellow man, and showing concern for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the beggar, an approach that must not be made with empty hands. It is... on earth, amongst men, that the spirit's adventure unfolds."

The essence of his thoughts may best be summed up in a line from another of his works, Ethics and Infinity. "Since the Other looks at me, I am responsible for him." Or, in a more extreme form: "I am responsible for the Other without waiting for reciprocity, were I to die for it."

From this philosophical standpoint flow Levinas's conceptions of justice and the importance of the "other." But his approach rises above simplistic humanism; Levinas recognized that one always interacts more than just with one "other" - at the same time one must contend with the whole world. It is the introduction of this third element that makes law and judgment necessary. Limits are set on what must be done for the "other," otherwise another "other" will be forgotten and justice blinded.

For Levinas, ethics was the bedrock and the beginning of his philosophy. He turned traditional philosophy upside down when he made questions of existence and knowledge secondary to ethics and responsibility. And it's responsibility to the "other" that is above all else. A sense of self is only possible when the "other" is recognized - the one who is not myself.

"The transfer of concern for oneself into concern for the other... for Levinas, constitutes the very humanity of man," says Georges Hansel.

BECAUSE Levinas's work was grounded in reality, the role of the state - especially the Jewish state - flows naturally from his thinking on justice. Although Levinas felt that he could never criticize Israel, since he lived in the Diaspora, he had definite views on its role.

Although Levinas saw Israel as central in his life, Israel did not return the favor. In 1982 he came to speak at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Joelle Hansel, Levinas's granddaughter-in-law, who was studying at the university that year, and is now a lecturer in Jewish thought at the Hebrew University, remembers that "hardly anyone came, he wasn't presented as an important thinker and there was a strike on as well."

Part of the problem was that Levinas's style of philosophy was not fashionable in academic circles in Israel.

Epstein was one of the first, if not the first, to teach Levinas. "He was not known and not appreciated," he says of those years.

Levinas's first book in Hebrew, Ethics and Infinity was published in 1995 and went through three printings. Meanwhile, Epstein was teaching Levinas in Hebrew to small groups. The Levinas Center was conducting seminars. Gradually his thinking became more acceptable at universities through the work of noted Israeli academics such as Shalom Rosenberg, Zev Harvey, and Shmuel Wygoda.

There was another factor in his rise, David Hansel points out: Levinas could only be accepted in Israel after making it big elsewhere.

"In Israel you only hear about things 20 years after you hear about them in the US," he says.

In recent years Levinas has become more widely appreciated. The Raissa and Emmanuel Levinas Center - MOFET - was established earlier this year, and helped organize last month's conference. Today his works are readily available in bookstores.

MOFET's Joelle Hansel, one of the major organizers of the conference, says its first goal was to present Levinas to an Israeli audience.

"It's important to let people know the two Levinases," she says. "That Levinas belonged to the Western philosophical tradition, and that he was a commentator on Jewish sources as well. It's not just a fashion, now it's irreversible. People buy the Talmudic Readings and they are confronted by demanding thoughts. People will discover they need to know more of his philosophy.

"Levinas's reputation is [now] as one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century," continues Hansel, "but he wasn't so well known here. So now we've bridged the gap."

But aren't these Levinas followers exaggerating the potential impact of his teachings? How likely is it that ordinary Israelis will want to dive into the rarified waters of philosophy or Jewish thought, as opposed to the more simplistic religious outlooks all too common in this country?

Benny Levy of the Levinas Center believes Levinas will find his place among the many people in Israel now trying to fill a vacuum in the Israeli psyche.

"When Zionism gave answers and resolved basic problems, then Israelis didn't have a need for a foreign philosopher like Levinas; the task of Zionism was to build a state and to ensure stability."

But Levy sees in Levinas an answer to "post-Zionism" in that he dealt with the fundamental of what a Jewish state should be beyond the fact of its mere existence.

For David Hansel, "Most important is that with Levinas it's possible to go beyond the division between religious and nonreligious, observant and non-observant, on which our whole society has been built. These categories are losing their meaning."

Hansel says that through Levinas he would like "ordinary Israelis to understand the possibility of remaining faithful to Jewish history, thought and tradition, beyond the simplistic divisions between observant and nonobservant. There is another category - simply to be Jewish."

Translator Daniel Epstein echoes these thoughts. "I think real dialogue is not one of the strengths of Israel. Everyone lives in compartments here. For Levinas there are no compartments, just one thing - the quest for the meaning of life."

BUT THE growing appreciation of Levinas opens the door to a simplification and dumbing-down of his work, a danger his popularizers are aware of.

"The big danger is to present him as a philosopher who says 'be good to your neighbor,' or he can serve simply as a bridge between secular and religious Jews or between Palestinians and Israelis," says Levy. "All these are possible, but it's not the essence of Levinas."

"One can present his ethics as very naive and sentimental and romantic," says Joelle Hansel. "But people who read Levinas seriously wouldn't understand him this way."

Some in the Jewish community have also criticized Levinas's teachings as morality tinged with Christian concepts, an idea Epstein scathingly rejects.

"The history of the Exile is the history of Jewish ideas and beliefs which were adopted by other cultures including Christianity. Now, when we come home, we rediscover our roots and we have the impression that we speak not a Jewish language, but a foreign language. It's not true; responsibility for 'the other' is not a Christian idea, it's one of the first commandments of God to Adam, and then to Cain."

Social justice was central to Levinas, but so was the study of Jewish sources.

"In this he's close to a large audience in Israel," says Joelle Hansel. "Many people have a desire to return to Jewish sources, not necessarily Jewish practices - to know about our origins and heritage. It's not an intellectual return, it's ethical and practical."

Certainly the success in Hebrew of Nine Talmudic Readings shows a desire to return to these sources. It was 15 years of reading and teaching Levinas in Israel that gave Epstein the confidence to publish the translation. He was in some ways surprised by its success.

"I was discouraged by some people who thought there was no interest in Levinas in Israel," he says. On the other hand, "What he has to say is something very important for every one of us."

Although Epstein is an Orthodox rabbi, he admits it is easier for those with some secular background to understand Levinas.

"He is not known in the Orthodox community and it's hard to understand Levinas if you don't have any kind of general culture," he says. "I tried in my translation to put the concepts into classical Hebrew, to avoid certain words, and to speak plain Hebrew.

"It's very hard. One of my hopes is that in Levinas's words I can hear Jewish words. For instance, the meaning of face is badly served by the French word visage - to see. But in Hebrew, panim means exactly what Levinas means. It's someone turning to face me - there is nothing to do with visibility - it's a move of the other to address me."

Despite the difficulties, Epstein has had positive comments from the Orthodox world, but also puzzled ones.

"We have to read Levinas as he read Talmud without all the prejudices which set people here against each other," he cautions.

For Levinas adherents such as Epstein and Levy, the spurt of interest in Levinas is only the beginning.

"People rush to [buy Nine Talmudic Readings], but just because it is a bestseller doesn't mean everybody has read it," says Levy. "Sartre wrote that, by definition, a bestseller is not read."

Next year Epstein plans to publish a new set of Talmudic Readings. If it becomes a bestseller, well, people may even read it.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716570080

2002-07-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 27, 2002
From Auschwitz to outer space
By LAUREN GELFOND

Many years ago a bright young boy was murdered, but thanks to Israel's first astronaut, his dreams will live on to touch the stars.

In 1944, a tall, skinny 14-year-old intellectual was lined up in the Theresienstadt ghetto and pushed by the Nazis into the line for those unfit for work. It was, of course, a death sentence.

In the years leading up to that fateful day, Petr Ginz, the ghetto's underground magazine editor and local artist kept his mind going even when his body could not.

He spent his long hungry days in the ghetto painting and writing, creating images of freedom, where humans could sail at sea and fly toward the moon, directed only by gravity and wind, not guns.

Despite his youth, he created a collection of hundreds of drawings, poems and articles. He was also an avid reader, and on the inside of every book he read, he posted his name alongside a deeply-held belief: Science above all.

Though he was exterminated at Auschwitz at the age of 14, his dreams of science and freedom were preserved in 120 of his drawings that remained hidden back in Theresienstadt. After the war, a child survivor dug them up and delivered them to Ginz's parents, who fared better than their son. When they came to Israel in the 1950s, they donated the collection to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Petr's honor.

There, in Jerusalem, the drawings remained on exhibition, until one painting recently crossed the path of Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, and the young Jewish boy's dreams from the ghetto were given a second chance.

Ramon spent many hours during his space training contemplating what he would bring with him into space, besides a collection of Israeli flags. He knew it would have to be something special that reflected his own experiences and those of the Jewish people around the world he would represent. With a wink he told reporters for months that he was hatching a surprise.

The idea for the surprise developed when Ramon met members of the American Yad Vashem Society in Texas, where he has been training with NASA since 1998.

Reflecting on his own family memories of a mother who survived Auschwitz, and a grandfather and many other relatives who were killed during the Holocaust, it started to make sense to him that something preserved from that era should join him on his space travels.

At Ramon's request, Yad Vashem's senior curator in Jerusalem, Yehudit Shendar, was asked to draw up a list of possibilities.

But it only took one look at Petr Ginz's "Moon Landscape" for Shendar to realize that no list was necessary, calling the choice "destined."

"Ramon liked the idea of making a connection with lost ancestors and it was a perfect fit. Like Ramon, Ginz was talented in many subjects, including science. It was so unusual in those days that he imagined space travel. He was on a quest to discover new frontiers," she said.

"And after finding this piece, I even realize that the two look alike. Later we discovered that the shuttle is scheduled to launch on July 19, the birthday of Peter Ginz's father. [Since the interview, the launch date has been postponed]. We also found out that Ramon, without realizing it, had studied in childhood with Petr Ginz's niece. There sure were a lot of coincidences."

Indeed, says Petr's surviving sister, Eva Ginz Pressburger, 72, now living in Beersheba - some 60 years after Petr dreamed of freedom and space, it is as if he has come back to life to fulfill his destiny.

"There are two kinds of artists. Those who document reality and those who create new worlds. Dreaming of freedom and new kinds of life kept Petr going," she said. "His soul is alive in that drawing, and now it as if he continues to live through the drawing's adventures."

Ramon used similar words to describe his feelings about Petr when he spoke before Yad Vashem members: "I feel that my journey fulfills the dream of Petr Ginz. A dream that is ultimate proof of the greatness of the soul of a boy imprisoned within the ghetto walls, the walls of which could not surrender his spirit. Ginz's drawings are a testimony to the triumph of the spirit."

And so, Ramon now says, when NASA's Columbia Shuttle launches into space, it is not just delivering Israel's first astronaut - but also some dreams that almost died in the Holocaust.

"We are showing the world that, no matter what, the Jewish spirit and the Jewish people will endure."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716560617

2002-06-30T17:22:00.000-07:00

NYT June 27, 2002 Post-Oslo Mideast
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

ASHINGTON — The Oslo "process priesthood" was thunderstruck by President Bush's vision of a free and prosperous state for Palestinian Arabs.

For weeks, those experts had been leaking their certainty of Bush's adoption of the same old formula for failure: (1) declaration of an interim Palestinian state under Yasir Arafat's dictatorship, with a "timeline" to force Israeli concessions, (2) a peace conference to impose on Israel the Clinton offer to return to indefensible borders and divide Jerusalem, sweetened by (3) Saudi-led Arab acceptance of Israel's existence.

But Bush this week placed responsibility for the war on Arafat's "unacceptable" support of terror. Our rattled establishment of experts in the State Department and the elite media immediately put out word that Bush had deviated from the course they expected only because of some last-minute proof of Arafat's personal sponsorship of a suicide bombing.

It's time to conclude that President Bush has a clear post-Oslo policy regarding a future Palestine. In the creation of that new state, why accept the model of so many other Arab dictatorships? Why not build in for its new citizens the safeguards and opportunities of a modern democracy?

Westerners who believe Arabs are doomed to rule by monarchs or demagogues scorn such idealism. They argue that even if given a genuine opposition, a free media and a secret ballot, Palestinian voters will never reject Arafat, revered symbol of their drive for statehood.

Maybe this pessimistic reading is correct. Perhaps most Palestinians, given the choice, would place hatred of Israelis over personal self-interest and peace. What if Arafat were to win, and "one man, one vote, but only once" prevailed? What if free elections were to enthrone dictatorship, corruption and terror?

That's where Bush's post-Oslo realism has a political sophistication that the priesthood in its ritual negotiation fails to grasp. The president recognizes that elections of an executive alone do not a democracy make.

That's why the Palestinian state envisioned by Bush protects the people by separating government powers. His "reform" offers substantial financial help to create a constitution with a strong legislature and an independent judiciary.

"Israel should release frozen Palestinian revenues," Bush adds, "into honest, accountable hands" — not into what Palestinians know to be foreign bank accounts of Arafat's corrupt lackeys or Iranian arms merchants. Reform will come only with the formative state's "transparency and independent auditing."

Talk about engagement. Here is an American president leading the world beyond fixation on one terrorist collaborator, and beyond the process priesthood's "comprehensive peace agreement that never seems to come." With his Reaganesque style and surprisingly Wilsonian outlook, Bush is now actively engaged in fostering the creation of the first Arab state that could provide freedom, equality and the good life to millions of its citizens.

The odds are against him. The monarchies of Saudi Arabia and Jordan and the dictatorships of Egypt and Syria would be threatened by a successful Arab democratic experiment. Centers of terrorism in Baghdad and Tehran, as well as the cells of Al Qaeda, will go all out to inflame the minority of Palestinian jihadists who dedicate their lives to their final solution of the Israeli problem.

Palestinian patriots may find that the only way to statehood requires civil war. The majority of residents of Gaza and the West Bank dream of a peaceful and productive life in a free country. They are denied this today not by Israel nor by America, but by the minority of terrorists among them who want totalitarian control of all Palestinians as well as Jews.

Will these patriotic Palestinians vote for their freedom and independence, even if it means a fight to the finish with terrorists? We don't know. Nor can anyone be sure what Bush calls "new and different" leaders will dare to emerge and show the courage to tame terrorism as they advocate territorial compromise with Israel.

We do know this: Bush's post-Oslo involvement at least offers Palestinians a way to satisfy the universal human desire for a good life under honest government — where they can go to work instead of watch their children go to war.

The audacious Bush offer is on the table. Israel cannot fail to cooperate. Will Palestinians miss this opportunity, too?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/27/opinion/27SAFI.html

2002-06-30T16:08:00.000-07:00

Jpost Jun. 27, 2002
BRET STEPHENS'S EYES ABROAD: It's curtains for global warming
By BRET STEPHENS

As it turns out, God really is in the details.

In 1994, David Schmidt, a young Ph.D. candidate in engineering at the University of Wisconsin, was asked by his examiners to explain why thin shower curtains "suck in" whenever the water is turned on.

The solution to the riddle, like Fermat's last theorem, proved remarkably elusive. According to one theory, "curtain suck" is the product of the Bernoulli principle, which holds that pressure drops as air, water and other fluids accelerate, leading to lift. (This same principle explains how planes fly.) Yet another theory - the bouyancy theory - holds that curtain suck is the result of a disequilibrium between the hot air inside the shower space and the cold air without, which pushes in the shower curtain. But this theory fails to account for the persistence of curtain suck when the shower is run cold.

Intrigued, Schmidt, now at the University of Massachusetts, pressed ahead with the investigation. He designed a $28,000 piece of software that allowed him to model the flow of air and water within a simulated image of his mother-in-law's bathtub. He then filled the "tub" with 50,000 tetrahedral cells, which can detect velocity and pressure. Following that, he turned on a virtual shower that flooded his virtual tub with four gallons of virtual water over a period of 30 seconds. Then he let his computer crunch the numbers.

Two weeks and 1.5 trillion calculations later, Schmidt had his answer. Aerodynamic drag causes water droplets to decelerate, transferring energy to the air and creating air currents akin to a tiny hurricane. Low pressure in the eye of that hurricane then tugs on the lower end of the shower curtain. Voila! It sucks in.

WELCOME TO the curious world of climate modeling. As Schmidt's experiment makes clear, simply to understand shifting climate patterns in the space of a bathtub is no small matter. Yet today, huge political controversies have been stirred on the basis of climate forecasts for the entire globe, stretching decades into the future. According to the Worldwatch Institute, in the 21st century "the climate battle may assume the kind of strategic importance that wars - both hot and cold - had during the 20th."

The international fracas over US President George W. Bush's rejection last year of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change indicates that the battle is, indeed, a real one. But the question is, is the phenomenon over which the battle is being fought also real? And is it worth the agony, or even the ink?

You'd be forgiven for thinking that it is. According to Christine Todd Whitman, current head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, global warming is "one of the greatest environmental challenges we face, if not the greatest." US News & World Report has offered that "by midcentury, the chic Art Deco hotels that now line Miami's South Beach could stand waterlogged and abandoned. Malaria could be a public health threat in Vermont. Nebraska farmers could abandon their fields for lack of water." And then president Bill Clinton (in a televised, ABC News Earth Day interview with movie star Leonardo DiCaprio, no less) sketched out scenarios in which "the polar ice caps will melt more rapidly; sea levels will rise.... island nations could literally be buried."

Making the situation all the more deplorable, and giving it political edge, is the belief that changing climate patterns are largely the result of increased carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from man-made sources - cars, planes, factories and so on. According to CNN's Michelle Mitchell, leading climate scientists have reached "a unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse, and is due to man. There is no wiggle room."

From this, it follows that what men have wrought, men must undo. The Kyoto Protocol calls on industrialized nations to hold their CO2 emissions to 1990 levels, principally by placing draconian limits on all energy releasing activities and by investing massively in such alternative fuel sources as wind power and solar cells. Anything short of this, says the conventional wisdom, all but guarantees an uncomfortably hot future for posterity. Asks Bob Herbert of The New York Times: "Do you think, maybe, we should be paying more attention to this?"

THE SHORT answer is no.

If there is one thing more remarkable than the level of alarm inspired by global warming, it is the thin empirical foundations upon which the forecast rests. According to Richard Lindzen, a professor of meteorology at MIT, the best available evidence shows that global mean temperatures have risen by a mere 0.5 degrees Celsius over the past century, and that global concentrations of CO2 over a century have also increased by a statistically insignificant percentage, to 0.036% from 0.028%.

There is abundant evidence showing significant variations in past global mean temperatures, including a spike that took place around the year 1000, long before the advent of the internal-combustion engine. (And right around the time the Vikings settled Iceland and Greenland and briefly reached North America.)

There is no evidence whatsoever showing that man-made emissions are the principal source of global warming; cyclical radiation effects caused by sunsposts make for an equally plausible cuplrit. And where there is evidence of global warming, it appears to be happening in cooler places, thereby making temperatures more mild, not more insufferable.

All this stands to reason. Currently it is impossible - and it may yet prove fundamentally impossible - to make sound predictions about global weather patterns. Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, an erstwhile Greenpeace activist who turned skeptic after putting his own assumptions to the test, writes that "faithfully modeling all the important factors in the climatic system involves representing everything from the entire planet down to individual dust particles," and is therefore beyond the reach of current computational capabilities.

Adds Lindzen: "We simply do not know what relation, if any, exists between global climate changes and water vapor, clouds, storms, hurricanes, and other factors, including regional climate changes, which are generally much larger than global changes and not correlated with them."

Then, too, anecdotal evidence of global warming turns out, on closer inspection, to offer ambiguous lessons. Earlier this year, for example, came news that the massive Larsen B Antarctic ice shelf, three times the size of Hong Kong, had abruptly disintegrated, ostensibly furnishing further evidence of global warming. But then came word that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was growing at a rate of 26.8 gigatons per year, and that overall temperatures in Antarctica had declined by around 2.0 degrees Celsius.

"Continental Antarctic cooling," say researchers from the University of Illinois, "poses challenges to models of climate and ecosystem change."

Put simply, when it comes to climate change, much more is unknown than known, and what we do know suggests neither that mankind is on course to catastrophe, nor indeed that we could do much about it if we were. In fact, the only thing upon which climate scientists reliably agree is that the world emerged from a "little ice age" around 1880, and things have been warming, albeit slightly, with dips and variations, ever since.

Where it all might lead is anyone's guess. But simply to draw the most apocalyptic scenarios and then insist on drastic action hardly seems the most sensible way to move forward.

YET THAT is precisely what all of Europe, the Democratic party, a significant segment of the scientific community, and most other ordinarily sophisticated people seem to be doing. It's worth asking why.

Again, a little history is in order. Throughout the 1970s, the scientific consensus held that the world was entering a period of global cooling, with results equally catastrophic to those now predicted for global warming. Then, in 1988, Margaret Thatcher established the Hadley Center for Climate Prediction and Research, largely to push the global warming theory.

The reason? Thatcher wanted to break the power of the coal miners' union and promote (non-CO2 emitting) nuclear power, and one way of doing so was to emphasize the dangers a hydrocarbons-based economy posed to the environment.

It was, however, a too-clever gambit, which the Left was bound to seize on. How could they not have? By 1988, every other fashionably leftist article of faith had proved a bugaboo. Oil was not running out. Overpopulation was not causing famines. Nuclear winter was not around the corner. But what global warming amounted to was the perfect doomsday forecast: an environmental catastrophe caused mainly by the overpolluting industrialized West, universal in its dimension, requiring massive social engineering. Global warming, like much of today's feminism, simply became another vehicle to impose the old left-wing social prescriptions. As the International Panel on Climate Control has itself admitted, debate over climate policy concerns "a wide range of issues, including development, equity, sustainability, and sustainable development."

Look at what the Kyoto Protocol proposes. Though every country is meant to be a signatory, only developed countries must abide by the Protocol's terms. The US, which by some calculations is said to emit five times as much CO2 as all of Europe combined, would bear the brunt of the treaty's costs. Meanwhile, China - the second largest emitter - would be under no obligation to make similar efforts. Countries that adopted Kyoto would need to raise gas and diesel taxes by as much as 25% in order to achieve called-for cuts in overall consumption. Electricity prices wold also have to rise by an estimated 100%.

The economic effect? The Japanese minister of environment estimated that it would likely shave off 1% of her country's GDP per annum. A study by the energy and economic consultancy DRI-WEFA estimated the costs of Kyoto to Germany and Britain at about 5% of GDP and an overall job loss of 2.8 million. Matters would only be worse if these countries also phased out nuclear power, as Germany is slated to do in the coming years.

Yet for all this, the effects of Kyoto on atmospheric concentrations of CO2 would be negligible, with temperature increases reaching "business as usual" levels by 2100, rather than by 2094. And Kyoto would just be the beginning: Jerry Mahlman of Princeton believes it would take 30 Kyotos to curb the projected rate of global warming, at a projected cost of $4 trillion per Kyoto.

EVER SINCE Malthus predicted that population growth would quickly outstrip mankind's ability to feed itself, the modern world has been routinely beset by scientific predictions of doom no less frightening, indeed more so, than what's on offer in the Book of Revelations. None yet has come to pass. Like the itinerant circus troupe in Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, humanity as a whole has always outwitted the Grim Reaper. There's no reason not to think we won't do so again, even if every grim weather forecast proves true. We are an ingenious and adaptive species, that has survived everything nature has thrown in our way. We shall do so again.

The real question is - has always been - can we survive the traps we lay for ourselves? Or will the ghosts of our mind, from which we spend so much time running, eventually consume us?
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716562436

2002-06-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

Jun. 27, 2002
When CNN is the story
By MIRIAM SHAVIV

CNN is making new efforts to contend with criticism by Israel and the Jewish community of its Middle East coverage. Miriam Shaviv looks at the news station's uneasy history of reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the real reasons it decided to make changes

On Monday night, star CNN presenter Wolf Blitzer is sitting at a table against the backdrop of the Old City of Jerusalem.

"I have with me four very special people," he says, and introduces his guests: two relatives of terror victims, a survivor of a suicide bombing, and a psychologist who deals with post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sherri Mandell, the mother of Kobi, a 14-year-old who last year was stoned to death by Palestinians in a cave near his Tekoa home, begins by describing her son leaving home "with a salami sandwich"; Meir Schijveschuurder, who lost his parents and three siblings in the Sbarro bombing, describes in broken English receiving a call to come to sign an emergency form to allow one of his sisters to be operated on, and how it slowly dawned on him his parents were gone.

Polina Valis, who was injured in the Dolphinarium attack, relates how the friends who were there still support each other, but are still "afraid to go by bus, go the mall, drink coffee."

The name of the show, the first in a five-part series, is Victims of Terror, and in the next four days, it focused on the professionals who were first to arrive at the scene of an explosion, and regular Israelis who have to brave the buses every day, risking their lives.

For many media observers, both the tone and the content of the program were a novelty. Although CNN routinely reports on terror attacks in Israel, pro-Israeli groups have complained over a long period that it downplays the stories of victims, often neglecting to identify them by name and age, and devoting to them less airtime than to suffering Palestinians.

Watchdog groups have long charged that CNN is actually biased against Israel. They have logged countless examples of reporters who allow Palestinian representatives to get away with abject lies, such as the PLO representative to the US, Hassan Abdel Rahman, who said on Crossfire on April 2 that there were "very few" armed people hiding in the Church of the Nativity; reporters who talk repeatedly of violence "flaring up" and "erupting" in the passive tense, helping to disguise Palestinian responsibility for the violence; and reporters who distort facts, for example, on February 16 reporting that "a Palestinian died when a car exploded," without mentioning he was in the process of attempting a suicide bombing.

But this week, there were other gestures towards the pro-Israeli community from CNN. Eason Jordan, the network's chief news executive and newsgathering president, flew in to the region and requested a meeting with Communications Minister Reuven Rivlin. During his visit, he defended CNN's reporting record to virtually every major media outlet in the country, and announced that CNN would no longer give air time to the families of Palestinian bombers "unless there is a compelling reason to do so."

The immediate spur for the gestures was the decision by the YES satellite company to offer FOX News as an alternative to CNN, and a threat by the cable companies to follow suit. The Israeli media treated the gestures as proof that the Israeli lobby really does have power to hurt even such large and powerful networks. The headline in Yediot Aharonot, gloated about "CNN's amelioration trip"; Ma'ariv, boasted of a "special apology."

Clearly, the pro-Israeli lobby's muscle flexing has worked some wonders. But media commentators place the victory in the context of a larger battle CNN is waging, for viewers from the conservative side of the political spectrum in the US.

"CNN has well-documented biases, including being pro-Liberal," says Elizabeth Swasey, director of Communications at the Media Resource Center in Alexandria, Virginia. "There is much more competition in the market now, so they are being forced to change."

In recent months, that competition has increased enormously. CNN's biggest rival is Rupert Murdoch's FOX News, created just five years ago, which has managed to capture much of the conservative heartland. Two months ago, according to Swasey, for the first time, FOX managed to beat CNN in ratings in terms of sheer numbers - although it is still available in fewer homes in the US.

According to Swasey, CNN is under tremendous pressure to regain its number one status among cable networks. It realizes that many of the viewers on the mainstream center and Right in the US feel strongly about Israel and believe CNN is too pro-Palestinian.

"They are not used to losing in ratings," she says. "There is a note of desperation in a lot of what they are doing right now. They will try anything."

EVEN critics of CNN agree that any anti-Israeli bias was never company policy, but there is still a long history of antagonism between Israel activists and individual CNN correspondents.

CNN's relationship with Israel goes back to June 1980, when it first went on air, and when it opened its bureau in Jerusalem.

According to Jay Bushinsky, who was the first bureau chief, there was, from the beginning, a sense that the Israel office was less important to CNN than its European counterparts.

"It was as if we were illegitimate offspring," says Bushinsky, who was at CNN until 1985. "They didn't invest the same kind of resources in us as they did in other bureaus, or treat the personnel in the same way as others," forcing many to remain freelancers, for example. He complains the reporters' work was always treated with a degree of skepticism.

"We covered the Lebanon War assiduously, on the front lines every day, but we always sensed that the editors in Atlanta wished our reports conformed to the approach taken by other networks," he says. "When they wanted to know why our reports were different, I always said, 'because we were there.'"

Bushinsky emphasizes that there was never a feeling of anti-Israel bias or of anti-Semitism, but speculates that one of the reasons CNN was covering Israel "reluctantly" may have been "because too many Jews were working there." Another reason, he says, was that early on, CNN had a largely rural audience, "which may not have been so interested in Israel." Still, he emphasizes that attitudes were very much dependent on the individual editors.

He recalls several skirmishes between the reporters and producers over terminology.

"Even at that stage, the word 'terrorist' was problematic," he says. In July 1985, when Israel exchanged 1,150 Palestinians in detention for three Israeli POWs, he says CNN told him not to call the Palestinians 'prisoners' but 'hostages.' On another occasion, in a light piece about Sammy Davis Jr. entertaining Israeli troops during the Lebanon War, he was told not to sign his piece with the word 'Shalom,' although Davis had addressed Bushinsky with the word as well.

In the late 1980s, one individual caused the first major flare-up in the relationship between the Jewish state and CNN - bureau chief Robert Wiener. (Efforts to reach Wiener through CNN were unsuccesful.)

"He came to Israel with the story already written, with the Israelis bad and the Palestinians good," says a source close to CNN at the time. "Occasionally he would do a story by himself, and it was always about the suffering of the Palestinian people."

According to the source, Wiener created an anti-Israel atmosphere around the office, which was staffed largely by Jews. "He flew the Palestinian flag in the office, and changed the sign under one of the clocks from 'Jerusalem' to 'Palestine.'"

On at least two occasions, he caused controversy with pro-Palestinian stories. Once, says the source, he assigned a reporter to a story about the residents of Ariel who forced Arab workers in their settlements to wear identity tags. Wiener, says the source, later inserted into the report archive pictures of Jews wearing a yellow badge during the Holocaust, "drawing a lot of fire at the time." On another occasion, he assigned a reporter to do a story about an Arab village where several residents had been attacked by wild dogs.

"The Palestinians said the dogs had been sent in by Jewish settlers, that they were attack dogs," says the source. "The reporter came back in tears, but he forced her to put together a story, and honchoed how she wrote it. They did the right thing journalistically, saying "Palestinians said that ," but there was no response from the other side. A few days later, it turned out the real story was that the dogs were wild and rabid. It was completely irresponsible journalism."

In January 1990, the Anti-Defamation league and several Israeli officials complained about Wiener's biased reporting of the Intifada. They also complained that CNN broadcast Palestinian charges of IDF brutality without giving fair weight to Israeli officials' explanations, and said the station repeatedly illustrated reports with dated archival material of soldiers beating Palestinians. CNN said it stood by its staff, but several weeks later, Wiener was transferred. Both he and CNN denied any connection between the move and the criticism.

SINCE then, relations between the network and Israeli sympathizers continued to be marred by occasional incidents. One reporter, Linda Scherzer, was asked to move to another bureau in 1993 after five years in Jerusalem. When she refused to leave the country, she was dismissed, and there are lingering rumors this happened because she was perceived as being too pro-Israeli.

Scherzer says that this was never said to her outright, but "I have always wondered if that was a possible explanation for what happened."

She says that during her time at CNN she never felt pressure to conform to a particular point of view.

"I was always baffled by why [the dismissal] happened, particularly because reporters who covered the Gulf War got tremendous international prominence, including myself. I know that people I reported to were pleased with my work, and Jews in the US certainly didn't see me as too pro-Israel - when I went home to the US, I always got an earful. I am left with lingering questions about how CNN perceived me, whether they suspected that deep down I was just an Israeli patriot."

Other bureau chiefs, particularly Walter Rodgers in the mid 1990s, have also been accused of allowing Palestinian sympathies to show. The complaints by pro-Israeli groups during the second intifada have followed much the same lines.

This time around, reports on CNN's coverage and e-mail campaigns by organizations such as CAMERA and HonestReporting.com did not initially receive much attention from CNN's headquarters.

"They were supercilious and haughty, as if they were CNN, and were above it all," says a consultant to one watchdog group.

Things began to change, however, at the beginning of the year. At that time, senior US Jewish officials and CEOs in the business community began making their feelings known, and e-mail campaigns picked up pace.

In February, CNN failed to identify by name or age two teenage victims of the suicide bombing in a Karnei Shomron pizzeria, one of whom was an American citizen. HonestReporting.com readers sent up to 6,000 e-mails a day to CNN executives, effectively paralyzing their internal e-mail system. The consultant, who was present at several meetings with watchdog groups initiated by CNN, says the top CNN executives had, until then, failed to appreciate the strength of public feeling on the issue.

"We came to the conclusion that the news we see is driven by correspondents in the field, not by the corporate side of the organization which is instinctively more pro-Israel than the correspondents," says the consultant. "A lot of the heads are Jews who care a lot about Israel. One of them said that when [watchdog groups] attack us, he has a hard time in synagogue that week."

What they discovered, says the consultant, was that the reporters on the ground had relatively free rein. They very often came to Israel without proper understanding of the region's history or culture, or with attitudes shaped by other countries they had covered such as South Africa, where the racism model prevailed. Many of the journalists also find themselves influenced by their foreign media colleagues, who reflect their own bias.

"There is a tendency among foreign correspondents to arrive at a consensus about the issue at hand, and report accordingly," says Bushinsky. "Anyone who deviates from the consensus is considered an outcast, someone who 'got the story wrong.'"

According to the consultant, many of the anchors back in Atlanta were much more likely to challenge false Palestinian claims than the reporters on the ground - and they would also often challenge their own reporters.

"[CNN stringer] Rula Amin was challenged four times by Atlanta-based anchors while she reported on Jenin," says the consultant. "On April 16, anchor Daryn Kagan told Amin that there is "a different perception here Rula, I am sure, as we can see from the pictures, a number of homes have been destroyed. But the Israelis would point out that they believe there were gunmen and fighters holding out in those houses, and that's why they had to be attacked so fiercely."

A few days earlier, New-York based anchor Paula Zahn interrupted Amin to remind her that Israelis argue they went into Jenin because "they know that men who are very active in the Palestinian Authority's violence against Israel are located there."

In addition, material on CNN.com which is written in Atlanta was often much less biased towards the Palestinians than the broadcast material. The use of the word "terrorist" to describe Palestinian suicide-bombers, for example, was common, while on air they were routinely described as "militants."

"At the beginning," says the consultant, "the executives didn't believe there was a problem, mostly out of ignorance of what was going on [in the field] . They were not aware of how often the big lie [that 500 Palestinians died in Jenin in April] was spread by Palestinian spokesmen, and seemed shocked when we told them there were 30 cases in 10 days. They were not watching this narrow little part of CNN's operation - they have to watch what's going in a massive empire, and suddenly this corner started biting them in the backside."

Michael Wolf, media critic for New York magazine, says that the executives are "as aware as they decided they should be."

Still, CAMERA executive director Andrea Levin agrees that "Receptiveness to public concern has improved." She compares the situation to 1997, when it took CAMERA a year to get Walter Rodgers to correct an incorrect statement that the Arab population of Jerusalem is dwindling.

"They are responsive to our calls and our comment, we do sense there is an interest and effort," says Levin. "I've been recently in touch with CNN's CEO who also seems concerned."

THE INCREASED attention, of course, took place precisely at the time when the ratings war with the more conservative FOX News Network was heating up. The battle between FOX and CNN, says Swasey, has become "all the rage in the US. It has been the subject of numerous reports in the papers, a truly hot news topic." According to Swasey, CNN has long been regarded as a liberal bastion.

"You see it in the ideological labeling they do - they are more likely to label people from the Right as 'Conservatives,' while not labeling liberals. You see it in their story selections. CNN has long been known as the Clinton News Network, and more recently, as the Castro News Network, because of the way they covered [former US president Jimmy] Carter's visit to the Communist island."

Already last August, CNN chief Walter Isaacson went to meet with House and Senate GOP leaders on Capitol Hill, in order to improve the network's image with conservatives.

"I was trying to reach out to a lot of Republicans who feel that CNN has not been as open covering Republicans, and I wanted to hear their concerns," he said at the time.

Since then, CNN has several times taken more conservative approaches. After September 11, for example, Reuters said it wouldn't refer to the people who attacked the World Trade Center as "terrorists," while CNN vowed to remind audiences that they were fighting the war in Afghanistan because of the terrorism of September 11.

As part of its battle against FOX, Swasey says CNN has recently also made many programming changes, bringing in new faces, "adding bells whistles, gimmicks, different graphics and music to spice it up." Two months ago, FOX finally overtook CNN as the leading cable news company, and since then, CNN's Israel mishaps have only grown larger.

First, a month ago, CNN spent an hour interviewing Hen Keinan, whose mother and baby daughter were killed in a terror attack in Petah Tikva. But CNN International broadcast only short excerpts, showing instead an extended interview with the mother of the terrorist who had perpetrated the attack. The protests from their audience caused CNN to broadcast the interview in full within days, and issue a public apology.

Last week, Britain's Guardian quoted CNN founder Ted Turner as saying, "aren't the Israelis and Palestinians both terrorizing each other?" Although he actually made the comments in April, while the IDF was in Jenin, the comments still prompted a large public outcry both in Israel, and in the US. CNN rushed to disassociate itself from Turner, who "has no operational or editorial oversight of CNN."

The final straw was the threat, by Israel's satellite and cable companies, to either offer FOX as an alternative to CNN, or to remove CNN altogether from the air.

"In the television business, the most important thing of all, the grail you live and die by, is 'carriage,'" says media observer Wolf. "If you lose carriage in a key market like Israel is in that area of the world, the nature of your business begins to fundamentally change. They can't afford to set that precedent, because next they'll lose 3 million here, 12 million there."

This was particularly important, of course, because the Israeli companies had threatened to replace CNN with its chief rival.

"In media, numbers count a lot, even if they are small," says Bushinsky. "With ratings, even a couple of percentage points mean a lot."

TO WHAT extent do CNN's efforts to rebalance its reporting reflect a genuine concern with journalistic standards?

Most media critics say the proof will be in the network's long-term behavior, but are otherwise split on the issue.

"If they are doing it because they are genuinely concerned, I applaud them," says Ken Auletta, media writer for The New Yorker. "If not, they are being craven, and I don't know which one we are talking about."

Michael Greenspan, who worked for CNN's Jerusalem bureau between 1984 and 1990, says "Only Eason Jordan knows."

For Wolf, CNN's interests begin and end with business, and they are merely conducting a PR exercise. "Everyone knows that the Israeli cable companies will not remove CNN," he asserts. "All they've done is set up a situation where everyone can appear to have placated everyone else. This is a big game in which nothing really changes."

But the network's top executives, especially Isaacson, enjoy widespread respect, even from watchdog groups.

"They are a business with competitors," says Levin, "but there is also a relatively new management at CNN which is concerned about getting the story right."

Auletta concurs: "Isaacson is a real journalist, a man of integrity. I can't believe he's trying to perpetuate unfair coverage. My instinct is that these are honest people trying to do a job, who may make mistakes."

Even if they want to, however, CNN's top executives may find it hard to rein in their Israel reporters.

"There is a culture of stars, whether it's Dan Rather for CBS who lands in Israel and didn't know what Temple Mount was, or Christiane Amanpour who arrives with her safari jacket as if she's on a military mission," says the consultant to the pro-Israel media watchdog. "It's hard to control them."

In the meanwhile, CNN is in a tight spot. Pro-Israeli groups are waiting to see if the network will become what they perceive as fairer. On the other hand, media critics and other less interested parties are worried that CNN has compromised its journalistic standards by giving in to partisan pressure.

According to Auletta, if CNN is genuinely interested in making its coverage more balanced, it may have chosen the wrong time.

"In terms of appearances, the timing is unfortunate," he says. "Someone could interpret CNN's actions as meaning that all you have to do is make enough noise and CNN will review its coverage of us. This is not in the interests of good journalism."

For this reason, Wolf says that CNN is likely to backpedal furiously in the next few weeks.

"They will have to send up a lot of PR clouds, saying all they are trying to do is be fair. They will try and convince people they're navigated all the demands, while not changing at all," he says. "That's CNN's job - not to be influenced by people who are trying to influence it."

The biased Beeb - After local satellite and cable TV companies threatened to remove CNN from their subscriber package last week, Shinui party chairman Yosef Lapid had some choice words for the British press: "Newspapers like The Independent and The Guardian are working in the service of the Hamas," he said.

But many Israelis consider one newsmedia outlet worse than even those: BBC-TV.

"The reporting is sometimes Soviet-like in its propaganda," says a consultant to one media watchdog group. "I suspect they may even take encouragement from the complaints of the pro-Israel community."

In one example on May 10, 2001, the BBC showed an Israeli attack on a Gaza military base, with "lots of noise, dust, and ambulances," he says. "The next picture showed an ambulance pulling up to a hospital, with a badly wounded man coming out. The problem: it was an Israeli ambulance, with an injured Romanian worker. We brought the editing problem to the attention of the BBC, but there was not a word of apology, nothing."

According to the executive director of CAMERA, Andrea Levin, the BBC does not use the word "terror" to describe suicide bombings in Israel, although they use the word in the Northern Ireland context - and even with regard to rebel groups in Uganda.

"It is a double standard," Levin says.

She claims that the BBC does not have an imperative to present "a balanced mainstream view of Israeli concerns." On one occasion, Levin says, a BBC reporter actually badgered Bassam Eid, a Palestinian human rights activist who said that the violence should stop because the sides had agreed to settle their differences in negotiations.

"'What do you mean, the people are frustrated! she said,'" according to Levin, "as if she was indignant he would suggest the Palestinians should pursue anything but what they're doing."

Could pro-Israeli audiences hope to influence the BBC in the same way they seem to have influenced CNN? Probably not, say the experts.

"The BBC is one of the largest media institutions in the world and because of its size and influence, it has ingrained policies," says Levin. "Like its image, it considers itself above criticism."

Most importantly, however, is that the feeling in Britain regarding Israel and the coverage of it does not run as deep as the feeling does in the United States. "I don't know whether their audience is as focused on the BBC problem," says Levin.

Even so, says Levin, audience members should continue to bring BBC mistakes to public attention and to the attention of the media outlet. CNN is not the only success pro-Israel activists have had: "There have been many grassroots movements directed at newspapers in the last six months," she says. "Efforts directed at The New York Times, for example, have had an impact."

Jordan's view - Eason Jordan, CNN's chief news executive and newsgathering president, looks relaxed and at home wandering around the corridors of Jerusalem's David's Citadel Hotel. With good reason: this is his 50th visit to Israel in some 20 years. His current visit, he says, should not be taken as an admission that CNN recognizes its local reporting to be biased towards the Palestinians and has to be altered.

"It was logical for me to make this trip at this time because of a confluence of events," he says, citing Ted Turner's comments equating Israeli military actions with terror and the back-to-back bombings in Jerusalem last week.

According to Jordan, CNN is committed to "fairness, truth, and being responsible" in its Israel coverage.

"There is no bias against Israel, we even have great sympathy especially for the victims of suicide bombers, after September 11," he says.

He claims that Wolf Blitzer's series Victims of Terror is not an attempt to mend fences with pro-Israel groups, but a regular part of CNN scheduling.

"We have done many stories on victims in Israel," he says. "In the wake of the attacks last week, we decided it was time to take a greater look at the victims of terrorism. This is not to suggest we ignored victims after other attacks."

Nor, says Jordan, is CNN panicking because of the entry of FOX News into the Israeli news market. "We are out to do the best we can do," he says. "We welcome competition, which only serves to make us better."

Jordan says that on the whole, CNN's reporting from Israel is at a very high standard, but he allows that occasionally the network is "not as clear as it could be," and sometimes "gets it wrong." However, he does not see a pattern or intent, nor is there a conscious effort to exclude stories such as the high level of incitement in the Palestinian media.

"We have representatives and guests talking about these things," he says. "Should we do more? Probably so, but there is no effort to hide important elements of the story."

Still, Jordan is prepared to admit that there is "always room for improvements in CNN." He readily concedes, for example, that the network erred by airing an interview with the mother of the Petah Tikva suicide bomber three weeks ago, instead of an interview with Hen Keinan, whose mother and daughter were killed in the explosion.

"With the benefit of hindsight, we would have done that differently - it was not intentional," he says. From now on, the network will refrain from giving airtime to the families of suicide bombers, at his instructions.

"I know this is a painful time for all Israelis, a country terrorized by suicide bombers. Emotions are very intense and there is a great sensitivity about news reporting. I think CNN is making every effort to ensure our reports are all they should be."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716560769

2002-06-24T06:08:00.000-07:00

The Washington Times - May 15, 2002

PHOTOJOURNALISM PIECE

By Maya Alleruzzo

NOTE: The picture (with caption) originally sent with this article can be found at: http://digitalfilmmaker.net/gaza/gaza8.shtml. It is a picture worth much more than a thousand words.

CAPTION: Om Mohammed helps her twelve-year-old son Abu Ali with a toy suicide bomber belt he fashioned on his own. "I hope to be a Martyr...I hope when I get 14 or 15 to explode myself." His mother is proud of her son: "God gave him to me to protect and defend our homeland." The family is seen in their Gaza City home, May 15, 2002. ( Maya Alleruzzo / The Washington Times ) Maya Alleruzzo is a staff photojournalist at The Washington Times in Washington, D.C. She can be contacted at malleruzzo@WashingtonTimes.com

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip May 15, 2002 -- Abu Ali, like many 12-year-olds living in Gaza, has dreams of eternity. But the Palestinian boy's hopes are rooted in a grim reality: "I hope to be a martyr," he said. "I hope when I get to 14 or 15 to explode myself."

His mother, Om Muhammed, is eager to help her son, one of six children, accomplish his goal. She helps him tug on a toy suicide bomber costume in her living room as she serves mint tea to a visitor. The get-up is dauntingly convincing, but is harmlessly made of electrical tape, plywood and spare wire.

Harmless for now, at least.

"I encourage him, and he should do this," said the woman, the mother of six. "God gave him to me to defend our land. Palestinian women must have more and more children till we liberate our land. This is a holy duty for all Palestinian people."

Little Ali, masked in a kaffiyeh and carrying a toy gun made of pipes, marched earlier today in a demostration marking Al Nakba or " the catastrophe," as Palestinians refer to the day Israel was founded in 1948.

Given Abu Ali's start in life, his future might seem inevitable. Walking through the streets of Gaza City, one can see young boys playing with toy Kalashnikovs and slingshots beneath the walls painted with graffiti depicting masked Hamas fighters, grenades, exploding buses.

Jobs in nearby Tel Aviv dried up for Palestinians from Gaza after the latest intifada began once peace talks broke down in 2000. The Israelis closed the border crossings in an attempt to stop the Palestinian suicide bombers from blowing up themselves and Israeli civilians on buses, in cafes, supermarkets and restaurants. But the bombers still make it through from other places.

The killing and maiming of mostly innocent Israelis by these young Palestinians has only made life harder for the rest of the Palestinian people. Even for Gazans with local jobs, road closings often leave them sleeping at the Israeli checkpoints. Students from the south now sleep in tents at Al Aqsa University, lest they risk missing classes when the roads close. With no passports, Palestinians cannot travel.

If jobs here are scarce, there is one man who is making enough to support his family.

Twenty-four-year-old Bahaa Yassin paints most of the portraits of martyrs seen in the Gaza Strip. Before the intifada, he did a variety of artwork to support himself and his wife. Family portraits, shop signs, and the occasional martyr. Now, about 70 percent of his business comes from these large, loving tributes to the young fighters.

Funeral marches are a citywide event. Young boys march -- usually five kilometers from the hospital to the graveyard -- alongside men shooting live rounds into the air.

Hisham Zaqout, whose nephew Youssef, 15, was killed when he tried to infiltrate an Israeli settlement, say the well-wishers, posters and artistic tributes have helped ease the family's pain. "In Islam, sacrifice is the highest honor, " he says. "Youssef did this for all of us to be free."

2002-06-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 13, 2002
The new hasbara
By MICHAEL FREUND

By bringing US talk-radio hosts to Jerusalem to broadcast to their listeners back home, the America's Voices program is helping defenders of the Jewish State make their case.

For Michael Papo, executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis, the challenge seemed overwhelming. With limited financial resources available, what could he do to ensure that Israel's generally favorable image in his local community remained positive?

Unable to afford a traditional multi-media ad buy and not convinced that even if he could, it would make much of a difference, Papo wanted something more effective and longer lasting. His objective was to circumvent the leading news vehicles like television and newspapers while still reaching a large, local grassroots audience with clout and influence.

When Papo heard about "America's Voices in Israel" - a recently established US-based not-for-profit organization that brings American talk radio hosts to Israel to broadcast their shows back home - he knew he was onto something.

Founded and chaired by Malcolm Hoenlein, executive director of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and supported by groups ranging from the America-Israel Friendship League, the Ronald Lauder organization and The Jerusalem Post, "America's Voices" is working to enlist talk radio in the battle for Israel's image because, as Hoenlein says, "it is by far the most effective and affordable vehicle in the American media arsenal."

The statistics back Hoenlein up. Surveys demonstrate that Americans spend more time each day listening to the radio than the combined time they spend reading newspapers and watching television. The Radio Advertising Bureau recently released a survey which showed that Americans spend "85% of their time with ear-oriented media" versus only 15% with what it called "eye-oriented media" like newspapers and television. As American commuting times increase, so does the time they spend listening to the radio, further boosting radio's advantage, making this long-neglected medium an even more important tool in shaping public opinion.

No tool, says Hoenlein, is better suited than radio to help defenders of Israel make their case. "Radio is Israel's natural media ally. Because they can't rely on graphic or visual images to make their points, radio advocates must win their arguments using reason, logic and common sense - three things that Israel's cause has in abundance," he said, adding: "Since radio listeners spend more time listening, they have more time to think through things before making up their minds, and that extra time is what gives Israel's advocates a hasbara advantage."

"Arab propagandists have a much harder time winning arguments on the radio than they do on television because on the radio they have to defend what in all honesty is becoming harder and harder to defend," says Eli Kazhdan, co-founder of the Jerusalem-based Israel Citizens Information Council, and a director of America's Voices. "At the end of the day," Kazhdan argues, "radio deprives anti-Israel campaigners of the graphic images they need to create the emotional sympathies necessary to justify the unjustifiable. Radio works for Israel the way television works for the Palestinians, which is why it is so important that we stop ceding our 'home field advantage' in our hasbara battles and fight more of them on friendly ground." And radio, Kazhdan says, "is to Israel what Wrigley Field is to the Chicago Cubs. It is our home field."

American radio has created mega-stars, some of whom have tens of millions of listeners. Don Imus is one of them. Heard on more than 150 radio stations in all 50 states, Imus has been a New York fixture for decades. His morning show is also simulcast on the MSNBC cable television network, and even though it is little more than one fixed camera filming the radio broadcast, the Imus in the Morning Program is the number one rated program on the entire network.

The Conference of Presidents' Hoenlein says that it was Imus more than anyone who "forced" them to create America's Voices. The impetus came when Jerusalem Post publisher Tom Rose, in an appearance on the Imus program late last year, invited the radio icon to broadcast his show from the studios of Jerusalem Post Radio for a week. Imus agreed. A date was set for the week of January 6, 2002. With little time to prepare, the Post raced to assemble a state-of-the-art radio production facility custom built to accommodate the Imus program's extensive technical requirements.

When the deteriorating security situation forced the trip's cancellation, the Post was left with a top-tier radio production facility, but no one to use it. "We had to figure something out," said Hoenlein. "Here we were sitting on the finest radio facility in the country staring at a huge unmet hasbara need. Why not create a parade of talk show hosts through this place? Why not use this facility to help Israel sell itself?" he recalls.

Without really knowing it, America's Voices had its first test-run last October when nationally syndicated talk radio host G. Gordon Liddy broadcast his show for a full week from The Jerusalem Post's old radio studio. During his last broadcast from Jerusalem, the man best known to most Americans for his role in the 1972 Watergate break-in told his eight million listeners that "This experience has truly been one of the most important and special of my radio career. There really is no place like Israel and there are really are no people like Israelis. Other than in my own country, there is no place on earth where I truly feel more at home than here in Israel. We can never stop learning from them nor fully appreciate the sacrifices these folks make every day to defend their freedoms and their homeland."

As Kenneth Bialkin, president of the American-Israel Friendship League, past chairman of the Conference of Presidents and an America's Voices director, says, "A statement that powerful, delivered to that many people, is a pretty hard thing to put a price tag on.

"I have always said that Israel is its own best salesman. The key is to get these opinion makers, who are far more influential than people realize, to experience Israel for themselves."

From the Liddy visit, America's Voices learned a lot about what national radio hosts need, and used that experience to encourage more to come. In the last few months America's Voices and Jerusalem Post Radio have partnered to host week-long broadcast visits of national radio personalities like Bruce Willams of Talk America and major market leaders like John Bachelor of WABC radio, New York's number one talk station.

While Hoenlein feels that the bulk of the American people are supportive of Israel, he says that much remains to be done to reinforce that support. "We must make our voices heard. We can not take for granted the support that Israel enjoys."

Programs such as America's Voices, he says, aim precisely to do just that, particularly because they allow Americans to hear about Israel from people whom they trust.

Hoenlein is far from alone in his assessment. As president and chief executive officer of the United Jewish Communities (UJC), an umbrella organization representing 189 Jewish federations and 400 independent communities across North America, Stephen Hoffman has closely followed Israel's hasbara efforts, which he feels are "not as bad as you might fear, but on the other hand, not as good as they should be." According to Hoffman, "In my own experience, when we bring media people with us to Israel, they have been very effective in telling the real story. When you can get a media guy to travel with you to Israel, they will try hard to be balanced. And that," Hoffman notes, "plays in our favor, since the facts are on our side."

While the Liddy visit helped create a model for bringing national US radio shows to Israel, Indianapolis's Papo thinks he may have stumbled upon a similar, if slightly different, model: namely, how to cost-effectively allow local federations to bring local talk show hosts using local Jewish federations as the sponsoring agents. Papo says he "couldn't believe it" when he learned that he could bring his city's number one rated talk show host to broadcast a week's worth of programs live from Israel for only $12,000.

"I can't even buy one full page ad in my local newspaper for that," he says. "Even I couldn't fully appreciate the incredible opportunities such a minimal community investment would present at first, so it is not surprising that some of our board members had questions," says Papo. Once those questions were answered, Papo got his board's approval and, along with federation president Charles "Chuck" Cohen, invited Indianapolis radio personality Greg Garrison to come to Israel to broadcast his three-hour morning talk show for a week as the guest of the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis.

FOR GARRISON, an evangelical conservative staunchly supportive of the Jewish state, coming to Israel was a no-brainer. "Getting to visit Israel for the first time with Chuck and Mike as my guides and as a guest of the Indianapolis Jewish community was one of the greatest honors I ever had."

Syndicated across Indiana with an estimated listener audience of about 600,000 on Indianapolis flagship radio station WIBC, Garrison says his April visit and broadcasts were an opportunity "to finally see for my own eyes what I have always believed, and that is that Israel is a country Americans must defend and support. But now that I have seen it, I can speak with so much authority, and in my business authority means everything."

Opening the first segment of his first broadcast, Garrison reminded his listeners that the Monday they were preparing to start back home in Indiana was rapidly coming to a close in Jerusalem.

"The eight-hour time change gives us the advantage of letting you hear about our full day at the same time you are starting yours. Today, as you have already probably heard, tanks went back into Ramallah. Well, as everyone here knows, and as you should too, those tanks have nothing to do with 'occupation' and everything to do with fighting terror."

Figures including former prime ministers Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, Housing Minister Natan Sharansky, Gideon Meir of the Foreign Ministry and Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert appeared live on Garrison's show, enabling his listeners to call in and ask their own questions directly to some of Israel's most important people.

"How do you put a price tag on that?," asks Chuck Cohen.

Answering his own question, Cohen says, "This trip was a win-win for everyone. For Garrison it was a chance to produce an incredibly exciting week of broadcasts from Jerusalem. It was a chance for his station, WIBC, to massively promote the fact that they were sending their top host to cover the world's biggest story. In itself this on-air promotion created tremendous local third party media interest, which only further increased the local profile of the trip.

"For us, our federation got more exposure from the Garrison visit than from any other project anyone can remember," he says. "That exposure is important not just for the general community to know we exist, but it is also important for our own base. It was extremely important for the Jewish community of Indianapolis to see that their federation was out there defending and supporting Israel in such a public and prominent way," notes Cohen.

"There was this incredible pent up frustration. Things were going so horribly wrong in Israel which people felt they were kind of powerless to do anything about. Bringing Garrison helped our community immensely only to show that we weren't powerless, we really could help."

"Of course it helped us too," says Mark Ziman, chief financial officer of The Jerusalem Post and administrator of the America's Voices program. "No question about it. The Indianapolis visit gave us the chance to demonstrate yet again what we can do. Not only were we able to produce 12 hours of technically flawless digital-CD quality remote studio broadcasts, but our Jerusalem Post name and connections helped Garrison get live in-studio interviews with two past Israeli prime ministers and other leading officials. No one else could have come close to that."

Cohen is hopeful that the success of the Garrison trip will lead the Indianapolis Federation to push for a similar effort nationwide. "This will hopefully serve as the seed of a national program to get all organized Jewish communities to do the same thing," he says, adding, "the Arabs have been doing their job explaining their positions. Now, we need to do ours."

Papo feels that the Garrison visit also presents the federation system with a challenge it needs to meet. "There are 189 federations throughout North America. If each of them would use America's Voices or something like it, we can really change Israeli hasbara forever."

"The one thing the Garrison trip taught me," concludes Papo, "was that no community is too small to have a tremendously positive impact and for about the same price that it costs to place one ad in the local newspaper for one day, the impact of our trip with Greg will last a lifetime."

To contact America's Voices: call 202-409-4640

2002-06-12T21:08:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 13, 2002
Dahlan: PA reforms are merely cosmetic
By LAMIA LAHOUD AND AP

Gaza Preventive Security chief Muhammad Dahlan yesterday said he had refused to accept the post of Palestinian Authority interior minister because he would not have had any powers to make serious changes, and charged that PA reforms were merely cosmetic.

The Interior Ministry post would have put Dahlan in command of the security forces, a position PA Chairman Yasser Arafat has held for the past eight years.

"When I asked [Arafat] if I could change the people who worked in the ministry, he said, 'No,' so I declined the offer," Dahlan said.
The position of interior minister eventually went to former general Abdel Razak al-Yahya, 73, a longtime Arafat loyalist and former head of the security committee that negotiated with Israel.
Al-Yahya also hesitated to take the job, but agreed after Arafat assured him he would have powers to make changes, according to a Palestinian source.

Palestinian sources said the new finance minister, Salam Fayyad, agreed to his appointment only after receiving assurances he would be able to channel funds without too much interference from above.
Dahlan said he has resigned as head of Gaza Preventive Security and moved out of his headquarter into a modest office near the seashore. He said Arafat does not believe he is serious and continues to call him.

Palestinian sources said Arafat has never before accepted the resignation of one of his officials.
Meanwhile, Arafat may make more changes to his cabinet and give ministers more powers before presenting the new government to the Palestinian Legislative Council, following public pressure to do more, a senior Palestinian source told The Jerusalem Post yesterday.

"Arafat may appoint three to five new people to the cabinet, mostly technocrats... since there has been a strong public debate and the mood among Palestinians is that five new ministers in a cabinet of 21 is not enough," the senior source said.

Many Palestinian legislators have complained that the reforms are insufficient and are demanding that Arafat also make structural changes and give up some of his powers.

Ziad Abu Amr, head of the Palestinian Legislative Council's political committee that recommended reforms, said he was skeptical Arafat would agree to real changes.

"We wanted a change in the whole style of leadership and not only to change names," he said.

2002-06-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 13, 2002
A funeral instead of graduation
By TOVAH LAZAROFF

This coming Tuesday, Hadar Hershkowitz, 15, was to have sung and danced at her middle school graduation in a special performance of fairy tales created by the students.

Instead, friends and family members yesterday heaped her fresh grave with flowers and crowded into the Herzliya Cemetery only a few short blocks from her home to say goodbye.

Hershkowitz was killed by a suicide bomber while walking with a friend outside Jamil's shwarma grill on Rehov Sokolow. A friend, also a student at Ze'ev Jabotinsky Middle School in Herzliya, was seriously wounded in the attack.

One young speaker at the funeral said, "We are all asking why, why was it you? ... We don't believe what happened, but still we are here to talk about our beloved friend."

"We can still see you, hear you, and feel you," another friend said. "You loved life. You were nervous about starting high school, but you were still very optimistic. You were always so happy. You loved to have fun and to go out with your friends. You never liked being alone. We loved you so much and we won't forget you."

Despite the hot sun, friends stayed in a tight circle around her grave and lit yahrzeit candles.
School principal Aviva Moran said, "She was at the center of her social circle. She was very attached to her friends. She loved to help them. She got so much love from her family. She didn't keep it to herself she passed it to her friends and they passed it back to her."

Mia Bianos, another friend of Hershkowitz's, told Israel Radio that, "She never did anything bad to anyone. She was always there for you. You could talk with her about everything. She spoke with me, she comforted me. It's not fair."

Moran said she had emergency procedures detailing how she and the staff should act should they lose a student, but she never imagined she would need them. When she heard that a student was hurt in the attack she went to the hospital; only then did she hear that Hadar was also wounded and at another hospital.

Moran said she went to the second hospital with counselors from the school and a psychologist. Hadar was in surgery. They waited there with students who came after hearing the news, hoping for the best.

"Hadar never made it out of surgery," Moran said.
She and her staff opened the school. The city sent psychologists. They closed the doors at 1 a.m. to prepare for the next morning. Classes were canceled and the ninth grade gathered in the auditorium. A bus was provided for those who wanted to go to the funeral.

Students created a memorial board at the school entrance for Hadar. Staff fielded questions from students, such as, "How will I feel safe leaving the house?" and "How do I say goodbye to a good friend?" The school remained open throughout the day and into the evening. Students returning from the funeral were given sandwiches and water.

Hadar is survived by her parents, a brother, and a sister. Her father, Aryeh Hershkowitz, is the director-general of Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer club.
On Rehov Sokolow, life had already returned to normal. Children on bicycles and skateboards passed by the site of the attack, which was surrounded by police barriers. Workers were repairing the eatery.

Standing outside his men's clothing store smoking a cigar, Shimon Tzuber, who was slightly wounded in the attack, said it caught him by surprise as he was sitting outside. "I heard a large boom. I felt some sort of burning in my back... I never expected it to happen here. We were so relaxed."
Herzliya is surrounded by Israeli cities, so people assumed it would be too hard for a terrorist to get here, Tzuber said.

"Jamil's Shwarma is an institution. It's well known for the best shwarma, Tzuber said. People were always there in the evening. "The little girl [Hadar] came here all the time with her family."

2002-06-12T21:01:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 13, 2002
Tank blows up 150-kilo bomb in Gaza car
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH

Soldiers blew up a car containing a 150-kilo bomb and two mortars near Elei Sinai in the northern Gaza Strip yesterday. Security officials believe terrorists planned to fire the mortars, then detonate the bomb as soldiers arrived to search the area.

At noon, soldiers spotted a car parked in a restricted area in which Palestinian farmers are allowed to work their plots. On closer examination, they saw a large metal tank inside the car and two iron pipes. They cleared the area, and tanks fired at the vehicle, setting off the bomb. Sappers who searched the wreckage estimated the bomb contained 150 kilos of explosives.
It was the second terrorist attack thwarted by troops in the Gaza Strip in less than 24 hours.

Late Tuesday night, soldiers spotted seven terrorists approaching Netzarim with a bomb. The soldiers opened fire, as did a tank, killing four. Two terrorists were wounded and the seventh fled. A fifth terrorist died shortly after from his wounds.

Palestinians reported that Hussein al-Matwi, eight, was killed by IDF gunfire in the area. His mother claimed her son had gone to buy candy when he was hit.

The Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack and vowed to avenge the deaths of the "martyrs," claiming they would strike against the "cancerous" settlements and saying that thousands are willing to sacrifice their lives to rid themselves of the settlers.

Near the terrorists' bodies, soldiers found five Kalashnikovs, numerous ammunition clips, and a bomb that was estimated by sappers to contain 30-40 kilograms of explosives. It is believed the terrorists planned to attack a convoy of cars or a bus.

Shortly before Tuesday's attack, soldiers in a post west of Netzarim came under heavy gunfire from a Palestinian Police position, and yesterday morning IDF bulldozers destroyed the position. IDF officers said the gunfire was a diversion to allow the terrorists to perpetrate their attack.

Security forces are seeking to determine whether the same cell was responsible for the mining of two tanks on the Karni-Netzarim road earlier this year in which six soldiers were killed.

In the West Bank, the IDF pulled out of Ramallah last night, after operating in the city for three days, during which more than 80 suspected terrorists were arrested, among them many fugitives. In addition, two cars laden with explosives were destroyed, as were several bombs discovered in the headquarters of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's Force 17 presidential guard.

Palestinians reported that among those arrested yesterday were senior Tanzim activist Abdel Bassat Shubaki and Jihad Na'ahla, the Islamic Jihad regional commander.

Visiting Psagot, Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said soldiers met with little confrontation during the operation. "The mission was conducted quietly, and the achievements are impressive," he said.

Early yesterday morning, security forces arrested five Palestinian fugitives wanted for questioning by the Shin Bet and four Palestinians suspected of terrorist activities. Two were arrested in Tarkumiya, northwest of Hebron; one in Shuweika, north of Tulkarm; five, including a fugitive, in Zaita, north of Tulkarm; and one in Silwad, north of Ramallah.

2002-06-11T02:35:00.000-07:00

JPost Jun. 11, 2002 http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1023716453903
Failed Palestinian suicide bomber, treated in Israeli hospital, has no regrets
By ASSOCIATED PRESS

AFULA, Israel - Zeidan Zeidan failed in his suicide bombing mission and now has second thoughts. Rethinking his fate in an Israeli hospital bed, he has decided he wouldn't want to die. Next time he would open fire at Israelis with a rifle.

Zeidan was wounded when the bomb he was carrying in a backpack partially detonated at a busy highway junction in central Israel on May 8. Pictures of him being dragged by a bomb-squad robot were shown around the world. Police were concerned that he was carrying explosives strapped to his body, as many suicide bombers do.

Now he is being treated at Afula Hospital, on the same floor as the injured from a tragically successful terror attack a month later, in which 17 Israelis were killed.

Mixing bravado with immaturity, the youthful-looking Zeidan, 20, with a wispy mustache, said of his bungled bombing, "I wouldn't do it again," but not out of remorse. Zeidan would like to survive to tell about it again.

Next time "I would become a fighter, and if I saw any Jews I wouldn't hesitate to shoot them, but I wouldn't want to hurt myself," said the scrawny 20-year-old, shackled and handcuffed to his hospital bed.

The fact that a self-described terrorist is sharing a hospital and world-class treatment with victims of another terror attack does not sit well with Israelis, though in the twisted world of Palestinian-Israeli violence, it is not an uncommon sight.

Across the hall in the intensive care unit, Tamara Elishkov's daughters keep vigil over their mother, who crawled away from the burning bus on June 7 with a broken leg.

The eldest, Ruthie Noam, 27, is struggling with her emotions about Zeidan's presence in the hospital. "It's very hard. One the one hand he's a person and must be treated, but on the other hand he wanted to do what the latest guy did."

She mused, "They are killing us and we are rescuing them. There is no logic."

The irony does not go unnoticed by Zeidan. "The doctors and the nurses here are OK, but I know inside they hate me," he said.

Wincing from the pain of his injuries, Zeidan regrets only that his attempt to carry out an attack on Israelis failed.

"I am sorry it didn't work because now I will not have a better life in paradise," he said. Violent Islamic groups repeat a widely held belief that Palestinians who kill themselves while killing Jews have a clear path to heaven.

Zeidan shrugged his shoulders and said, "I wanted to be with God," waving his hands heavenwards. "It is better to go there than do nothing here."

Palestinians say the Israeli restrictions imposed during the violence have ruined their economy and made many young people desperate, fertile ground for extremist recruiters.

The Israelis say the restrictions are necessary for security.

A high school dropout, Zeidan lived with his parents and seven siblings in the West Bank town of Jenin.

He regularly attended prayers at his local mosque but was not involved with any of the militant groups operating in Jenin, saying "politics is just to fool people." Then he approached a local leader of the Islamic Jihad group and offered to carry out an attack, the relatives said. The group| has claimed responsibility for many deadly bombings, including the June 7 attack.

His mission was postponed for a month while bitter fighting raged in Jenin during an intensive military campaign by the Israeli army in the West Bank, trying to root out bombers.

Soon after the fighting ended, Zeidan was contacted by the organization. Three days later, with only the briefest explanation of how to activate the bomb, he was ready for his mission.

The morning of the attack Zeidan woke at 4 a.m. and kissed his mother goodbye, as he did every day went he left for morning prayers. Instead of going to mosque, however, he walked the 15 kilometers (9 miles) from Jenin to the Megiddo junction, the bomb doused in cheap perfume to disguise its foul smell, he said.

On the way, he said he was very happy.

However, Israeli police spotted him and fired at him before he could reach behind his back and detonate the bomb, he said. "There was no time to press the button, but I had planned to," he said.

Despite his own intentions, Zeidan, who is facing a lengthy jail term, said he hoped the victims of last week's bus bombing "would get better.

"But then I heard some of them wished the doctors wouldn't take care of me and I got angry," he said.

2002-06-08T09:03:00.000-07:00

In Israeli Hospital, Bomber Tells of Trying to Kill Israelis
New York Times By JAMES BENNET

FULA, Israel, June 7 — On one ward of an Israeli hospital here, gilded tonight by votive candles honoring the Jewish Sabbath, Israeli soldiers wounded in a devastating suicide attack lie just a few rooms away from a failed Palestinian suicide bomber, who had hoped to kill as many of their comrades as possible.

The young men in their matching pajamas might be hard to tell apart, but beneath his blanket, the bomber is manacled by a wrist and an ankle to his bed.

He is guarded by two Israeli police officers who read the newspaper, crunch sunflower seeds and occasionally joke with their prisoner and arrange his pillows. As he chewed on a cucumber, the bomber grinned at their teasing.

Even by the sorrowful standards of these most intimate enemies, the juxtaposition of Palestinian bomber and Israeli wounded was stunning. They were all wounded a few miles south of here, in two separate attacks at a crossroads marking the ancient battleground of Megiddo, which is Hebrew for Armageddon.

In a conversation that lasted more than two hours tonight, the bomber, Zaydan Zaydan, gave a rare glimpse into the blend of religion, desperation, low technology and cruelty that can produce suicide bombers. He described his ease in evading Israeli tanks and checkpoints, and a bomb that reeked so badly that he doused it with cheap perfume as he walked toward his chosen killing ground.

Mr. Zaydan, who is 18, spoke of his hopeless search for a job, of long days spent in pool halls before he found his way deeper into Islam, and of how his recruiter composed his last, videotaped statement for him, because, as a fifth-grade dropout, he can read but not write.

He said he was "pushed" to make his attack not by Israeli action or a terrorist group, but by "the love of martyrdom." He added: "I didn't want revenge for anything. I just wanted to be a martyr."

Mr. Zaydan, who is from the West Bank city of Jenin, triggered his bomb at Megiddo junction on May 8, Israeli officials said. They said that only the detonator fired, tearing open his stomach and damaging several organs. A picture of an Israeli Army robot dragging his wounded body across the pavement was published around the world.

Mr. Zaydan, who was sent by the extremist group Islamic Jihad, insisted today that he had not detonated his bomb, but instead had been shot twice in the stomach by soldiers. That account was not supported by his wounds, according to the hospital. No one else was wounded in the incident.

The soldiers hospitalized here were wounded on Wednesday, when another suicide bomber from Islamic Jihad drove a car alongside a bus and detonated a powerful explosion. In a rolling inferno, 17 people died, 13 of them soldiers.

Sgt. Kfir Levi, 20, remembers vividly the smell of burning bodies and the screams of fellow passengers trapped inside. He lay tonight two rooms away from Mr. Zaydan, with burns and shrapnel wounds. Nurses change his sheets four times a day, he said, because glass keeps coming out of him.

"He's also a human being, despite all of this," Sergeant Levi said of Mr. Zaydan. "That's the difference between us and them, at least in our thoughts. I don't believe if something like this happened on the other side, they'd be giving this kind of treatment. Just the opposite."

Mr. Zaydan expressed gratitude for his treatment, even by his immediate captors. "This Jewish policeman is better than many, many Arabs," he said, indicating one of his monitors.

A frail man with a wisp of beard, Mr. Zaydan may have hoped to ingratiate himself with the Israelis. He seemed anxious to avoid implicating other Palestinians, and it was impossible to know tonight how he was trimming and shading his account. Permission for the interview was granted through the hospital.

He insisted that he had sought to kill only soldiers, whom he described as overwhelming adversaries.

"I know Israel," he said, recalling his six years as a peddler here. "I know that the individual Israeli citizen is innocent like us. Unfortunately, we are victims of our leaders, sitting on their chairs."

After dropping out of school, Mr. Zaydan became a carpenter, then a peddler of newspapers and other products in Israel. When the latest conflict began in September 2000, he said he sought work fruitlessly in Jenin, settling for a couple of hours spent each day carrying boxes of vegetables in the market there.

The rest of the day he spent sleeping or hanging around a pool hall, smoking. Then he happened to watch a religious lesson on television that convinced him he was wasting his time. In what he called his life's turning point, he quit billiards and began going to the mosque regularly. Eventually, he stopped smoking.

He insisted that he was drawn to martyrdom by what he read in books, not by anything he heard from his imam, or priest.

After Israel first raided Jenin's refugee camp at the beginning of March, Mr. Zaydan said, he began to think seriously about becoming a suicide bomber. He knew of Mahmoud Tawalbeh, the local leader of Islamic Jihad, and found his brother, whom he called Raed, in the camp.

"I told him I wanted to be a martyr," he said. "He conveyed the message."

But a subsequently planned meeting was canceled when Israel again invaded Jenin, as part of its West Bank offensive in April. Mahmoud Tawalbeh died in the fighting.

After the raid ended and Israel lifted the curfew, a young man came to Mr. Zaydan with a message left behind by Mahmoud Tawalbeh. The message was that he had accepted the offer of Mr. Zaydan's life.

The young man, whose name Mr. Zaydan insisted he did not know, led the new recruit to an abandoned house, where he showed him a large black bag. Inside was the bomb, wired to two 9-volt batteries, he said. He said that he could not identify the explosive, but that it stank, suggesting that it might have been fertilizer.

Mr. Zaydan said the bomb weighed more than 30 pounds and had two switches in case one did not work. "On-off," he said, using English for the only time in the interview. He said he had received no other training than how to use the switch.

The man also gave him a new cellular phone and told him to call whenever he was about to detonate the bomb to give his location. Mr. Zaydan said the young man had not suggested a target.

"He told me, this guy, `Our main target is soldiers, but if people discover you, then blow yourself up,' " he said.

Mr. Zaydan said he gave no sign of his plans to his family that night, laughing over dinner with a brother. At 4 a.m., as was his custom, he crept in and kissed his mother, receiving her blessing, then went to the mosque to pray. He said he knew that he would cause his mother pain by killing himself, but said each martyr gains the power in paradise to choose 70 people to join him. He said he would have included his family.

He described crossing the West Bank boundary on foot, dousing the bag with three-dollar perfume to mask the bomb's smell, then hitch-hiking to Megiddo junction.

Mr. Zaydan, who has been interrogated by the Israelis and is expecting to be prosecuted, said bitterly that he knew he would be jailed for life and remembered only as a terrorist.

"I feel sorry, because it was a mistake," he said. "But as a human being, I should live like others. The way there is an Israeli state, there are people living in this state, enjoying life, having someone protect them. I don't live in this situation. I don't feel I'm secure."

Soldiers could enter Jenin at any time, he said, and he constantly feared being arrested. "As long as life continues like this," he said, "you will have people who think like me." He insisted that he wanted peace, but said he saw little chance for it.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/08/international/middleeast/08BOMB.html

2002-06-07T20:44:00.000-07:00

What did you do while Israel was destroyed?

By David D. Perlmutter

When I was in college, an Armenian American acquaintance told me about his grandfather's obsession with the Turkish genocide against his people in the early part of the 20th century. To a comment of "nice weather, today," the old man habitually replied "What does it matter since our people were slaughtered?"

I wonder if I will be like him in forty years. Marcel Ophuls, creator of the "The Sorrow and the Pity," once said, "It's time to stop talking about the Holocaust and do something about it." I presume he meant doing a better job of uncovering and prosecuting war criminals--but what about the next Holocaust?

For the first time in my life I see the shadows of Israel's destruction, if not by Arab armies all at once, but by suicide bombers one Jewish child and mother at a time. I see an anti-Jewish European press sadistically attacking Israel's defensive measures. I see a clownishly hypocritical United Nations condemning Israel's bulldozing of a building while millions die in the Sudan or Tibet. I see my fellow academics musing and posturing in praise of demons who would cut their throats merely for being non-Muslims.

Small items, too, prick hard. I find myself getting irritated at a Jewish social organization I belong to raising its dues: why don't we send all the money to buy Israeli war bonds instead? I am furious when I read that some Jewish Hollywood Mogul just gave seven million dollars to the democratic party. Where is the opposition of our good friends in the Democratic party to President's Bush's persistent coddling of Arafat and the House of Saud?

So I simmer when I see Jews fighting everybody's battles--from the Civil Rights movement to the salvation of Bosnian Muslims--but when the hangman comes for us, we find ourselves standing alone. (Why, for example, does the Hebrew Union College use a picture of "Jews Oppose Police Brutality" is its advertising--isn't "Islamic Fascist Brutality" a most clear and present danger?"

Mostly, I cannot stand watching the news--with its tired cliches of "cycles" of violence. Today I see Arafat, sitting in his bunker, talking to "international activists" and proclaiming that the Israelis are just like Nazis. I wonder: did Hitler allow his enemies press conferences? I daydream--if only! If in 1948, 1956, 1967 or 1973 Israel had acted like the Third Reich then today Israelis today would shop, marry, eat pizza and play unmolested. And of course Jews, not sheiks, would have that Gulf Oil. In contrast, if the Arabs had conquered Israel does anyone think a single Jew would today be alive between the Jordan and the Mediterranean? This is what I'm reduced to: thinking like a Nazi when an Arab accuses Jews of acting like Nazis.

I'm unhappy as well--especially since I teach political communication--at Israel's unsophisticated, unplanned media policy. Since the Lebanon War, the seven squabbling Israeli ministries that claim to control press relations have been notorious for either ignoring or failing to understand the needs of modern journalism. One journalist noted to me: "The Palestinians will go to the news bureaus each day and pitch stories, and go out of their way to help arrange interviews, suggest places to shoot. From the Israeli government, all you get is statements, silence or red tape."

A more ominous reason that the evening news is so laden with images favorable to the Palestinians is that they are chosen and shot by Palestinians. Israeli reporters are banned from working in Palestine areas; foreign journalists are subtly or violently pressured to either keep out or report with a pro-Palestinian bias. The result is that most networks and news bureaus use Palestinian stringers for spot news coverage and also for translations. So Yassir and his brown shirts are allowed to make statements like, "We are the only occupied people in the world" without an accompanying laugh track.

These are my dark thoughts and quiet desperations. Who will dissolve them? Who will silence the madness? Will I even be allowed to become an old, bitter man? Will any of us have chance to look back on these days beyond the mushroom clouds of the tomorrow?

Jewish World Review contributor David Perlmutter is an associate professor of mass communication at Louisiana State University and a senior fellow at the Reilly Center for Media & Public Affairs. He is the author of, among others, Visions of War : Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age to the Cyber Age.

2002-06-07T20:29:00.000-07:00

Philadelphia Inquirer Fri, Jun. 07, 2002

Arafat bid may not be reform
Under pressure, he offered a new security plan. Some say it uses the same staff.
By Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and Jessica Guynn
Knight Ridder News Service

RAMALLAH, West Bank - In the hard slog toward peace in the Middle East, one of the key demands being made of Palestinian leaders is that they streamline their bloated and inefficient security forces.

Under intense pressure from the United States, Israel and many Palestinians, Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has promised to revamp a hodgepodge of paramilitary agencies criticized by Palestinians and the West alike.

But when Arafat unveils his plans, they are unlikely to look much like reform.

The current system's chaotic lines of command have encouraged squabbles over who is in charge and have led to widespread human-rights abuses, violence and corruption. Experts believe a more efficient security apparatus would help thwart violence against Israel.

Arafat presented the outline of a reform plan to CIA Director George Tenet on Wednesday, a day before Arafat's compound in Ramallah was shelled as part of an Israeli response to a suicide attack in northern Israel that killed 17 bus passengers. The plan would cut the dozen Palestinian security services to four: intelligence, internal security, policing and presidential security.

"The reality is that the same people will remain in charge," said Abdul Jawad Saleh, 70, a popular Palestinian legislator representing Ramallah who was beaten up by intelligence officers in Jericho three years ago after a peaceful sit-in against Arafat. "He doesn't want representatives of the people to scrutinize or criticize him. What he wants these people who are in charge to do is to protect him."

Leaks of the plan suggest that none of the existing agency heads would be replaced. In fact, the head of the new Supreme Security Council that Arafat plans would be Maj. Gen. Ahmed Razak Yehiyeh, 73.

Yehiyeh commanded the Palestine Liberation Army before Arafat and, like the rest of Arafat's inner circle, is loyal to him.

By nominating Yehiyeh, Arafat bypassed fresher faces, including Mohammed Dahlan, who resigned on the spot as head of Gaza preventive security services and returned to Gaza, Palestinian officials privately say. Dahlan, like many other pro-reform Palestinians, had wanted a change in leadership.

Exactly how many agencies make up the security system is another area blurred by bureaucracy. For instance, Gen. Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of general intelligence for the West Bank, insists there are only four agencies; Col. Jibral Rajoub, who heads the West Bank preventive security services and his former counterpart Dahlan say eight; others produce a list of 12 paramilitary police, intelligence and secret service agencies.

The numbers conflict because of confusion over whether a particular agency is actually a branch of another or stands alone. Squabbles over control are rampant, perhaps intentionally.

"It is confusion by design by Arafat so that no one entity is strong enough to pose a challenge to him," said Larry Johnson, a security consultant who is a former State Department official and CIA terrorism expert in Washington. "Ultimately all the security forces are under the thumb of Arafat. Now they announce a major reorganization... whose focus is more on internal security and protecting Arafat and his power as opposed to putting into place a security force to protect the Palestinian people."

The current security system is far bigger than envisioned by international agreements establishing the Palestinian Authority in the early 1990s. A means to maintain public order and internal security during the transition to a Palestinian state became a fat, multi-agency system accused of human-rights abuses, spying operations, and attacks on neighboring Israel.

Tirawi, the West Bank intelligence head, is one of the security leaders accused of orchestrating shooting attacks against Israelis, although he denies it.

Officially, there are supposed to be only 30,000 security personnel in the Palestinian territories, although outside estimates say there are as many as 50,000.

More disturbing to Israelis are the weapons.

The Oslo Accords granted Palestinians about 30,000 light arms. But because of smuggling via underground tunnels from Egypt and by ship on the Mediterranean, more sophisticated weapons are falling into Palestinian hands, said Gal Luft, a doctoral candidate at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

"I can't even imagine how many weapons are still out there," he said.

Palestinian leaders say that no matter how many security people they have, a shattered infrastructure caused by Israel's military response to the intifadah, or uprising, has not helped them in their effort to reform.

Some Middle East observers agreed. "Under the best of circumstances you don't wave a magic wand and roll up this kind of organization overnight," said Geoffrey Aronson, director of the Foundation for Middle East Peace.

In principle, the Palestinian Authority should be able to find most of the militants, the people launching suicide attacks on Israel, Aronson said. But that has been vastly complicated by Israel's destruction of security agency offices, Israeli checkpoints, and other military activities, he said.

"The logistical problems may in and of themselves be insurmountable," he said.

Israeli officials deny that their military measures affect the Palestinian ability to control terror.

"[Arafat] doesn't need a security infrastructure; he just would have had to send out word that he opposes these outrages, and that would have been enough," said Zalman Shoval, an adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. "No one can even sign a check for 20 dollars without his approval."

2002-06-06T23:00:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post Jun. 7, 2002
ANALYSIS: From Pakistan to Palestine
By CAROLINE GLICK

Pakistan and India today stand on the brink of nuclear war. The 1962 Cuban missile crisis the world's previous nuclear showdown was a walk in the park when compared to the danger emanating from the Indian subcontinent, home to some 20 percent of the world's population.

India, with its powerful army, robust democratic society, and enormous population and land mass, is clearly the stronger force. Since 1947, India has proved conclusively to the Pakistanis in three wars that the Islamic state is no match for it on the battlefield. As recently as 1999, when Pakistani forces led by Gen. Pervez Musharraf attempted to grab land in the disputed Kashmir province with a combination of conventional and terrorist forces, only to beat a humiliating and costly retreat, India showed again that it has the will and the ability to put down any Pakistani attempt to change the political status quo through military means.

And yet, we see that India has failed to deter the Pakistanis. Over the past two weeks, Pakistan conducted three missile tests and declared that for it, nuclear warheads are weapons of first resort. Despite international pressure, Musharraf refuses to end Pakistani support for Islamic terrorist organizations in Kashmir.

The situation is so dangerous, because not only has Pakistan declared that it will respond to a conventional military attack with nuclear weapons, but, says Dr. Eli Carmon, of the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, it "would even respond to a 'serious undermining' of its economy or society with nuclear weapons." That is, any move from economic sanctions to a military offensive taken by India to destroy the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani-ruled Kashmir and Pakistan would be seen as justification for attacking it with nuclear weapons.

How has this situation come about? How is it possible the Pakistani government can speak so blithely about the death of millions of people including its own? How can it be that, in the aftermath of September 11, the Pakistani government continues unabashedly to support terrorism even as it hosts US forces there to combat terrorism?

The answer lies in the special way Pakistan defines its national interest a unique blend of calculated rationality and irrational nihilist millenarianism. On the rational side, since September 11, Musharraf has seen that it is possible to play a double game with the United States and win. He has allowed US forces to use Pakistan as a staging ground against the Taliban and al-Qaida in Afghanistan. Yet he has also provided shelter for these forces fleeing the US offensive in Pakistan. And the Bush administration refuses to call him to task for this. In fact, it has rewarded him.

Musharraf is received by President George W. Bush in the US. Pakistan has been promised hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid, and the US arms embargo against nuclear-proliferating Pakistan has been lifted. All the while US special forces, which scale Afghan mountain ranges with 50 kilo packs on their backs looking for al-Qaida and Taliban forces in caves, come up empty-handed, as the enemy has fled to the Pakistani side of the Khyber Pass.

Quite reasonably, Musharraf has learned from this that there is no price to be paid for supporting terrorism and sheltering terrorists. In fact, he only stands to gain from it.

On the irrational side is the barely disguised Pakistani eagerness to use its nuclear arsenal against India. Aside from Pakistan, in the history of nuclear arms, since 1945 no nuclear power has been so overt in its embrace of a first-strike option.

In the March issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Peter Landesman described Pakistani enthusiasm for nuclear war. In the center of every major Pakistani city's central traffic circle, he writes, "sits a craggy, Gibraltarish replica of a nameless peak in the Chagai range. This mountain is the home of Pakistan's nuclear test site. The mountain replicas, about three stories tall, are surrounded by flower beds that are lovingly weeded, watered, and manicured. At dusk, when the streetlights come on, so do the mountains, glowing a weird molten yellow."

Landesman interviewed Brig.-Gen. Amanullah, formerly head of Pakistani Military Intelligence in Sind Province, which borders on India and includes Pakistan's largest city, Karachi. Now retired, Amanullah retains close ties to the Pakistani military and intelligence service. He explained to Landesman that he prays for a nuclear war. "We should fire at them and take out a few of their cities Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta," he said. "They should fire back and take Karachi and Lahore. Kill off a hundred or two hundred million people. There is no future here, and we need to start over."

Today, after 55 years of sovereign nationhood, Pakistan can boast three achievements a nuclear arsenal, an organized military, and a system of Islamic madrassas that inculcate millions of people with the culture and values of jihad. On all other levels, Pakistan is a failed state. Adult literacy rates are under 33 percent. Vast swaths of the 1,600-kilometer-long and 160-km.-wide border with Afghanistan are parched by drought and misuse and incapable of sustaining a population exploding at a rate of 2.6 percent a year. The poverty and squalor of the cities is beyond comprehension. Competing tribal groups war for power in the various provinces and spawn irredentist movements from Peshawar to Karachi.
In this situation, a nuclear exchange with India is seen as a way to turn back the clock, and as Amanullah put it, "start again." Thus the twin swords of terrorism and nuclear war are pointed at the throats of one-fifth of the world's population. For Pakistan today, terrorism is rewarded and nuclear war, which would lead to its physical annihilation, is an acceptable option.
This situation must be sobering for Israelis, as we find ourselves in month 21 of the Palestinian jihad against us. Even more than the Pakistanis, who enjoy only tepid international support, the Palestinians have gained from their adoption of jihad ideology and terrorist tactics. The Palestinian war against us enjoys unprecedented international popularity. In Europe, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat is beloved, and in Washington, the Bush administration has responded to the jihad by embracing Palestinian statehood as the central plank of US Middle East policy.

While the Palestinian terrorist proto-state does not possess nuclear weapons, the Palestinians have repeatedly experimented with chemical agents on their bombs. Traces of hepatitis C and rat poison have been found on exploded bombs, and reports indicate that the Megiddo bomb was laced with cyanide. The Pi Glilot attack shows that the Palestinians intend to carry out strategic attacks that will cause tens of thousands of casualties. Like the Pakistanis, the Palestinians move forward with their calamitous plans with full knowledge that carrying them out will be catastrophic for them as well.

While Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has placed almost all his emphasis on the need to replace Arafat as Palestinian leader, OC Southern Command Maj.-Gen. Doron Almog claims the conflict with the Palestinians is not a simple question of bad leadership. In an address at Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center on Wednesday evening, Almog explained, "The majority of Palestinians demands the right of return. They wish to turn back the clock. They hold on to land documents from the period of Turkish rule and plan their return."
He argued that, from a strategic perspective, Israel will only emerge victorious from the Palestinian jihad when "there is a fundamental change in Palestinian consciousness." In their nihilistic desire to "turn back the clock," the Palestinians resemble the nuclear trigger-happy Pakistanis.

Also like Pakistan, the Palestinian proto-state has no operating bureaucracies other than its security forces. Similar to the madrassas in Pakistan, the PA school system preaches jihad training children for suicide and mass murder. In fact, from the perspective of totalitarian suicidal ideology, the Palestinian Authority may have already surpassed Pakistan. While Musharraf only hints at suicide as an option when referring to "first-strike options," Arafat overtly endorses it with his constant calls for "millions of martyrs" marching on Jerusalem.

Aside from its current lack of a nuclear option (although an Iranian or Iraqi bomb will serve its purposes just as well), the one major difference between the Palestinian proto-state and Pakistan is that the PA lacks a unified military.
As Israelis reel under the weight of Wednesday's massacre at Megiddo and face the very real and imminent prospect of a successful Pi Glilot attack, we find ourselves looking over to the Indian subcontinent and taking heart that it could be worse. Unfortunately for us, if CIA Director George Tenet succeeds in his mission of unifying the PA security forces, he will have brought us not security and stability but Pakistan.
Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1022691095338

2002-06-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

Jun. 7, 2002
Peres: Syria to blame for Megiddo attack
By HERB KEINON, DAVID RUDGE,AND MELISSA RADLER IN NEW YORK

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres yesterday lashed out at the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, saying it shares in the blame for Wednesday's Megiddo bus bombing, because Damascus is harboring terrorist organizations.

Peres made the accusation during a series of media interviews, including one with Qatar-based al-Jazeera television, in which he noted that the orders for the deadly attack were given by Islamic Jihad leader Abdallah Ramadan Shalah from his base in Damascus.

Peres, speaking to reporters at the Israel Export Institute Conference in Tel Aviv, said Syria plays host to no fewer than 10 terror organizations headquartered in Damascus, including Islamic Jihad.

"I said that Ramadan Shalah, who is the commander of the Jihad forces and who lives and operates in Syria, said that he had given the order. I place responsibility on Syria, which hosts 10 terrorist headquarters in Damascus," Peres said.

Ambassador to the UN Yehuda Lancry sent a letter yesterday detailing Syria's responsibility for Wednesday's attack near Megiddo to Ambassador Mikhail Wehbe of Syria, current president of the Security Council.

"Israel is appalled that a member of the Security Council continues to lend its support to organizations committed to deliberate murder of civilians," Lancry wrote.

Noting that Syria assumed leadership of the 15-member body at a time when Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the council have made fighting international terrorism a top priority, Lancry wrote, "It is astounding that Syria is brazenly supporting attempts to subvert anti-terrorist objectives of an international body of which it itself is president.

"The international community must demand that the government of Syria immediately halt its support for the terrorist groups to which it grants safe harbor in its territory and abide scrupulously by its international obligations and the resolutions of the Security Council."

The letter included a request that Wehbe circulate the text as an official council document.

Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer also blamed Syria for ultimately being responsible for the attack, when he visited the wounded in Ha'emek Hospital yesterday evening.

His comments came as 12 of those killed in the suicide car bomber attack outside the walls of Megiddo Prison on the Wadi Ara highway were laid to rest yesterday.

Four of the other victims were buried on Wednesday evening.

Of the nearly 40 wounded, 13 were still hospitalized in Afula. One of them, a soldier, remained in serious condition in the intensive care unit after undergoing three operations. Another woman was reported to be in satisfactory condition, and the remainder suffered light-to-moderate wounds.

Six of those who had been aboard the No. 830 Egged bus en route from Tel Aviv to Tiberias are in Hadera's Hillel Yaffe Hospital, including one who was transferred there from Afula.

One of them was reported to be in serious condition, two satisfactory, and the other three recovering from light wounds. One person, who suffered serious head wounds, is in Haifa's Rambam Hospital.
Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1022691095299

2002-06-06T22:35:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post Jun. 7, 2002
Youth killed by terrorist sniper
By MARGOT DUDKEVITCH

Erez Rund, 18, of Ofra, died after being shot in the chest by a Palestinian terrorist yesterday afternoon while riding on Route 60 between Shilo and Ofra, near the village of Sinjil.

Rund, a student at the Har Meron Yeshiva, was visiting in Eli where he planned to study next year, and was offered a ride to his community by an Eli resident.

The terrorist fired a number of shots from ambush from a Kalashnikov assault rifle at the vehicle, hitting Rund but missing the other occupants.

Four bullets hit the vehicle, and the terrorist fled to one of the nearby villages under Palestinian control. Security forces immediately conducted searches in the Palestinian villages in the area.

Rund will be buried at 11:30 this morning in Ofra, and eulogies will be delivered at the community's main synagogue. At 7:30 this morning, residents of Ofra will recite prayers at the site of yesterday's shooting attack.

The topography where the attack occurred allows Palestinian snipers to fire from ambush from the surrounding hilltops and hit any Israeli vehicle on the road below with ease. After perpetrating an attack, they flee back unhindered into Palestinian-controlled areas.

Minutes after the shooting, an intensive care ambulance from Ofra reached the scene and treated Rund, said Pinhas Wallerstein, head of the Binyamin Regional Council. They began taking him to Hadassah-University Hospital in Jerusalem's Ein Kerem, but "his condition deteriorated and en route the ambulance drove directly to Hadassah-Mount Scopus," Wallerstein said.

Rund was immediately taken to surgery, but died on the operating table.

Some Ofra residents expressed outrage that the hospital informed reporters of his death before the family was told.

"His parents were in the hospital and went to attend evening prayers. Apparently the doctors were searching for them, but only after the reporters were informed did the family find out," said one resident.

The shooting occurred hours after IDF troops pulled out of the Mukata compound in Ramallah, in response to Wednesday's deadly bomb attack at the Megiddo junction in which 17 Israelis were killed and scores wounded.

Wallerstein said the only solution to terror attacks is to build a new community every time Israelis are targeted.

"Security fences will endanger our lives even more, and then we will find ourselves in a similar position to residents in the North, who live under the threat of Katyusha and rocket attacks from the Hizbullah," Wallerstein said. "Incursions by the army into Palestinian areas are also not effective. The only way to get the message to Yasser Arafat is that every time Israelis are attacked we build a new community. I assure you that very quickly he will reach the realization that he has more to lose by failing to combat terror."

Wallerstein said Rund's parents, Yossi and Haya, have lived in the community since it was established; Yossi is a beekeeper and Haya works in the community's ulpana. Erez is also survived by an older married sister who lives on the community, a 21-year-old brother, and a 13-year-old sister.

After hearing the tragic news last night, friends gathered at the home of a family who adopted the Bnei Akiva group they and Rund belonged to.

"Erez loved life; he was a very close friend," Roi Ganoniyan, who grew up with Rund and was his closest friend, said last night. "I was his counsellor in Bnei Akiva, and he in turn also became a counsellor and planned to continue for a third year. Erez studied at the Yeshiva Tichonit at Mount Miron and planned to attend the pre-military yeshiva at Eli next year and then serve in a combat unit in the army.

"It was important to Erez to try to bring secular and religious youths together," Ganoniyan said. "He loved Israel and enjoyed hiking. He always smiled and knew how to make everyone around him laugh."

Elsewhere in the area, shots were fired last night at an Israeli civilian convoy leaving the settlement of Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. Palestinians threw a number of grenades harmlessly at an IDF position near Ganei Tal in Gush Katif.
In Jenin early yesterday, a number of bombs exploded near IDF troops.

In the Gaza Strip late Wednesday night, Palestinians fired two mortar shells at an IDF post in Gush Katif. No one was wounded and no damage reported.
Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1022691095323

2002-06-06T09:59:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post Jun. 6, 2002
Doctor treating wounded: Each time, it’s terrible
By DANIEL BEN-TAL

Dr. Doron Koppelman, a senior surgeon at Afula's Ha'emek Hospital, never knows how his daily journey to work from his Caesarea home will end. "For the third time in as many months, I was driving along the Wadi Ara road when a terrorist bomb went off in front of me and I found myself treating the wounded," he said, emerging from the operating room yesterday afternoon.
The two previous explosions occurred less than 100 meters from his car. This time, he had to skirt a one kilometer traffic jam via dirt tracks to reach the wounded.

"People were screaming for help and there were body parts everywhere. I've become one of the thousands of Israelis who see such sights with horrible regularity. Each time, it's terrible," he said.

"You look for the ones you can help first, to stop the blood flow. After the last outrage, the health minister gave me a military doctor's backpack containing emergency equipment, which was in my car. I didn't expect to use it so soon.

"I was a near-victim again today, and feel lucky that I wasn't closer to any of the bombs. I have begun to truly understand what trauma is."

Marina Yakimchik, 46, and her sister Svetlana Silina arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport from Minsk at 3:40 yesterday morning to participate in a Jewish Agency-sponsored voluntary program helping on IDF bases. Her son Anton Brodnik, 25, who immigrated a year ago, and his girlfriend Ala Zankowensky, 25, met them. They boarded the first bus to Tel Aviv, and from there to Anton's home in Tiberias.

"We were admiring the Arab villages along the Wadi Ara road, how pretty the houses look then there was this tremendous explosion," recalled Marina via an interpreter. All four suffered multiple shrapnel wounds, and within minutes were rushed to the hospital.

Marina, Anton, and Ala were hospitalized in the surgery ward, while Svetlana, whose wounds were classified as moderate, underwent a series of operations.

In the adjacent ward, dozens of family, friends, and comrades-in-arms hovered around the beds of four wounded soldiers.

"You never know when it's your turn," said Guy Pollack, from Netanya, who regularly travels to his base in the North by bus. "I narrowly missed the last blast on this line because I was late for the bus, but this time my luck ran out. Soldiers are no longer allowed to hitchhike, so we have to take the risk.

"I was dozing when this enormous blast threw me out through the window. I awoke, covered in blood, only to lose consciousness. I have many cuts and burns; I'll be OK."

Fellow soldier Haim Tubul, 20, from Hadera, was also thrown out of the burning bus. "I remember saying Shma Yisrael as I found myself on the ground, my face covered with blood," he recalled.

St.-Sgt. Zvi Avraham was severely burned by the fireball that engulfed the bus as its fuel tank exploded. "I emerged from the fire, somehow managed to get up and run away, then rolled on the ground to extinguish the flames," he said.

"We've dealt with more than 400 victims of 10 terror incidents this past year," hospital director Dr. Eran Halperin told The Jerusalem Post.

"Unfortunately, we have experience with these situations and have learned the lessons from previous incidents to improve both our medical and organization preparedness. We have learned much about trauma therapy for example how to talk to the families of terror victims. Everything is under control. The staff knows exactly what to do."

The hospital recently treated six Palestinian gunmen wounded during the IDF incursion into Jenin during Operation Defensive Shield, while Zeidan Zeidan, the failed suicide bomber who seriously wounded himself at the Megiddo junction three weeks ago has been released from intensive care, but remains hospitalized under police guard.

"We do not differentiate between patients," noted Halperin. "The only criteria are medical. We have a mixed staff serving a mixed population. About 20 percent of our medical staff and 40 percent of our patients are Arabs. It could be that there is ill feeling between people, but it never expresses itself inside the hospital."

Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1022691089867

2002-06-06T09:57:00.000-07:00

Jun. 6, 2002
Mother of bus victim: ‘He was my only son'
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF

Sgt. Sivan Wiener of Holon had just celebrated her 19th birthday in Tel Aviv the night before the bombing.

She wanted to return to her army base, but her family asked her to wait until early morning when it is safer to travel.

Her older brother Dudu, 33, of Tel Aviv brought her to the bus station and he spoke with her on the cellphone at 6:15 to make sure she was all right.

"When I heard about the attack, I called her again, but she didn't answer. I immediately understood that it was all over."

He recalled in an interview with Yediot Aharonot how only yesterday evening she had played with his sons.

"They ran after her to the elevator and begged her to stay. She calmed them down, promising to return on Friday for another visit," Dudu said.

Eliran, an old friend from school, said she had gone with Sivan yesterday to help her celebrate. "We drank something but returned home quickly because of the army, even though she was crazy about parties" she said.

Friends gathered at her home to mourn. "I still can't believe she's gone," one said.
"It's like a bad dream," another said. "It's not at all like Sivan, she was so happy and full of life."
Sgt. Sariel Katz's mother waited all morning for her 21-year old son to call and say he was all right, just as he had when he was near the terrorist bus attack in Wadi Ara. She told Israel Radio, "When I didn't hear from him this morning, I thought okay, he's sleeping. By 11 a.m. I called all the hospitals and I couldn't find him. I called his officer and said, 'I'm looking for him but I can't find him.' They suggested I call the morgue. I hoped he was thrown from the bus and still hadn't been found.

"I saw the bus, nothing was left, I didn't want to think about it, what a wonderful boy, everyone loved him."

Yesterday he was buried in Netanya's military cemetery.
St.-Sgt David Stanislavski, 23, of Netanya, immigrated from Ukraine four years ago with his mother.

Next month they were going to go back for a visit.
"There everyone is waiting for him," his mother told Israel Radio.

"He was my only son, I don't have any other children. Why, why are more families being left without children?"

Other victims buried last night include: St.-Sgt. Eliran Buskila, 21, of Hadera; Cpl. Liron Avitan, 19, of Hadera; and Sgt. Yigal Nivpur, 22, of Netanya.

The victims

St.-Sgt. Eliran Buskila, 21, of Hadera

St.-Sgt. Tzvi Gelber, 20, of Hadera

Sgt. Dotan Reisel, 22, of Hadera

Cpl. Liron Avitan, 19, of Hadera

Sgt. Violetta Hizguyev, 20, of Hadera

St.-Sgt. Genady Isakov, 21, of Hadera

Sgt. Sariel Katz, 21, of Netanya

Sgt. Yigal Nivpur, 22, of Netanya

St.-Sgt. David Stanislavski, 23, of Netanya.

Sgt. Sivan Wiener, 19, of Holon

Cpl. Avraham Barzilai, 19, of Netanya

Cpl. Dennis Blumin, 20, of Hadera

Zion Agmon, 50, of Hadera

Cpl. Vladimir Morari, 20, of Hadera

The names of the other victims had not been released by press time.

Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1022691089819

2002-06-06T09:52:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post May. 23, 2002
Terrorism up close and personal
By ALAN JOSEPH BAUER

Dr. Alan Bauer, an immigrant from the Chicago area, and his seven-year-old son, Yonathon, were among 87 people wounded in a March 21 suicide bombing on Jerusalem's King George Street.

The tragedy of the three people who were killed in that attack, including a man and his pregnant wife (Gadi and Tzipi Shemesh), who left behind two little girls aged three and seven, overshadowed - at least in the news media - the ordeals faced by those "only" maimed or otherwise injured in the blast.

Two months later, Bauer, of the capital's Sha'arei Hessed neighborhood, and president of a biotech company developing rapid detection tests for Anthrax spores, shares his own very personal account of what he and Yonathon have gone through.

It is a story of hope even more than one about trauma, as Yonathon has confronted his injuries with utmost bravery. Having temporarily lost his sight, the boy is already running and reading again, and also undergoing rehabilitation therapy at Alyn Hospital in Jerusalem. This week he was slated to have surgery to remove a bolt lodged in his brain. And his dad hopes to see his second grader back at school very soon.

I write this for my family, friends, colleagues and associates. I am happy that the vast majority of you have never experienced a terrorist act directly; I hope this will remain the case for the remainder of your days!

I have decided to pen a few words for two reasons: I feel a need to write and I hope that by sharing this experience, I can add a little depth beyond the quick headlines and numerical summaries.

This is not a political piece. Israeli politics are like quicksand: You put in one toe and you are soon up to your neck. A fair political analysis would take up all of my hard-drive memory. This effort is but a brief glimpse into an extraordinary and challenging period of my family's life.

March 21, 2002 was a very cold, wet and windy day in Jerusalem. My oldest son, Yonathon, was with me from early in the morning. The four boys (our youngest son is a year and a half old) were on Pessah vacation, and I took Yonathon to the doctor with a sore throat and eventually to my office, where he kept himself busy as I performed rapid detection tests for Anthrax spores.

We bundled up and left the office for the 15-minute walk home. Our walk took us past the sites of a car-bombing, a shooting attack, and two suicide bombings including the Sbarro restaurant. We crossed Jaffa Street to King George and walked toward home. We passed Da Vinci pizza, the candy store, and then it happened.

I did not hear the loud explosion that one hears from a distance; the rapid pressure change impaired my hearing immediately. The sensation I had was one of being pushed furiously and uncontrollably from behind; I could not stop until I fell down to the ground. I got up and saw my hand covered in blood: I knew instantly what had happened. I spun around to find Yonathon (we had been holding hands) and the scene was one of absolute, utter quiet.

There was white smoke that looked like thick fog, but there was no sound. A friend who was in a store 50 meters away also noted the silence - no buses, no cars. Just debris and bodies on the street and sidewalk.

I began to scream, "Yonathon! Yonathon!" and I found him, face down, about three meters behind my landing point.

Without thought to neck or back injury, I picked him up and heard him making noises from his mouth - he's alive! I thought. I ran with him in the opposite direction of the destruction and put him down on the sidewalk.

Two people as far apart in the world as it is imaginable to be came over to me: One was a young dancer who was an army medic (we are still in touch). He told me that he would take care of Yonathon. My first instinct was to wave him away. When I realized that I could do nothing myself, I let him work on our son.

The second person to approach was a photographer who shamelessly began photographing Yonathon - he finally left after I cursed him and chased him away.

Finding myself momentarily with nothing to do, I went back to get my bag, which held my cell phone and my lab notebook, near the spot where I found Yonathon. A few feet away from the bag was a dead man, badly burned. I thought, mistakenly, it was the terrorist.

As I took out my cell phone, a message jumped across the screen: My partner, Josh, checking up on me, as we have been wont to do in these situations. I called my wife, Revital. I could not hear, so I looked at the screen to see when I was connected. I began to yell into the phone - "pigua" (attack), "They are attending to us," among other things.

She told me later that she could not understand me, but she got the idea when she heard the ambulances. I disconnected the phone as the first ambulance arrived. Yonathon (on a stretcher) and I were helped in and we immediately took off for Hadassah-Ein Kerem, the university hospital and trauma center.

It was in the ambulance that I first saw that Yonathon had a significant head wound. While I had seen cuts on his face, the blood-soaked rag on the back of his head showed me that he had been seriously injured. My hand had two holes, but there was not much blood or pain - yet. I looked for my cell phone to call Josh. It was gone - it had fallen at the bombing site. I thought, "Wow, I've got to tell Josh before some guy starts calling China." (The phone was later found and graciously returned.) I tried to call from a medic's phone, but couldn't get through - as usually happens in such a situation, the network was overloaded.

In the ambulance, the medics attended to us. They detailed our injuries on small forms which had rubber bands to hang on the foot (or hand) and then a color-coded definition of status. One simply tears the perforation to leave exposed the last label indicating the present condition. As they prepared Yonathon's form, I saw the fellow tear away the labels and leave behind "niftar" (deceased). I began to scream at him and then he showed me the next label down, "dachuf" (urgent).

We arrived at the hospital 20 minutes later and, for the first time all day, Yonathon and I were separated; he was taken to the trauma center while I went to the emergency room.

In the background I heard bells ringing - they are sounded to alert staff to incoming wounded. Female soldiers went around taking names and personal data; police came to ask for relevant information. As we arrived first, I went to the first bed in the unit. I had a small staff of doctors, nurses and others with me at all times.

An X-ray was taken and a screw was found in my left wrist. I asked a social worker to call my wife and to check on Yonathon. She claimed she couldn't find out anything about him and I was worried that she was hiding something.

My wife and in-laws arrived quickly.

The doctors tried to find a pulse in my left hand. It took them quite some time, but they finally found that one artery was working.

Someone from the news office came over - I was an English-speaking American... big fish. "I've got Nightline, I've got 20/20. You'll be on tonight in the US!" he said excitedly.

The only thing I wanted was a syringe filled with morphine. I respectfully declined his offer. He came back a few days later offering a satellite program between the US and Israel; my answer remained the same.

After more than an hour , I was wheeled off to the operating room. I knew that Yonathon was also on his way there but I did not know the extent of his injuries. I arrived at the operating reception area and there was my doctor - and she was laughing. "You again!" she exclaimed.

Last New Year's Eve I had put my hand through a window and cut an artery and nerve (same arm); that was a real bloodbath (one of the reasons I thought that my bleeding after the bombing seemed so trivial). So here I was again to take up her time. I told her that I liked the service; they returned the joke and told me the next morning that I was still under warranty from the first operation.

Turns out that my doctor is also an avid rower (from France) and wanted to know where I bought my rowing machine. Lights out for yours truly and six hours of reconstructive surgery. I awoke in the recovery room... with pain in my leg. Maybe I had come back to the wrong body... No, they pulled a vein from my left leg in order to replace the now twice-damaged artery. They also took skin grafts from the same leg. Wow, that hurt.

They didn't remove the bandage for the skin graft - it fell off by itself a few weeks later. Two arteries had been damaged - one by an object that passed through my arm and the second by the aforementioned screw, which was presented to me as I was half dreaming after the surgery. Thank God, there was no bone or nerve damage.

Yonathon and I were now two buildings apart. I went to visit him in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) - in my wheelchair and with my IV tower - but I was scared to see him.

As I approached his bed, I saw a drainage tube in his head. His face was swollen and partially burned. His eyes were gray and partially open. He was sedated and on a respirator.

The doctors showed me the CT scans - shrapnel had entered the back of his head and passed right through the right side of his brain. There had been bleeding and the drainage was important to remove blood and to drain off excess CSF (cerebral spinal fluid).

I left in my wheelchair and only when I saw a close friend whose son is undergoing chemotherapy at the same hospital did I burst into tears.

For the first three days, Yonathon would be sedated and then they would bring him out of it to see what was happening. I spent much time in my bed during this time; later, I realized that they needed me in the ward only once every six hours for medication, so I went to Yonathon (as long as someone could wheel me over) as often as I could.

To experience these events by ourselves would have been impossible. We knew that God was with us so we never felt alone. The unbelievable human support network that surrounded us still brings me to tears.

At the first level are my in-laws and friends who have helped in every possible way, from baby-sitting to shopping to staying with Yonathon when we could not be with him. Then, there are the families in our neighborhood of Sha'arei Hessed who have provided us with every meal for the past month. Pessah came and went and we cooked all of seven eggs - everything else was prepared and delivered to us.

Close friends prepared two boxes for the Seder night - one for my family at home and one for me in the hospital with Yonathon (I was released the same morning and moved over to PICU).

People throughout the world were praying, saying Psalms, calling with words of support. Across the globe, people put us in their prayers and never forgot us.

My prognosis: I am healing. My hand looks awful and for this reason only I keep it covered (it scares my kids and worries adults). I will have lots of physical therapy ahead but I am already rowing on my "erg." The little things are hard - tying shoes and closing buttons. I feel very grateful to be alive and to be recounting these events.

Back to Yonathon. Yonathon was taken off sedation and respirator - he was breathing on his own. He came to and had terrible head pains. He was also receiving medication for the strep throat that he had prior to the bombing.

His right side showed mobility but he showed very little movement with his left side (right brain injury). He moved his lips but we could not understand him.

After a while, he said "abba" and "imma." We burst into tears. Then he told my wife that he loved her.

The nurses were unbelievable; they helped us so much and they cried and laughed along with us.

Eventually, Yonathon improved in strength and wanted to hear stories. He liked my stories more than those from books, so I recounted everything that ever happened to me from my earliest consciousness to the present. He eventually began to eat and after a few days, the tubes were all gone.

The head pains receded and he was awake and interactive for hours on end. He was talkative and in good spirits. His teacher visited often and was delighted at Yonathon's recall of class material.

At this point, I want to mention that people with whom I had not had contact for some time came to the fore and helped out. One was a roommate with whom I had shared an apartment prior to my getting married. While we had not spoken in years, he immediately came to the hospital the day after the attack to check up on Yonathon and let me know how he was doing. He spent all of Friday night and Saturday with me.

A college roommate, now a chief of neurosurgery, has been an extraordinary help in providing understanding of Yonathon's wounds, their implications, and the prognosis for recovery.

While we have exchanged only a few e-mails since our Harvard graduation 15 years ago, he was quick to call and to examine the CT scans in order to advise us. I cannot give enough thanks to my friends, former roommates, and neighbors who have rushed to our side in this tremendous time of need.

The major projectile traveled from the back to the front of Yonathon's brain. Smaller pieces were located in two other areas of the brain. They manifested themselves in near absence of left-side motion and in apparent blindness (known as cortical blindness).

Yonathon's eyes regained their color and began to focus after a few days. Still, we could not tell what he was seeing. The eyes themselves were deemed to be okay, but we just did not get a feeling that he could see ("What color is Tweetie on this balloon?" "Yellow." Well, every Tweetie is yellow).

As to the motion, there was some limited movement of left hand and foot. I had seen Yonathon move all of his appendages in the ambulance; two doctors noted the same upon our arrival and they felt that it was a good sign. As to the vision, both my neurosurgeon friend and a local pediatric neurologist felt that it would come back - when is not clear.

After two and a half weeks, Yonathon left PICU and moved to a children's hospital for rehab. The nurses kissed him and walked him out of the hospital. The first night in the new place, Yonathon turned to me and said, "Abba, the curtain over there is blue."

And, yes, it was. Then came a flurry of naming object colors and what was written on different bottles and papers. We were thrilled. Yonathon began an intensive physical and occupational therapy program; he also gets to swim, which he loves.

In mid-April he made his first visit home since the day of the attack. His classmates came over to visit him. The teacher read letters the children had written and gave him presents that they had prepared. They sang and learned together. The visit was spectacular and the support of the school and its staff has been phenomenal.

Every day, these children and hundreds of others in the school include Yonathon in their prayers, and say Psalms for him. One mother confided to my wife that her son did not want to have his birthday party until Yonathon could come.

One day, Yonathon did what he has always loved to do: he took a book and read it from cover to cover. He also took his first steps on his own.

There is a path ahead of us for our collective recoveries, but we are thankful to God for our well-being and we thank all of our friends, relatives, and supporters for their encouragement, support and love.
Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1021813233713

2002-06-03T21:13:00.000-07:00

May 9, 2002, The Los Angeles Times, "Two Sides: Pick One, Folks," By Norah Vincent.
Mideast conflict splits the world into reductionist, divisive camps.
(Norah Vincent is a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a think tank set up after Sept. 11 to, study terrorism.)

I heard a joke the other day that confirmed my suspicions about the insidious grip anti-Semitism is gaining, not just on the minds of voting French people but on the jocular mindlessness of dopey Americans.

What do you call six Jews in turbans? Pakistan.

Not funny, right? But it is indicative of a scary sentiment, one you may have thought was confined to the dankest corners of the Arab world. The meaning, as far as I can ferret it out, is this: Because it has collaborated with the United States in the war on terror and because President Pervez Musharraf, whose newly "reelected" military dictatorship stays in power by the strong arms of a few trusted advisors, Pakistan is clearly being run by a cabal of Jews. How else to explain the defection of a Muslim state from the Arab world's solidarity with Al Qaeda and the Palestinians? How else to explain Pakistan's willingness to join forces with America, the great Satan, which, as Arab conspiracy theorists are always telling us, is itself run by powerful Jews and is thereby merely an extension of Israel?

The implication is clear. Anyone who opposes terrorism or the Islamist agenda is, by proxy, a Jew or a puppet of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency. As the conflict in Israel escalates, the world is separating quickly into two reductive and hostile camps: Jews and anti-Semites.

Because we support Israel, Americans increasingly are seen as surrogate Jews. We should accept our new moniker with pride, partly because being a Jew is nothing to be ashamed of, but mostly because our alliance with Israel is meritorious in principle.

We support Israel because it is a democracy and because Israelis share our belief in liberal politics. Its press is free, as are its elections and society. These are values worth fighting for; they are why we went to war in Afghanistan, after all. And defending Israel against Palestinian suicide bombing is nothing less than a defense of Enlightenment ideals against medieval tyranny.

The Palestinian cause (against oppression and for a state) is another matter, one that all fair-minded people recognize as legitimate. But the present Palestinian leadership and its loudest supporters in the Arab world are hopelessly tainted by their toleration and even covert fostering of appalling Jew-hating, jingoistic rants that appear regularly in the Arab press.

Take columnist Fatma Abdallah Mahmoud's recent piece in the Egyptian government daily Al Akhbar complaining to Hitler about the "fabrication" of the Holocaust: "If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin."

The Middle East Media Research Institute documented that, along with this screed from a weekly column in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat by Yasser Arafat aide Bassam Abu Sharif. Accusing Israel of shooting at the statue of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem, he wrote: "This, of course, was a failed attempt to murder peace, love and tolerance, just as their forefathers tried to murder the prophetic message when they hammered their nails and iron stakes through the body of Jesus into the wooden cross."

Even Christians gave that one up long ago when they remembered that Jesus was a Jew.

Supporters of this kind of filth are enemies of fairness, sanity and liberalism. So, pick a side, folks; there are only two.

2002-06-03T18:14:00.000-07:00

Jerusalem Post Jun. 4, 2002
Air force on alert for jet attacks
By ARIEH O'SULLIVAN
The air force, responsible for protecting Israel from airborne terror attacks, has intelligence that foreign fighter pilots may attempt kamikaze-style attacks in solidarity with the Palestinians.
Closer to home, it is also believed that Palestinian terrorists have purchased motorized ultra-light gliders and para-gliders to be used to infiltrate from the Gaza Strip. The gliders and para-gliders were purchased as civilian items abroad.
There is also a constant alert for a terror attack similar to the September 11 strikes in the United States, with a hijacked passenger plane crashing into a building or strategic target.
A major drill is scheduled for today in Givatayim simulating the crash of a jet into a skyscraper. The drill also calls for the simulated explosion of a car bomb in the underground parking lot of the building.
Organizers said they will set off large amounts of smoke from the top floors of the 30-floor Vered Towers on the corner of Hashalom and Rabin boulevards to give it a realistic effect, and that volunteers would be rescued from upper floors by ladders. Hundreds of firefighters, police, and emergency workers will participate in the exercise.
Fire chief Efraim Ma'aravi said the drill will be dedicated to New York City firefighters who were killed in the September 11 attack.
"They taught us all about how to fight fires in tall buildings, what equipment is needed, and how such buildings act when they are on fire," Ma'aravi told AP. "We are remembering them in this drill."
The public may also notice a sudden increase in warplane activity in the skies over the next few days.
The air force began a full corps exercise on Sunday night that will last until tomorrow.
Source: http://www.jpost.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/Full&cid=1022691076844

2002-06-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

Divest and Conquer By ALAN M. DERSHOWITZ
Forward 5/31/02

A nasty and immoral campaign is being waged around the world to damage
Israel's economy by coercing universities and other institutions into
divesting their holdings in Israel, as some of them did from South Africa
during the apartheid regime. There is no justification for the comparison
between the two, and the divestment effort should be opposed by anyone who
supports human rights.

As fair-minded observers understand, the two cases are entirely different.
South African apartheid was a racist system by which a minority controlled
and subjugated a disenfranchised majority. The campaign for South African
divestment was inspired and joined by long-term advocates of neutral
support for human rights across the board. Israel, by contrast, is a
functioning democracy that guarantees full equality before the law to all
its citizens, regardless of race, ethnicity or religion. The anti-Israel
divestment campaign has been inspired by pleaders with a particular animus
toward Israel and little commitment to human rights in general.

The intellectual leader of this campaign is none other than Noam Chomsky,
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist, who has long favored
the abolition of the state of Israel and the substitution of a "secular,
binational state" based, it seems, on the model of Lebanon. This is the
same Chomsky who has defended the "findings" of the notorious French
antisemite and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson, who claims "the Jews"
were responsible for World War II. Chomsky has said that he saw "no hint
of antisemitic implications in Faurisson's works," including his denial of
the Holocaust, which Chomsky claims is based on "extensive historical
research." Chomsky went so far as to write an introduction to one of
Faurisson's antisemitic books.

Of course, Chomsky is not alone in his divest-from-Israel campaign. He is
joined in his ignoble effort by a motley assortment of knee-jerk
anti-Zionists, rabid America-haters, radical leftists such as the
Trotskyist Spartacist League and even a few of Chomsky's former students
who now teach in Israel. Some in this movement would take the money now
invested in the Middle East's only democracy and have it sent to
"progressive" states - countries such as Iraq, Libya, Syria, Cuba and the
Palestinian Authority, which support and finance terrorism.

Thankfully, the divestment effort has garnered little support so far among
respectable human rights advocates. Here in Cambridge, Mass., on Chomsky's
home turf, a petition demanding divestment from Harvard and MIT garnered
just 412 signatures from among students, faculty, staff and alumni of the
two institutions, while more than 5,300 signed petitions opposing
divestment. The result should surprise no one.

There is no intellectually or morally defensible case for singling out
Israel for divestiture. Universities invest in a wide array of companies
that have operations in countries all over the world, including many that
systematically violate the human rights of millions of people. And these
other countries are not defending themselves against those who would
destroy them and target their civilians. Yet this petition focuses only on
the Jewish state, to the exclusion of all others, including those that -
by any reasonable standard - are among the worst violators of human
rights.

As an advocate, teacher and student of human rights for almost 40 years, I
feel confident in asserting that Israel's record on human rights is among
the best in the world, especially among nations that have confronted
comparable threats.
Israel has the only independent judiciary in the entire Middle East. Its
Supreme Court, one of the most highly regarded in the world, is the only
court in the Middle East from which an Arab or a Muslim can expect
justice, as many have found in winning dozens of victories against the
Israeli government, the Israeli military and individual Israeli citizens.
There is no more important component in the protection of human rights and
civil liberties than an independent judiciary willing to stand up to its
own government. I challenge the proponents of divestment to name a court
in any Arab or Muslim country that is comparable to the Israeli Supreme
Court.

As the only true democracy in the Middle East, Israel is the only country
in the region that has virtually unlimited freedom of speech. Any person
in Israel - whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian - can criticize the
Israeli government and its leaders. No citizen of any other Middle Eastern
or Muslim state can do that without fear of imprisonment or death. As one
wag recently put it, citizens of Israel and the Palestinian Authority have
exactly the same right of free speech - both may criticize Israel and
praise Yasser Arafat.

Israel is the only country in the world that has openly confronted the
difficult issue of protecting the civil liberties of the ticking bomb
terrorist. The Israeli Supreme Court recently ruled that despite the
potential benefits of employing "physical pressure" (that is, using
non-lethal torture in order to extract information), such pressure is now
illegal in Israel. Brutal torture, including lethal torture, is
commonplace in nearly every other Middle Eastern and Muslim country.
Indeed, American authorities sometimes send suspects to Egypt, Jordan and
the Philippines precisely because they know that they will be tortured in
those countries.

The list could go on and on, and by every single standard Israel would
surpass other countries against which no divestiture petition has been
directed. To be sure, Israel is far from perfect. I have been critical of
some of its policies, as have countless Israeli citizens. Crucially, there
are mechanisms within Israel for improving its civil liberties and human
rights record. These mechanisms do not exist in other Middle Eastern and
Muslim nations.

Even when judged against European nations, Israel's human rights record
does very well. It is far better than that of France on virtually any
criterion, even if one forgets about the Algerian War, in which the French
military tortured and murdered thousands of people. It is least as good as
the British record in dealing with terrorism in Northern Ireland. The
Israeli legal system is far superior to that of Italy, Spain and many
other European countries.

There are, of course, difficult issues to be resolved between Israel and
the Palestinians. These include the future of the settlements, the
establishment of Palestinian self-governance and the prevention of
terrorism. These issues will require compromise on all sides. Americans
are and must be free to criticize Israel when they disagree with its
policies or actions, as they criticize any other country in the world
whose record is not perfect. But to single out the Jewish state of Israel,
as if it were the worst human rights offender, is bigotry pure and simple.
Those who sign the Chomsky petition should be ashamed of themselves. If
they are not, it is up to others to shame them.

Here's an alternative to singling out Israel for divestment: Let
universities choose nations for investment in the order of the human
rights records. If that were done, investment in Israel would increase
dramatically, while investments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan,
Philippines, Indonesia, the Palestinian Authority and most other countries
of the world would decrease dramatically.

I challenge Noam Chomsky to a public debate on whether universities should
invest in or divest from companies that do business with Israel and other
countries.

Alan M. Dershowitz is a professor of law at Harvard University and author
of "Shouting Fire: Civil Liberties in a Turbulent Age" (Little, Brown &
Co., 2002).

2002-05-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

May. 2, 2002
BRET STEPHENS' EYES ABROAD: Indirect responsibility, anyone?
By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal

ON JUNE 8, 2001, a Belgian court sentenced four Rwandans - a former government minister,
a university professor, and two Roman Catholic nuns - to prison terms of 12 to 20 years for the
crime of genocide. Specifically, the court found that in the spring of 1994, Alphonse Higanaro, the
former Rwandan transport minister, had ordered the killing of a Tutsi family of eight, and that Vincent
Ntezimana, the academic, had drawn up lists of Tutsi to be exterminated. The court also found that
one of the nuns, a Sister Gertrude, had in her capacity as Mother Superior of the Suvo convent refused
sanctuary to several thousand Tutsi refugees, describing them as "rubbish" before alerting the Hutu
Interahumwe militia (in which two of her brothers were then serving) to the Tutsi presence. The refugees
were hacked to death with machetes.
Sister Gertrude also expelled 22 refugees - relative's of the convent's Tutsi nuns - from the convent. It is
reported that some of these refugees paid the Hutu $15 for the privilege of being shot to death rather than
stabbed.
As for the second nun, Sister Maria Kisito, she was found guilty of assisting the Interahumwe in setting
fire to a nearby health clinic in which 700 Tutsi had taken refuge. All perished. Altogether, the four
defendants had a hand in an estimated 5,000 Tutsi murders.

Following the trial, George-Henri Beauthier, a lawyer for the prosecution, saluted the verdict this way:
"This will encourage us to continue the fight and prosecute all those responsible for genocide."
Sure enough, the following week suit was brought in a Brussels court against Ariel Sharon by 23
survivors of the Sabra and Shatilla massacres. The charge: crimes against humanity.

It happens that I was living in Brussels at the time,so I was able to follow the two cases closely.
What struck me then was this: The Rwandans were tried for acts for which they were directly
responsible. Sharon was accused of acts for which he was, at most, indirectly responsible. Yet
while the Brussels case against Sharon was eventually dismissed on jurisdictional grounds, the
distinction between direct and indirect responsibility remains, in European eyes as well as in the
eyes of much of the "international community," a blurred one. The implications of this - for Europe,
the United Nations, and the United States - cannot be ignored.

LET'S RECALL briefly the findings of the Kahan Commission regarding the killing of some 800
Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatilla by Eli Hobeika's Christian Phalagnist militia in September
1982. The commission found that "in having the Phalangists enter the camps, no intention existed on
the part of anyone who acted on the part of Israel to harm the noncombatant population."
The commission also acquited Sharon on the charge that he had been negligent in stopping the massacre;
Israeli generals had, in fact, ordered the Phalangists to withdraw their forces once it became clear that
something dreadful had occured.

What the commission did find was that Sharon should have anticipated the massacre, and that this failure
of foresight amounted to a form of "indirect responsibility," with the recommendation that Sharon
"draw the appropriate personal conclusions." As everyone knows, Sharon did exactly that, and
notwithstanding his political resurrection, he has worn something like a mark of Cain ever since.
So, indeed, has Israel.

It is not my intention here to debate the merits of the concept of indirect responsibility. To me, it
seems a dangerous catch-all phrase, or (to mix my metaphors) a slippery slope. But these arguments are
now moot. Both with the Kahan Commission, and in the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia, indirect responbibility has become a fact of international law, to say nothing of
political reality.

The point now is that if we're going to punish people for "indirect responsibility" in war crimes, we ought
to define such responsibility clearly and apply it consistently. And this brings me back to the subject
of Rwanda.

ANYONE INTERESTED in what transpired in Rwanda during that awful spring could do no better
than to read Philip Gourevitch's We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With
Our Familes. But to get a sense of how Rwanda was allowed to happen, one must read Samantha
Power's meticulously researched "Bystander to Genocide" in last September's issue of The Atlantic Monthly.

The prelude to the Rwanda genocide is instructive. In 1993, after generations of hostility and
periodic outbreaks of fighting between Tutsi and Hutu, an agreement called the Arusha Accords
was reached under Tanzanian auspices. Its terms called for the return of Tutsi exiles, a power-sharing
government, the demobilization and demilitarization of both Hutu and Tutsi, and the introduction
of a UN force, the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda, or UNAMIR, to monitor and enforce the agreement.

Within months, however, the Hutu were violating the terms of the accord: military equipment
was being flown in for the Hutus; local militias were being trained; lists of Tutsis were being
drawn up for what the UN officer in charge of the mission, a French Canadian general named
Romeo Dallaire, suspected was for "their extermination."

The conscientious Dallaire then relayed this information to the UN Department of Peacekeeping
Operations, headed by Kofi Annan, and proposed a raid on Hutu weapons depots. Annan's office
expressly turned him down, advising him instead to alert the Hutu President, Juvenal Habyarimana.

The Clinton administration also didn't pay heed. As evidence of Hutu violations of the accord
came to light, the US chose to look the other way. "An examination of cable traffic from the US
embassy in Kigali to Washington [before the killing began]," writes Power, "reveals that setbacks
were perceived as 'dangers to the peace process' more than 'dangers to Rwandans.' American
criticisms were deliberately and steadfastly leveled at 'both sides,' though Hutu government and
militia forces were usually responsible."

Then, on April 6, President Habyarimana's jet was shot down. It was the pretext the Hutu militia
needed to begin the killing. The Prime Minister and her husband, both moderates, were killed within
minutes in their homes. Hutu militia also rounded up 10 Belgian peacekeepers - the Belgians were the
backbone of UNAMIR's operation - and killed them. Rwandan radio began broadcasting the names
and addresses of all Tutsi to be killed immediately.

Writes Power: "Killers often carried a machete in one hand and a transistor radio in the other. Tens of
thousands of Tutsi fled their homes in panic and weresnared and butchered at checkpoints. Little care was
given to their disposal. Some were shoveled into landfills. Human flesh rotted in the sunshine. In
churches, bodies mingled with scattered hosts."

To these several events, the reaction of the West proved remarkably uniform. The Europeans moved
quickly to evacuate their citizens in Rwanda; they landed 1,000 troops in the Kigali airport expressly
for that purpose, and then departed.

The Belgians, Rwanda's erstwhile colonial masters, also wanted out. But as Willie Claes, the foreign
minister at the time, explained: "We are pulling out, but we don't want to be seen doing it alone." He
wanted "cover," which meant the removal of all UN peacekeepers.

On April 21, the United Nations Security Council, with the full backing of the US, complied, with
one caveat. A "small, skeletal" force was to remain in place, in order, as then UN Ambassador
Madeleine Albright said, "to show the will of the international community."

By then, an estimated 100,000 Tutsi had been slaughtered. [me: By the end over 50% of the
Tutsi population was exterminated, close to 800,000 people]

The UN wanted to maintain its posture of evenhandedness - and to protect non-Rwandans.
In the face of Dallaire's pleas for beefed up assistance and more proactive measures, Annan's
office responded as follows: "You should make every effort not to compromise your impartiality
or to act beyond your mandate, but [you] may exercise your discretion to do [so] should this
be essential for the evacuation of foreign nationals."

As for the Clinton administration, its objectives were twofold. First, it wanted to extract US citizens,
which it accomplished by April 10. Second, the administration, wary of "another Somalia," wanted to
avoid avoid any form of military involvement.

This latter point posed a peculiar difficulty. The US is a signatory to the 1948 Genocide Convention.
Article One of the Convention stipulates: "The contracting parties confirm that genocide, whether
committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to
prevent and punish."

Thus, in order to avoid any military involvement in Rwanda, the US government had to avoid using "the
g-word." Power quotes from a memo of an interagency group: "Be Careful. Legal at State was worried about
this yesterday - Genocide finding could commit [the US government] to actually 'do something.'"

As a result, the administration was forced to resort to the most remarkable verbal gymanastics. State
Department spokesmen talked of "acts of genocide," but not genocide. Then-secretary of state Warren
Christopher carefully instructed his UN delegation that it was "not authorized to agree to the
characterization of any specific incident of genocide or to agree to any formulation that indicates that all
killings in Rwanda are genocide."

Yet even as this defense became untenable, the administration went out of its way to find excuses for
inaction. A proposal that Rwandan radio be jammed was denied on grounds that it would be a violation of free
speech. A proposal to send in a second UNAMIR mission fell afoul of US tactical objections: the UN wanted an
"inside-out" approach; the US insisted on "outside-in." An undertaking by Vice President Al Gore
to supply the mission with armored personnel carriers was delayed on account of cost considerations, and the
question of whether the APCs should be wheeled or tracked.

In the end, it all amounted to nothing. Only the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front brought the killing
to a halt, in June, by force of arms.

UPON READING Gourevitch's initial account of the genocide in The New Yorker, Bill Clinton circulated
copies of the article to his staff with notes like: "Is what he's saying true?" and "How did this happen?"
In fact, Clinton could not have failed to take notice of the genocide. The story was all over the press. In
the few days during which US Embassy personnel remained in Kigali as the killing unfolded, detailed
diplomatic dispatches were sent to the White House.

Secretary Christopher was kept well-abreast of developments via the work of interagency groups
and his own Africa specialists. So was ambassador Albright at the UN. Peacekeeping chief Kofi
Annan was kept informed via Dallaire. The Belgians had extensive contacts in their old colony.
All of them knew perfectly well what was happening. They chose - for reasons of political expediency,
international indifference or personal embarrassment -to look away.

As for Clinton's jotted questions, they were carefully planted deceits, though whether to himself
or to posterity I can hardly say. None of this is to say that there were not intellectually defensible
reasons for the West to stay out of Rwanda. But these reasons are neither legally nor morally
defensible once the Western world committed itself to preventing genocide. Annan had
foreknowledge that a genocide was going to take place,
but did nothing. Clinton and his officers had knowledge that a genocide was taking place, but did nothing.
The Belgians, who possessed the means on the ground to do something, not only abandoned their posts
instantly upon the death of 10 troops, but prevailed on the UN to go along.

[me : At least the Dutch governmnent had the intellectual honesty to accept indirect responsibility
for the massacre of 7,000 in Zbrecnica in 1990s .. they resigned a month ago... but no one is
talking about prosecuting them for crimes against humanity ]...

All of them bear a clear, if indirect responsibility for the genocide in Rwanda. Yet none of them, to my
knowledge, has drawn the "appropriate personal conclusions."
Only Israelis, it seems, are fools enough to do that.

2002-05-31T08:06:00.000-07:00

May 13, 2002
Exiled Palestinian militants ran two-year reign of terror
By Sayed Anwar
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Residents of this biblical city are expressing relief at the exile to Cyprus last week of 13 hard-core Palestinian militants, who they said had imposed a two-year reign of terror that included rape, extortion and executions.
The 13 sent to Cyprus, as well as 26 others sent to the Gaza Strip, had taken shelter in the Church of the Nativity, triggering a 39-day siege that ended Friday.
Palestinians who live near the church described the group as a criminal gang that preyed especially on Palestinian Christians, demanding "protection money" from the main businesses, which make and sell religious artifacts.
According to Bethlehem residents, one of the group's top leaders, Jihad Ja'ara, 29, traveled around town with an M-16 rifle, terrorizing the community.
"Finally the Christians can breathe freely," said Helen, 50, a Christian mother of four. "We are so delighted that these criminals who have intimidated us for such a long time are now going away."
Others feared new gunmen will capitalize on the group's disappearance and the pullout of Israeli troops.
"Will new gangs come in?" asked Samer, 33, from the Christian suburb of Beit Jala in Bethlehem. "The gunmen will start taking revenge on the weak, desperate people."
Residents also said that Mr. Ja'ara and another top leader, Ibrahim Abayat, took nine Muslims whom they suspected of collaborating with Israel into an apartment near Manger Square and fatally shot them.
The executions took place shortly before the April 2 gunbattle between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters that sent more than 200 Palestinians fleeing into the church, where they remained for 39 days.
Abayat, in a phone interview from inside the church while the siege was under way, said he was personally responsible for the killings.
He said there was no need for a trial because "it was a well-known fact that these people were linked to Israel."
Abayat and Mr. Ja'ara are now at a seaside hotel in Cyprus, waiting to be moved to an as-yet-unnamed European country, where many expect them to be set free.
The gang has said it is part of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militia linked to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat that has claimed responsibility for several recent suicide bombings in Israel.
Zuhair Hamdan, founder of the Movement for Coexistence in Jerusalem, was sitting on a chair outside his corner shop near Bethlehem in November when an official Palestinian Authority car drew up with a squeal of brakes.
From the back window a gunman, who Mr. Hamdan says was a member of the gang, emptied 12 bullets from a M-16 rifle, hitting him five times in the abdomen, legs and neck.
Mr. Hamdan was so close to death in the hospital that he now jokes, "They took my body to the cemetery but the cemetery rejected me."
Mr. Hamdan said seven members of the gang were involved. Five of the seven assailants have since died, at least one of them fatally shot by Israel during the recent church siege, he said.
"The remaining two gunmen are being kicked out of Bethlehem, but wherever they end up, someone will get to them and make them pay for all the awful things they've done," he said.
The gang apparently used its ready access to guns and close ties with Mr. Arafat's Palestinian security forces to extort money, run guns, smuggle drugs and even demand that young women separate from their husbands.
After one woman was reportedly raped by a gang member, the perpetrator was put in jail, but only briefly. His comrades reportedly forced the jailers to let him go.
The gang's hostility toward Christians extended to a 17-year-old altar boy fatally shot during an Israeli incursion in October.
A small stone monument the family erected in Johnny Talgieh's memory on the spot in Manger Square where he died was kicked and spat on by gang members, then toppled with ropes and cables and left smashed on the ground.
"They did not want to recognize that a Christian could be considered a [martyr]," said a family member, "even though having that statue there would have given the Palestinian cause a huge propaganda boost.
"They hate us Christians more than they love Palestine."
Even during the recent siege, gang members who had not fled into the church continued to demand their regular 10 shekels (about $2) from each taxi driver going in and out of a parking lot close to the compound.
One who refused, saying he had no cash, was reportedly beaten up last month.
The gang apparently operated under the full protection of Mr. Arafat's Fatah organization and Tanzim, its military wing.
During the 19-month uprising, they have often fired into the nearby Israeli suburb of Gilo from church grounds and the homes of Palestinian Christians in Beit Jala.
When Palestinian gunmen would show up at the door, Christian families often had no choice but to let their homes be used as sniper posts and face the consequences of Israeli retaliation.

2002-05-31T07:55:00.000-07:00

A Question of Blood
By Dan Gordon
The Jewish Journal
May 29, 2002
The circus of Palestinian victimhood has struck its tent temporarily in
Jenin, and gone to church instead in Bethlehem. The Jenin story has
petered out because the world, in general, now knows that there was no
massacre in Jenin. The world now knows that of the two estimates of the
death toll in the fighting which took place in the Jenin refugee camp, one
was true and one was false. The Palestinians originally claimed that 500
to 1,000 people had been massacred by the Zionist entity. The Israel
Defense Forces estimate was that the death toll was in the dozens, not in
the hundreds, and that the majority of those killed in the fighting were
gunmen, who had booby-trapped a civilian neighborhood in the hopes of
killing as many Israeli soldiers as possible. Today even Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International, two organizations that can certainly not
be said to be part of a pro-Israel cabal, have both now come to the
conclusion that no evidence exists that any massacre took place. The total
number of bodies recovered thus far is 56 by one account and 52 by
another, the overwhelming majority of which, they acknowledge, appear to
be combatants. Don¹t bother looking for an apology for that blood libel.
None will be forthcoming.

So Gen. Arafat, as he now calls himself, went instead to the Church of the
Nativity in Bethlehem and cried out to the international community to make
sure that the crime perpetrated by the Israelis against this holy place
would never happen again. Never mind that it was armed Palestinian gunmen
who stormed the church, terrorized priests, stole relics and, in one case,
ripped the crucifix off the neck of an Armenian cleric. Never mind that in
footage televised by CNN, albeit on one day only, the Israeli flares,
which the Palestinians claimed set fire to the Church of the Nativity, can
be clearly seen sailing harmlessly over the church on the right side of
the screen, while the fire itself has already been started inside the
church, on the left side of the screen. Don¹t expect any apology on that
one either.

There is, however, one thing to ponder before the circus sideshow moves on
completely. I was in the Jenin refugee camp on April 16. In addition to
noting that there was no smell of death in the camp and that the
booby-traps and anti-personnel bombs laid out by the Palestinian gunmen
were still very much in evidence, I heard a story, which I did indeed find
chilling. It was told to me by Dr. David Zangen, chief medical officer of
the Israeli paratroop unit, which bore the brunt of the fighting in Jenin.
Zangen stated that the Israelis not only worked to keep the hospital in
Jenin open, but that they offered the Palestinians blood for their
wounded.

The Palestinians refused it because it was Jewish blood.

That is a chilling story to an American of my age, with memories of white,
bigoted-racial purists refusing to accept blood from African Americans in
the segregated South.

The Israeli response, which could easily have been, "fine, have it you own
way," was to fly in 2,000 units of blood from Jordan, via helicopters, for
the Palestinians. In addition, they saw to it that 40 units of blood from
the Mukasad Hospital in East Jerusalem went to the hospital in Ramallah,
that 70 units got to the hospital in Tul Quarem and they facilitated the
delivery of 1,800 units of anti-coagulants that had come in from Morocco,
and thus, were somehow acceptable to the Palestinians where Jewish blood
was not. (This information was later confirmed to me by Col. Arik Gordin
[reserves] of the IDF Office of Military Spokesman, who supplied the exact
numbers of units of blood and anticoagulants and the names of the
hospitals to which they were delivered.)

So the question to ponder, before the circus leaves town, is how do you
negotiate with a hatred so great that it will refuse to accept your blood,
even to save its own people¹s lives? How does an international community
vilify a nation that offers its own blood to its enemies, while its own
soldiers lie dying, and that, when faced with race hatred that brands
their blood unfit, diverts military flights to bring blood more suitable
to the taste of those who would destroy them?

Dan Gordon is the author of five books and the screenwriter of such films
as "The Hurricane" and "Murder in the First." He is also a former sergeant
in the Israel Defense Forces and a peace activist who has held meetings
with Arab leaders in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza.