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(from A Treasury of Jewish Quotations, [Thomas Yoseloff, 1956])

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YERUSHALAYIM: THE CITY OF DAVID
Baruch Cohen

“For a small moment I have forsaken thee,
with great mercies shall I gather thee.”—Isaiah 54:7

The history of Yerushalayim is the history of man—of greatness, splendor, lofty ideals and of war and peace. Yerushalayim, with its record of some five thousand years, has been known and connected to more people for a longer time than any other place on earth.

Throughout the centuries of their dispersion, in whatever far corner of the earth they found themselves, the Jews prayed for their return to Zion, the Biblical synonym for Yerushalayim.

Houses of prayer, synagogues, wherever in the world they were built, were oriented towards the east—toward Yerushalayim—and the practice is followed to this day. History has no parallel to the mystic bond of the Jews with Yerushalayim. Without Yerushalayim, there would be no State of Israel. Yerushalayim is the soul of the Jewish people.

Yerushalayim is and will remain for all time the center of the Jewish nation, the capital of the restored State of Israel. L’shana haBaa B’Yerushalayim HaBnuya!

(Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman at CIJR.)

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PRIME MINISTER VOWS NEVER TO RE-DIVIDE CITY
Jonathan Lis
Ha’aretz, May 30, 2003

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon promised Thursday not to redivide Jerusalem at an official ceremony marking the 36th anniversary of the city's unification. "For 36 years, there have been no missiles in Jerusalem, the city has not been sown with minefields and no enemy has watched us and spit fire from the gun embrasures of its walls and towers," Sharon told the crowds gathered at the capital's Ammunition Hill, site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Six Day War.

"From a threatened and divided city, Jerusalem has become a bustling, thriving city. But the price was heavy and very painful. This fortified hill is soaked with blood. Its trenches and crevices were, in the wee hours of that terrible morning, the scene of a battle that will forever be inscribed for glory in the chronicles of Israel. Never again will gunfire be directed at it, never again will an enemy set foot on it.

"We are fighting ceaselessly against a cruel onslaught of terror aimed at undermining our determined hold on this city… Jerusalem is defended by walls made of the love of the nation of Israel throughout all its generations. It is defended by the clear and unequivocal policy of its government. We will never concede Jerusalem. Never. As [Israel’s] prime minister I am proud of the right to be Jerusalem's protector. I will carry out this sacred obligation unreservedly, and the people of Israel will carry it out unreservedly forever…"

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A LETTER FOR YOM YERUSHALAYIM
Natan Sharansky
Jerusalem Post, May 28, 2002

As the State of Israel s minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs, I feel deeply privileged to write this letter to you on the eve of one of our most meaningful holidays. Yom Yerushalayim, 27 Iyar…is a significant day in the lives of Israelis and Jews everywhere. Jerusalem has been the center of our national expression for over 3000 years. And ever since the destruction of our Temple over 1900 years ago, Jews throughout world have prayed three times each day for our return. And now, we have returned.

Jerusalem represents both the highest expression of our Jewish ideals and spirituality--and the strongest force for internal unity. Only when King David designated Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, did our people achieve a national identity. And only when King Solomon built the Temple in Jerusalem did our people find unified religious focus.

In our time, as well, we have witnessed this power of Jerusalem to unify the Jewish People. When our soldiers reached the Lions' Gate in their campaign to reunify Jerusalem, we very soon witnessed the crumbling of the Iron Curtain enabling the reunification of the Jewish People. Jews on both sides of that miserable barrier experienced an irrepressible surge of Jewish pride, unity and resolve. When Jerusalem is whole, the Jewish People are united.

Those of us fortunate enough to live in the capital of the sovereign Jewish State of Israel intensely feel its majesty and magic. Not one day passes without my taking a moment to try to fathom the miracle of our return. Yet few of my fellow Jews have visited Jerusalem, and even among those who have, fewer still come today. Nothing is more crucial to our unity, solidarity, and determination than Jews coming to Jerusalem to visit, if they cannot yet come to live here. Your presence here gives witness to the importance of our struggle. Your visit here gives testimony to our common destiny. We need your encouragement and your moral support…

On this Yom Yerushalayim we hope that each Jew who reads this message, and each Jew who holds Jerusalem and the future of the Jewish people dear to his or her heart, will resolve to visit us in Jerusalem at least once in the next year. "L'shana Haba b'Yerushalayim HaMeuchedet" ("Next year in united Jerusalem"). Until then, I hope to see you in Jerusalem throughout the coming year.

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers!

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Volume III, No. 638 • Thursday, May 29, 2003

THE ROAD TO A NUCLEAR IRAN
Caroline B. Glick
Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2003

As the world's media and foreign ministries have again trained their sights in on Israel and the Palestinians, a much more significant drama is being largely underplayed. At its meeting next month in Vienna, the International Atomic Energy Agency will address the recent confirmation of reports that Iran is now poised to produce nuclear weapons.

Since a consortium of Russian companies signed an $800 million deal in 1996 to build a 1,000-megawatt light water nuclear reactor for Iran in Bushehr, most efforts by the U.S. and Israel to stop the Iranian nuclear program have centered around applying pressure on the Russian government.

"The Iranians learned from Iraqi mistakes," says a senior Israeli intelligence official who is involved in efforts to monitor the Iranian nuclear program. The Iraqis worked 80 percent in secret and 20 percent in public on their nuclear program [which made] it possible to take action to prevent them from moving forward. “In contrast…Iran works 80 percent in public and 20 percent in secret [moving] forward publicly, lulling the international community into a sense of complacency that all the Iranians are building is a nuclear power plant. Then suddenly we discover that they are on the verge of producing nuclear bombs."

Last August, an Iranian rebel group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, showed that the Bushehr plant might very well be little more than a sideshow to the real Iranian nuclear program. The group's disclosure, which was later substantiated by satellite imagery, indicated that Iran secretly developed two other nuclear sites in Natanz and Arak…While Russian companies have been under constant Western intelligence surveillance, it appears that these two facilities have been built with intense and little noted Chinese, Pakistani, and North Korean assistance.

When satellite images taken after the group's disclosure backed up the allegations, IAEA director Muhammad el-Baradei requested permission from the Iranian government to inspect the sites last December. In what is itself a violation of the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory, the Iranian government delayed the inspection until February. The IAEA's inspections were limited to the Natanz facility due to Baradei's tight schedule. Visiting the Natanz plant, Baradei and his inspectors found a network of centrifuges for enriching uranium. At the time Baradei indicated that a pilot facility at the site was complete and that a large centrifuge enrichment plant was still under construction. [By] 2005 the Iranian government will be able to field several uranium-based nuclear weapons every year…

For their part, the Russians appear to be cooperating in the attempt to rein in the Iranians. Although they refuse to curtail their involvement with the Bushehr reactor, they have conditioned the operation of the Bushehr plant on Iranian agreement that the spent fuel rods from the reactor, which can be used to produce enriched plutonium, be returned to Russia. The Iranians have refused to sign on to the Russian proposal and as a result, although complete, the Bushehr plant is not operational.

As MK Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, notes, "The Iranian nuclear program is of course a strategic threat to Israel, but it is far from being only Israel's problem. The Iranians are now enhancing their ballistic missile capabilities to cover not only Israel but targets throughout Europe. A nuclear armed Iran, capable not only of bombing Israel, but of bombing Europe, will be a force of global instability and will significantly change the global balance of power."

[The] Bush administration is divided on how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. Hawks in the Pentagon are pushing for the U.S. to force the IAEA to find Iran in material breach of the NPT at its meeting next month. Such a finding would open the Iranian nuclear program to UN Security Council scrutiny that could lead to UN-sanctioned military action similar to the actions taken by the Security Council against Iraq in 1990. At the very least, it could have salutary effects on the U.S.'s thus far unsuccessful bid to force Europe to cut economic ties with the mullocracy.

For its part, the State Department…has recommended traveling a less contentious path that involves "engaging" the Iranian government in an "unofficial" dialogue that has been taking place over the past several months in Geneva under UN supervision. At these meetings, the Iranian officials have denied that they are pursuing nuclear weapons just as they refused to accept that Hizbullah is a terrorist organization, denied supporting terrorism, and pretended they are not harboring al-Qaida commanders. That is, these unofficial negotiations with the Iranians…have been characterized by complete Iranian duplicity. At the same time, by soft-pedaling the Iranian threat, the State Department is paving the way for a failure at the IAEA meeting next month. Speaking to Reuters, a Western diplomatic official in Vienna said last week that Baradei is expected merely to note that there are "inconsistencies" in the Iranian nuclear program that need to be explained.

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week, former FBI director Louis Freeh addressed the issue of the Iranian threat to U.S. national security. Calling Hizbullah "the exclusive terrorist agent of the Islamic Republic of Iran," he criticized the Clinton administration for refusing to apply pressure on Iran after the FBI found that its security services stood behind the 1996 Hizbullah bombing of the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia… Then, too, the U.S. has accused Teheran of sheltering top al-Qaida terrorists like Said Adel, the network's security chief, and Osama bin Laden's son Saad. Washington further alleges that al-Qaida operatives in Iran directed the May 12 terror attacks against U.S. targets in Riyadh. [The] Iranians also control the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, finance Hamas, and since the Karine-A weapons sale to the PA was concluded in late 2001, Iranian intelligence authorities have been backing and instructing Fatah terror cells as well.

In the aftermath of the May 12 attacks, the State Department suspended its dialogue with the Iranian government and raised its rhetoric against the Iranian regime. [Yet] the State Department has been spending its energy not playing up the IAEA meeting next month, but in pressuring Israel to accept its road map to establish a Palestinian state by 2005 just in time for the Iranians to declare that they are vacating their signature to the NPT and possess a nuclear arsenal capable of hitting targets in Israel and Europe.

In a conversation with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon earlier in the week, U.S. President George W. Bush reportedly said he is convinced that PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas is committed to reforming the PA and fighting terrorism. And yet, the day after this conversation, Abbas himself told the Egyptian press that as far as he is concerned, PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, and not he, remains the head of the PA. In Abbas's words, "Arafat is at the top of the [Palestinian] Authority. He's the man to whom we refer, regardless of the American or Israeli view of him."…

In an article in The Atlantic Monthly published in August 1992, Robert Kaplan discussed how it came to pass that the U.S. government was caught unawares when Saddam Hussein marched his army into Kuwait in August 1990… Saddam's 1988 gassing of 5,000 Kurds met with little backlash from Washington, as Arabists in the State Department were given more or less free rein regarding U.S. policy towards Iraq… Kaplan noted, "The only Middle East issue that really energized [U.S. secretary of state James] Baker was…the Arab-Israeli question." Together with his senior policy aides Dennis Ross and Dan Kurtzer, Baker poured all his energy and leverage into pressuring then prime minister Yitzhak Shamir's government to open negotiations with PLO-backed Palestinians… Baker failed to take note of what Saddam was planning for Kuwait. This, in spite of the fact that in April 1990, four months before the invasion, Chas Freeman, then U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, warned specifically that Saddam was likely to invade Kuwait.

For anyone with eyes to see, it is clear that Abbas's ascension to power in the PA is a farce. The new wave of massacres in Israel and Abbas's declared allegiance to Arafat and Hamas are simply expressions of the obvious: Abbas is not a trustworthy interlocutor and by supporting his sham of reform, the U.S. is supporting the terrorist organizations murdering Israelis as well as their state supporters in Teheran.

There is an old joke about a man groping around on the street at night. His friend approaches him and asks him what he is doing. "I'm looking for my keys," he responds. "Did you drop them here?" his friend asks. "No, I dropped them in the alley across the way. But there's no light in the alley, so I'm looking for them here." The prime danger to U.S. national security lies in Teheran. The key to the global Islamic terror nexus…is found in the dark allies of Teheran, not in the well lit streets of Jerusalem. Rather than pressuring an ally to reward Teheran's terrorist friends, the U.S. should be using all its leverage throughout the world to prevent the ayatollahs from acquiring nuclear weapons.

The price the U.S. paid in 1990 for ignoring Saddam Hussein in favor of pressuring Israel was the Gulf War. The price it will pay for repeating the mistake with Iran will be a nuclear nightmare.

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TURN UP THE RHETORIC ON IRAN
David Warren
National Post, May 28, 2003

It is now emerging from intelligence sources that the reason the United States was able to give Saudi Arabia the heads-up it ignored on the terror bombings in Riyadh, is because the CIA had been intercepting communications between al-Qaeda operatives in Arabia and Iran. The hits themselves helped to clarify co-ordinates; and there is thus little doubt remaining in American minds that Iran is sheltering senior al-Qaeda leaders. The ayatollahs are most likely trying to integrate surviving al-Qaeda resources with those of Hezbollah, their own main horse in terror international.

I read some hint of that into the strange remarks made by the Syrian President (Syria is Iran's closest ally), to the effect that al-Qaeda no longer exists. He spoke rhetorically, as if al-Qaeda had been a figment of George Bush's paranoid imagination all along; but Bashir Assad, who is not very intelligent, has a track record for unconsciously spilling beans. Meanwhile, in an event which deserved much greater media coverage, the Israelis last Thursday intercepted a third ship delivering arms to Gaza. The Abu Hassan was in the Mediterranean, outbound from Lebanon with a major Hezbollah arms expert on board. There were Iranian fingerprints all over the mission.

Iranian opposition sources have helped identify two new uranium enrichment facilities, previously undisclosed to the IAEA, west of Tehran. A string of other sites are suspected. These are the latest indications of the Iranian regime's North-Korea-like obsession with speeding up its nuclear program, on the theory that once you have nuclear bombs there is nothing the Americans can do to hurt you…

We know that the U.S. State Department has broken off discreet talks with the Iranian regime… Over the Memorial Day weekend, various agencies were directed by the U.S. National Security Council to find answers urgently to a series of intelligence and policy questions; and a major White House review of Iran policy is in progress. It would appear a more aggressively confrontational U.S. position is coming; and that a tacit decision has already been made, to give up on diplomacy with Iran--whether through back channels or publicly with the powerless foreign ministry, nominally under the direction of the elected President, Mohammed Khatami. Ayatollah Khatami's role towards the end of the Islamist revolution in Iran [is] to be the pretty face, "shaking hands with everything that sticks out horizontally" in the words of one Iranian commentator… Khatami has no domestic credibility left…

The United States is not going to invade Iran, however. I am aware of not even one hawk in the Pentagon who wants to do that, to say nothing of the fey State Department. The consensus of policy wonks left and right is that invading Iran would be a foolish idea; and on the right, that "regime change" can be accomplished without this.

Nor even does Michael Ledeen want to invade. He is the "neoconservative" journalist, historian, and think-tanker [who] wants the Bush administration to speed things along, by kicking away a few more of the struts that support the regime, while providing the students in Iran's ragingly pro-Western campus underground with something more resembling material support. And as the Americans are still learning from their remarkably successful Iraq incursion, external threats can in themselves undermine and discombobulate a regime that is in fear of its own people. It is among the chief reasons the Saddamites became frozen in the headlights with the approach of war. Therefore, turn up the rhetoric.

Mr. Ledeen is the best informed Western journalist on the situation in Iran… His view, and mine, is that the Iranian people are, unlike the Iraqis, capable of taking down their monstrous regime themselves. As in other Asian societies, the students are the vanguard of a whole oppressed people. They are the proxies of their elders, they come from the more "advantaged" families, and by their demonstrations show that even those who endure the least material suffering want the dictatorship overthrown.

July 9 is when the pot next approaches boil-over. That will be the third anniversary of the first major student insurrection. Each year the demonstrations reach crescendo on that date, and my own Iranian correspondents hope that this is the year the lid comes off.

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Volume III, No. 637 • Wednesday, May 28, 2003

WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP

WEEKLY QUOTES

“The decision…was as difficult as crossing the Red Sea.”—Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, describing his government’s 12-7 cabinet vote to approve the U.S.-backed road map. [Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that in granting qualified approval to the road map peace plan, the cabinet had not ratified a binding legal document, but rather presented a “declaration of diplomatic intentions.”] (Associated Press, May 26; Jerusalem Post, May 26)

“We are not occupiers. This is the homeland of the Jewish people.”—P.M. Ariel Sharon, who earlier this week caused an uproar for using the word ‘occupation’ to describe Israeli rule over Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, backtracked from his remarks, explaining that what he had meant was that it is “not desirable to rule over another people.” [P.M. Sharon noted that Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein had rebuked him for using this term, pointing out that the legal position adopted by all Israeli governments since 1967 is that the West Bank and Gaza are “disputed territories” rather than “occupied territories”.] (Jer. Post, May 28)

“If you compare the current Likud to the Labor party’s forerunner, the Mapai, during the time of Golda Meir [prime minister from 1969-74], you’ll see that Golda’s Mapai was more nationalist, more determined, and more prepared to stand up for what’s ours than the Likud of today.”—M.K. Uzi Landau, reflecting the viewpoint of many from within P.M. Sharon’s own Likud party. Landau lobbed scathing criticism against the prime minister for his conditional approval of the road map, and also said that he would not have believed he would hear such a statement [the prime minister’s usage of the term ‘occupation’] coming from a right-wing, hawkish icon, like Ariel Sharon. (Ha’aretz, May 28)

“At this price, the left would have brought peace long ago. There’s no compromise here. It gives up everything. Even leaving the settlements in our hands will be difficult. [Israel’s 14 reservations] will end up like autumn leaves. It is far worse than Oslo.”—M.K. David Levy, a Likud stalwart who moved leftward into Ehud Barak’s government and who later returned to the Likud, saying that the road map document was one of the “worst things ever to be faced by Israel”. (Ha’aretz, May 28)

“I don’t want to judge Sharon by what he says or by what’s said about him. I know him inside and out. I’ll believe him only when he implements the road map. The implementation is the only test as far as I’m concerned… We do not accept each side picking and choosing only those specific elements that are convenient for them in the road map… We cannot accept relinquishing the right of return… This does not mean we want to destroy the State of Israel—we recognize it in the borders drawn by [UN Resolution] 242…”—P.A. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who said that he had received word from the Americans that the peace plan would not be reworked, emphasized that Israel’s stated 14 reservations to the plan “do not interest” him. (New York Times, May 25; Ha’aretz, May 28)

“I will not step down, but will die as a martyr. The struggle against occupation is legitimate and I mean ‘soldiers of the occupation’. It is inadmissible to kill a child or a woman in a restaurant or a café.”—P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat, categorically rejecting the possibility of his resignation. (Arab News, May 26)

“…This can be a hopeful moment in the Middle East… The Palestinians have a new leader who is dedicated to reform, P.M. Sharon has accepted the road map and the two-state solution. And this President…is determined to see if this can be the right moment to get the parties to move forward… I think the biggest difference is Yasser Arafat is not party to the current discussions. It was Yasser Arafat who did the most to destroy the prospects of an agreement being reached when it was very close to being reached.”—White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, responding to a question on how President Bush’s Mideast efforts differ from those of President Bill Clinton. (White House Press Office, May 27)

“Indeed, Iran should be on notice: Efforts to try to remake Iraq in Iran’s image will be aggressively put down.”—U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, also suggested that Iraq might have destroyed illicit weapons just prior to the commencement of the war. [Senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Joseph Cirincione, charged that “they don’t have a good explanation for (not having found unconventional weapons), and therefore are trying to come up with as long a list as possible. But it’s impossible to destroy or hide the quantities the administration said they had without noticing it.”] (Nat’l. Post, May 28)

“Is there really an entity called al-Qaeda? Was it in Afghanistan? Does it exist now? [Osama bin Laden] cannot talk on the phone or use the Internet, but he can direct communications to the four corners of the world? This is illogical. America is happy with Syria and the Arab countries when Israel is happy with them. Israel is a state that occupies our land and we are required to take its interests into account? What logic is that?”—Syrian President Bashar Assad, who said he doubts the existence of al-Qaeda, denied that his country was harbouring terrorists and members of Iraq’s ousted regime. (A.P., May 26)

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SHORT TAKES

BUSH TO MEET ABU MAZEN AND SHARON—(Washington) The White House announced today that President George W. Bush will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas next week. Bush will first talk with Arab leaders in Egypt, and then will hold a summit with Sharon and Abbas in the Jordanian port city of Aqaba. The announcement came as the Palestinians, amid a power struggle between Abbas and P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat, postponed a meeting between Abbas and Sharon that had been scheduled for today. While the U.S. administration tried to minimize the significance of the postponement, Arafat told the PLO's executive committee that he wanted to review security proposals with Abbas. (A.P., May 28)

ABBAS SEEKS TO OUST ARAFAT’S NEPHEW—(New York) Palestinian P.M. Mahmoud Abbas is trying to oust P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat’s nephew from his post as chief Palestinian representative at the UN. Nasser al-Kidwa has been Palestinian “observer” since 1991, promoting the hard-line stances of his uncle, including lobbying for a UN peacekeeping force to be sent to the West Bank and Gaza, and calling for Israelis to be indicted by the UN’s international war crimes court. Al-Kidwa was seen last week having angry words with Terje Roed-Laresen, the UN’s special representative for the Middle East. The impassioned exchange was a result of Mr. Larsen’s address to the Security Council, in which he offered uncharacteristic praise of Israeli P.M. Ariel Sharon for his having “repeatedly endorsed the two-state solution”. (Nat’l. Post, May 28)

NAVY SEIZES HIZBULLAH ARMS BOAT—(Rosh Hanikra) Naval commandos intercepted an Egyptian fishing trawler loaded with bomb components and bombmaking instructions prepared by Hizbullah, heading for the Gaza Strip from Lebanon last week. Security officials say there is a clear link between Hizbullah and two men linked to P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat: deputy Naval Police chief Fathi Razam, considered a close confidant of Arafat who decides on weapons-smuggling routes, and Adel Almairibi, in charge of weapons smuggling for the Palestinian Authority. Razam and Almairibi were involved in the Karine A episode of January 2002, in which a ship was intercepted with 50 tons of weapons destined for the P.A. (Jer. Post, May 23)

ISRAEL CHAIRS DISARMAMENT PARLEY—(Geneva) Calling for ''dialogue, recognition and acceptance,'' Ya’akov Levy, permanent representative of Israel to the UN Office in Geneva, opened the annual Conference on Disarmament, marking the first time Israel has headed a major inter-governmental forum. In protest, several Muslim countries sent lower-level representatives to the meeting, and two delegations sat in the gallery instead of behind their country’s nameplates, but no one walked out. The presidency of the conference rotates each month among the 66 member states. (Reuters; Jewish Telegraphic Agency, May 27)

JORDAN FEARS RELIGIOUS WAR OVER JEWISH TEMPLE MOUNT—(Amman) Jordan today warned the Israeli government against allowing Jews to pray on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, saying such a step could lead to a "devastating religious war." Abdullah Kana'an, chairman of the Jordanian Royal Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, was responding to plans broached by Israeli cabinet ministers to open the Temple Mount to Jewish worshippers. He said the Israeli move was "designed to back the Jews' alleged right to the Mosque by turning part of it into a synagogue in the run-up to rebuilding their alleged Temple." Under the provisions of the 1994 peace treaty between Jordan and Israel, Jordan continues to have a role in protecting Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem. (Ha’aretz, May 28)

AL-JAZEERA TV FIRES CHIEF OVER SPY-LINK TO IRAQ—(Dubai) The satellite television company al-Jazeera has fired its chief executive, Mohammed Jassem al-Ali, who was named in documents procured by a British newspaper in Baghdad that appear to link him with Saddam Hussein's intelligence services, the Mukhabarat. The papers allege contacts between agents and three members of al-Jazeera staff. Jihad Ballout, a senior company official, said Mr. Jassem Al-Ali would remain on the board of directors. Other papers found among abandoned ministries and palaces indicate that Iraqi intelligence had intervened to prevent the broadcast of footage of the 1988 gas attacks on the Kurdish town of Halabjah. (N.Y. Post, Independent, May 28)

U.S. STILL CRITICAL OF IRAN, DESPITE AL QAEDA ARRESTS—(Washington) The Bush administration said yesterday it received word that Iran has arrested several al Qaeda members, but the actions fail to ease American concerns about Iranian support for terror. Administration officials say it is unclear how many al Qaeda members were arrested and whether they include any top operatives that some believe function with Iranian acquiescence. The arrests also fail to meet the demands that al Qaeda operatives be handed over to Saudi Arabia or other authorities investigating the bombing of three foreign compounds in Riyadh this month. Despite the tough tone, officials say that a high-level meeting to decide steps against the Tehran government has been postponed. The White House also took a tough position on Iran's nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes only. (N.Y.T., May 28)

MONTREAL ‘SLEEPER AGENT’ DENIES TERRORIST LINKS—(Montreal) A Moroccan karate instructor arrested in Montreal last week is a sleeper agent in the Osama bin Laden network who could be activated at any time to carry out a terrorist attack, according to a Canadian intelligence report released yesterday. The dossier claims that Adil Charkaoui, who was also a graduate student at the Université de Montréal, trained at bin Laden’s camps in Afghanistan in 1998 and is allegedly tied to the Montreal-based cell associated with Ahmed Ressam, who tried to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999. (Nat’l. Post, May 28)

CANADIAN MP NOMINATES INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT FOR NOBEL PEACE PRIZE—(Ottawa) New Democratic Party member of Parliament Sven Robinson has nominated the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize. In particular, Robinson singles out Brian Avery and Tom Hurndal, who survived sniper fire while “defending Palestinian civilians from Israeli troops,” and Rachel Corrie, the American student who was crushed to death by an IDF bulldozer. According to a report by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), the ISM is, according to its own website, a Palestinian-led movement that recognizes "the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle." For example, in a January 2002 article for Palestine Journal, ISM founders Adam Shapiro and his Palestinian-American wife Huwaida Arraf wrote that non-violent activities should take place in addition to (not in place of) armed resistance, because the non-violent activities are good for public relation purposes. They also characterized suicide operations as “noble.” (Office of M.P. Sven Robinson, May 2; CAMERA Alert, May 27)

MONTREAL HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS HOLD CEREMONY TO OPEN MUSEUM—(Montreal) The Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre on Tuesday dedicated its new museum to the memory of the six million Jews killed under Nazi rule. The museum, which officially opens on June 30, is believed to be Canada's only site dedicated solely to the Holocaust. The most emotional moment of the day came as survivors placed an urn of ashes from Auschwitz into the museum's Memorial Room. Curator Yitzchak Mais said the museum is designed to reflect Jewish culture and history in Europe before the war, the political context and horrors of the war itself, and how the 25,000 survivors who immigrated to Montreal rebuilt their lives. (The Canadian Press, May 28)

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Volume III, No. 636 • Tuesday, May 27, 2003

MIDDLE EAST TRAGEDIES:
PRESSING AHEAD IS OUR ONLY CHOICE
Victor Davis Hanson
National Review, May 23, 2003

The images are jarring, the hypocrisies appalling, the rhetoric repulsive. Only in the Arab Middle East--and the Islamic world in general--are suicide-murderers operating and indeed canonized, even blessed with cash bonuses. An inveterate liar like Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf is lauded for his defense of a mass killer like Saddam Hussein--and at last lampooned not on moral grounds, but because his yarns about thousands of dead Marines are finally exposed by the sound of American tanks rumbling his way. The last gassings in the modern world--Nasser's in Yemen and Saddam's in Kurdistan and Iran--were all Mideastern; so are promises of virgins in exchange for bombing women and children.

Pick up any newspaper and the day's bombings, killings, and terror are most likely to have occurred somewhere in the Islamic world. The big, silly lie--Jews caused 9/11, the U.S. used atomic weapons against Iraq, Americans bombed mosques--has been a staple of Middle East popular culture. The hatred of Jews is open, unapologetic, and mostly unrivaled on the world stage since the Third Reich.

I think the American street--and as we have learned in the case of anger toward the French, there surely is such a thing--has finally thrown up its hands with Arab ingratitude. Egyptian, Jordanian, and Palestinian recipients of billions of dollars in American aid routinely reply by trashing the U.S., whether in the street, through government publications, or via public declarations in Arab and European capitals.

In embarrassed response, we are tossed the old bone by their corrupt leaders--"Ignore what we say publicly and look instead privately at what we do." Arab apologists claim that triangulating with and backing off from the only democracy in the region would win back their good graces; but we know that such perfidy toward Israel would only win us contempt, as we were shown to be not merely opportunistic, but weak and scared into the bargain as well.

Shiites, once murdered en masse by Saddam Hussein, now turn on the American and British liberators who alone in the world could do what they could not. Iraqis, freed by us from their own home-grown murderers, in thanks now blame us for not stopping them from robbing themselves. Our citizens are routinely blown to pieces in Saudi Arabia or shot down in Jordan, even as we are told that Americans--after losing 3,000 of their citizens to Islamist killers--are not being nice to Arab students and visitors because we require security checks on them and occasionally tail those with suspicious backgrounds. Egyptians march and shout threats to America and the West--and then whine that thousands in Cairo and Luxor are out of work because most over here take them seriously, and choose to pass on having such unhinged people escort them around the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings. Have all these people gone mad?

The world is watching all this, and it is not pretty. After talking to a variety of foreigners who do not necessarily share the American point of view, I conclude that South Americans, Europeans, Asians, and Africans don't much like what they see in the Middle East--and blame those over there, not us, for the old mess.

The general causes of these Middle Eastern pathologies have been well diagnosed since September 11, ad nauseam. The Arab world has no real consensual governments; statism and tribalism hamper market economics and ensure stagnation. Sexual apartheid, Islamic fundamentalism, the absence of an independent judiciary, and a censored press all do their part to ensure endemic poverty, rampant corruption, and rising resentment among an exploding population…

Class, family, money, and connections--rarely merit--bring social advancement and prized jobs. The trickle-down of oil money masks the generic failure for a while, but ultimately undermines diversification and sound development in the economy--as well as accentuating a crass inequality. Autocracies forge a devil's bargain with radical Islamists and their epigones of terrorist killers, from al Qaeda to Hezbollah, to deflect their efforts away from Arab regimes and onto Americans and Israelis. All the talk of a once-glorious Baghdad, an Arab Renaissance in the 13th century, or a few Aristotelian texts kept alive in Arabic still cannot hide the present dismal reality--and indeed is being forgotten because of it.

Millions in the Arab street now enjoy merely the patina of Western culture--everything from cell phones, the Internet, and videos--but without either the freedom or material security that create the conditions that produce these and thousands of other such appurtenances. The result is that appetites and frustrations alike arise faster than they can be satisfied with available wealth--or constrained by the strictures of traditional and ever-more-fanatical Islam. Americans now accept all this--and snicker at the old Marxist and neocolonialist exegeses that the British, the Americans, the French--or little green men on Mars--are responsible for the Middle East mess.

Illegitimate governments--whether Arab theocracies, monarchies, dictatorships, or corrupt oligarchies--rely on state police and their labyrinth of torture and random execution to stifle dissent. Filtered popular frustration is directed toward Israel and the United States--as the martyrs of the West Bank are the salve for anger over everything from dirty water to expensive food. Millions of Muslims collectively murdered by Saddam Hussein, Milosevic, the Taliban, the Assads, Qaddafi, and an array of autocrats from Algeria to the Gulf seem to count as nothing. Persecuted and often stateless Muslims without a home in Kurdistan or Bosnia gain little sympathy--unless the Jews can be blamed. It is not who is killed, nor how many--but by whom: One protester in the West Bank mistakenly shot by the IDF earns more wrath in the Arab calculus than 10,000 butchered by Saddam Hussein or the elder Assad.

Before 9/11, the West in a variety of ways had been complicit in all this tragedy, and either ignored the alarming symptoms--or, worse still, aided and abetted the disease. Oil companies and defense contractors winked at bribery and knew well enough that the weapons and toys they sold to despots only impoverished these sick nations and brought the dies irae ever closer. "If we don't, the French surely will" was the mantra when bribery, Israeli boycotts, and questionable weapons sales were requisite for megaprofits.

Paleolithic diplomats--as if the professed anti-Communism of the old Cold War still justified support for authoritarians--were quiet about almost everything from Saudi blackmail payments to terrorists and beheadings to mass jailings, random murder, and disfigurement of women. Political appeasement--from Reagan's failure to hit the Bekka Valley after the slaughter of U.S. Marines, to Clinton's pathetic responses to murdered diplomats, bombings, and the leveling of embassies--only emboldened Arab killers.

Judging magnanimity as decadence, the half-educated in al Qaeda embraced pseudo-Spenglerian theories of a soft and decadent West unable to tear itself away from thong-watching and Sunday football. Largess in the halls of power in New York and Washington played a contemptible role too--as ex-ambassadors, retired generals, and revolving-door lawyers created fancy names, titles, and institutes to conceal what was really Gulf money thrown on the table for American influence.

On the left, multiculturalists and postcolonial theorists were even worse, promulgating the relativist argument that there was no real standard by which to assess third-world criminality. And by mixing a cocktail of colonial guilt and advocacy about the soi-disant "other," they helped to create a politically-correct climate that left us ill-prepared for the hatred of the madrassas. Arab monsters like Saddam Hussein sensed that there would always be useful idiots in the West to march on their behalf if it came to a choice between a third-world killer and a democratic U.S. More fools in the universities alleged that oppression, exploitation, and inequality alone caused Arab anger--even as well-off, educated, and pampered momma's boys like Mohamed Atta pulled out their Korans, put on headbands, and then blew us and themselves to smithereens, still babbling about unclean women in the last hours before their rendezvous in Hell.

So the general symptomology, diagnosis, and bleak prognosis of this illness in the Middle East are now more or less agreed upon; the treatment, however, is not. Arab intellectuals--long corrupted by complicity with criminal regimes, and perennial critics of American foreign policy--now suddenly look askance at democracy, if jump-started by the United States. American academics, who once decried our support for the agents of oppression, now decry our efforts to remove them and allow something better.

What in God's name, then, are we to do with this nonsense? We seek military action and democratic reform hand-in-glove to end Islamic rogue states and terrorist enclaves--not because such audacious measures are our first option (appeasement, neglect, and complicity in the past were preferable), but because they are the last. Go ahead and argue over the improbability of democracy in the Middle East. Reckon the horrendous costs and unending commitment. Cite the improper parallels with Germany and Japan until you are blue in the face. Stammer on that Baghdad will never be a New England town hall.

Maybe, maybe not. But at least consider the alternatives.

Hitting and then running? Did that in Iraq in 1991--and Shiites and Kurds hated us before dying in droves; Kuwaitis soon forgot our sacrifice, and we spent $30 billion and 350,000 air sorties to patrol the desert skies for 12 years. Afghans gave no praise for our help in routing the Soviets, but plenty of blame for leaving when the threat was over.

Establish bases and forget nation-building? Did that too once, everywhere from Libya to Saudi Arabia, and we still got a madman in Tripoli and 60,000 royal third cousins in Riyadh.

Turn the other cheek and say, "What's a few American volunteers killed in Lebanon or the Sudan when the stock market is booming and Starbucks is sprouting up everywhere?" Did that also, and we got 9/11.

Pour in money? Did that for a quarter-century; but I don't see that the street in Amman or Cairo is much appreciative about freebies, from tons of American wheat to Abrams tanks.

Get tough with Israel? Taking 39 scuds, pulling out of Lebanon, offering 97 percent of the West Bank, and putting up with Oslo got them the Intifada and female suicide bombers.

The fact is that the only alternative after September 11 was the messy, dirty, easily caricatured path that Mr. Bush has taken us down. For all the reoccurring troubles in Afghanistan, for all the looting and lawlessness in the month after the brilliant military victory in Iraq, and for all the recent explosions in restaurants, synagogues, and hotels--we are still making real progress.

Two years ago the most awful regimes since Hitler's Germany were the Taliban and the Hussein despotism. Both are now gone, and something better will yet emerge in their place. The American military has not proven merely lethal, but unpredictable and a little crazy into the bargain--as if our generals, when told to go to Baghdad or Kabul, nod yes and smile: "Hell, what are they going to do anyway, blow up the World Trade Center?"

Two years ago the world's most deadly agent was an Arab terrorist; now it is an American with a laptop and an F-18 circling above with a pod of GPS bombs.

Two years ago nuts in caves talked about Americans who were scared to fight; now the world is worried because we fight too quickly and too well. There are no more videos of Osama bin Laden strutting with his cell phone trailing sycophantic psychopaths. Yasser Arafat is no longer lord of the Lincoln bedroom, but shuffles around his own self-created moonscape.

Two years ago Syria and Lebanon were considered sacrosanct hideouts that we dared not enter--or so a sapling ophthalmologist from Syria threatened us. Today we tell the custodians of terror there to clean it up or we will--and assume that eventually we must.

Two years ago--and I speak from experience--faulting our corrupt relationship with Saudi Arabia brought mostly abuse from hacks in suits and ties in Washington and New York; now defending that status quo is more likely to incur public odium.

Two years ago the Cassandra-like trio of Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, and Fouad Ajami were considered outcasts by disingenuous but influential Middle Eastern Studies departments; now they--not the poseurs in university lounges and academic conferences--are heeded by presidents and prime ministers.

No, we are making progress because we have sized up the problem, know the solution--and have the guts to press ahead. No one claimed all this would be easy or welcome. But like Roman senators of old with each hand on a fold of the toga, we offer choices. We hope that there are still enough people of good will and sobriety in the Middle East to rid themselves of the terrorist killers, and thus select a freely offered, Western-style democracy over the 1st Marine Division, a 1,000-plane sky, and some 30 acres of floating tarmac.

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Volume III, No. 635 • Monday, May 26, 2003

ISRAEL AND THE ROAD MAP

PRIME MINISTER ARIEL SHARON:
'OCCUPATION' OF PALESTINIANS IS 'TERRIBLE'
Jerusalem Post, May 26, 2003

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon delivered an impassioned defense of his support for the U.S.-backed road map peace plan on Monday, calling the occupation of Palestinians in the territories, "terrible" for Israel. In remarks to Likud Party members who assailed the cabinet decision made Sunday to back the plan…Sharon retorted: "There is nobody here to whom the homeland means more than it does to me…I don't know if we shall succeed, but I shall make every effort to reach a political settlement…"

He said there would be no let down in Israel's war on terror, and that if terror attacks continue to be launched against Israel, "the Palestinians won't get anything." But, Sharon said "…to maintain 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation, is terrible for Israel, the Palestinians and for the Israeli economy… If there is security and quiet, along with the measures we are taking, there will be investment in Israel and growth… Whoever thinks we have surrendered to terrorism, Israel has not, Israel fights terrorism day and night."…

____________________________________________________

AN INAUSPICIOUS START
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, May 26, 2003

The cabinet decision to endorse the road map is being billed as an historic moment. It was. For the first time, the Israeli government has formally committed itself to the formation of a Palestinian state on this side of the Jordan river. Ten years ago this September, there was another, much more festive historic moment--the signing of Oslo's Declaration of Principles by Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat, and Bill Clinton on the White House lawn. That moment too seemed pregnant with possibility for some, with trepidation for others.

How is this moment different? What should be done to ensure that this moment turns out better than the last one? That moment also followed American victories, first in the Cold War, then in evicting Iraq from Kuwait. Then, like now, there was a sense that the defeat of forces most opposed to peace--Iraq, the PLO, and the Soviet bloc--provided a window of opportunity for peacemaking.

This time, Saddam Hussein has not just been defeated, but ousted from power in a war dedicated to that objective. This time, Saddam's ouster is not an isolated act, but a battle in a wider war against the terror network of which he was one part. This time, the signatory of the last agreement, Yasser Arafat, has been revealed to be addicted to terrorism and the principle obstacle to any settlement. The regional context of this moment, in other words, is arguably even more promising than a decade ago. Whether this regional climate is translated into a successful peace process depends on whether the lessons of the past decade of failure are learned.

Much will be made of the reservations that the cabinet passed in conjunction with its endorsement of the road map. Yet none of Israel's basic reservations alters the basic destination of that document: a Palestinian state. A document that did not contain so many flaws and yet endorsed a Palestinian state would have passed by an even larger majority than 12 to 7 (with 4 abstentions). The remarkable thing then, is not the reservations, but that a government so right-wing that Ariel Sharon sits on its left flank decided to back Palestinian statehood by a solid majority.

The conventional wisdom will be that it is this government, as much as the Palestinians, that threatens the prospects of the road map successfully reaching its declared destination: two states living side by side in a stable, secure peace. The road map was constructed according to such a conventional balance of blame. This is its primary weakness and threat to its success. The greatest problem with the road map is not where it is going, but where it came from.

Since the Six Day War of 1967, Middle East peacemaking has been built on the idea that Israeli reluctance to give up territory is the principle obstacle to peace. Since the current Palestinian offensive began, this formula has been changed by shifting some of the blame to the Palestinian side. Rather than completely blaming Israel, an equation has been created: Israel must give up land (and stop settlements), the Palestinians must stop terrorism. These models have failed because they were attempts to ignore reality. The reality always was, and continues to be, that the "Arab-Israeli conflict" is not about the land Israel took in order to survive, but the repeated Arab attempts to destroy Israel in its entirety.

The insistence that Israel at least share the blame for being under attack is not just a matter of unfairness. Unfairness per se is not pleasant, but it does not matter. What matters is that the readiness to blame Israel has taken the Arab world off the hook, and has been a key force in the legitimization of terrorism. In September 2000, for example, the Palestinians even used terror to reduce their share of the blame in the conflict. Just two months before, at Camp David, Arafat had rejected Israel's offer of a state over almost the entire territory in dispute, including the redivision of Jerusalem. When the Palestinians launched their offensive, far from compounding the blame on them for scuttling peace, Israel became a pariah again.

The Palestinians have learned time and again that terror works. It is for this reason that, even in our post-September 11 world, they are so reluctant to stop it. This cycle can only be broken by a radical changing of the rules. U.S. President George W. Bush's June 24 speech did this by, for the first time, conditioning Palestinian statehood on Palestinian behavior a new leadership, a crackdown on terror, and democratization.

The road map undid this by once again shifting the burden back toward Israel. It did this not just structurally, but through its birth: by the U.S., Europe, Russia, and the UN with almost no Israeli role, as if a peace process by definition must be imposed upon Israel as much as the Palestinians.

Israel's endorsement of the road map presents the U.S. with an opportunity to correct this pattern. Though much importance is being attached to the road map, it is more of an empty vessel than is usually understood. If the U.S. continues to try to prove its evenhandedness by pressuring Israel, and if it continues to shave off its expectations of the Palestinians (as has already happened with the demand for “new leadership”), the road map will fall into the same dust bin as its many failed predecessors. If, however, the U.S. changes tack and places the primary burden on the Arab world to dismantle the edifice of enmity it has built so deep and so high, there is a chance that this inauspicious start could be salvaged.

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TEXT OF ISRAEL'S 14 COMMENTS ON THE ROAD MAP
Jerusalem Post, May 26, 2003

As provided by media watch group Independent Media Review and Analysis (IMRA), the following is a translation of the text of Israel's 14 conditions for accepting the international Quartet's road map.

1. Both at the commencement of and during the process, and as a condition to its continuance, calm will be maintained. The Palestinians will dismantle the existing security organizations and implement security reforms during the course of which new organizations will be formed and act to combat terror, violence and incitement (incitement must cease immediately and the Palestinian Authority must educate for peace). These organizations will engage in genuine prevention of terror and violence through arrests, interrogations, prevention and the enforcement of the legal groundwork for investigations, prosecution and punishment… There will be no progress to the second phase without the fulfillment of all above-mentioned conditions relating to the war against terror. The security plans to be implemented are the Tenet and Zinni plans. [As in the other mutual frameworks, the Roadmap will not state that Israel must cease violence and incitement against the Palestinians].

2. Full performance will be a condition for progress between phases and for progress within phases. The first condition for progress will be the complete cessation of terror, violence and incitement. Progress between phases will come only following the full implementation of the preceding phase. Attention will be paid not to timelines, but to performance benchmarks (timelines will serve only as reference points).

3. The emergence of a new and different leadership in the Palestinian Authority within the framework of governmental reform. The formation of a new leadership constitutes a condition for progress to the second phase of the plan. In this framework, elections will be conducted for the Palestinian Legislative Council following coordination with Israel.

4. The Monitoring mechanism will be under American management. The chief verification activity will concentrate upon the creation of another Palestinian entity and progress in the civil reform process within the Palestinian Authority…

5. The character of the provisional Palestinian state will be determined through negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The provisional state will have provisional borders and certain aspects of sovereignty, be fully demilitarized with no military forces, but only with police and internal security forces of limited scope and armaments, be without the authority to undertake defense alliances or military cooperation, and Israeli control over the entry and exit of all persons and cargo, as well as of its air space and electromagnetic spectrum.

6. In connection to both the introductory statements and the final settlement, declared references must be made to Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state and to the waiver of any right of return for Palestinian refugees to the State of Israel.

7. End of the process will lead to the end of all claims and not only the end of the conflict.

8. The future settlement will be reached through agreement and direct negotiations between the two parties, in accordance with the vision outlined by President Bush in his 24 June address.

9. There will be no involvement with issues pertaining to the final settlement. Among issues not to be discussed: settlement in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (excluding a settlement freeze and illegal outposts), the status of the Palestinian Authority and its institutions in Jerusalem, and all other matters whose substance relates to the final settlement.

10. The removal of references other than 242 and 338 (1397, the Saudi Initiative and the Arab Initiative adopted in Beirut). A settlement based upon the Roadmap will be an autonomous settlement that derives its validity therefrom…

11. Promotion of the reform process in the Palestinian Authority: a transitional Palestinian constitution will be composed, a Palestinian legal infrastructure will be constructed and cooperation with Israel in this field will be renewed. In the economic sphere: international efforts to rehabilitate the Palestinian economy will continue…

12. The deployment of IDF forces along the September 2000 lines will be subject to the stipulation of Article 4 (absolute quiet) and will be carried out in keeping with changes to be required by the nature of the new circumstances and needs created thereby…

13. Subject to security conditions, Israel will work to restore Palestinian life to normal…

14. Arab states will assist the process through the condemnation of terrorist activity. No link will be established between the Palestinian track and other tracks (Syrian-Lebanese).

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RICE, POWELL ACKNOWLEDGE ISRAELI CONCERNS
ABOUT U.S. ROADMAP
White House Office of the Press Secretary, May 23, 2003

The statement below was issued by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

“The roadmap was presented to the Government of Israel with a request from the President that it respond with contributions to this document to advance true peace. The United States Government received a response from the Government of Israel, explaining its significant concerns about the roadmap. The United States shares the view of the Government of Israel that these are real concerns, and will address them fully and seriously in the implementation of the roadmap to fulfill the President's vision of June 24, 2002.”

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Volume III, No. 634 • Friday, May 23, 2003

DOES THE INTERNATIONAL NEWS MEDIA
OVERLOOK ISRAEL'S LEGAL RIGHTS
IN THE PALESTINIAN-ISRAELI CONFLICT?
Dan Diker
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Jerusalem Viewpoints No. 495, April 1, 2003

International news organizations covering the Arab-Israeli conflict frequently refer to the international agreements and resolutions that were intended to resolve outstanding issues between the parties. Unfortunately, however, they frequently do this in ways that are prejudiced against Israel's legal rights and claims. In many cases, correspondents misreport or even overlook the expressed intent of the drafters of these resolutions. For example, Israel's civilian and military presence in the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip and its administration of a united Jerusalem and the northern Mt. Dov [Shaaba Farms] region complies with international laws and resolutions, yet some leading international news organizations have referred to these areas as "illegally occupied lands or colonies." 1 …The emotionally charged Palestinian liberation story is, for many reporters, more compelling than the dry, factual context of history, especially existing international laws and resolutions that support Israel's narrative.

Media and Legal "Lenses" on the Disputed Territories. On 16 February 2003, the BBC's Dateline London program featured a live, televised debate on the planned U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. [Journalist] Nick Gowing, and distinguished guests including British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, top German and French officials, and former White House Press Secretary James Rubin, all agreed that "the conflict between Palestine and Israel" would have to be solved as part of the overall peace prescription for the region. 2 This premature reference to "Palestine" places Palestinian claims to the disputed West Bank and Gaza Strip…on an equal diplomatic and legal footing with the claims of the State of Israel. In other words, it assigns a legal status to the Palestinian claims that…they do not have. [Reference] to "Palestine" has become so commonplace in recent years that even U.S. President George W. Bush has used the term…According to Alan Baker, Legal Advisor to Israel's Foreign Ministry, use of the language "Palestine" contravenes the carefully crafted language in the Oslo Accords and UN Security Council Resolution
242. 3…

New York Times correspondent Steven Weisman reported recently on Israel's obligation to pull out of "occupied" territories according to the U.S. "roadmap." Weisman writes: "Use of the word ‘occupied’ [implies] a full withdrawal by Israel from Palestinian territories it has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war." 4 An Associated Press article similarly asserted that: "Security Council resolutions 242 and 338 call on Israel to withdraw from all territory captured in the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973." 5 These frequent references…are inconsistent with UN Security Council Resolution 242 and the Oslo Accords. UN Security Council Resolution 242 of 22 November 1967, which was the basis of the 1992 Madrid peace conference and the 1993 Oslo accords, require Israel to withdraw from "territories" to "secure and recognized borders," not from "the territories" or "all the territories" captured in the Six-Day War. 6

Lord Caradon, former British Ambassador to the UN and a drafter of Resolution 242, told the Beirut Daily Star on 12 June 1974: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of 4 June 1967 because those positions were undesirable and artificial…They were just armistice lines. That's why we didn't demand that the Israelis return to them…" 7 Israel's former UN Ambassador Dore Gold [noted]: "Since the Soviets tried to add the language of full withdrawal but failed, there is no ambiguity in the meaning of the withdrawal clause, which was unanimously adopted by the Security Council." 8

In November 2002, a senior Reuters television producer participating in a media panel discussing news coverage of the Middle East conflict insisted that Reuters was "careful to maintain objective coverage of the Palestinian territories." This author asked whether the foreign news producer meant "Palestinian territories" that were ceded to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo accords. The Reuters executive responded that she meant "all of the West Bank and Gaza." 9 This pointed exchange illustrates another common reporting error… Arafat's PLO was not mentioned in Resolution 242 and had no legal status under that resolution. 10 In fact, the drafters of the resolution did not consider creating a second Arab state west of the Jordan River. They therefore used the carefully chosen term "refugee problem" to refer both to extant Arab (Palestinian) and Jewish refugee claims stemming from the 1948 war and the additional Arab refugee problem created by the 1967 war. Moreover, references to the entire West Bank and Gaza as "Palestinian" territories also contradict the Oslo agreement's Declaration of Principles of September 1993 and the Oslo II Interim Agreement of 1995. Neither agreement requires either Palestinians or Israelis to refrain from the construction of settlements, neighborhoods, houses, roads, or any other similar building projects pending a peacefully negotiated final agreement… 11

All Israeli governments since 1967 have held that Israeli settlements are legal according to the 1907 Hague Convention that permits the administering authority to utilize public land and to enjoy its "usufruct" ("fruits"). 12 Moreover, Israeli governments have consistently argued that the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention, especially Article 49 which deals with population transfer, has no legal applicability to the West Bank and Gaza….

"Occupied Arab East Jerusalem." International news reporting on Jerusalem [has centered] on Arab and Palestinian claims regarding the "Judaization" of Israel's unified capital, whose eastern half, captured from Jordan in the defensive Six-Day War of 1967, is referred to by much of the international community, including the news media, as "occupied Arab East Jerusalem." 13 Indeed, the underlying assumption in this reporting is that, historically speaking, eastern Jerusalem has always been an Arab city like Damascus or Baghdad. This ignores the fact that Jerusalem has had an overwhelmingly Jewish majority as far back as the mid-nineteenth century…

A recently released comprehensive study of urban planning and demographic growth in Jerusalem by international human rights attorney Justus Reid Weiner reveals a picture of the city that is substantially different from the Jerusalem perceived by the media and public. Between 1967 and 2000, Jerusalem's Arab population increased from 26.6 percent to 31.7 percent of the city's total populace, while the city's Jewish population decreased accordingly. 14 Arab housing starts also heavily outpaced Jewish building during the same period due in part to "the direct sponsorship of illegal construction by the Palestinian Authority." 15

An October 2002 [BBC] report quoted the reaction of 14 Arab and Muslim news media organizations that were "enraged" over the U.S. Congress's most recent vote to confirm a 1995 congressional decision to recognize united Jerusalem as Israel's capital. [Lebanese state television] asserted that such a move would succeed in "'Judaizing' the city's character and falsifying its true identity." 16 The report failed to mention that the U.S. congressional decision was based in part on Israel's Supreme Court decision of 1967 empowering the Eshkol government to administer a unified Jerusalem, and in part on UN Security Council Resolution 242, that did not mention Jerusalem as part of "lands" from which Israel had been requested to withdraw. Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur Goldberg was one of the drafters of the resolution and he asserted that: "Resolution 242 in no way refers to Jerusalem, and this omission was deliberate....Jerusalem was a discrete matter, and not linked to the West Bank." 17

In fact, news reporting on the conflict over Jerusalem almost uniformly neglects Israel's legal and historical claims to its capital city. According to Israel's former UN Ambassador Dore Gold: "Israel's legal position in Jerusalem originates in the Palestine Mandate by which the League of Nations…recognized 'the historic connection of the Jewish people with Palestine' and called for 'the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish People.'" 18… Despite the fact that the United Nations…proposed that Jerusalem be divided…in General Assembly Resolution 181 of November 1947, the Arab armies' invasion of the fledgling Jewish state in May 1948 rendered UN Resolution 181 a "dead letter." 19 …Major international legal experts such as former U.S. State Department Legal Advisor Steven Schwebel, who also headed the International Court of Justice at The Hague, further support Israel's position. In 1970…Schwebel argued that "Israel has better title in the territory that was Palestine, including the whole of Jerusalem (emphasis mine--D.D.), than Jordan and Egypt." 20

In 1996, Israel decided to open up the Hasmonean archeological tunnel near the ancient Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, and one year later the government decided to approve existing plans to build the Har Homa neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem. Palestinian spokesmen and a compliant international media vilified these moves as violations of the Oslo accords. 21 However, Daniel Taub, General Law Director of Israel's Foreign Ministry and part of the Oslo negotiation team, asserted the legality of Israel's position. "Neither [Oslo's] Declaration of Principles, nor the interim agreement place any strictures on Israel concerning Jerusalem. All questions concerning Jerusalem were left to the permanent status negotiations…" 22

The "Disputed" Shaaba Farms. Following Israel's unilateral withdrawal from southern Lebanon… in May 2000, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan announced on 25 July 2000 that Israel fully implemented its part of UN Resolution 425. Despite Israel's compliance…news organizations have frequently referred to the Shaaba Farms…as "disputed." 23 …The mistaken use of the term "disputed”…legitimizes continued Hizballah attacks from Lebanon…

The "Fighting" Reporters of the Foreign Media. Fiamma Nirenstein, Middle East special correspondent for Italy's La Stampa newspaper, characterized foreign news correspondents as fighting journalists rather than reporting journalists with respect to the armed conflict between the Palestinians and Israel. 24 Many foreign reporters, today in their 40s and early 50s, actively demonstrated on European and U.S. college campuses against capitalist hegemony in America and Western imperialism in Africa and South America, and against Israel's participation in the 1982 Lebanon war. Today, these "fighting journalists" are active moral participants in a still unfolding story of "Palestinian Davids" fighting to "liberate their homeland" from the Israeli "colonialist Goliath."…

The Influence of Media on International Law. [Although] international legal texts in the past have not cited media reports as an acceptable source of international law…this is beginning to change. A Swedish lawyer, who recently filed a complaint of war crimes against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon [argued that] media reports of Sharon's alleged "crimes" should suffice as evidence against him. Although the prosecutor ultimately rejected the claim, TV pictures have an increasing value as admissible evidence. 25 According to international human rights attorney and Canadian parliamentarian Professor Irwin Cotler, media reports can be a "constituent feature" of a complaint to the International Criminal Court at The Hague, as part of an effort to initiate a war crimes trial. 26 International news organizations, therefore, bear a heavy responsibility for accurate reportage of the rights and claims of both Palestinians and Israelis, in order to ensure optimal balance in presenting this explosive and complex conflict to the public.

Notes:
1. Dilip Hiro, "Land is the Issue," Guardian, 22 May 2001; http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,494505,00.html
2. "The Crisis in Iraq," BBC's Dateline London, with Nick Gowing, 16 February 2003.
3. Interview with Alan Baker, Legal Advisor to Israel's Foreign Ministry, 17 January 2003.
4. Steven Weisman, "U.S. Joins Partners on Plan for Middle East, But Not Timing," New York Times, 21 December 2002, p. A2.
5. Jeff Helmreich, "Journalistic License, Professional Standards in the Print Media's Coverage of Israel," Jerusalem Letter #460, 15 August 2001, p. 4.
6. Dore Gold, "From Occupied Territories to Disputed Territories," Jerusalem Viewpoints #470, 16 January 2002, p. 3.
7. Beirut Daily Star, 12 June 1974, as quoted by Leonard J. Davis in Myths and Facts (Washington: Near East Report, 1989), p. 48.
8. Gold, p. 3.
9. This exchange was part of a panel on news coverage of the Israel-Palestinian conflict in Jerusalem, 17 November 2002.
10. Moshe Landau, Yehuda Blum, and Meir Rosenne, "Arafat's Web of Lies," Ha'aretz, 3 January 2001.
11. "Har Homa, Legal Aspects," Israel Foreign Ministry web site, 3 March 1997; www.israel-mfa.gov.il.
12. Ibid. This is also the position of Alan Baker, Legal Advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and part of the Israeli team drafting the Oslo Accords, as stated to the author at a meeting on 17 January 2003.
13. Justus Reid Weiner, Illegal Construction in Jerusalem: A Variation on an Alarming Global Trend (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2003), p. 7.
14. Ibid., p. 8.
15. Ibid., p. 10.
16. BBC Monitoring, "Arab Fury at Jerusalem Decision," 5 October 2002, p. 2.
17. Leonard J. Davis, Myths and Facts, p. 214.
18. Dore Gold, Jerusalem in International Diplomacy (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, May 2001), p. 23.
19. Ibid., p. 24.
20. Ibid., p. 26.
21. Alex Safian, "The Media's Tunnel Vision," Camera Backgrounder, 6 November 1996, p. 3.
22. Ibid., p. 3.
23. See Ewen MacAskill, "Threat Grows of Second Front in Lebanon," Guardian, 4 April 2002, p. 2.
24. Interview with Fiamma Nirenstein, Special Middle East Correspondent, La Stampa, 27 January 2003.
25. Interview with Alan Baker, 13 May 2003.
26. Interview with Professor Irwin Cotler, Member of the Canadian Parliament and expert on international human rights law, 4 February 2003.

(Dan Diker is a Knesset and economic affairs reporter for Israel Broadcasting
Authority's English News and is also media affairs consultant at the
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs/Institute for Contemporary Affairs.)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers!

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Volume III, No. 633 • Thursday, May 22, 2003

THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW
WHAT HE DID TO MY FAMILY
Smadar Haran Kaiser
Washington, Post, May 18, 2003

Abu Abbas, the former head of a Palestinian terrorist group who was captured in Iraq on April 15, is infamous for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. But there are probably few who remember why Abbas's terrorists held the ship and its 400-plus passengers hostage for two days. It was to gain the release of a Lebanese terrorist named Samir Kuntar, who is locked up in an Israeli prison for life. Kuntar's name is all but unknown to the world. But I know it well. Because almost a quarter of a century ago, Kuntar murdered my family.

It was a murder of unimaginable cruelty, crueler even than the murder of Leon Klinghoffer, the American tourist who was shot on the Achille Lauro and dumped overboard in his wheelchair. Kuntar's mission against my family, which never made world headlines, was also masterminded by Abu Abbas. And my wish now is that this terrorist leader should be prosecuted in the United States, so that the world may know of all his terrorist acts, not the least of which is what he did to my family on April 22, 1979.

It had been a peaceful Sabbath day. My husband, Danny, and I had picnicked with our little girls, Einat, 4, and Yael, 2, on the beach not far from our home in Nahariya, a city on the northern coast of Israel, about six miles south of the Lebanese border. Around midnight, we were asleep in our apartment when four terrorists, sent by Abu Abbas from Lebanon, landed in a rubber boat on the beach two blocks away. Gunfire and exploding grenades awakened us as the terrorists burst into our building. They had already killed a police officer. As they charged up to the floor above ours, I opened the door to our apartment. In the moment before the hall light went off, they turned and saw me. As they moved on, our neighbor from the upper floor came running down the stairs. I grabbed her and pushed her inside our apartment and slammed the door.

Outside, we could hear the men storming about. Desperately, we sought to hide. Danny helped our neighbor climb into a crawl space above our bedroom; I went in behind her with Yael in my arms. Then Danny grabbed Einat and was dashing out the front door to take refuge in an underground shelter when the terrorists came crashing into our flat. They held Danny and Einat while they searched for me and Yael, knowing there were more people in the apartment. I will never forget the joy and the hatred in their voices as they swaggered about hunting for us, firing their guns and throwing grenades. I knew that if Yael cried out, the terrorists would toss a grenade into the crawl space and we would be killed. So I kept my hand over her mouth, hoping she could breathe. As I lay there, I remembered my mother telling me how she had hidden from the Nazis during the Holocaust. "This is just like what happened to my mother," I thought.

As police began to arrive, the terrorists took Danny and Einat down to the beach. There, according to eyewitnesses, one of them shot Danny in front of Einat so that his death would be the last sight she would ever see. Then he smashed my little girl's skull in against a rock with his rifle butt. That terrorist was Samir Kuntar.

By the time we were rescued from the crawl space, hours later, Yael, too, was dead. In trying to save all our lives, I had smothered her.

The next day, Abu Abbas announced from Beirut that the terrorist attack in Nahariya had been carried out "to protest the signing of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty" at Camp David the previous year. Abbas seems to have a gift for charming journalists, but imagine the character of a man who protests an act of peace by committing an act of slaughter.

Two of Abbas's terrorists had been killed by police on the beach. The other two were captured, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Despite my protests, one was released in a prisoner exchange for Israeli POWs several months before the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abu Abbas was determined to find a way to free Kuntar as well. So he engineered the hijacking of the Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt and demanded the release of 50 Arab terrorists from Israeli jails. The only one of those prisoners actually named was Samir Kuntar. The plight of hundreds held hostage on a cruise ship for two days at sea lent itself to massive international media coverage. The attack on Nahariya, by contrast, had taken less than an hour in the middle of the night. So what happened then was hardly noticed outside of Israel.

One hears the terrorists and their excusers say that they are driven to kill out of desperation. But there is always a choice. Even when you have suffered, you can choose whether to kill and ruin another's life, or whether to go on and rebuild. Even after my family was murdered, I never dreamed of taking revenge on any Arab.

But I am determined that Samir Kuntar should never be released from prison. In 1984, I had to fight my own government not to release him as part of an exchange for several Israeli soldiers who were POWs in Lebanon. I understood, of course, that the families of those POWs would gladly have agreed to the release of an Arab terrorist to get their sons back. But I told Yitzhak Rabin, then defense minister, that the blood of my family was as red as that of the POWs. Israel had always taken a position of refusing to negotiate with terrorists. If they were going to make an exception, let it be for a terrorist who was not as cruel as Kuntar. "Your job is not to be emotional," I told Rabin, "but to act rationally." And he did.

So Kuntar remains in prison. I have been shocked to learn that he has married an Israeli Arab woman who is an activist on behalf of terrorist prisoners. As the wife of a prisoner, she gets a monthly stipend from the government. I'm not too happy about that.

In recent years, Abu Abbas started telling journalists that he had renounced terrorism and that killing Leon Klinghoffer had been a mistake. But he has never said that killing my family was a mistake. He was a terrorist once, and a terrorist, I believe, he remains. Why else did he spend these last years, as the Israeli press has reported, free as a bird in Baghdad, passing rewards of $25,000 from Saddam Hussein to families of Palestinian suicide bombers? More than words, that kind of cash prize, which is a fortune to poor families, was a way of urging more suicide bombers. The fortunate thing about Abbas's attaching himself to Hussein is that it set him up for capture.

Some say that Italy should have first crack at Abbas. It had already convicted him of the Achille Lauro hijacking in absentia in 1986. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi now wants Abbas handed over so that he can begin serving his life sentence. But it's also true that in 1985, the Italians had Abbas in their hands after U.S. fighter jets forced his plane to land in Sicily. And yet they let him go. So while I trust Berlusconi, who knows if a future Italian government might not again wash its hands of Abbas?

In 1995, Rabin, then our prime minister, asked me to join him on his trip to the White House, where he was to sign a peace agreement with Yasser Arafat, which I supported. I believe that he wanted me to represent all Israeli victims of terrorism. Rabin dreaded shaking hands with Arafat, knowing that those hands were bloody. At first, I agreed to make the trip, but at the last minute, I declined. As prime minister, Rabin had to shake hands with Arafat for political reasons. As a private person, I did not. So I stayed here.

Now I am ready and willing to come to the United States to testify against Abu Abbas if he is tried for terrorism. The daughters of Leon Klinghoffer have said they are ready to do the same. Unlike Klinghoffer, Danny, Einat and Yael were not American citizens. But Klinghoffer was killed on an Italian ship in Abbas's attempt to free the killer of my family in Israel. We are all connected by the international web of terrorism woven by Abbas. Let the truth come out in a new and public trial. And let it be in the United States, the leader in the struggle against terrorism.

(Smadar Haran Kaiser is a social worker.
She is remarried and has two daughters.)

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Volume III, No. 632 • Wednesday, May 21, 2003

WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP

WEEKLY QUOTES

“Sunday morning’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem in which seven civilians were killed and dozens were wounded, [Saturday] night’s terrorist attack in Hebron in which a husband and his pregnant wife were killed, and other attacks and victims in recent days, all prove—again—to us and the world what kind of an enemy the State of Israel is dealing with… The objective of Palestinian terror, as perpetrated by all of the organizations operating out of the P.A. areas and from abroad, is to continue to murder civilians, women [and] children because they are Jews and Israelis… The State of Israel will continue to fight terror everywhere, at all times, and in every way possible…until we see that there is someone on the other side who can do this… [P]eace can prevail only after terror has been defeated, only after there will be quiet here. Only then will it be possible to make diplomatic progress.”—Statement by P.M. Ariel Sharon’s Media Adviser, Arnon Perlman (Israel Foreign Ministry, May 18)

“I’ve got confidence we can move the peace process forward. We’re still on the road to peace. It’s just going to be a bumpy road.”—U.S. President George W. Bush defending his administration’s peace plan for the Middle East, in the wake of a series of bombing attacks against Israel over the weekend. [President Bush, who is said to be weighing a possible visit to the region in the coming weeks, spoke via telephone with Palestinian P.M. Mahmoud Abbas, whom he characterized as “a reformer and somebody who will work for peace.”] (New York Times, May 20, Cox News Service, May 21)

“Enough is enough. The peace process has become the terror process. [During a wave of suicide bombings in 1996] we worked to help Arafat so he would put an end to terror. Today we’re doing the same thing [with Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian prime minister]. We should stop playing this game of helping the good guys versus the bad guys.”—Head of Parliament’s defense and foreign affairs committee, Yuval Steinitz, pressing for the expulsion of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the dismantling of the P.A. [Head of Israeli military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi Farkash, communicated that the security establishment was united in opposing exile for Mr. Arafat, believing that it would only strengthen him.] (N.Y.T., May 20)

“Each peace offering—at least, each offering that includes carrots but no sticks, like the latest ‘road map’--is a new reward for [terrorist] behavior. When U.S. President George Bush…expresses his determination to pursue peace regardless of the terror hits on Israel…he plays right into the terrorists’ hands. He might as well be saying ‘Go ahead, kill as many Jews as you can, that won’t stop us making concessions to you.’ The alternative is to follow the principles enunciated in the President’s excellent speech at the University of South Carolina last Friday, in which the key phrase was, ‘The future of peace requires the defeat of terror’. Sticks work better than carrots to this end, and unless the entire Palestinian leadership can be convinced that they have something to lose by playing these games…their attitude won’t change…”—Columnist David Warren (Nat’l. Post, May 21)

“I condemn those operations [recent terrorist attacks] because it is hampering our efforts to reach a peaceful settlement with Israel. There must be one legitimate authority and one legitimate weapon.”—P.A. Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, although appealing to fellow Palestinians to halt the violence, communicated that his government would not clash with the different factions [i.e. Palestinian terror organizations—ed.]. (Ha’aretz, May 21)

“In the name of Allah, those expelled from their homes will return to them. On this cursed day, the State of Israel was founded, under force of arms and as part of an imperialist conspiracy, which led to the eviction of our nation into dispersion and camps, amid acts of slaughter and horrible crimes.”—P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat in a speech to the Palestinian Legislative Council commemorating “Nakba Day”, the day the Palestinians bewail as the founding of the State of Israel. (Jer. Post, May 16)

“We were surprised that the army had come back in. The army presence is not only an obstacle and an affront to the Abu Mazen visit but an obstacle to any hope to achieve a lasting peace.”—Sofian Abu Zaida, chairman of the Palestinian liaison committee with Israel, reacting to the IDF’s incursion into Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, which led to the cancellation of a planned visit to the area by P.M. Mahmoud Abbas. [The IDF had entered Beit Hanoun in an attempt to stop Hamas missile strikes at Israel. Unusual demonstrations were held in the area on Tuesday by hundreds of residents protesting Hamas’ use of their neighbourhood as a lunching pad for terrorism.] (Jerusalem Post, May 21)

“Saddam Hussein stood beside us at a time that no other government did. In my opinion, no one else helped the Palestinian people. Iraq was the only donor country helping the martyrs’ families.”—West Bank resident Mohammed Shkukani whose 24-year old son, Amer, blew himself up a year ago in a suicide attack that injured three Israelis in Tel Aviv, lamenting the lack of incoming Iraqi cash that had previously been used to support terrorists and their families. The Shkukanis were the recipients of an Iraqi payment of $25,000. U.S. dollars. [With the overthrow of Saddam’s regime, the flow of an estimated $30 million to Palestinian families has ended.] (Washington Times, May 21)

“This President Bush—Dubya—if he keeps going in the direction he’s been going, will be remembered as the president who got so wrapped around the finger of Ariel Sharon that he indulged Israel into thinking it really could have it all—settlements, prosperity, peace and democracy—and in doing so helped contributed to the slow erosion of the Jewish state… He will have to halt the attacks on Colin Powell from the Pentagon and make clear, for once, that he stands behind his secretary of state; tell both the Christian right and the Likud-run Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that he is not going to let them block his path by their support for the lunatic Israeli settlement movement…”—Columnist Thomas Friedman (N.Y.T., May 11)

“You and the U.S. are being undermined by the other members of the so-called ‘Quartet’—the European Union, the UN and Russia. You and the U.S. are being pressured to show we are ‘evenhanded’ and are being urged to pressure Israel to make concessions. It would be morally reprehensible for the U.S. to be ‘evenhanded’ between democratic Israel, a reliable friend and ally that shares our values, and the terrorist-infested Palestinian infrastructure that refused to accept the right of Israel to exist at all.”—Letter to U.S. President George W. Bush signed by twenty-two Christian conservative leaders protesting the road map, insisting that in is current form it “could lead to disaster”. Gary Bauer, President of American Values, spearheaded the letter campaign. (Jer. Post, May 20)

“The best thing about the road map is the destination. That is peace between a free and independent secure Israel and a free and independent secure Palestine. I don’t believe we’re going to get to that destination according to this road map. The first thing that has to happen is that the new Palestinian leadership has to make a 100 percent effort to stop the terrorism against the Israelis. Otherwise there won’t be the confidence to start the process…”—Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, urging Democrats to say what they think about the Bush administration’s proposed road map for peace. (A.P., May 21)

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SHORT TAKES

ISRAEL STRUCK BY WAVE OF BOMBINGS; SHARON CANCELS SUMMIT WITH BUSH--(Afula) P.M. Ariel Sharon canceled his visit to the White House after Israel was struck by five suicide bombings over a 48-hour period. The string of attacks began before Sharon met with Palestinian P.M. Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday night in the first Israeli-Palestinian summit since the outbreak of fighting nearly three years ago. Hamas bombers struck Hebron on Saturday, twice in Jerusalem on Sunday, and in the Gaza Strip on Monday, killing nine Israelis and wounding 23. On Monday, a 19-year-old Palestinian woman, Hiba Da'arma, from the village Tubas in the northern Jordan Valley, blew herself up at a mall in Afula, killing three Israelis and wounding 47 others. Today, Israel sent a message to Washington not to send a "road map" monitoring team to the region. (A.P., May 20, Ha'aretz, May 2, Jer. Post, May 21)

ISRAEL TOURISM MINISTER PROMOTING ALTERNATIVE PEACE PLAN--(Washington) Benny Elon, Israel’s Tourism Minister and leader of the right-wing National Union faction, opposes the U.S. backed “road map” in favour of his own alternative peace plan. The Elon plan includes dissolving the P.A., making the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan the sole representative of the Palestinian people and thereby a de-facto Palestinian state, formally annexing the West Bank and Gaza to Israel and completing the “exchange of populations that began in 1948." P.M. Ariel Sharon criticized Elon for using his official trip to the U.S. to enlist support for his own plan, instead of supporting the positions of the government. (Israel Insider, May 5, Forward, May 9)

AN EXCLUDED SAEB EREKAT RESIGNS--(Gaza City) Former top Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat submitted his resignation to Palestinian P.M. Mahmoud Abbas, during a cabinet meeting on Thursday in Gaza City. Erekat refused to say why he resigned, but he stepped down after Abbas excluded him from Saturday night's summit with P.M. Ariel Sharon (instead, Abbas was accompanied by Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia and security chief Mohammed Dahlan). In an interview in his hometown of Jericho, Erekat predicted that Sharon would not agree to the "road map" peace plan, faulted Washington for letting the Israeli leader off the hook, and accused his own Palestinian colleagues of corruption. Israelis say that Erekat, a loyalist to P.A. Chairman Yasser Arafat, is a victim of a power struggle between Arafat and Abbas. (Ha'aretz, May 18, Boston Globe, May 19)

AL QAEDA REPORTEDLY DIRECTED SAUDI BOMBINGS FROM IRAN--(Washington) Intercepted intelligence communications strongly suggests that a small cell of al Qaeda leaders in Iran directed last week’s terrorist attacks in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in which 34 people including 8 Americans were killed. Amongst the senior al Qaeda officials said to have found safe haven in the Islamic Republic are Saif Adel, the organization’s security chief who allegedly had a hand in the May 12 Riyadh operation, and Saad bin Laden, the son of Osama bin Laden. American envoy Zalmay Khalizad, who had been scheduled to meet with his Iranian counterparts at a meeting in Geneva, announced the “indefinite cancellation” of the scheduled talks. The Bush administration has notified Iran that it expects to see action against al Qaeda before resuming their nascent discussions on security and regional issues, held under UN auspices. Iran has vehemently denied that it is harboring al Qaeda terrorists. (N.Y.T., May 20, L.A. Times, May 21)

FRANCE: U.S. SPREAD LIES ABOUT OUR COUNTRY--(Washington) France’s Ambassador, Jean-Davide Levitte, reportedly sent a letter to the U.S. government formally complaining that France has been a target of an American campaign of “repeated disinformation.” In particular, French diplomats deny the allegations made by White House officials that France supplied military and diplomatic aid to Saddam Hussein’s regime. The U.S. rejects the assertion that they have engaged in such a defamation campaign, and stands behind its assertions. (N.Y.T., May 16)

CANADA DENIES REFUGEE STATUS TO MAN, CHARGES ‘WAR CRIMES’ FOR HIS LINKS TO ISRAEL—(Toronto) Canada has denied refugee status to a Lebanese man, known only as Mr. X, on the grounds that he was an accomplice to alleged Israeli "war crimes." Mr. X, who spied on the terrorist Hezbollah organization in southern Lebanon for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, had provided information about Hezbollah operatives, including the names of some 40 members of the organization. Mr. X has been concerned for his safety ever since Israel withdrew from the security zone in 2000 and it become known to him that Hezbollah is aware of his Mossad involvement. Ronen Gil-Or, a representative of the Israeli Embassy, rejected the refugee board’s allegations that Mr. X had participated in war crimes in Israel’s service. “Israel did not and has not been involved in any war crimes or crimes against humanity in southern Lebanon or any other place,” he said. Denis Coderre, Canada’s immigration minister, says the refugee board’s decision does not reflect Canadian policy toward Israel. (J.T.A., May 20)

ANTI-ISRAEL GRAFFITI FOUND ON MONTREAL JEWISH SCHOOLS--(Montreal) Vandals painted hate messages on the building housing Herzliah High School and the United Talmud Torah Elementary School in the St. Laurent section of Montreal over the weekend. Swastikas and messages that read "Free Palestine" and "Die Sharon" were spray-painted across the building. "The students understand that it was an isolated incident, and there is no reason for them to feel in any particular danger, but it's an unfortunate incident," says David Birnbaum, the director of the Quebec region of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Birnbaum says such incidents have become more common since the conflicts flared up in the Middle East more than two years ago. (CBC News, May 19)

NEW YORK TIMES REPORTER RESIGNS, LEAVES BEHIND LONG TRAIL OF DECEPTION--(New York) Staff reporter Jayson Blair committed regular acts of journalistic fraud while covering important news events throughout his five-year career at the New York Times. Readers and Times colleagues were misled by stories in which interviews and comments were fabricated and much of the material was stolen from other newspapers and wire services, including most recently his fictitious accounts of American soldiers injured in combat. An internal investigation suggests Mr. Blair’s deceits went undetected for so long due to a failure of communication among senior editors. In another case of journalistic bias, New York Times reporter and Pulitzer-prize winner Chris Hedges was booed off a stage at an Illinois college for an antiwar speech in which he said the “U.S. policy in Iraq was an oppression of the weak”. (N.Y.T., May 11, N.Y. Post, May 21)

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Volume III, No. 631 • Tuesday, May 20, 2003

A JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS
Fouad Ajami
U.S. News and World Report, May 26, 2003

The anti-American terrorism in, and out of, Arab lands knows no respite. The weapon of choice in last week's terror attacks in Saudi Arabia was the car bomb--a tool not unfamiliar in the brutal landscape of a region in the grip of a crisis that seems never to abate. The terror masters paid no heed to the "road map" Secretary of State Colin Powell had come to promote as a path to peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or to the promise of Palestinian deliverance held out by the Bush administration. "It's a new environment," Saad al-Faqih, a London-based Saudi dissident and physician, said, describing the desert kingdom. "There is a completely different scene as far as the hostility against the U.S.--and the society itself is providing a natural shelter and protection to al Qaeda members."

In truth, there was nothing new about this latest act of terror, just as there is nothing new about the kind of shelter ordinary, mainstream society in the Arab world grants this sort of violence. In Iraq, mass graves filled by Saddam Hussein's brutal regime now turn up almost daily. Yet few Arabs outside Iraq have stepped forth to acknowledge the criminality of the order that had been in place in Baghdad; few have said a word of praise for the foreign liberators of Iraq. Indeed, a well-known singer and rabble-rouser in Egypt has turned up with a popular new hit: "Better Saddam's hell than America's paradise," the song goes.

Beyond the poisoned atmosphere in Cairo, among the very Palestinians the road map aims to serve, no penance has been expressed, no second thoughts have been uttered over the support the Palestinians had so consistently given Saddam. If anything, popular opinion in Palestinian lands shames the Iraqis for the joy they have expressed at their own liberation, ridicules them as pawns of a foreign power, or worse.

It may be the proper thing for America to take up the matter of Israel and the Palestinians; it may be a debt owed the stalwart British P.M. Tony Blair. But we should know the Arab world for what it is today and entertain no grand illusions about the gratitude the road map would deliver in Palestinian and Arab streets. We buy no friendship in Arab lands with pro-Palestinian diplomacy; we ward off no anti-American terrorism. There is no possibility the rancid anti-Americanism of Hosni Mubarak's Egypt would be assuaged with a big push for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement. The highest religious authority of that land, Sheik al Azhar Muhammad Tantawi, recently called the American-led coalition's effort against Saddam a "crusading war" and said that Muslims everywhere were obliged to take up arms against the "invaders." This kind of sentiment can never be stilled with a diplomatic effort on behalf of the Palestinians.

There are deeper furies that grip Arab society; we take up a false trail when we fall for the claim that our troubles in that world spring from our policy on Israel and Palestinians. This is the trail our interlocutors in those lands would have us follow. But they are shrewd men, the rulers who hold sway in those Arab lands. It is a cultural norm of the Arab world that strangers are never exposed to family demons. We are strangers in that world, and the Palestine story is all we shall be given, for it is the most convenient of tales.

A dozen years ago, after the first Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was in its death throes, but we spared it, left Iraq and the Persian Gulf, and began what turned out to be yet another futile pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian accord. Then, too, we fell for the idea that the American victory in the Arabian Desert had to be redeemed in the alleyways of Nablus and Ramallah. We took the bait that a great power's authority requires a Palestinian solution. Into the camp of the victors, we brought the Palestinians and the Jordanians who had shouted themselves hoarse in favor of Saddam Hussein. We took them unreformed and unrepentant. Our leverage would never be so great again, our leaders believed then. In the years that followed, anti-American terrorism grew more brazen, and the masters of al Qaeda took our measure. Last week, Secretary Powell arrived in Riyadh to promote peace and instead found himself inspecting a scene of carnage, the latest heartbreaking testament to the furies that now blow through Arab lands.

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INTELLIGENCE VERSUS AL-QAEDA
Ze'ev Schiff
Ha'aretz, May 18, 2003

A series of its terror plots were successfully foiled, but al Qaeda still managed to surprise the intelligence services of the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Britain and Israel, in a renewed offensive of murderous suicide bombings. These attacks involve significant logistical preparation, which al Qaeda managed to keep covert.

The locations of the two most recent attacks, Saudi Arabia and Morocco, both Arab-Muslim monarchies, suggest that al Qaeda is finding it increasingly difficult to carry out attacks in non-Muslim countries. It is easier for its operatives in countries with radical Muslim populations. Intelligence analysts believe the recent suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv beachfront pub is also part of the current offensive. In that case, there was surely cooperation from Palestinian terror organizations, but the method used, including the sophisticated smuggling of the explosives, is linked to al Qaeda. In any case, Israel clearly must show increased vigilance to the possibility that al Qaeda will attempt to carry out a major attack here.

During the past year, al Qaeda operations around the globe have been foiled numerous times… Cooperation among the various intelligence agencies has greatly aided in preventing terror. Only such cooperation enables a counter-attack against the terrorists. However, Arab intelligence organizations are not always reliable partners in this war.

Yesterday's intelligence coups are no guarantee of future success. Intelligence information has a very short shelf-life. And unless it is followed by quick response, it is often lost. The terror attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco suggest a broad intelligence failure…

This sort of failure has happened several times in Saudi Arabia, and it is clear that the security services there are more keen on protecting the Saudi monarchy than cooperating with the Americans against international Islamic terrorism. It is not implausible that supporters of al Qaeda have penetrated the Saudi security apparatus. The situation in Morocco is different, even though what happened there was also a failure. In the case of Rabat there is, at least, the promise of full cooperation with Western intelligence. It is also clear that the targets were Jews.

Both Saudi Arabia and Morocco have tried to cover the fact that these attacks are part of Islamic terrorism, which feeds on religious hatred and xenophobia, by stressing the international nature of the terror. This is not terrorism geared toward the rescue of the Palestinian people from Israeli occupation, and those who laud the suicide attacks against Israel are themselves victims of the same method. And we still haven't reached the peak of this war.

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THE POST-WAR RUSH
John Podhoretz
New York Post, May 20, 2003

The Bush administration wanted too much, too soon and too quickly in the wake of the war with Iraq. The Defense Department and the White House wanted an Iraqi government up and running in a few months. The State Department wanted Israel to commit to the creation of a Palestinian state within three years. Harsh reality has intruded in both situations.

First, Iraq. The administration's focus in the first week after the war was on getting an interim Iraqi government up and running as soon as possible. Now its focus is properly on getting Iraqi society up and running… The opportunities for a democratic Middle East will require the U.S. to do the painstaking job of helping Iraqis build a civil society that can govern itself. Iraq is not ready for self-government.

In Israel, the first high-level meeting in 21/2 years between Israeli and Palestinian political figures has resulted in a spate of suicide bombings that will make it impossible for Israel to ease restrictions on Palestinians. This effectively negates the "road map" that Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the warring parties last week. Powell brought the road map with him to take advantage of the opportunity for decisive change in the Middle East thanks to the victory in Iraq. The war with Iraq might well be a hinge point in history. But you can't rush history, and the administration was guilty of trying to do so.

Many opponents of the war believed that the administration intended to colonize Iraq for its oil. The administration's conduct in the weeks after the war shows just how ludicrous that idea was: No imperial power tries to hand off political authority as quickly as the administration wanted… The administration seemed almost transfixed by the need to challenge the colonialism argument by rushing things politically. Two administration officials told me last month that the Iraqis "needed to step up to the plate" and take charge of their country quickly. The problem with that baseball analogy is that the Iraqi body politic didn't volunteer to play this game, and they are unprepared for it.

The U.S. wasn't entirely prepared either. The internal Washington battles over the structure of a post-Saddam government took precedence over questions about how the country would be managed…

In Israel, the story was far more predictable. Whenever the so-called "peace process" heats up, Jews get killed. Powell and British P.M. Tony Blair clearly fantasized that the advent of a new Palestinian prime minister might end this cycle. Instead, their "road map" has resulted in a repulsive round of murder.

The new reality of the Middle East has to sink in on the Palestinians before they will forswear their eternal self-destructiveness. That will take time. If the U.S. makes progress in Iraq and simultaneously continues to lean on Syria and Iran to cease funding the terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas, the Israelis will be able to consider the notion of a two-state solution. That's months, if not years, away.

Stop hurrying.

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A CHANGE IN TACTICS
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, May 20, 2003

As the victims of Sunday's bus bombing in Jerusalem were being buried, another suicide bomber struck in Afula yesterday, the fifth in three days.

The special cabinet meeting Sunday night produced little more than business as usual… The cabinet decided to refuse to meet with foreign leaders who met with Yasser Arafat [and] to revoke all the measures taken to ease pressure on the Palestinians leading up to the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell… In other words, this wave of murderous attacks, the first since the fall of Baghdad, is being met with a "stay the course" approach. But what is the course we are on?

We continue to build a fence, to demolish the homes of terrorists, to kill and capture them when we can… All of these measures arguably have played a role in stopping hundreds of attempted attacks. But for all the sense that we are doing everything we can, we tend to rule out the one thing we have not tried: going after not just the "troops" of terror but its leadership. The leaders are not just those directly involved in planning specific attacks, but the "political" leaders who encourage, justify, and fund the terrorists. These leaders are well known to the security forces and indeed to the international press…

Before the fall of Saddam Hussein, targeting such leaders presumably was avoided so as not to complicate U.S. plans to eliminate a major strategic threat to Israel. Perhaps this was wise then, but it obviously can no longer be argued now… Finally, it is argued by some, such as our own Labor Party…that to fight back too hard simply plays into the hands of the terrorists, whose goal is to "kill the peace." Even U.S. President George W. Bush said after the Afula bombing, "There are terrorists who want to disrupt [P.M. Sharon's planned] visit by bombing and killing. It's clear there are people there that still cannot stand the thought of peace." Yes, they hate peace with Israel, but no, they are not motivated by this or that visit, and we do not fight them by going through the motions of a "peace process" when bombs are going off…

In Afghanistan, the U.S. toppled the Taliban because that was the only way to evict al Qaeda. In Iraq, the U.S. toppled Saddam, partly because that was the only way to prevent him from obtaining more effective weapons of mass destruction, but mainly to send a signal to all radical regimes that they must fall into line or just fall. With the P.A., we are sending a very different signal: You can continue to preside over a hotbed of terrorism, the terrorists can continue to show disdain for your meaningless condemnations, and we will fight terror for you… To the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, we send a similar signal…

This must change. If Sharon, understandably, does not want to part ways with the U.S., he should say to Bush that Israel, like the U.S., must fight terror at its source, from the top down, rather than letting more of us die to test the intentions of leaders he has already said must be removed. Bush will understand, and even if he does not, further restraint will only serve to legitimate the terror against us.

Top of the Page

Volume III, No. 630 • Friday, May 16, 2003

ISRAEL OPPONENT EDWARD SAID
GIVES WALKER-AMES LECTURE AT U. OF WASHINGTON
May 6, 2003

[The following critique was written for the University of Washington community by faculty embers Edward Alexander (Professor of English), Nikolai Popov (Senior Lecturer in English), and Marc Lange (Professor of Philosophy), in anticipation of a lecture on their campus by Professor Edward Said. As professor of English at Columbia University, Said has been a bitter critic of the State of Israel and has had a major influence on the anti-Israel movement at American universities.]

If enormous influence in the academic world is a reliable indicator of intellectual distinction, then Edward Said is a fine choice as University of Washington Walker-Ames Lecturer. He has taught a whole generation of English professors to search for racism in writers (like Jane Austen) who did not think as the professors do. He has induced a generation of Middle East scholars not only to believe that "since the time of Homer...every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist" but to ridicule "speculations about the latest conspiracy to blow up buildings, sabotage commercial airliners and poison water supplies" as "highly exaggerated [racial] stereotyping" (this in a statement of 1997).

By Said the herd of independent thinkers in political science departments have been taught that "Israel's occupation increased in severity and outright cruelty, more than rivalling all other military occupations in modern history." His acolytes also have found meat and drink in Said's pristinely ignorant and intellectually violent pronouncements about Jews. They are not, he claims, really a people at all because Moses was an Egyptian (he wasn't) and because Jewish identity in the Diaspora is entirely a function of external persecution. The Holocaust (which destroyed most of the potential citizens of a Jewish state) was in Said's estimation a great boon to Jews because it served to "protect" Palestinian Jews "with the world's compassion." Prior to 1948, he has asserted, "the historical duration of a Jewish state [in "Palestine"] was a sixty-year period two millennia ago." (In fact, as any normally attentive Sunday-school student knows, Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel lasted a thousand years.)

Said's pronouncements about his fellow Arabs have also been widely influential. While bewailing the racist stereotyping of Arabs by Western "Orientalists" Said has insisted that "there are no divisions in the Palestinian population of four million. We all support the PLO." Said wrote this while he was still a member of the Palestine National Council, the leading spokesman for the PLO in the American news media, and one of the closest advisors of Yasser Arafat, whom he praised for "his microscopic grasp ... of politics, not as grand strategy, in the pompous Kissingerian sense, but as daily, even hourly movement of people and attitudes, in the Gramscian or Foucauldian sense." But at the same time that Said insisted that "every Palestinian...is up in arms" against Israel, that they all belonged to a monolithic body with one will, acting and thinking in perfect unison, he felt it necessary to urge the murder of Arab "collaborators" with Israel. Indeed, he insisted that "the UN Charter and every other known document or protocol" sanctions such murders. Said eventually withdrew his support from the PLO head not because Arafat had become one of the major war criminals of modern times but because the Oslo Accords showed him becoming "soft" on Israel, willing to sell the world that famous used Buick called "recognition of Israel's right to exist." At the moment Said is incensed by reports that a new Iraqi government may make peace with Israel.

Said's intense hostility to America has also powerfully influenced that sizable contingent of our academics whose motto is "the other country, right or wrong." He has described Operation Iraqi Freedom as the crusade of an "avenging Judeo-Christian god of war," fitting into the pattern of America" reducing whole peoples, countries and even continents to ruin by nothing short of holocaust." And, as usual, he blames the Jews for what he dislikes: "The Perles and Wolfowitzes of this country" have led America into a war "planned by a docile professionalized staff in...Washington and Tel Aviv" and publicly defended by "Ari Fleischer (who I believe is an Israeli citizen)." (A New York Post journalist who attempted to find the source of Said's phony claim about Fleischer located it in the website of the White Aryan Resistance Movement.)

Should Said's past membership in an international terrorist organization or his bountiful production of Disneyland versions of history or his thinly-veiled antisemitism and blatant anti-Americanism have disqualified him for selection by the John Danz/Walker-Ames committee? Perhaps not: if UW were to eliminate all candidates who promoted ideas so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them, the stock of possible appointees would be seriously depleted.

But Said's career has in recent years lurched from scandal to scandal. In the September 1999 issue of Commentary, Justus Reid Weiner revealed that Said had "adjusted" the facts of his life to create a personal myth…to fit the myth of Arab dispossession. For decades he had presented himself as an exile, an Arab who grew up in Jerusalem but who, at age twelve, when Israel was established, was (along with his family) driven out of the Talbiyeh neighborhood of Jerusalem. In fact, as Weiner massively documented and irrefutably demonstrated, Said's tragic tale was largely a fabrication. He grew up in a wealthy section of Cairo, son of a Palestinian Arab who emigrated to the U.S. in 1911, became an American citizen, then moved to Egypt. Said was educated in Egypt, not Jerusalem. His family occasionally visited cousins in Jerusalem, and Said was born during one such visit in 1935.

In July of 2000 Said was in the news again. During a visit to Lebanon in July, he was spotted hurling rocks over the border at Israelis. Expressing dismay at the Agence France Presse photograph of his pitching exploits (a peculiar way of realizing his intellectual vocation) Said exclaimed: "I had no idea that media people were there..." Not the action, but its detection, caused him to regret what he had done.

Columbia University, Said's employer, saw nothing wrong with Said's fabrications or his stone-throwing. This is the same Columbia which in 1959 immediately "accepted the resignation" of a young English Department instructor named Charles Van Doren for being involved in a rigged NBC quiz show called "Twenty-One." Columbia's then Dean John Palfrey said that "The issue is the moral one of honesty and integrity," and that "If these principles are to continue to have meaning at Columbia," Van Doren could not remain there. Palfrey's principles have long since been forgotten at Columbia, and apparently at the University of Washington as well.

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AT OXFORD, ARABS AND JEWS
WOULD FIGHT AS GENTLEMEN
Shmuley Boteach Jerusalem Post, May 14, 2003

In the 11 years that I served as rabbi to the students of Oxford University, I was aware that I had been given the opportunity to influence some of the world's future leaders. But the news this week that Prof. Noah Feldman of NYU Law School was chosen by the Pentagon as the American adviser to help draft an Iraqi constitution gave me particular delight. Noah was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford for two years with whom I studied, argued, and played squash. I can attest to his brilliance and wide erudition, as well as to his profound commitment to social justice, already in evidence while at Oxford.

It is clear that one of the principal reasons that Noah, at 32, has been chosen is the fact that in addition to being an experienced constitutional expert, he has the added bonus of an Oxford doctorate in Islamic thought. But my delight in his appointment comes not only from seeing a former student chosen for so historic a task. Rather, it is the joy of seeing the vindication of a system, a unique arrangement of student coexistence that was central to Oxford in my time there, a system where it was not out of the ordinary for a Jewish student to become an expert in Islam.

When I arrived in 1988, it became one of the highest priorities of our L'Chaim Society to promote the State of Israel in a city that was awash with high-profile Arab speakers who were guests of the Oxford Middle East Society, a well-organized student organization founded and funded by Arab students of prominent families. They brought in Yasser Arafat, Hanan Ashrawi, Noam Chomsky, and many other leading critics of Israel. We responded with Ariel Sharon, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu, Yitzhak Shamir, and Natan Sharansky. Soon, a full-throttle competition for the hearts of Oxford's students was on.

But although a ferocious war of words was being conducted, the Arab students were never our enemies. On the contrary, we became friends and frequently socialized together. The bitter battles that one sees today on American and European campuses between Arab and Jewish students, replete with ugly Palestinian divestment petitions against Israel, were entirely absent from Oxford. While we both sought to promote our positions, we never directly clashed and never worked to undermine the other's events. To the contrary. A student whose father was the ambassador to Britain of an important Arab country was a frequent dinner guest at my home. Even as he hammered his belief that Sharon and Netanyahu were militant extremists, he hung out with my family and attended many of L'Chaim's events…

Arab and Muslim students were regulars at our communal Friday night Sabbath meals… Jerusalem Post columnist Ron Dermer, who served as president of L'Chaim, habitually arrived on the Sabbath with his close Muslim friends. And one of my proudest moments as a rabbi was when one of these students told me he could no longer drink our kiddush wine because, inspired by our commitment to Judaism, he had decided to become a religious Muslim. Alcohol was now out.

In November, 1997, when prime minister Netanyahu was to visit Oxford as our guest, I scrambled to find one of the beautiful medieval college dining halls to host a drinks reception. There being none available, I went to an Arab student friend of mine, scion of a highly distinguished family, and asked him to use his influence with the college head to procure the hall. It was a bizarre request, but the young man interceded immediately, asking in return that he and a group of Arab students be allowed to meet Netanyahu privately (Netanyahu's trip was subsequently cancelled due to a meeting with Madeleine Albright in London).

How did we all act so cordially while being so far apart ideologically? To be sure, being far from the fighting in the Middle East helped. But a far more important consideration was that Oxford has a long history of debate without rancor, discussion without division, heated exchange without hostile intent. The Oxford mentality demanded that we all act like gentlemen. Ripping down each other's posters or sending hecklers to ruin each other's events was simply not tolerated. Whatever our differences, we knew that the environment demanded that we treat each other cordially. And it is how two parties treat each other, rather than anything else, that determines whether they will be enemies or friends…

The Arab-Israeli conflict still rages because, while all sorts of pressure has been brought to bear on Israel to relinquish land for peace, with the notable exception of some in the Bush Administration, the Western powers have made no demand that the Arabs simply behave like gentlemen. The West has not had the guts to say to the Arabs: "You have a dispute with Israel, ok. But blowing up children is repulsive and uncivilized and we will not tolerate it. Before we have any dealings with you we demand that your actions be in accord with basic civility. We do not befriend barbarians. Period."

Suicide bombings against innocent civilians have repeatedly been excused in European capitals as an understandable response to occupation. Actions that would never be tolerated if practiced by the Arab populations of Paris, Rome, or Copenhagen are somehow tolerated if practiced in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Notice that when Palestinians danced in the streets on September 11, 2001, not one world leader rebuked them saying, "Is this how civilized people behave?"

Sadly, Arabs in the Middle East are not held to even minimal standards of civility, not in how they treat women, not in how they treat Christians, and not in how they treat each other. The House of Saud can behead prostitutes and allow high school girls to be incinerated because they dared run from a burning building without headscarves, but Prince Bandar will still be treated as the dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington. That such a phenomenon is tolerated shows that we are not gentlemen.

Bashar Assad can occupy Lebanon, a fellow Arab country, and fund Hizbullah. But rather than telling him, "I only visit with honorable company," the American secretary of state rushed to Syria to hear from Assad's lips how he had closed the Hamas and PFLP offices in Damascus. Later The New York Times made a simple phone call and confirmed that they were still open.

This is what makes Prof. Feldman so perfect for his job in Iraq. In his new book After Jihad, Noah argues that the Arabs are capable of democratic government, and challenges the West to take concrete steps to ensure that Arab countries embrace egalitarian principles, thereby facilitating a durable peace. "American self-interest can be understood to include a foreign policy consistent with the deeply held democratic values that make America what it is."

In other words, America, which treats other nations with civility, has the right to demand that the leaders of the countries it deals with behave like gentlemen.

(Shmuely Boteach is a nationally-syndicated radio host
on The Talk America Radio Network.)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers! Please note that due to a legal holiday in Canada, the next CIJR Briefing will be sent to you on Tuesday, May 20.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\

UPCOMING EVENTS

To our Toronto Readers:

Tell the World
Walk With Israel

Sunday, May 25, 2003

Registration @ Coronation Park, 9:30 a.m.

Join UJA Federation for the world's largest solidarity walk
on Israel's behalf, starting from Coronation Park at 10:30 a.m. sharp!

For more details and registration information visit:
www.jewishtoronto.net

________________________________________________

To our Winnipeg Readers:

The Asper Foundation Lecture Series

proudly presents

Dr. Frederick Krantz
CIJR Director and Concordia University Professor

“After Iraq:
New Challenges for the Middle East”

Thursday, May 29, 7:30 p.m.

Berney Theatre, Asper Jewish Community Campus
123 Doncaster Street, Winnipeg

Admission: $5, students free (with student I.D.). Space limited. Ticket purchases at tel. 477-7510 or at the door, May 29 at 7:00 p.m.

Sponsored by the Winnipeg Zionist Initiative and the Rose and Max Rady Jewish Community Centre.

Top of the Page

Volume III, No. 629 • Thursday, May 15, 2003

HOMEGROWN FANATICS
Sulaiman al-Hattlan
New York Times, May 15, 2003

On Monday night, Riyadh didn't sleep. Phone lines were jammed and streets were crowded. The news was devastating: three suicide bombings at housing complexes for Westerners here in the Saudi capital had killed more than 20 people and wounded nearly 200, some of them Saudi. Only days earlier, Saudi officials had described Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as "weak and nonexistent." But on Monday night, Saudis were asking, "Is Osama behind these attacks?"

Even if it turns out that Al Qaeda wasn't directly responsible for the bombings, its influence is to blame for an atmosphere that has allowed such horrible deeds. Though few would publicly admit it, Saudis have become hostages of the backward agenda of a small minority of bin Laden supporters who in effect have hijacked our society. Progressive voices have been silenced. The religious and social oppression of women means half the population is forced to stay behind locked doors. Members of the religious police harass us in public spaces, and sometimes even in our homes about our clothing and haircuts. A civil cold war is raging, one we have long pretended doesn't exist.

Some here still won't acknowledge that their fellow Saudis were responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, pinning blame instead on the C.I.A. or Zionists. But what happened in Riyadh on Monday evening must wake us up to the reality that fanatics and terrorists live among us. Suicide bombers are attacking Muslims, too. And fanatical religious leaders have issued religious decrees, or fatwas, calling for the deaths of Saudi liberal intellectuals.

It is time to stop blaming the outside world for the deadly fanaticism in Saudi Arabia, which some Saudis have done in saying that the Sept. 11 attackers had been brainwashed elsewhere. As Mansour Al-Nogidan, a former religious fanatic who has become fundamentalism's strongest Saudi intellectual critic, wrote in a Saudi newspaper last Sunday, Saudi Arabia suffers from a homemade brand of fanaticism propagated by members of the conservative Wahhabi school of Islam. Hamza Al-Muzini, a prominent Saudi linguistics professor, recently wrote in another Saudi daily that his young son is being taught the culture of death at school, and that many teachers influence young Saudis with their extremist political agenda, a situation tolerated by the Ministry of Education. After this article, Dr. Muzini received death threats from Saudi fundamentalists.

Because of the dominance of Wahhabism, Saudi society has been exposed to only one school of thought, one that teaches hatred of Jews, Christians and certain Muslims, like Shiites and liberal and moderate Sunnis. But we Saudis must acknowledge that our real enemy is religious fanaticism. We have to stop talking about the need for reform and actually start it, particularly in education. Otherwise, what happened here on Monday night could be the beginning of a war that leads to the Talibanization of our society.

On the streets of Riyadh yesterday, I saw thousands of angry Saudis. I am angry too. What our extremists exported is coming back to hit us, dreadfully, at home. This Saudi anger could be a sign that our society soon might be able to start looking at itself.

(Sulaiman Al-Hattlan, a columnist for the Saudi daily Al Watan,
is a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.)
______________________________________

AL-QAEDA IN SAUDI ARABIA:
COMING OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Yael Shahar
Institute for Counter-Terrorism (Herzliya, Israel), May 13, 2003

To analysts following the security situation in Saudi Arabia, Monday's nearly simultaneous attacks on complexes housing Westerners in Saudi Arabia came as no surprise. Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network continues to strike a sympathetic cord among many in the conservative kingdom. These sympathies increase the vulnerability of Saudi society to the kind of tolerance for extremists that has already opened the doors for al-Qaeda in countries from Pakistan to Indonesia.

To say that the writing was on the wall is to understate the case. For months, there have been signs that al-Qaeda sympathizers were forming local cells. In Saudi Arabia, there is no need to import extremists; there is no shortage of local elements ready to follow in the footsteps of the 15 young Saudis who helped fly hijacked planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon a year and a half ago. The kingdom's ultra conservative religious framework contributes to a situation in which al-Qaeda's jihad against Western culture falls on fertile ground.

The first concrete hints of Monday's events began on March 18, when a Saudi man believed to be linked to al-Qaeda was killed by the premature detonation of a bomb he was preparing. A search of the house where the explosion occurred, located in Riyadh's Jazirah district turned up three hand grenades, at least a dozen assault rifles, pistols, ammunition and explosives. The investigation into the plot revealed an extensive network of cells… The result was a series of increasingly strident warnings of imminent terror attacks on Western targets in Saudi Arabia. On 1 May, the U.S. State Department issued an uncommonly specific travel warning to American citizens in the kingdom. "The Department of State warns U.S. citizens to defer non-essential travel to Saudi Arabia. Information indicates that terrorist groups may be in the final phases of planning attacks against U.S. interests in Saudi Arabia," the document said.

Less than a week later, on 6 May, Saudi security forces…found themselves in the midst of a gun battle with militants. The gunmen fled their hideout, still firing on pursuing security forces. When their car was damaged in the firefight, they carjacked another vehicle and disappeared… A subsequent search of the cell's hideout and getaway car turned up a huge cache of arms, including, according to media reports, 55 hand grenades, five suitcases loaded with a total of 377 kilograms (829 pounds) of explosive, AK-47 automatic rifles, and 2,545 bullets of different calibres. Police also found a substantial sum of cash, wigs and other disguises, computers and communications equipment….

As a mark of the seriousness of the situation, the Saudi government took the unprecedented step of publicizing the existence of the cell. A public announcement was issued, according to which at least 19 men were being sought in connection with terrorist plots. The suspects included 17 Saudis, an Iraqi holding both Kuwaiti and Canadian citizenship, and a Yemeni. Their names and pictures were shown on state-run Saudi television, and splashed across the front pages of local newspapers. Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz announced a reward of up to 300,000 riyals (80,000 dollars) for people who guided authorities to the cell and 50,000 riyals for those who provided any information about them.

The day after the raid, a senior Saudi security official announced that suspected terrorists were receiving orders directly from bin Laden. This announcement too, was unprecedented. The Saudi government had previously been at pains to deny that there was significant al-Qaeda activity in the kingdom. At the same time, Interior Minister Prince Nayef announced in February that Saudi authorities were holding 253 people with suspected links to al-Qaeda and that 90 of them were proven to be members of the terror organization. However, these people were depicted as an aberration…

Now, for the first time, Saudi officials were concerned enough to confront the issue openly. Prince Nayef [said,] "Yes, all the cell members are known to be al-Qaeda operatives." Nayef said the suspects received military training in Afghanistan before returning to Saudi Arabia. "This group has started outside of the kingdom. They received military training in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, they pretend to be Islamists and declare others as infidels," he told Al-Watan… Prince Nayef said the men believed in "suicidal ideas, and not in money. They are young and have been brainwashed."

However, it wasn't just their ideas that were dangerous. Citing the large quantities of weapons and explosives found, Prince Nayef pointed out: "The most dangerous thing is the explosives. Its quantity is large and quality is high. This is very disturbing and indicates how dangerous these people are. The presence of such highly advanced explosives indicates that they had been planning to destroy buildings or big places… These men have only one goal in mind: Jihad (holy war)," he said.

Nor was it only Westerners who were at risk. Saudi officials said that the cell had been planning attacks on the royal family as well as American and British interests. The prime targets were the defense minister, Prince Sultan, and his brother, Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz.

This of course, is nothing new. Bin Laden and his followers regard the current rulers of Saudi Arabia as traitors to Islam and to the Muslim nation. His main claim against the Saudi family is the presence of U.S. military forces in the site of Islam's two holiest shrines, Mecca and Medina. Recognizing the use made of this claim by al-Qaeda, and its increasing acceptance elsewhere in the Arab world, the Bush administration announced April 29 that it would pull almost all U.S. military personnel out of the kingdom. The presence of some 5,000 American troops in the Saudi Peninsula since the first Gulf War was touted in the media "as a main reason for the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and other attacks against Americans."

The truth of course is more complicated; bin Laden may have used the presence of U.S. troops as a rallying cry, but his declaration of war was against the impact of Western culture… The Saudi royal family--who bin Laden views as corrupt heretics propped up by American military power--have always been the target of his most strident abhorrence. This time, recognizing that al-Qaeda was now on its doorstep, the Saudi government was quick to launch a coordinated counter-attack. The state-controlled media came out with a series of editorials calling Osama bin Laden a fanatical coward, and heaping scorn on the "misguided men who blindly follow his teachings." Saudi Arabia's highest religious authority, Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdul Aziz al-Sheikh, described the militants as "corrupt, traitors and aggressors"…

What is significant about the Saudi al-Qaeda networks is not so much their degree of autonomy. Last week, a Saudi weekly published in London reported that al-Qaeda was preparing a new attack on the U.S. on the scale of September 11. The paper, Al-Majallah, cited an e-mail message from a newly-appointed al-Qaeda spokesman, Thabet bin Qais, who claimed that "an attack against America is inevitable." Al-Qaeda, he said has "…sidelined the September 11, 2001 team." According to Thabet bin Qais, "Future missions have been entrusted to the new team, which is well protected against the U.S. intelligence services. The old leadership does not know the names of any of its members." In a later issue, Al-Majallah quoted an al-Qaeda operative named Abu Mohamed Al-Ablaj as saying that his group had "been planning major operations for a long time in the Gulf where it had stocked large amounts of arms and explosives." In an email to the paper, Al-Ablaj wrote that the recent raid in Riyadh had not derailed the group's plans. Al-Ablaj described himself as the "coordinator of the Mujahedin training center" run by al-Qaeda.

[What] one sees here is the emergence of a local leadership for al-Qaeda cells—or more accurately, Qaeda spin-offs. These cells are not directly connected with the "traditional" al-Qaeda leadership, currently in hiding in Pakistan and elsewhere. The reason that "the old leadership does not know the names" of the new cell members is simple: they are completely unconnected. This is not to say that the Saudi network is not al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda is not an organization, but a phenomenon--a combination of shared ideologies, common goals, and of course, a common idea of what methods to use to achieve these goals…

In the first week of March, ICT [Institute for Counter-Terrorism] reprinted a “call for treason in the name of Jihad," that appeared on an Internet forum popular with followers of Osama bin Laden. The site, Arabforum.net is particularly designed to appeal to young Moslems around the world. The message appealed to Muslims to betray their countries for the sake of Jihad. It calls upon “all brothers working in air and sea headquarters, airports and harbors, serving the U.S.A. and their allies and to all employees working with the U.S.A. in the oil fields” to rise and act to save the Moslem “Umma” (nation). It calls on Moslems everywhere to do what they can to sabotage the preparations for the war against Iraq…“The infidel enemy, which we command you to destroy on the battlefield, is the same enemy which you are serving. You know its bases, its abilities, its movements, its weak points and you are, therefore, the source of our strength. This fact places you in an important and special position in your ability to serve your land and your religion.” Residents of the Gulf countries are further urged to gather intelligence and report information in preparation of terror attacks. The appeal goes on to list the kinds of information that should be reported, including…"Housing accommodation and administrative areas used by American technical teams," and "Housing accommodation of American headquarters employees (local employees)."

One of the immediate conclusions from Monday's attacks is the local element: the perpetrators were on their home ground, were sure of their abilities to elude capture, and confident of their chances of success. In a country where young Muslims are increasingly turning to religion for reasons for their country's woes, the radicalization of the next generation is bound to have concrete results. One of these results was seen in Monday night's attack.

Top of the Page

Volume III, No. 628 • Wednesday, May 14, 2003

WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP

WEEKLY QUOTES

“[Dismantling settlements] is not an issue on the horizon. If you ask me whether in Beit El there will not be Jews, no, Jews will live there.”—P.M. Ariel Sharon pledging that Jews will continue to live in Shilo and Beit El under Israeli sovereignty. The prime minister, who also rejected calls to cease adding to the settlements, communicated to visiting U.S. Secretary of State Powell that the ‘settlements’ are home to Israel’s “finest youth. They are already the third generation, contributing to the State and serving in elite army units”. (Ha’aretz, Jerusalem Post, Globe and Mail, May 13)

“They [the Israeli government] have some comments on the road map and we will listen to their comments but we do not plan to rewrite or renegotiate the road map. We believe the best way to [work out differences] is through the road map.”—U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell during his visit to Israel, insisting that the road map was the “only path” to peace. (Reuters, May 13)

“The reason we continue with these security measures is not just to protect our citizens, but to protect this embryonic process that could be destroyed by one or two suicide bombings.”—Spokesman for P.M. Ariel Sharon, Ra’anan Gissin, citing intelligence information warning of a possible Palestinian attack, explained why Israel felt it necessary to seal off the Gaza Strip shortly after having opened the border to Palestinian workers. (New York Times, May 13)

“The election of Mahmoud Abbas…the release of the road map, and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s just-concluded trip to the region presents the parties with both real and false choices. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have latched onto the false ones. These revolve around the quality and quantity of Israeli gestures that would supposedly bolster Abbas’s standing…[including] halting the expansion of Israeli ‘settlements’ [and] ending closures… Israel has in fact released 98 Palestinians who crossed into the county illegally… Moreover, Israel stands ready to issue 25,000 work permits [and] release PA funds… [F]ocusing on whether Israel is doing enough to ease hardships…is really beside the point…If the Palestinians stopped the violence they would quickly discover that Israel is ready to deliver more than just gestures. But premature gestures to the Palestinians that undermine incentives for accommodation with Israel are counterproductive…”—Editorial (Jer. Post, May 13)

“The road map is many times more terrible than the Oslo agreement… Instead of punishing the PA for not fulfilling any of the obligations that it undertook under Oslo, and murdering more than a thousand Israelis within the last decade; instead of predicating any future progress on changing the entire leadership, including Arafat, it rewards the Palestinians with unprecedented achievements… When there is no obligation on the Palestinians to stop teaching hatred of Israel, no peace is possible…”—Likud Minister Uzi Landau, calling on P.M. Sharon to reject the road map. (Jer. Post, May 13)

“All the suspects are involved at various levels of prohibited economic activities. This includes transferring large amounts of money to organizations identified with Hamas abroad that was passed on to organizations affiliated with Hamas in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, and to the Islamic Movement in Israel. This money was used for the civilian infrastructure of Hamas, for military operations against Israel, and to support the families of suicide terrorists…”—Eran Kamin, head of investigations at the National Fraud Squad, referring to the arrest of the Islamic Movement’s northern branch leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, along with 14 other Israeli Arabs from the city of Umm al-Fahm, on charges of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. [Islamic Movement spokesman Tawfik Mahmeed denied any connection between his group, the largest Israeli Arab organization in the country, and Hamas.] (Ha’aretz, May 13; Jer. Post, May 14)

“The only way to deal with this [terrorist] threat ultimately is to destroy it. There’s no treaty that can solve this problem. There’s no peace agreement, no policy of containment or deterrence that works to deal with this threat. We have to go find the terrorists.”—U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, following yesterday’s deadly attack in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which killed at least 30, including 7 Americans, and which U.S. officials said was almost certainly carried out by al-Qaeda. (N.Y.T., May 14)

“The real problem is in the Saudi society itself. They don’t want to ask real questions about why their society is producing such people.”—Khairallah Khairallah, a former editor of the London-based Al Hayat newspaper, questioning the Saudi royal family’s resolve to confront terrorism, pointing to yesterday’s attack as an example of extremism running unchecked. (N.Y.T., May 14)

“We are now in the highest point of danger in the United States since Sept. 11. If al-Qaeda doesn’t act within weeks or months against U.S. targets, the organization will lose credibility with its own members and on the Arab street. They have to prove that they still exist.”—George Friedman, terrorist expert and Chairman of Stratfor, a leading U.S. intelligence firm, articulating his organization’s belief that since 9/11, and especially in the aftermath of the American-led Iraq victory, al-Qaeda is under enormous pressure to prove it remains a deadly force. (Nat’l. Post, May 14)

“They kill Americans and others when Israel makes serious efforts to reach a just peace with the Palestinians, and when Israel makes no such efforts. They kill Americans and others when Washington stations troops in Saudi Arabia, and when it begins to withdraw them. They kill Americans and others when Bill Clinton leans over backward to avoid confronting Saddam Hussein, and when George W. Bush deposed the Iraqi dictator. They kill Americans and others whenever they can. That makes no sense in the rational, secular political universe that Western nations and much of the developing world have jointly constructed… Road maps for Middle East peace are drawn up on the implicit assumption that rewarding Palestinian nationalism with a state will quell the holy bombers and their allies… But such judgments defy logic and miss the bombers’ point. Their target is the entire rational, secular political universe that we instinctively--and mistakenly--turn to for explanations… They attack not to create another Arab state, but to turn the existing ones into a single fanatical theocracy that will eventually extend its control over other civilizations.”—Columnist Jim Hoagland (N.Y. Post, May 14)

“I am entitled to admire a man who brought Germany work, bread, peace, honour and a place in the sun. There is more to Adolf Hitler and his government than Jews, Auschwitz and violence. The violent acts were committed as wartime measures. My mother told me in 1968 or ’69, ‘Ernst, you would not have been born if it weren’t for Adolf Hitler. I owe that man my life’.”—Notorious Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, currently in Canada facing deportation charges to his native Germany, denying allegations that he is a white supremacist. (Globe and Mail, Nat’l. Post, May 10)

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SHORT TAKES

13 ISRAELIS INJURED IN SEPARATE ATTACKS—(Gush Katif; Sderot) Thirteen Israelis were injured in two separate attacks yesterday. In the morning, ten IDF soldiers were injured when Palestinians fired mortars at a military base in Gush Katif in the Gaza Strip. The IDF returned fire at Khan Yunis. In the afternoon, three people were wounded when Palestinians fired a Qassam rocket at the Negev town of Sderot, setting the Of Kor factory on fire. In response, IDF troops moved into the village of al-Qarara, near Khan Yunis. IDF troops also found a laboratory containing dozens of kilograms of explosive material in Nablus, and discovered two suitcase bombs in an apartment near Tul Karm. (Ha’aretz, May 14)

SHARON AND ABBAS TO MEET--(Jerusalem) Before P.M. Ariel Sharon leaves for talks in Washington, he and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, will hold the first Israeli-Palestinian talks in nearly three years this Saturday night in Jerusalem. Abbas' Cabinet minister in charge of security, Mohammed Dahlan, and Palestinian parliament speaker Ahmed Qureia will also reportedly attend the meeting. The U.S. also announced plans to provide $50 million to rebuild the Palestinian infrastructure. (Jer. Post, May 11, 14)

F.M. SHALOM MEETS QATARI COUNTERPART—(Paris) Israeli F.M. Silvan Shalom met today with his Qatari counterpart in Paris, the first such high-level encounter between the two countries and Israel's first meeting with an Arab leader since the outbreak of Israeli-Palestinian violence 31 months ago. Following the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords, Israel developed tentative relations with some of the Persian Gulf states, opening trade offices in Qatar and Oman in 1996. But relations have been rocky since September 2000, with Egypt pulling out its ambassador and Oman closing its trade office. (Ha’aretz, May 14)

BUSH TO PROPOSE FREE-TRADE AREA ACROSS MIDEAST—(Columbia, S.C.) U.S. President George W. Bush linked Middle East peacemaking with the need for economic advancement, offering to extend U.S. free-trade benefits already enjoyed by Israel and Jordan to other nations in the region within a decade. Bush, speaking to 1,200 university graduates, said that unrestricted U.S. trade with the Middle East could help the entire region prosper. Under his proposal for a U.S.-Middle East Free Trade, nations would be brought into the pact gradually. To qualify, nations would have to renounce terrorism and agree to drop boycotts of Israel. (Ha’aretz, May 9)

KHATAMI HAILED IN LEBANON—(Beirut) Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims cheered as Iranian President Mohammad Khatami drove through Beirut on Monday, making the first visit by an Iranian president to Lebanon since the Islamic revolution of 1979. Khatami was greeted by Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, P.M. Rafik Hariri, and Hizbollah deputy leader Sheik Naim Kassem. Hizbollah's inclusion in the red-carpet reception for Khatami was a departure from protocol, and signals the group's acceptance in mainstream politics. This week, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that officials from the U.S. and Iran have met several times in Switzerland to try to ease tensions. (Ha’aretz, May 12; Jer. Post, May 14)

MOBILE LABORATORIES IN IRAQ—(Baghdad) U.S. military inspectors have found what they consider their most persuasive evidence that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction: three trailers that might have been mobile biological weapons laboratories. Two contained equipment that U.S. military experts concluded was almost certainly intended to produce biological weapons, including a fermenting machine, a dryer, a system to bring in fresh water and eliminate contaminated water, and equipment to contain the emission of gases that might give away the laboratory's purpose. Last weekend, U.S. forces uncovered what is thought to be radioactive Cobalt-60 at a test-range site near Amiriya, raising suspicions that Iraq was pursuing a nuclear weapons program. (N.Y.T., May 12; Int. Her. Trib., May 14)

U.S. GIVES JORDAN $700 MILLION IN WAR COMPENSATION—(Amman) The U.S. has given Jordan $700 million to compensate for economic hardship caused by the war in Iraq. "This underscores the strength and breadth of relationship between our two countries," Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters in Amman. Though King Abdullah distanced himself publicly from the war under strong domestic pressure, he allowed U.S. special forces access to Iraq from Jordanian soil. The $700 million is part of a $1.1 billion aid package to the kingdom that includes $400 million in military aid. This is in addition to $450 million given annually by Washington to Amman. (Reuters, May 13)

CANADIAN SUSPECT IN SAUDI BLAST—(Riyadh) Saudi officials are linking the deadly terror attack that killed at least 30 people in Riyadh Monday night to a separate foiled plot involving a group of suspected terrorists that included a Canadian citizen. Abdel-Rahman Mansour Jabarah, who has Canadian and Kuwaiti passports, was identified last week as one of 19 suspected to have received orders directly from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to attack Western interests and members of the Saudi royal family. The 22-year old is the brother of Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, formerly of St. Catharines, Ont., who is in custody in New York for plotting al-Qaeda actions in southeast Asia. (Canwest News, May 14)

BOYCOTT OF ISRAELI ACADEMICS REJECTED—(London) A teachers' union rejected a proposal to have British universities sever all ties with Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel's alleged violation of Palestinians’ rights. Two-thirds of the 200 delegates at an Association of University Teachers conference rejected the proposal. Sue Blackwell, a lecturer at Birmingham University who proposed the motion, told delegates that just as Britain had boycotted South Africa it should impose one on "today's apartheid regime." (A.P., May 9)

MORE MUSLIMS THAN JEWS IN QUEBEC—(Ottawa) Data from the 2001 Canadian census made public by Statistics Canada yesterday show that the number of Muslims in Quebec totals 108,620, up by 141.8% from a decade earlier. The Jewish figure slipped by 8%, to 89,915. Islam is also now the second-largest non-Christian religion in Canada as a whole. (Gazette, May 14)

QUEBEC COURT PUTS CONCORDIA HILLEL LAWSUIT ON HOLD—(Montreal) Quebec Superior Court Judge François Bélanger has put Hillel’s $100,000 claim against the Concordia Student Union on hold, suspending all proceedings until Hillel exhausts its internal university channels. “I welcome the Judge’s ruling,” said Aaron Maté, a CSU vice president and Jewish student. “I hope that all members of the Jewish community…will recognize the serious damage that they are doing…[by] silencing those who have the courage to defend Palestinian human rights.” The lawsuit was filed in December 2002 after the CSU suspended Hillel for exhibiting material about an Israeli army program open to Diaspora Jews. (CSU, May 6)

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Volume III, No. 627 • Tuesday, May 13, 2003

THE MEANING OF 'PAINFUL CONCESSIONS'
Yossi Klein Halevi
Jerusalem Post, May 8, 2003

Like most journalists, I routinely use the words "West Bank"--or preferably, the more neutral "territories"--to refer to Judea and Samaria. And "settlements" to refer to its Jewish villages and towns. And "land for peace" to refer to the formula that suggests that mass Jewish dislocation can somehow heal this conflict.

I use that language, in part, to shield myself from the traumatic implications of an eventual withdrawal, which I, like most centrist Israelis, reluctantly support. The reasons for that support seem to me self-evident--the demographic threat to a Jewish state, the moral consequences of endless occupation, the need to separate from the Palestinians and define a defensible border, the need to extricate ourselves from an increasingly pathological relationship with the international community.

Most Israelis have decided that withdrawal is both necessary and inevitable. And the man who built the settlements, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, now agrees with them.

Still, as we approach our moment of decision, the language of euphemism with which we speak about withdrawal feels increasingly untenable. As a people, we need to courageously confront the consequences of uprooting--what Sharon calls, with rare understatement, "painful concessions." We need an advance account of the enormity of that pain, not in order to dissuade ourselves from accepting the brutal decree of history, but to do so without illusions. The failure of the Oslo process hasn't released us from the necessity of withdrawal, but it does demand an end to self-deception. And a key element of that self-deception has been our unwillingness to concede the human, social, and historical consequences of withdrawal.

The deception begins with the sterile phrase, "land for peace." "Land" implies a pristine landscape, devoid of human presence. In fact, the formulation means a destruction of worlds--neighborhoods and homes, schools and synagogues, hangouts and hitchhiking stations. It isn't "land" and it probably won't be "peace"--at least not a peace that means recognition of our right to exist and respect for the inviolability of our borders.

The human toll that will result from the destruction of organic communities is incalculable. After the Sinai town of Yamit was destroyed in 1982, many never recovered; for some, the result was depression and divorce. At its peak, Yamit contained perhaps 5,000 residents. Increase Yamit by tens of thousands and you can begin to imagine the implications for Israeli society that will result from a similar uprooting--the real word is "transfer"--in Judea and Samaria.

And Yamit was barely a decade old when it was destroyed. By contrast, some communities in Judea and Samaria are well into their third decade. Unlike Yamit, a native generation has grown up in Judea and Samaria for whom Israel lies across the green line. And a third generation is now being formed there. Think of that next time you read a newspaper account that refers to children killed or wounded in a terrorist attack in Judea and Samaria as "settlers." Beyond the personal is the national trauma. The towns and villages of Judea and Samaria are the legacy and symbol of this generation of religious Zionists. The destruction of dozens of communities that form the emotional core of religious Zionism will be a blow from which it may not fully recover.

The implications for the state are profound. The religious Zionists, after all, aren't a marginal community but the last collective repository of idealistic Zionism. For a state under siege, their invigorating presence has been essential. Young religious Zionists have replaced secular kibbutzniks as the army's elite, increasingly filling combat units and the officers' corps. Go to any settlement on a Shabbat morning and you'll see dozens of young men gathered outside the synagogue, soldiers on leave from elite units exchanging army stories while their younger brothers…

Will religious Zionism continue to provide the army with its most passionate soldiers, after its most beloved communities are destroyed and its young people feel betrayed by the state? In religious terms, the uprooting will inevitably be referred to as a "hurban." That Hebrew word for destruction refers to the two ancient exiles from this land. True, withdrawal from Judea and Samaria will only be a partial hurban; one assumes the Jewish state will survive the blow. But in one sense the exile from Judea and Samaria could be more devastating than its two predecessors, because this time, the hurban will be self-imposed.

When one part of the nation accuses another part of being responsible for its hurban, the most minimal sense of collective identity will be threatened, perhaps for generations to come.

One of the great mistakes of the Israeli Left has been to minimize Israel's claim to Judea and Samaria. The impulse was understandable: The Left downplayed the historic and emotional attachments to the land to resist the annexationist appeal. Yet it confused the need for physical withdrawal with an unnecessary emotional withdrawal. The Left's denial of our historic claim--and its downplaying of the price we will pay for uprooting-- has allowed the international community to see an Israeli withdrawal not as a concession at all but as the self-evident restoration of occupied land, the thief returning his booty.

By contrast, the Palestinians never fail to remind the world that they are being forced to abandon their claim to pre-1967 Israel.

The logic of partition is based on the fact that two peoples claim the same territory. But if one people stakes its emotional claim to the entire land, as the Palestinians continue to do, while the rival people confines its claim to only part of the contested land, then the moral basis for partition is compromised. Precisely those who support partition should be vigorously reminding the world of the Jewish claim to Judea and Samaria and the trauma we will be imposing on ourselves by forfeiting that claim. Otherwise, we risk a repetition of what happened after the Camp David negotiations in July 2000, when much of the international community dismissed Israel's willingness to withdraw as inconsequential.

If political and demographic conditions make withdrawal necessary, that doesn't lessen the legitimacy of our connection to Hebron and Bethlehem, just as the Palestinians never forget their links to Jaffa and Haifa. The settlers were right to stake our claim--just as the peace camp was right to insist on justice and reconciliation as the highest national priorities. Both the settlement movement and the peace movement were legitimate, indeed essential, expressions of Jewish history. The fact that neither could fulfill its vision doesn't detract from the nobility of the effort.

In voluntarily severing ourselves from our historic heartland, we will be doing what no nation has ever done to itself. That hurban gives us the right to demand of the Palestinians and the Arab world an equivalent hurban of their deepest claims and grievances, especially the "right of return" to pre-1967 Israel. Failure to convey the full extent of the price we will pay for withdrawal will result in the world continuing to indulge Palestinian intransigence, while taking for granted our self-inflicted mutilation.

(The writer is the Israel correspondent for the New Republic
and author of “At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew's
Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land”.)

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TRUE TEST FOR COMPLIANCE
Natan Sharansky
Jewish Week, May 9, 2003

All eyes have now turned toward new Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen to see whether he will be able to stop terror attacks against Israeli civilians and thereby restore the peace process. But while showing zero tolerance for terror is essential for the peace process to be renewed, it may prove to be only a tactical measure. A truer indicator of the prospects for peace is whether the Palestinians will also show zero tolerance for anti-Semitism.

The expectation that Israel should simply absorb terrorist attacks and continue to make political concessions was pervasive when the Palestinians began their terror campaign more than 22 years ago. Today, countries that had previously shown a blind spot for Palestinian terror are at least speaking of the need for terrorism to be stopped in order for peace to proceed. But the cessation of terror attacks, should it occur, may indicate more a change in Palestinian tactics than a change of heart… Indeed, the willingness of the Palestinians to fight terror is a necessary condition for peace, but it is not sufficient. A deeper gauge of the prospects for reconciliation would measure the degree to which anti-Semitism is tolerated and encouraged in the areas under Palestinian control.

Today, after years in which the Arab states have cultivated a climate where anti-Semitism flourishes, the scourge of anti-Semitism in the Arab world has reached unprecedented heights. Throughout the region, a virulent hatred for the Jewish state has become synonymous with a virulent hatred of the Jewish people. Indeed, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism have been fused into one.

State-sponsored anti-Semitism was put on shameful display recently in Egypt when the government aired a 30-part miniseries on television during Ramadan on the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” The film, which was later broadcast throughout the Arab world, treated tens of millions of viewers to a modern production of the old czarist forgery about the Jews conspiring to control the world. Egypt, a nation ostensibly at peace with Israel, had seen fit to place this anti-Semitic film on prime-time TV. The world, for its part, has seen fit to remain silent.

Equally appalling, throughout the Arab world, Zionism is constantly equated with Nazism. Importing many traditional European anti-Semitic themes into their state-run media, Arabs portray Jews in the stereotypical fashion familiar to readers of Der Sturmer, the Nazi publication. In newspaper cartoons Jews are depicted as Nazis, devils, murderers and baby killers. In fact, every day tens of millions of Arabs are exposed to the most vicious lies ever invented about the Jewish people, dwarfing many times over the number of people exposed to Nazi propaganda at the height of that regime’s power. Even respected professors and government ministers do not hesitate to publish articles and books promoting blood libels. Arab heads of states sometimes are brazen enough to join in the Jew bashing, as Syrian President Bashar Assad did two years ago when he chose a visit by the Pope to Damascus to vilify the Jews as Christ killers.

In Palestinian society, anti-Semitism is running rampant. Through its state-run schools, television, radio and media, the Palestinian regime has used every canard in the book to incite against Jews and their state. Israelis have been accused of everything from poisoning Palestinian wells to lacing Palestinian chewing gum with the AIDS virus to using uranium-depleted weapons against civilians. Indeed, a Palestinian regime that Israel helped to establish and with whom a peace accord was to be reached spent the Oslo years indoctrinating Palestinians to deny both the legitimacy of the Jewish state and the legitimacy of the Jewish nation.

The Oslo years marked a turning point not only for the growth of anti-Semitism in the region, but also for the free world’s tolerance for it. In the decades after the Holocaust, leaders of the free world generally were vigilant about fighting anti-Semitism. There was a wide consensus that the evil that led to the Holocaust must never be allowed to take root again. But during Oslo, a blind eye was turned toward anti-Semitism in the name of “peace.” Though numerous organizations documented and exposed what was happening within the Palestinian-controlled areas, democratic leaders--including some Israeli ones--didn’t want to hear it. Arafat’s anti-Semitic propaganda was treated as a passing episode on the way to peace. In fact, peace became a passing episode on the way to a terrorist war fueled by anti-Semitic hatred.

The consequences of tolerance for anti-Semitism were seen at the so-called UN Conference Against Racism in 2001. On the streets of Durban, South Africa, an anti-Semitism of a kind not seen since the days of Nazi Germany was unleashed. Fortunately, the American delegation walked out rather than sanction this carnival of hate. But more than an American walkout will be needed if peace is to be achieved in our region. The free world must make it clear that anti-Semitism will no longer be tolerated. Not in Egypt. Not in Jordan. Not in Syria. And certainly not in the Palestinian Authority.

Real peace between Israelis and Palestinians will never be achieved if Palestinian society remains poisoned by anti-Semitic hate, no matter which leader stands at the helm. Zero tolerance for terror is essential for the peace process to proceed, and zero tolerance for anti-Semitism is essential if real peace is to ever to be achieved.

(Natan Sharansky is the Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Jerusalem in Israel.)

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Volume III, No. 626 • Monday, May 12, 2003

WHERE'S OUR DIPLOMATIC HORIZON?
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, May 12, 2003

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell's message here can be summarized in two words: Get started. The destination of the road map for Palestinians is clear: a state. But why should we get started when the destination for Israel is deliberately left murky?

This is the imbalance that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon sought to address when he stated that Israel will not move forward to create a provisional Palestinian state unless the Palestinians renounce the "right of return" to Israel.

Powell's response to this idea has been chilly. In the air on the way here he said, "If [requiring such a Palestinian commitment] becomes an initial upfront issue, then it will complicate progress." In his press conference with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom on Saturday night he said, "I think we should get started now, recognizing how difficult issues such as the right of return are... But let's not let it be a roadblock now to getting started."

Let's get this straight. The right of return is not just a difficult issue, it is the show-stopper for Israel. It is the negation of every Palestinian promise to recognize Israel's right to exist. So unless this part of the end point is settled now, there is nothing to start.

This is not to say that the fate of the Palestinian diaspora should not be on the final-status negotiating table. It is to say that Israel must know going in that the right of return is limited to a Palestinian state and not to Israel itself.

Israel's position on this has become somewhat difficult to understand given how effectively the Palestinians have captured the terminology of this issue. The fact is that the terms "right," "return," and "refugees" are all largely lies built on kernels of truth.

Yes, there are UN resolutions that touch on the issue, but the famous Resolution 194 is, first, non-binding and, second, does not require Israel to take back anyone contrary to Israeli interests. There is then no right, only a demand that Palestinians make.

Yes, some Palestinians personally left Israel in 1948 (such as Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas) and therefore can speak of return to Israel, but this is just a fraction of the 4 million Palestinians. Applying the term "return" to all Palestinians is therefore grossly misleading.

And yes, there were Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, but Palestinians are the only people who are considered refugees generations later, regardless of how settled they become. Millions of refugees from World War II and countless conflicts that followed are no longer called refugees--why Palestinians?

But terminology is not the main problem here, but what is behind it. The Palestinians must get used to the idea that they cannot stake a claim to Palestine and Israel at the same time, while pretending they are for a two-state solution. They cannot say that they want every Israeli booted out of their territory, while retaining the right to move to Israel.

The United States knows this. Many Palestinians know this. But there is no advantage to postponing the job of admitting it, and great disadvantages in leaving the matter ambiguous.

There is great understanding that the Palestinians need constant reminders of their diplomatic horizon, namely, that in the end they will have a state. This is so important that the road map requires an "unequivocal" Israeli commitment to an "independent, viable, sovereign Palestinian state" at the outset, despite the fact that statehood is a final-status issue.

There is almost no understanding that this same need for a diplomatic horizon exists on the Israeli side, arguably more so. It is Israelis, after all, who have been victims of a wave of terrorism from the people they are being told want to live peacefully beside them. And it is the Palestinians who, even as Israelis increasingly came to back the idea of a Palestinian state, have not begun to abandon their demand to achieve demographically what they have failed to achieve through terrorism.

The road map is essentially a continuation of the presumed-dead Oslo agreement, both in letter and in spirit. That Israel would entertain returning to the path of Oslo is itself remarkable. That it would do so as if the last 30 months of terror had no meaning is not realistic.

The new Israeli requirement that the Palestinians renounce all demands to return to Israel proper, as opposed to their own state, is essentially the only formal amendment that Israel is asking to make in the Oslo paradigm.

It is an amendment that says, "We were willing to trust you that this was about building your state and not dismantling ours, but now we need more proof." Powell has displayed a tin ear toward this Israeli need. Israelis will be watching closely whether President George W. Bush displays greater understanding.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PERES'S MIDEAST VISION IS RESURRECTED
Neill Lochery
National Post, May 12, 2003

It has been a good week for the veteran Israeli politician and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shimon Peres. Last week it looked as if his career and vision of a new Middle East were both finally dead and buried. But as they say, a week in politics is a long time, and today Peres is once more centre stage. The resignation of Amram Mitzna as leader of the Israeli Labour Party--after only nine months in the job--and U.S. President George W. Bush's speech outlining his vision of free trade zones in the Mideast have moved the political agenda back into Mr. Peres's ballpark.

The resignation of Mitzna reflects the current mess in the Israeli Labour Party. In truth, the current plight of the once-dominant party in Israel owes much to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Since then the party has lacked a leader with Rabin's credibility and trust among Israeli voters. Mitzna, despite his clear victory in a Labour leadership campaign last year, was always going to be little more than a stopgap leader. His thumping defeat at the polls this January by Ariel Sharon meant that it was only a question of when, and not if, he was going resign. That said, the timing of his resignation took many by surprise, and has left a void in which a desperate party looks likely to turn in the interim to Shimon Peres.

The return of Peres to the helm of the Labour Party--Peres does not know the meaning of the term "temporary leader"--will transform the Israeli dynamic of the peace process. Mr. Peres never favoured leaving the national unity coalition government last year and is eying a quick return to government. He may well find a willing partner in Ariel Sharon, who last week was given a stark reminder by some ministers that they wish to insert new, and potentially unacceptable clauses, into the road mad peace plan that was presented by the Bush administration two weeks ago. During, and after, the Israeli election, Sharon consistently argued that his preference was to form another national unity administration over the narrow-based centre-right led coalition he ended up having to form after talks with Mitzna broke down.

Soon we could see a rejuvenated Peres back at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem responsible--along with Sharon--for negotiating a final status agreement with the Palestinians, and if current signals from Damascus are to be believed, a possible peace agreement with Syria.

Perhaps more worrying than the potential return of Peres the man, is the clear sign that his vision of a new Middle East is back on the agenda. Bush's speech last week outlined his vision for free trade zones in the Middle East. Clearly the President sees the use of free trade zones as a carrot he can wave at the Arab world to fall in line. Come join the party and enjoy economic prosperity. In the real world, the vast majority of the Arab countries respond much better to the stick than the carrot. There is a theory doing the rounds that Bush is over-compensating for the war in Iraq and devoting too much effort to building bridges with the Arab world.

Few would have been more fascinated with Bush's speech than Peres. Back in the mid-1990s, Peres--to the ridicule of many--outlined his vision of a new Middle East. One in which there were free trade zones and where the two key economic components of the region--Israeli high-tech expertise and cheap Arab labour--combined to make the region an economic powerhouse.

In practical terms, this was considered to be important to the peace process since a large part of the Palestinian state's economic viability depended on sections of its labour force being able to enter the Israeli jobs market and earn wages that would subsequently be spent back in the Palestinian state. This was no one-way dependency. For many years Israel had been chronically short of cheap labour and the Palestinians, many of whom worked without proper papers or employee national insurance contributions, filled an important gap, especially in the construction industry and domestic help sectors.

The failure of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the resulting violence appeared to put an end to all this. From here onwards, a new set of terminology: separation, physical barriers and fences replaced the vocabulary of co-operation, mutual dependency and integration. Bush's speech appears to have shifted the agenda back towards the latter terminology. He is likely to find a willing partner in Shimon Peres who--if he can navigate a way back into government--will try to implement his vision for the Middle East.

Be careful! The flawed philosophy that underpinned the Oslo peace process may be about to rise from the grave.

(Neill Lochery is director of the Centre for Israeli
Studies at University College, London.)

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Volume III, No. 625 • Friday, May 9, 2003

THE U.S. AND ISRAEL: THE ROAD AHEAD
Abraham D. Sofaer
Commentary, May, 2003

Immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, the first Bush administration convened in Madrid an international conference on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This was an event that political leaders all over the world had been pursuing as if it were the holy grail of international diplomacy. It set in motion a decade of "peacemaking" that included the treaty between Israel and Jordan but whose most visible fruit was the Oslo accords of 1993.

In recent months, three years into the bloody Palestinian assault on Israel that the Oslo peace process became, the same dynamic has once again been in play, as international diplomats and government officials have scrambled to take advantage of the anticipated defeat of Saddam Hussein by pushing forward their preferred solutions. President Bush himself predicted in late February that "success in Iraq could…begin a new stage of Middle Eastern peace," while England and other European nations, keen to demonstrate their good faith to the Arab world, have gone much farther. In the very first week of the war, the British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, complaining about an alleged double standard when it came to "injustice against the Palestinians," equated U.N. resolutions concerning Saddam Hussein's threats to international peace with those condemning Israel on a range of less significant matters.

A more evenhanded view underlies the latest diplomatic initiative to address the Israel-Palestinian dispute. This is the famous "road map" prepared by the "quartet" of the United States, the European Union, the U.N. and Russia [which] proposes a two-state solution to the conflict, to be reached in three phases.

In Phase I, the Palestinians are to "declare" an end to violence and terrorism; undertake "visible" efforts to prevent attacks on Israelis, consolidate all security forces under an "empowered" interior minister, and restructure Palestinian institutions through numerous, detailed measures. Israel, for its part, is to call for an end to violence against Palestinians; cooperate in rebuilding a viable Palestinian security force; cease all actions "undermining trust," including deportations, demolition of homes and destruction of Palestinian infrastructure; take measures to improve the humanitarian situation; and "immediately" dismantle "settlement outposts erected since March 2001" and freeze all other settlement activity, including "natural growth."

All this is to happen by next month. Then comes Phase II, which foresees the "option" of creating a Palestinian state, with provisional borders, attributes of sovereignty and maximum territorial continuity; the completion date for this phase is the end of 2003. Phase III, which is to result in a final agreement between the parties settling all outstanding issues, is to be completed by the end of 2005…

Quite apart from its wildly optimistic timetable, many substantive objections can and should be raised to the road map. Still, it may be stipulated that the plan's aim--a two-state solution--is a reasonable one, accepted by the present Israeli government. But the mere recitation of a valid aim…will hardly suffice to realize the peace envisioned by the road map's authors. The problem is that this road map, like many plans for Middle East peace, expects to bring an end to Palestinian violence against Israel without addressing the reasons why the Palestinians have deliberately and repeatedly chosen that path.

Dennis Ross, the former U.S. negotiator for the Middle East, recently admitted that ever since the last Gulf War, he and other U.S. negotiators failed to take seriously the Palestinian Authority's steadfast refusal to end violence. [Instead,] the U.S. kept pressing Israel to make further concessions, thereby convincing Palestinians that they could go on cheating and killing and still procure the benefits for which they had been negotiating. In the end, it seemed reasonable to suppose that they might even force Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza as it had been forced to withdraw from southern Lebanon in the summer of 2000.

But Palestinian violence is a much more serious and difficult problem than even Dennis Ross now admits. It is the product of an environment that fosters, shelters, encourages and rewards acts aimed at nullifying Israel's very existence. And that environment is itself the creation not only of the Palestinians, or of the Arabs, but also of the international community--including the U.S…. No recognition of these facts, let alone any acknowledgment of the need to do something about them, has been made part of the road map--which is again why it shares the basic flaw of every Middle East peace plan that has preceded it.

The policies and practices I have in mind can be broken down into categories, of which the first has to do with terrorism. The United States portrays itself, properly, as leading the world-wide effort to combat terrorism. Some longstanding American policies, however, have contributed to terrorism, and especially to terrorism against Israel. Although steps have been taken to rectify matters in the wake of September 11, terrorists and supporters of terrorism continue to be abetted by the U.S. in their determination to control the destiny of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Consider, first, the longstanding strategy of Arab states and the Palestine Liberation Organization to keep as many Palestinians as possible living under horrible conditions in refugee camps, close to Israel. The camps, first set up after the 1948 war that followed the establishment of the state of Israel, are administered by…the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA now spends more than $400 million a year to assist a population that has swollen over the past half century to some 4.5 million, relatively few of whom are refugees by any accepted definition of the term. The whole system could not have been better designed both to endanger Israel's security and to damage its moral reputation…[An alternative] would include plans for building permanent homes for Palestinian refugees within Palestinian territories on the West Bank or in nearby states. As the scholar Scott B. Lasensky has recently suggested, incentive programs could also be put in place to encourage refugees to relocate and neighboring Arab states to accept them…

Second, the Palestinian educational system is an abomination; it, too, is largely funded by the U.N., with the substantial support of American taxpayers. In their schools, Palestinian children are taught mendacious versions of their own history as well as of Jewish culture, history and beliefs. Generations have been fed on propaganda that denies the legitimacy of the state of Israel while simultaneously glorifying intolerance, fanaticism and "martyrdom." Very little that is actually useful--engineering, computer technology, science, finance--is taught in these schools. In the private, religiously funded schools, things are still worse. There, in the words of Itamar Marcus, "children have been taught to hate, and to die for Allah. Their childhood has been destroyed by indoctrination to hate and kill Jews as well as Americans and Westerners in general."…How can Palestinians realistically be expected to accept Israel as long as they continue to convey to their children that Israel is unacceptable, and that terrorism against it is a noble undertaking?

Third, our policies have worked to prevent Israel from defending itself against terrorism... The Palestinian Authority has advocated, planned, financed and rewarded terrorism against Israel and Jews. And yet, during the Oslo years and for many months during the current intifada, the State Department persistently called on Jerusalem to go on turning over to the authority the sums collected by Israel for its use. [We] and others continue to be remiss in dealing with state support of terror. Iran, together with Hezbollah, its proxy force in Lebanon, supports Hamas, an Islamist organization based in Gaza. Hamas also has supporting offices in other countries, including Jordan. Islamic Jihad and the PFLP are based in Syria, where they enjoy sanctuary and have been provided with training camps. These organizations also raise funds and recruits in Saudi Arabia, in Europe and even in the United States.

Syria and Iran are on the State Department's list of states that support terrorism… Syria has openly acknowledged giving shelter to terrorist groups driven from Israel and the Palestinian territories… As for Iran, former Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres identified it as long ago as March 1996 as the source of support for terrorist activity in Israel. More recently, Iran supplied the arms on the Karine A that had been purchased by the Palestinian Authority for terrorist operations; it has also supplied Hezbollah in Lebanon with some 10,000 short-range rockets, as well as Iranian-made Zelzal-2 and Fajr rockets capable of reaching Tel Aviv… President Bush made clear where he stands in his speech of June 24, 2002: "Every nation actually committed to peace must block the shipment of Iranian supplies to [terrorist] groups, and oppose regimes that promote terror, like Iraq. And Syria must choose the right side in the war on terror by closing terrorist camps and expelling terrorist organizations." Secretary of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, have emphatically reiterated this warning…

I now pass to a different class of issues relating to Palestinian violence. In negotiations between the parties, the U.S. has worked to keep some matters unresolved. Of these, a few are indeed so difficult as to be properly deferred. Others, however, clearly admit of only one possible resolution; if they have nevertheless been pushed off to some future date, that is because it is felt by our diplomats that they should not be foreclosed until the parties themselves come to an agreement on them. This tactic, however, has caused far more harm than good…

The problem is not one of borders and territory; it is not one of schedules; it is not even one of a Palestinian state. The problem is existential…a threat to Israel's very existence, fueled by a radical and uncompromising hatred of that existence and by the implacable determination to liquidate it. Some Arab and Muslim states, along with private and religious groups around the world, have adopted the destruction of Israel as official policy. Others give sanctuary and active help to groups committed to that end.

With support from Germany, France, Russia and other nations, states controlled by Islamic extremists or Arab radicals have acquired or are acquiring nuclear devices and other weapons of mass destruction. The former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani--who has been described as a "moderate"--has declared that "the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground"; Pakistan's retired intelligence chief, Gen. Hamid Gul, now a "strategic adviser" to the Islamist parties that control the Pakistani legislature, has asserted that "we have the nuclear capability that can destroy Madras [India], surely the same missile can do the same to Tel Aviv." In the democratic West, no one wishes to believe this--it is too awful. And that, too, adds to the magnitude of the threat. By omission as much as by commission, the U.S. and other democracies have encouraged radical Palestinians and their supporters to cling to their dream of eliminating the Jewish state…

In late March, Condoleezza Rice remarked that although the administration welcomed "comments" on the road map, the document itself was not susceptible of "renegotiation." If true, that is a pity. A road map to peace is a fine thing, but if it is based in denial and wishful thinking it will be rightly doomed. The task for diplomats and all other interested parties is to force an end to the murder of Jews and to the effort to destroy the Jewish state; in pursuit of that goal, it is as necessary to delegitimize Palestinian violence once and for all as it is to prevent and repudiate the delegitimization of Israel. When that necessary condition is met in word and deed, all manner of desirable and mutually beneficial outcomes will become negotiable; but not before.

(Abraham D. Sofaer, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover
Institution, served as legal adviser to the State Department from
1985 to 1990 and was the principal negotiator of the 1989 accord that
returned to Egypt the Israeli-held area of Taba in the Sinai peninsula.)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers!

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Volume III, No. 624 • Thursday, May 8, 2003

BRITAIN'S DISINGENUOUS IRAQ-ISRAEL LINKAGE
Abraham Foxman
Forward, April 11, 2003

In announcing his resignation from the post of British foreign secretary out of opposition to the war with Iraq, Robin Cook said: "I have heard it said Iraq has had not months but 12 years in which to complete disarmament, and that our patience is exhausted. Yet, it is more than 30 years since Resolution 242 called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories. We do not express the same impatience with the persistent refusal of Israel to comply."

British P.M. Tony Blair and Cook's successor as foreign secretary, Jack Straw, have made similar statements, alleging a "double standard" in the demand that Iraq adhere to UN Security Council resolutions, while being "quixotic," as Straw put it, on the implementation of resolutions dealing with Israel. Such assertions are nothing less than a distortion of Security Council resolutions dealing with Israel, particularly the most important one, Resolution 242. Let us recall the resolution's background. In 1948 and 1956 Israel fought and won wars against its Arab neighbors. In each case Israel, under international pressure, pulled out of territory it had won, but in return received neither peace nor an end to the conflict.

Consequently, after Israel won its overwhelming victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, it was understood that now things had to be different. In adopting Resolution 242, the Security Council made clear that any future withdrawals from territory by Israel must be in the context of negotiations in which Israel's Arab neighbors make peace, accept the Jewish state and agree to secure and recognized borders.

Therefore, unlike the Security Council resolutions related to Iraq, there is no unilateral obligation by Israel to withdraw. Indeed, the very reason that Resolution 242 was passed was because of the recognition that only balanced concessions by both sides could bring peace to the region. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat came to learn this truth after his country was defeated in 1973 following the surprise Yom Kippur attack on Israel. He understood that only a revolutionary change away from the Arab League's 1967 Khartoum Declaration--which said no peace, no negotiations and no recognition--could bring about Israeli concessions. And so in 1977 he acted.

It then took another decade and a half before the Palestinians and Yasser Arafat, like Sadat, appeared to realize that they could gain concessions not by violence, not by rejection and not by boycott, but by a commitment to non-violent diplomacy based on recognition of Israel's legitimacy.

Once again, following the true path of Resolution 242, Israel began a process of withdrawal--leaving Gaza and six of the most populous cities of the West Bank. Under Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David, Israel offered a near total withdrawal from the territories in exchange for full peace and an end of conflict and of future claims.

However, it soon became clear that Arafat had not kept his commitment to the Oslo accords and to the spirit of Resolution 242. His goal was not reciprocity between the two sides, but to use the agreements as vehicles to retool violence and terrorism in order to obtain unilateral Israeli withdrawal without concessions and with the purpose of unending conflict.

The British leaders' false reading of the Security Council resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict is insidious because it is undoubtedly a precedent for demands, after the war against Iraq, to implement Security Council resolutions that Israel has allegedly not obeyed. Unlike Saddam Hussein's arrogance in the face of Security Council resolutions requiring his disarmament, Israel's presence in the territories is not the cause of the problem; it is the result of Palestinian unwillingness to give Israel peace and security in exchange for territorial concessions and statehood.

Just as the UN failed to play a constructive role during the lead up to the Iraqi war, so too has the international body often been destructive with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, Resolution 242 was the singular positive contribution of the UN toward achieving Arab-Israeli peace.

In the days ahead, some in the international community will try to undermine the concept of reciprocity that underlies 242 and that offers the only real hope for Israelis and Palestinians. The Robin Cooks and Jack Straws of the world must be rejected for their dangerous, one-sided reading of UN obligations which can only lead to ongoing conflict.

(Abraham Foxman is national director of the Anti-Defamation League.)

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ABBAS'S BURDEN OF PROOF
Caroline Glick
Jerusalem Post, April 25, 2003

There was a distinct feeling of deja vu from 1994 in the air this week. Back then, Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak saved the international community from embarrassment by physically forcing Yasser Arafat to sign the Gaza-Jericho agreement on live television. This week, Mubarak sent the commander of his intelligence service to repeat the performance. General Omar Sulieman came to Ramallah on Tuesday and literally forced Arafat to meet with his deputy, Dr. Mahmoud Abbas, and accept Abbas's cabinet.

As in 1994, the US and Europe heaved a collective sigh of relief at Egypt's manhandling of Arafat. The question is whether Arafat's seeming capitulation now will prove as fraudulent as his behavior then.

When last June US President George W. Bush called on the Palestinian people to reject the regime of PLO chief Arafat and to elect leaders "not compromised by terror," he underscored the necessity of a complete overhaul of the way the Palestinians perceive their national identity. No longer could the Palestinians conceive of their nationalism as something that must necessarily supplant Jewish nationalism in order to reach fruition. Rather, a new group of leaders was called on to rise up who would understand that the realization of Palestinian aspirations can come about only after the Palestinians accept Israel's right to exist as the Jewish state.

Today, responding to British pressure, the Bush administration stands poised to preside over new talks between the Israeli government and the PLO under the nascent leadership of Abbas, Arafat's deputy of four decades. The announced aim of these talks is the speedy establishment of a Palestinian state. But before any such talks begin it is vital that all concerned parties, but especially Israel, pause a moment and consider the reason for Oslo's abject failure.

The Oslo process was predicated on a set of false assumptions. The primary assumption was that the PLO, an organization founded with the expressed aim of destroying Israel, no longer sought our liquidation. Instead, what we found with Arafat's rejection of Ehud Barak's offer at Camp David is that the PLO had not changed. Not only would Arafat not yield the Palestinians' so-called "right of return," he also denied that the Jewish people have any historic and legal claims to Jerusalem. And for this stand he received a hero's welcome by the Palestinians upon his return to Gaza.

The Oslo process also posited that the PLO had forsworn its armed struggle for the destruction of the State of Israel. Yet Arafat himself formed the Aksa Martyr's Brigades, which…is still actively conducting terrorist operations against Israelis. Then, too, even before the PA launched its terrorist war against Israel in September 2000, its security services never made any sustained effort to destroy Hamas or Islamic Jihad terror infrastructures. To the contrary, PA military commanders like Col. Muhammad Dahlan embraced Hamas leaders… Already back in September 1996, Arafat showed that he had no compunction about using the weapons Israel had given him to fight terrorism to kill Israelis.

Finally, the Oslo agreement wrongly assumed that the PLO could be trusted to abide by its signed commitments to Israel. It could not. From allowing the free flow of sewage into riverbeds streaming into Israel to amassing arsenals of prohibited armaments to registering tens of thousands of vehicles stolen from Israelis, the PA breached every single commitment it made to Israel at the negotiating table.

Now we are told that all of this is pass, because under the Abbas's leadership the PA is reformed… Yet even if we accept the dubious assertion that Arafat is now neutralized, we still must ask ourselves the question, why would Abbas be any different? Abbas received his doctorate in 1983 from Moscow's Oriental University. There his dissertation topic was "The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism." In his dissertation…Abbas argued that, as opposed to what is commonly believed, "even fewer than a million Jews" were murdered by the Nazis. He further argued that the gas chambers were not used to kill people but rather to disinfect them and to burn bodies to prevent the flow of disease. Abbas claimed that Hitler did not decide to kill the Jews until David Ben-Gurion provoked him into doing so by "declaring war on the Nazis" in 1942. It was the Zionist conspirators, Abbas explains, who created the myth of six million murdered Jews in order to force the world to accept the establishment of Israel.

To date, neither the Israeli government nor Abbas's main champion, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, have asked him to retract his statements of Holocaust denial.

Then too, the US plan to base new rounds of negotiations with an Abbas-led PA on the Quartet's "road map" has never taken into account Abbas's expressed agreement with the maximalist Palestinian demands set out by Arafat at the Camp David summit. In an interview with Kul al Arab radio in August 2000, Abbas said of the Palestinian demand for the "right of return," "It is only natural that each refugee return to his home." In the same interview he also directly threatened Israel, stating that if Israel does not accept the Palestinian demands, "We will open up the records of the past and demand the country in which they live" that is, pre-1967 Israel. He also stated that he does not believe that Solomon's Temple ever existed in Jerusalem.

A year later, in an interview with the PA's Al-Ayyam newspaper, Abbas explained why any flexibility in the Palestinian demands toward Israel is unacceptable. "When a Palestinian says that we have missed an opportunity or a tempting or a beneficial offer [by rejecting Barak's offers at Camp David and Taba] it weakens the Palestinian position since [consequently] the Americans and Israelis say, 'Here is a Palestinian who agrees with our position.' Such things, unfortunately hurt the Palestinian position."

So much, then, for Abbas's alleged moderation. Then there are the claims that Abbas, unlike the rest of the PA, is untainted by corruption. Yet both Abbas and his Security Minister-designate Dahlan are some of the Palestinians most associated with PA corruption. Both men made a fortune from kick-backs from the cement monopolies in Gaza. For years, photographers were prohibited from taking pictures of the multi-million dollar villas in Gaza both men financed by bilking the public trough.

Abbas has also shown that his Soviet education rubbed off on him. Speaking of reforms in May 2002, Abbas explained that the reforms need to take economic power away from Palestinian civilians and transfer all power to the PA. Abbas argued then that a necessary reform would involve preventing international NGOs from distributing monies directly to Palestinian NGOs. All those funds, he argued, must be transferred to the PA, the sole organization responsible for deciding how it should be apportioned.

It is true that in some recent statements, Abbas has argued that the PA's terror war against Israel did not serve the national aspirations of the Palestinian people. But these sort of statements, while encouraging, should be seen for what they are: an argument about tactics, not strategy, certainly not morality. They are not denunciations of terrorism per se, only of terrorism that doesn't work. Together with his record as anti-Semitic ideologue of Palestinian terrorism, it ought to be enough to dampen anyone's enthusiasm for Abbas as an improvement over Arafat.

Learning the lessons of Oslo means placing the full burden of proof on the Palestinians. Abbas, not P.M. Ariel Sharon, must be challenged to show that he wishes to make concessions for peace. He must be challenged to recant his denials of the Holocaust. He must be called to accept that Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. He must forswear his insistence on the "right of return." He must be called on to accept publicly the existence of the Jewish people whose national, spiritual and political roots are in Jerusalem.

None of this is meant to humiliate Abbas. After all, no one believes that Sharon is humiliating himself when he says he will accept the establishment of a Palestinian state. Rather, all of this is necessary to ensure that not only will a peace deal be reached, but that the peace will hold. If we learned anything from the past three years it must be this: Unless the PA under Abbas is actually willing to abide by the commitments taken on by the PLO a decade ago, there is no point in cheering his rise, no reason to negotiate anything with him, and certainly no reason to sigh in relief that Arafat again has done Mubarak's bidding.

Top of the Page

Volume III, No. 623 • Wednesday, May 7, 2003

YOM HA’ATZMAUT 5763 –

CELEBRATING ISRAEL INDEPENDENCE DAY 2003

ISRAEL WILL PREVAIL
Baruch Cohen

“Together shall they sing, for they shall see eye to eye,
the Lord returning to Zion.” (Isaiah 52:8)

Fifty-five years ago, in the shadow of the Holocaust, a small, determined group of Jewish dreamers realized a dream that had stretched across twenty centuries of exile and enduring hardship for the Jewish people. They founded a country, Israel, starting an incredible nation-building epic, the most stirring saga of the twentieth century.

Few new nations have endured as much pain and contempt as Israel. Throughout her fifty-five years, Israel faced repeated war with armies outnumbering her forces, nevertheless successfully defeating belligerent Arab neighbours intent on extinguishing the young Jewish state. Despite wars, a lack of oil or water and other resources, Israel built an economy that today rivals Western Europe in per capita wealth and technical sophistication. Successive waves of immigration multiplied Israel’s Jewish population, now totaling over five million Jews, second only to the Jewish population of the United States.

In a sea of countries ruled by despots and autocrats, Israel created a vibrant democracy in which rival parties and political leaders competed openly for power, but never lost sight of their common goal. Israel had the good fortune to produce strong, visionary leaders: David Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, and Menachem Begin amongst them. Israel’s practical idealism and unity of purpose, key to her heroic wars of national survival, will successfully overcome the waves of terrorist attacks in the years to come. For a country that has fought, and continues to fight, just to stay alive, the idea of peace may seem like a mirage.

Yet Israel is more than a country. It is an idea that inspires millions of Jews around the world. The determined people of Israel--democratically united and sustained by an ancient faith--will overcome present and future difficulties. After Iraq, a new political map and a new political climate are nascent in the Middle East. With the strong united support of all Diaspora Jews, Israel will not only flourish, but prevail.

(Baruch Cohen is Research Chairman
of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ISRAEL AT 55
Editorial
Jerusalem Post, May 6, 2003

Today we remember our fallen; tonight we celebrate the freedom and independence that they fought for… [I]t is a time to take stock as a nation. How things look depends largely on how far one looks. In the short term, there is no denying that once again we will be celebrating under the threat of terrorism, and that simply carrying on with a degree of normality is a triumph of its own. Unemployment is high and many are suffering from the effects of a prolonged economic downturn, with little relief visible on the immediate horizon.

But a longer view is also in order. On Israel's founding 55 years ago, our population stood at 806,000. It is now 6.7 million, an eight-fold increase. Three million people have immigrated to Israel since 1948, including a million since 1990 and, perhaps most remarkably, 31,000 in the past year. Judging by these figures, we have made steady progress toward a goal that most nations take for granted--establishing our permanence as a state. On another level, progress on this basic objective has not been, or at least not seemed, steady.

The Oslo Accords, signed almost a decade ago, were built on the assumption that the Arab world in general, and the Palestinians in particular, had reconciled themselves to our existence, and all that was left was to negotiate borders with a Palestinian state. During Oslo's heyday it seemed to many that the Arab-Israeli conflict was behind us… Few imagined at this time that just a few years later Yasser Arafat would reject a state over 97 percent of the disputed territories and launch a terrorist offensive against Israel to boot.

The viciousness of the war against us these past 30 months, in which over 760 Israelis have died, over 520 of them civilians, has set back our views regarding Arab intentions to those held during the early years of the state. At that time, there was no question that the bulk of the Arab world would wipe us off the map if given half a chance. But if our belief in the Arab readiness for peace was premature, realizing this can hardly be seen as a step backwards in Israel's objective situation. If anything, our moments of greatest danger have been when we were caught in the throes of an illusion. Our new realism, however disconcerting, should be seen as a step forward toward a peace that will last.

Even more important than our improved perceptions is the great advancement in our strategic position that has just occurred. Not since Egypt made peace with Israel have we been able to shift a major Arab nation off the list of states that pose an immediate strategic threat. Iraq's immediate future remains uncertain, but Saddam Hussein is permanently gone from power, and there is reason to believe that the next Iraqi government will not be a threat to its neighbors, including Israel.

Another great and dangerous illusion that has been substantially dispelled is that terrorism against Israel is an isolated phenomenon, without strategic implications for the West as a whole. The latest revelations, such as the capture of Palestinian arch-terrorist Abu Abbas in Iraq and reports that the suicide bombers at Mike's Place in Tel Aviv last week were tied to Iran, only accentuate what we have long known: there is only one Islamist terror network and it is targeting the U.S. and Israel simultaneously.

America's war against the terrorism network is a war against our enemies, and our war against terrorism is part of the global struggle led by the United States. We are no longer alone in this struggle, either as victims or as combatants fighting back. The road map, a throwback to the pre-9/11 paradigm that still dominates European and UN thinking, is a harmful distraction, but it does not change the fundamental reality: The greatest and most powerful nation in the world is now in the trenches with us in a way it never has been before.

It would, of course, be better on this anniversary if we did not have to fight, and if the euphoria of the mid-90s had been more related to reality. It would be better if, as we remember our fallen and celebrate our independence, we would no longer have to guard our kindergartens, coffee houses, and malls. It would be better if the U.S. and Israel had more support from other democracies, given that we have been attacked and are fighting back. But it is better to be in a fight that has a chance of bringing lasting peace than in a "peace" built on denial, leading only to war.

______________________________________________________

WEDNESDAY’S “NEWS IN REVIEW” ROUND-UP

WEEKLY QUOTES

“On the 55th Independence Day of the State of Israel, we are still fighting for the basic issues in the life of the nation and the country… Nevertheless, despite the difficult challenges we are facing…we are proud of the great achievements made… I feel that recently the people of Israel have become more united than in the past. The tension between the various sectors in Israeli society has lessened. I also feel a great rise in the solidarity expressed by the Jewish people in the Diaspora… The free world’s campaign to eliminate international terrorism is of great necessity… Human beings have a basic right to live without fear… We are all one big family. We all have the same destiny and tradition. We can be proud to belong to the Jewish people…”—President Moshe Katsav (Israel Foreign Ministry, May 7)

“I would be happy to meet with [Palestinian Prime Minister] Abu Mazen… Only now, after the clear failure of the strategy of terror, perhaps a different leadership will prove that it is capable of taking the Palestinian people on a truly new path, for the first time.”—P.M. Ariel Sharon, indicating a willingness to resume negotiations, provided the new Palestinian prime minister could successfully quell the terrorism. P.M. Sharon also insisted that his government has substantial objections to the proposed road map, and that a peace accord would depend on the willingness of Palestinians to give up their demand that 3.9 million refugees be allowed to return to Israel, a demand Mr. Abbas has said he would not abandon. (Reuters, May 6; Nat’l. Post, May 7)

“The principal threat [to Abu Mazen’s success] will not be from Hamas, but from Chairman Arafat. The new leadership has so far done nothing. We hear talk about intentions, but the leadership must get organized, reshuffle the security services and disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad… The P.A. must start to demonstrate intention, effort and results. If intention and effort are there, we will respond accordingly, on the assumption that results will take longer.”—IDF Chief of Staff Lieut.-Gen. Moshe Ya’alon. [Ya’alon also communicated his belief that there was a good chance for an internal revolution in Iran that would topple the ayatollahs.] (Ha’aretz, May 6)

“Much attention was paid to Abu Mazen’s denouncing of ‘terrorism by any party in all its shapes and forms…’ In almost the same breath as Abu Mazen condemned terror, he praised the ‘courageous uprising against Israel’s aggression’ and claimed that Palestinians had ‘fought with honor’. How would a Palestinian learn from this that suicide bombings or shooting children in their beds is wrong rather than heroic? Why didn’t Abu Mazen simply condemn suicide bombings, which would have gone far to remove this ambiguity? If Abu Mazen is unable to speak clearly against terrorism it is hard to see how he can act clearly against it.”—Columnist Saul Singer (Jer. Post, May 1)

“[R]elease of the road map text [had been] contingent on the confirmation of a new Palestinian Authority cabinet by the PLA. Commentators have focused on whether the new PA prime minister…has or has not compromised himself in the deal struck with Yasser Arafat. But this is out-of-focus. If there were genuine acceptance of the need for peace with Israel, the number of Arafat cronies in the new cabinet would be academic… All that matters in this discussion is one overwhelming issue: the Arab world has not wanted a Jewish state in the Middle East and until it is prepared to tolerate one, no plan will work… This road map is a road map to nowhere. Until there is acceptance of a Jewish state…all peace plans are illusory and with real acceptance, any map is unnecessary. One only hopes that God has a road map of his own.”—Columnist Barbara Amiel (Daily Telegraph, April 28)

“…[T]he current state of the Labor Party, it is impossible to manage… I am not prepared to tolerate a situation in which I must make deals, settle personal accounts, and speak half-truths… There is no way to lead a party with people driven by an urge to self-destruction… I am ashamed of the fact that…before the elections to the Knesset and after them, many among the party’s leadership busied themselves with…the struggle against me, more so than with the struggle for peace and social justice…”—Labor Party Chairman Amram Mitzna, announcing his surprise resignation as Party head. [Former Labor leader Benjamin Ben-Eliezer has pledged to back Shimon Peres as Labor’s temporary chairman, in return for Peres’ promise not to seek the permanent chairmanship.] (Ha’aretz, May 5, May 6)

“As the top Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, put it to Charles Enderlin [author of the recently-released Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in The Middle East, 1995-2002]: ‘For Islam, there was never a Jewish temple at Al Quds [Jerusalem].’ At one point in December 2000, an Israeli negotiator actually offered, without Barak’s permission, Palestinian sovereignty over the plaza as long as the agreement contained the words ‘We know that the Jews maintain they have a religious connection to what they regard as the Temple Mount.’ Incredibly, the Palestinians refused.”—Journalist Ethan Bronner (New York Times, May 4)

“It’s very clear that there’s a new strategic situation in the region… And my clear message to President Bashar Assad is that some of the policies you’ve been following in the past will not take you anywhere in the future: support of terrorist activities, a presence in Damascus of [terrorist] organizations… These things have to come to an end… [Assad] said he was closing [terrorist] offices… But it is not what he says… [I]t’s performance that we’ll be looking at… Syria [will not] be a place where weapons can be shipped to other organizations, such as Hezbollah…”—U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, issuing another stern warning to Syria, following his meeting in Damascus with Bashar Assad. [Terrorist groups headquartered in Syria challenged American pronouncements that Assad had cracked down on them, insisting that no such demands had been made.] (NBC’s “Meet the Press”, May 4; Ha’aretz, May 7)

“I urge the Iraqi people to remain united, follow clerics, make nonstop efforts to expel the enemy from Iraq…and establish an Islamic government. This is the way. They should learn from Iran’s Islamic revolution.”—Leader of Iran’s powerful Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (A.P., May 5)

______________________________________________________

SHORT TAKES

ISRAEL’S POPULATION IS 6.7 MILLION—(Jerusalem) As Israel marks its 55th anniversary, its population stands at 6.7 million. The country’s Jewish population is 5.4 million (accounting for 38% of the world’s Jews). The remaining population is 82% Muslim, 9% Christian, and 9% Druze. (Jer. Post, May 5)

ABU-MAZEN STRUGGLE WITH ARAFAT CONTINUES—(Jerusalem) Even though the road map to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict stipulates that Palestinian security organizations be combined into three services reporting to Interior Minister Mohammed Dahlan, PA Chairman Yasser Arafat still retains control over five security organizations. His control of General Intelligence, the National Security Forces, Force 17, Military Intelligence and the Naval Forces represents the first substantial breach of the road map’s security clauses. Arafat has also given his former interior minister Hanni al-Hassan a central role in overseeing security mechanisms. In a counter-move, P.M. Abu Mazen announced last night that he is transferring al-Hasan’s responsibilities to Dahlan. (Ha’aretz, May 7)

ISRAELI KILLED, 2 SERIOUSLY HURT IN WEST BANK SHOOTING—(Jerusalem) The military wing of PA Chairman Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement claims responsibility for a shooting attack in the West Bank that killed one Israeli and wounded two on Monday. Gideon Lichterman, 27, was killed when his vehicle was fired upon by Palestinian gunman near the Ahiya outpost, northeast of Ramallah. His six-year-old daughter and another passenger were critically injured. (Ha’aretz, May 6)

IDF DESTROYS BOMB FACTORY NEAR JENIN; ARRESTS HEBRON SUSPECT—(Jerusalem) Paratroopers destroyed an explosives workshop in the village of Jaba near the West Bank town of Jenin, the military said Tuesday. Meanwhile soldiers arrested a top Islamic Jihad suspect blamed for the shooting attack last November on Worshipers' Way in Hebron in which 12 Israelis were killed. The suspect has been identified as Al-Nur Jaber. (Jer. Post, May 6)

ISRAEL VOWS TO DEPORT PEACE ACTIVISTS—(Tel Aviv) Israel officials announced that they will ban and deport peace activists, a move attributed to news of a meeting between members of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and the British suicide bombers who attacked a Tel Aviv bar last week. The ISM said Asif Mohammed Hanif, a British citizen, had met with activists at a memorial service for Rachel Corrie, an American killed by an Israeli bulldozer. Mr. Hanif was with fellow British citizen Omar Khan Sharif, who is at large after fleeing when his explosive vest failed to detonate during the attack. Britain announced that it arrested six people in connection with the incident. (N.Y.T., May 4; Globe and Mail, May 5)

RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL FOUND AT SITE OF ISRAELI ATTACK IN IRAQ—(Tuwaitha, Iraq) At the site of the Iraqi complex bombed by Israel in 1981, an American team of nuclear experts found sources of radioactive material. Cmdr. David Beckett said that what was found at Tuwaitha was the "largest amount of radiological material that has been found at a nuclear site in Iraq." There are unconfirmed reports that looters may have taken anthrax samples from the sprawling research facility. (N.Y.T., May 4)

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S SON TOOK $1-BILLION AS WAR BEGAN—(Baghdad) On March 18, less than 24 hours before the U.S. began its air assault on Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s son Qusay carried off the equivalent of $1-billion in cash from the country’s central bank. The sheer volume of the cash was so great that three tractor-trailers were needed to cart it off. Some Americans say they suspect the money may have been spirited across the border into Syria. (Globe and Mail, May 6)

REPORT: FRANCE HELPED IRAQIS ESCAPE—(Washington) The Washington Times reports that France secretly supplied Iraqi officials with passports in Syria that allowed them to escape to Europe, where they can move freely among EU countries. A Bush administration official said, "It's like Raoul Wallenberg in reverse," a reference to the Swedish diplomat who supplied travel documents to help Jews escape Nazi Germany. "Now you have the French helping the bad guys escape from us." A spokeswoman for the French Embassy denied the allegations. (Washington Times, May 6)

Am Yisrael Chai! Happy birthday Israel.

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Volume III, No. 622 Tuesday, May 6, 2008

"LOCAL VICTORY"
ISRAEL DIDN'T FIGHT THIS WAR. BUT IT MIGHT HAVE WON.
Yossi Klein Halevi
The New Republic, May 5, 2003

During the Oslo peace process, Natan Sharansky, the Soviet dissident turned politician, was a lone, even eccentric, voice on the Israeli right. Where others on the right condemned Oslo for betraying historic claims or vital security needs, Sharansky attacked it for betraying democracy. By imposing dictatorship on the Palestinians, he argued, Israel was repeating the mistake made by Western democracies that sought stability by accommodating rather than challenging communist regimes. Sharansky's insistence that Israel's territorial concessions be linked to Palestinian democratic reform was dismissed by both the left and right as the archaic thinking of a Soviet immigrant who didn't understand the Middle East.

But, with the fall of Saddam Hussein, Sharansky, who now serves as minister in charge of Diaspora affairs, believes he has been vindicated. "Iraq will be the first experiment in exporting democracy to the Arab world," he says. "Israel is the only country in the region that has experience in building democratic institutions, and we should offer our help."

How to offer that help, of course, is no simple matter. Even Sharansky acknowledges that Israel must proceed with caution… Aside from one lapse--the announcement, quickly rescinded after Jordanian protest, by an Israeli government minister that he was seeking to revive the pre-1948 Iraqi oil pipeline that ran through Jordan and ended in Haifa--the low profile that Israel maintained toward Iraq during the conflict is continuing. Israel has even continued to shun Ahmed Chalabi. Though the Iraqi exile leader has repeatedly affirmed his support for diplomatic relations with the Jewish state and visited the country in the late '90s, few Israeli officials have agreed to even meet with him, accepting the CIA's assessment of his marginality…

Those Israelis who do envision close Israeli-Iraqi ties tend to focus their hopes outside government. One such group is the Iraqi Jewish community, both in Israel and the Diaspora. About a quarter-million Jews of Iraqi origin live in Israel, and they are among the most successful and well-integrated of any community of Jews from Arab countries. When Iraq stabilizes, predicts community leader Mordechai Ben-Porat, many expatriates will be keen to travel to Baghdad and to probe business opportunities there. "Rather than frighten Iraqis with talk of diplomatic relations with Israel, we should be approaching them as former Iraqi Jews," says Ben-Porat. "Israel should come through the back door." He notes that Iraqi Muslims once valued Jews as business partners and as accountants: "One Jew who left Baghdad not long ago told me about a garage mechanic who refused to accept money from him for repairs because his father told him how much Jews had helped build Iraq. We will be able to do things there others can't."

New alliances could also involve unofficial contact with the Al Khoei Foundation, which until recently was led by the leading Shia proponent of interfaith relations, Abdel Majid Al Khoei. The foundation represents several million Shia around the world and opposes Khomeinite Shiism. Abdel Majid Al Khoei, who was recently murdered in Iraq, possibly for his support for the U.S.-British coalition against Saddam, "saw his role as helping reconcile Islam and other faiths," says David Rosen, an Israeli rabbi who heads the American Jewish Committee's interfaith department and who was friendly with the murdered leader. "His attitude toward Jews was very positive. He knew I was Israeli, and that didn't matter"…

But, despite all these hopes of eventual normalization between Iraq and Israel, no one here is celebrating yet. That's not only because of uncertainty in Iraq but because the post-Saddam Middle East poses new dangers for Israel along with new opportunities. The most immediate fear is that the road map meant to revive the peace process will omit key Israeli concerns, such as insisting that the Palestinians commit themselves not just to a cease-fire but to uprooting the terrorist infrastructure.

Then there's Iran, Israel's greatest long-term fear because of its well-developed nuclear program. The war with Iraq, notes a senior security source, may have convinced the mullahs in Iran to intensify their nuclear program: "Their conclusion is that, if Saddam had nuclear weapons like North Korea, he would not have been attacked." What's more, no one here is ruling out the possibility that Syria's Bashar Al Assad may wait for U.S. pressure to subside and then reactivate Hezbollah, which has an estimated 10,000 rockets and missiles aimed at the Galilee. Israeli analysts see Bashar as a dangerous combination of inexperience and ambition who may seek to replace Saddam as the new rejectionist hero of the Arab world.

Still, for Israel, this is a time of reprieve. To begin with, there's relief at the disappearance of a potentially existential threat. Last fall, a leading member of the defense establishment here told me that, if the Americans didn't topple Saddam and prevent him from going nuclear, the Middle East might not survive. And the end of Saddam's largesse has undermined Palestinian terrorism: Iraqi subsidies for the intifada--an estimated $35 million, ranging from $10,000 for the families of those killed in clashes with Israelis to $25,000 for the families of suicide bombers--have been suspended. The collapse of the only Arab regime that dared to attack the Israeli home front in the last three decades has helped restore Israeli deterrence, which many here believe began to erode when Israel refrained from retaliating against Iraq's 1991 Scud attacks. Given that much of the Arab world identifies Israel with the U.S., America's victory in Iraq is seen as a surrogate Israeli victory.

But the most important gain for Israel is that, for the first time since1948, there is no longer a threat of an "eastern front," that is, a Syrian-Iraqi military alliance. In all its wars with Israel, Syria relied on Iraq for backup. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, for example, Iraqi reinforcements were so crucial that Syria nearly reconquered the Golan Heights. One result of the collapse of the eastern front will be financial: The army is contending with severe budget cuts imposed by the country's economic crisis, and removing the Iraqi threat could help the IDF reduce the size of its troops. Similarly, while Ehud Barak's willingness at Camp David to cede the Jordan Valley…shocked Ariel Sharon almost as much as Barak's concessions on Jerusalem, military strategists may no longer see that territory as essential to Israel's defense. Israel's fear has long been a joint Syrian-Iraqi invasion through Jordan. Now, without Iraqi backing, the antiquated Syrian army poses little conventional threat.

Finally, the projection of U.S. power in Iraq could have far-reaching psychological consequences among the Palestinians. In recent months, a new word has been added to the IDF's lexicon: "consciousness." Everyone, from the chief of staff to intelligence officers, invokes the "consciousness" of the Palestinians as a measure of the army's success in its war against terrorism. The IDF believes Israel's goal of convincing Palestinians that terrorism is counterproductive--a message reinforced by the fall of Saddam and America's stiffened resolve against terrorism in the Middle East--is about to be realized. True, the terrorists are still mobilizing: Since the beginning of Passover last week, the army arrested seven terrorists actively planning suicide attacks. But, thanks to this kind of crackdown, suicide bombings are down to what Israelis call, without irony, a manageable level of terrorism… Most of all, the emergence of a camp headed by Abu Mazen, which opposes Yasir Arafat's terror strategy, is seen by the IDF as proof of victory in the war for Palestinian consciousness. "It's a victory without trumpets," says Dan Schueftan, a Middle East expert close to the IDF. "The generals fulfilled the extremely difficult mission of shoring up Israeli morale while demoralizing the Palestinians and fighting terrorism in very complicated terrain. You can say that we've won. At least this round."

That grim optimism defines the Israeli mood today. The tape has been scraped from windows in the sealed rooms, and gas masks have been put back into storage. Unlike last Passover, which began with the Netanya seder massacre, during which 29 people died and which kept most Israelis indoors throughout the holidays, this Passover Israelis crowded the Galilee's nature reserves, where, after a long drought, winter rains have restored dried-up rivers and waterfalls. Hezbollah missiles were just over the border, but Israelis weren't about to allow that to interfere with their first foray into a new Middle East.

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PROSPECTS FOR PAX AMERICANA
Efraim Inbar
Jerusalem Post, May 3, 2003

The American victory in Iraq begs the question of the significance of the American intervention in the Middle East. Does the American military presence in Baghdad constitute the beginning of a new period in the Middle East or will we see a quick military withdrawal and the dissipation of American influence, similar to what happened after the victory in 1991?

Can the Americans westernize and democratize the Arab world, by "Hellenizing" this region in a manner reminiscent of Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE? Will we see a really new Iraq, with a transformed political culture and with radically new attitudes? Will Baghdad become, once again, a flourishing center of sciences and of belle arte and an agent of change for its immediate and distant neighbors?

The answer to those questions depends primarily on two uncertain factors. The first enigma surrounds the ability and determination of the American polity to play an imperial role; the second set of uncertainties revolves around Iraqi society and its ability to absorb change and to transform itself into a 21st century sociopolitical entity.

Many observers of American foreign policy, of various political hues, read American international behavior as imperial. Despite the bad name acquired by imperialism, there is nothing inherently or morally wrong in bringing peace, prosperity and progress to less blessed regions. It is true that empires degenerate and omnipotence corrupts. The American case may be different, however, as its cherished values, democracy and market economies, which seem to have acquired almost universal acceptance, serve as obstacles for centralized power and its abuse.

The U.S. definitely has the military, economic and political preeminence to exercise its hegemony and export its values to every corner of the world. Its tremendous cultural influence is already omnipresent at every level, facing only quixotic resistance. The universal lingua franca is English (the American variant). American TV series' MacDonald's and Cokes abound. Enrollment in the elite American universities is the entry card into the rather cosmopolitan professional and scientific elites of many states. The U.S. is the strongest magnet for those who wish to improve their economic lot or to be freer. American political culture has the potential to reinforce the quest for implanting the American way elsewhere. It contains a sense of universal mission rooted in biblical motifs. Yet, America is not known for being patient enough to sustain a long-term commitment needed to this mission.

Are the present American policies the result of a temporary victory of the neoconservatives in Washington, or a reflection of a mature and self-confident America that has come to the realization that its own national security can no longer be secured by two big oceans? Do we see nowadays a transitory reaction to 9/11 or a decidedly internationalist American outlook based on long-term popular support and a readiness to pay the price for its civilizational role? The route taken by Washington remains to be seen and will be of course affected by the configuration of indigenous forces to which we now turn.

In a limited sense, Iraq is ready for change since anything is better than the tyranny of Saddam Hussein. In a larger sense, it probably has a potential for gradual transformation, primarily because Iraq is a rich country. It has oil, arable land and water. The American presence can bring about a more equitable division of resources.

Democratization in Korea or Taiwan shows that an important intervening variable in such a process is higher standards of living. Iraq also has a rather sophisticated middle class (a part of it abroad), which could become under certain circumstances a potent force for progress. Arab political culture does indeed play a negative role in this context, but it is not an insurmountable barrier for change as old traditions often contain modernizing elements.

The ethnic and religious cleavages in Iraq, which have a destabilizing potential, may actually become functional in the establishment of a non-centralized and consensual political system similar to the one that existed in quasi-democratic Lebanon in the 1950s and 1960s with Americans providing the guarantee of fair play. The alternative is to install a reformist strong man to lead Iraq into a new era, but Ataturks are hard to come by.

In any case, American-induced change will elicit active resistance by motley groups such as Islamists, ex-Ba'athists, and disgruntled tribal leaders, which might get support from abroad. Indeed, most of Iraq's neighbors have good reasons to fear change in Iraq and will probably meddle in its affairs.

While Western democracy in Baghdad is not around the corner, a successful economic and political liberalization process in Iraq will have tremendous ripple effects in the region.

(The writer is Professor of Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University
and the Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.)

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Volume III, No. 621 • Monday, May 5, 2003

YOM HAZIKARON 5763

REMEMBRANCE DAY FOR THE FALLEN
IN ISRAEL’S WARS

Since the 1948 War of Independence, 19,914 soldiers and security personnel have fallen; according to Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs 254 have been killed since Remembrance Day last year. On May 5-6 / Iyar 4, we recall their memories and heroism.

FIGHTING BY THE BOOK
David B. Green
Boston Globe, April 20, 2003

Last July, an Israel Air Force F-16 dropped a one-ton bomb on Salah Shehadeh's Gaza City apartment building. Shehadeh, a Hamas commander believed responsible for hundreds of attacks on Israeli military personnel and civilians, died in the ''targeted killing.'' So did another 14 Palestinian civilians, nine of them children.

Fourteen was also the number of Iraqi civilians initially said to have died on April 7, when a US B-1 bomber dropped four 2,000-pound bombs on the residential building in Baghdad's Mansur neighborhood where Saddam Hussein and colleagues were reported to be meeting. (Neighbors subsequently claimed that as many as 18 innocent people died in the afternoon attack.) Is this an acceptable number of innocent casualties in exchange for the death of Saddam? What about 100? Or the approximately 1,000 civilians who, according to one estimate, have died since Operation Iraqi Freedom began?

This kind of risk-to-benefit ratio is something that Israeli military planners spend a lot of time worrying about. After the Shehadeh killing, a regretful Moshe Ya'alon, the chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, told a newspaper that faulty intelligence had led the air force to conclude, mistakenly, that the building next door to the Hamas leader's building was empty. But he also claimed that the army had passed up on several earlier opportunities to hit Shehadeh because he was with his wife or his children. Each time Shehadeh's life was spared, he directed more suicide bombings against Israel.

The grinding guerrilla warfare in the Occupied Territories is often invoked as the kind of nightmare the United States wants to avoid in Iraq. This may be why U.S. forces entering urban venues have relied heavily on a combination of armored reconnaissance, commandoes, and air power, rather than the more risky door-to-door combat that has characterized much of Israel's fighting in the intifada.

But in at least one respect, the IDF may offer a model for U.S. and other coalition forces in the months ahead. The IDF, unlike the U.S. military, is guided by a single, overarching ethical code--one that existed orally for most of the army's history, but which was formalized and set to paper in the mid-1990s, and rewritten in concise, 10-point form two years ago.

Though simple in language, ''The Spirit of the IDF'' borrows from a multiplicity of sources--IDF tradition, Israeli and Jewish law, and international conventions--all drawn together with the assistance of some of the country's leading moral philosophers. At the heart of the IDF code is the concept of ''purity of arms,'' which requires that soldiers be willing to put their own lives at stake to avoid harming noncombatants and that they respond to all attacks and threats with proportional force.

The code's 10 ''values'' reflect the tensions inherent in the soldier's task. On the one hand, soldiers are urged to demonstrate ''a tenacity of purpose in performing missions'' and a ''drive to victory.'' On the other, they must act ''out of recognition of the supreme value of human life''; never abandon comrades; ''do all in [their] power to avoid causing harm to [noncombatants'] lives, bodies, dignity, and property''; and ''refrain from obeying blatantly illegal orders.'' Incorporated into the training of all Israeli soldiers, ''The Spirit of the IDF'' is also made available to troops in poster, letter, and laminated pocket-sized forms.

After the 2001 code was published, the Israeli philosopher Asa Kasher, author of the 1995 version, objected to the addition of a line about ''love of the homeland,'' calling it ''silly'' to talk about emotions in a code of ethics. But in general the code, like the struggle against the intifada itself, enjoys widespread support among an otherwise divided citizenry.

Moshe Halbertal, a professor of philosophy at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, was part of the team that worked on drafting ''The Spirit of the IDF.'' Widely known as a member of Israel's peace camp, Halbertal insists that he still favors a unilateral withdrawal by Israel from the territories. Nonetheless, he says he no longer has faith in the Palestinians as partners for peace. Their strategy in the intifada, he argues, has been intended to erase the distinction between combatants and noncombatants on both sides, making it a war of ''all against all.'' Israel's challenge, he says, ''is to move from a war against an entire population to one against those who instigate.''

The challenge is a serious one. Last month, the IDF acknowledged that 18 percent of the nearly 2,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces since the uprising began in September 2000 were civilians with no connection to acts of terror. (Israeli deaths from Palestinian attacks have exceeded 730, two-thirds of them civilian.) The army is convinced that its stringent rules of engagement have kept the figures far lower than they could have been, and Israelis have no doubt that their forces have a better record of keeping civilians out of harm's way than the United States in Baghdad or Afghanistan--and certainly better than Russia in Chechnya.

Writing in the journal Dissent last fall, the political philosopher Michael Walzer, author of ''Just and Unjust Wars'' (1977), called the contrast between Israeli conduct in the intifada and Russian tactics in Chechnya ''striking.'' ''The crucial mark of that contrast,'' he explained, ''is the very small number of civilian casualties in the Palestinian cities despite the fierceness of the fighting.''

In a mid-March interview with the daily tabloid Ma'ariv, Chief of Staff Ya'alon referred to an intelligence officer who had prevented the air force from attacking a Palestinian target by withholding necessary information. The officer had believed, mistakenly, that the operation would put civilians at risk. ''From the moral point of view, he deserves a commendation,'' commented Ya'alon. ''From the operational one, he deserved to be removed from his post.'' The chief of staff added that he was ''proud that we have officers'' who take their moral responsibility so seriously.

Others, however, argue that the military has become increasingly insensitive to abuses of force. Though initial, and widely publicized, reports about a civilian massacre in the Jenin refugee camp last April were later dispelled by the United Nations and many human-rights groups, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have continued to charge the IDF with ''war crimes,'' including delaying the arrival of medical care during the 10-day battle and the use of ''human shields.'' The IDF was in fact using Palestinian noncombatants for a number of tasks that potentially put them in danger, a practice they gave up only after the Israeli Supreme Court intervened.

But the army maintained a practice known as the ''neighbor procedure,'' in which Palestinians are ordered to approach buildings where suspected terrorists are holed up and convince them to give themselves up. The army argues that the Palestinians used in this manner are not ''human shields,'' that the practice is in fact intended to reduce tensions, and that under its written procedure no one can be forced to serve as a messenger in this manner. Israeli human-rights groups are still pressing the Supreme Court to outlaw the practice.

Lior Yavne, the spokesperson for B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, sees the enforcement of its own rules as one of the army's greatest failings. ''Since the start of the intifada,'' he notes, ''there have been about 300 investigations by the military police of misuse of weapons, and only four or five indictments--and none of these ended in a conviction with a punishment. This is far more important than the poster hanging in the barracks with the ethical code. When the army doesn't investigate... soldiers know that they won't be punished for their wrongdoings.''

Still, interviews with men who finished their regular service recently suggest that many have internalized the principles in the ethical code.

Ze'ev, an infantry officer who asked for only his first name to be used, describes a two-month stakeout of a Palestinian village in the West Bank. ''Every night there was shooting from the village, heavy gunfire. When you see a person with a gun, there's no question what you have to do. But when you see not three or four, but rather 40 people, with a single rifle, which moves around, you have to pick your targets carefully.'' Ze'ev recounts an incident in which a comrade had his commander's authorization to shoot an armed combatant below the knees-to wound, not to kill. The soldier shot twice, the second time after the enemy had fallen to the ground, and ended up killing a young boy with a rifle. The child had been part of a group that was firing on the Israelis, says Ze'ev, ''but at that moment, the kid wasn't one of them.'' He adds, in apparent contradiction to Lior Yavne's charge, ''The soldier was sent to jail, and thrown out of his unit''--though the claim cannot be verified.

Ze'ev says that behaving with restraint under fire ''is not a mission impossible.'' He adds, ''If you have any sense of moral behavior, and you think for a second, there shouldn't be any problem sticking to the things that are in the code.''

But not everyone in the IDF thinks it's that simple. Elazar Stern, a brigadier general and chief of the IDF Education Corps, is aware of the moral ambiguities inherent in a soldier's job. ''Part of what the nation demands of us,'' he says, ''is a willingness to have our heads toss and turn on the pillow several times at night. And if you're lucky, in the end you'll know that you did the right thing.''

(David B. Green is a senior editor at The Jerusalem Report.)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE SPIRIT OF THE IDF:
TEN INTRINSIC VALUES
Government of Israel, Israel Defense Forces Unit

1. Tenacity of Purpose in Performing Missions and Drive to Victory: The IDF servicemen and women will fight and conduct themselves with courage in the face of all dangers and obstacles. They will persevere in their missions resolutely and thoughtfully even to the point of endangering their lives.

2. Responsibility: The IDF serviceman or woman will see themselves as active participants in the defense of the state, its citizens and residents. They will carry out their duties at all times with initiative, involvement and diligence with common sense and within the framework of their authority, while prepared to bear responsibility for their conduct.

3. Credibility: The IDF servicemen and women shall present things objectively, completely and precisely, in planning, performing and reporting. They will act in such a manner that their peers and commanders can rely upon them in performing their tasks.

4. Personal Example: The IDF servicemen and women will comport themselves as required of them, and will demand of themselves as they demand of others, out of recognition of their ability and responsibility within the military and without to serve as a deserving role model.

5. Human Life: The IDF servicemen and women will act in a judicious and safe manner in all they do, out of recognition of the supreme value of human life. During combat they will endanger themselves and their comrades only to the extent required to carry out their mission.

6. Purity of Arms: The IDF servicemen and women will use their weapons and force only for the purpose of their mission, only to the necessary extent and will maintain their humanity even during combat. IDF soldiers will not use their weapons and force to harm human beings who are not combatants or prisoners of war, and will do all in their power to avoid causing harm to their lives, bodies, dignity and property.

7. Professionalism: The IDF servicemen and women will acquire the professional knowledge and skills required to perform their tasks, and will implement them while striving continuously to perfect their personal and collective achievements.

8. Discipline: The IDF servicemen and women will strive to the best of their ability to fully and successfully complete all that is required of them according to orders and their spirit. IDF soldiers will be meticulous in giving only lawful orders, and shall refrain from obeying blatantly illegal orders.

9. Comradeship: The IDF servicemen and women will act out of fraternity and devotion to their comrades, and will always go to their assistance when they need their help or depend on them, despite any danger or difficulty, even to the point of risking their lives.

10. Sense of Mission: The IDF soldiers view their service in the IDF as a mission. They will be ready to give their all in order to defend the state, its citizens and residents. This is due to the fact that they are representatives of the IDF who act on the basis and in the framework of the authority given to them in accordance with IDF orders.

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Volume III, No. 620 • Friday, May 2, 2003

STAND FOR ISRAEL
Tom DeLay
FrontPage Magazine, April 15, 2003

U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay delivered the following speech on April 2, 2003, upon receiving the “Friend of Israel Award” from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

As we meet tonight, something extraordinary is happening on the other side of the world. Hundreds of thousands of trained and dedicated volunteers an army of virtue are liberating a nation… Town by town, Iraqi families realize what the smiling men in camouflage uniforms have won for them… But, my friends, theirs is not the only voice that cries out in the desert. For as we meet tonight, in that same part of the world, violent men plot the deaths of school children. These men view innocent human life as a means to an end and murder as a propaganda technique…

Tonight our thoughts are with the people Israel, and it is on their behalf, the courageous who live every day in the crosshairs of such men, that I accept this award and proudly count myself a Friend of Israel…

There will be the rebuilding of Iraq and its welcome return to the community of nations… And there will be, as we well know, calls on Israel to set aside decades of experience and once again trust the words and papers of a terrorist entity bent on her destruction. Voices will call on the United States to serve as an honest broker in negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government. They will call on Israel to take risks for peace. As a friend of Israel… we must reject any suggestion that its government negotiate from weakness, stand on an even moral footing with suicide bombers, or trust the promises of terrorists. The United States stands for justice, and that means we stand for Israel. Our qualms are not with the Palestinian people, but their self-appointed leaders. Yassir Arafat and his thugs do not serve the interests of the Palestinian people…

Israel's fight is our fight: against terror, and for humanity. The United States, therefore, cannot serve as a disinterested broker between an ally and its terrorist enemy. There is no moral equivalence between an aggressor and a man who defends himself against aggression, just as there is no moral equivalence between terrorists and the Israeli government sworn to stop them, despite the absurd assertions of the State Department's newly released Human Rights Report. This Report is designed to document the human rights conditions in countries around the globe; however, it compares the human rights record of a free, tolerant, and pluralistic nation with that of a terrorist network…

[We] are absolutely right to stand with Israel, and our opponents are absolutely wrong…. Israel is not the problem; Israel is the solution! The House of Representatives said as much--shouted, in fact, by a margin of 352 to 21--by passing the resolution Congressman Lantos and I sponsored last year. The resolution affirmed America's solidarity with Israel, supported Israel's right to self-defense, urged all Arab states to denounce all forms of terrorism, and encouraged the alleviation of the needs of the Palestinian people. Any viable plan for peace must require the Palestinian Authority do the same and to permanently sever ties with those who do not….

Though tested by generations of fire, the people of Israel do not exhibit malice or seek revenge… They are not fools and should not be expected to bargain with murderers. But when a new generation of Palestinian leaders rises, with a real and lasting peace as their goal and, more importantly, the authority and will to deliver it, a comprehensive solution may finally be attainable…. Israel should have the freedom to defend its national security and to negotiate at a time and on terms set by its democratic government, not those imposed by anyone else.

To be a friend of Israel demands no less than supporting her through these difficult days… Despite decades of terror in the holy cradle of faith, we must hope, as did a 15-year old girl hiding in Amsterdam, writing in her diary, less than a month before she was taken to Auschwitz: I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. Through God's Grace, the friendship of the United States and Israel will endure to see the dreams of that girl fill the whole world with light and truth forever.

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WHY CHRISTIANS HAVE BECOME ISRAEL’S BEST FRIENDS
Don Feder
National Religious Broadcasters Journal, February-March 2003

Christian Zionists? The expression almost seems a contradiction in terms. Zionists are supposed to be Jews. In the past, the American Jewish community was the bedrock of support for the Jewish state--providing financial support, lobbying Washington and educating the public on Israel’s importance to the United States.

But Zionism is undergoing a not-so-quiet revolution. Increasingly, Hava Nagilah is sung by church ladies with a Midwestern twang and Southern Baptists are drinking
L’Chayim-- with grape juice. Today, Israel’s most reliable--and often most vocal--friends are to be found among evangelical Christians. While relatively new to the cause, they are fervent in their devotion to the Jewish state. What drives them and is their faith warranted?

On October 11, 2002, the Christian Coalition of America--previously known primarily for its adherence to a social conservative agenda--held a Christian Solidarity for Israel Rally at its national convention in Washington, D.C. Speakers like Pat Robertson, the Coalition’s founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting Network, endorsed Israel’s claim to a united Jerusalem and all of the land of the Biblical nation, including the West Bank. As Coalition members waved Israeli flags (provided by Americans for a Safe Israel), Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert exhorted them to keep the City of David the undivided capital of Israel. Benyamin Elon, former minister of tourism in the Sharon government, proclaimed, “We are the Children of Israel come back to the land of Israel.” For an organization accustomed to hearing pleas to end abortion and oppose gay rights at such gatherings, it was--to say the least--unprecedented.

Coalition President Roberta Combs followed up on that historic event by taking a group of the organization’s national leaders on a solidarity mission to Israel. Combs recalls that as a child her father would lead the family in a prayer for Israel each evening…

At the dawn of the 21st century, when one thinks of Israel’s more prominent defenders, the names that spring to mind are Robertson, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall, Alan Keyes and Jerry Falwell--all Christians. Even the secular media is beginning to catch on. Last year, 60 minutes, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal did feature stories on Christian support for the Jewish state.

After two years of suicide bombings and unrelenting attacks on Israel in Europe, the United Nations and the media, as well as on college campuses, many Jews are shell-shocked. Christians seem eager to step into the front lines. As Christians and as Americans, is their support of Israel justified?

Christianity’s roots are in the Jewish Bible. The God of Abraham, David and Isaiah is also the God of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Christians view the Jewish scriptures as a prologue to the New Testament. Moses was a Jew, not an Arab sheik. Jesus came from the house of David, not a Bedouin tribe. In light of the foregoing, Christian affinity for the parent faith is understandable.

For evangelicals, the Bible is the living word of the living God. When God tells the Children of Israel that he will bless those who bless them and curse those who curse them, Christians note that this is a covenant binding for all time. Similarly, when God gave the land between the Jordan and the Sea to Abraham’s descendants, that precluded a future claim to any of the territory. Unlike mortal man, God does not change His mind. If His commitments to the Jewish people were no longer valid, all of His other promises would be called into question.

There are non-Biblical considerations as well. Since the fall of Soviet communism, Islam has become Christianity’s principal adversary--as it was for most of the 1,400 years of Islamic history. With a few exceptions, wherever Christians are persecuted in the Third World, Islam is the force responsible for their plight. Gunmen murder women and children at a church service in Pakistan. Coptic Christian villages are burned to the ground in Egypt. In Indonesia, Christians are forcibly converted to Islam. Sudanese Christians are enslaved. Nigerian Christians have Islamic law imposed on them. In Saudi Arabia, the world’s most Moslem nation, conversion to Christianity is a capital offense, church services (even in private homes) are forbidden, Bibles are confiscated as contraband and, during the Gulf War, U.S. military personnel--who were there defending the medieval monarchy--were told not to wear crosses lest it offend the sensibilities of their “hosts.” Saudi schools teach unvarnished hatred of Christians and Jews.

The Moslem Brotherhood--precursor to Hamas and Islamic Jihad--had a saying: “First the Saturday people (Jews), then the Sunday people (Christians).” Christian Lebanon is no more. Throughout the region, thousands of ancient churches and other Christian sites have been deliberately destroyed. Under the Palestinian Authority, Bethlehem’s Christian population has been reduced from a clear majority to a minority of only 20 percent. The London Times reports: “Life in (PA-ruled) Bethlehem has become insufferable for many members of the dwindling Christian minority. Increasing Muslim-Christian tensions have left some Christians reluctant to celebrate Christmas in the town at the heart of the story of Christ’s birth.” All of this has increased feelings of solidarity with Islam’s Jewish victims. Many Christians understand that should the PLO’s banner fly over the Old City of Jerusalem, the city most holy to their faith would be lost to them as well as to the Jews.

We are in the midst of a worldwide jihad. The same forces that destroyed the World Trade Center and persecute Christians in the Third World, deploy terrorists in Tel Aviv and Hebron to murder Jewish women and children.

Christians also relate to Israel as loyal Americans. They understand that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and a steadfast ally of the United States…a nation that shares our heritage. Christians understand the biblical roots of colonial America--that without ancient Israel, the United States would not exist. How fitting, then, that this nation played a key role in Israel’s rebirth in 1948…

Israel speaks to the essence of what it means to be a Christian. This tiny nation--somehow surviving amidst genocidal, oil-rich neighbors--is a living validation of the Bible’s promises. Thus, it evokes the hopes as well as the deepest longings of Christians everywhere.

After two millennia, Christians and Jews find themselves on the same side of the barricades, confronting the forces of darkness. Perhaps it was always intended to be so.

(Don Feder, a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated
columnist, hosts a talk show on WROL-AM/Boston. He is the organizer
of an upcoming interfaith Christian-Jewish conference to take place
in May in Washington, D.C. [please see details below].)

Shabbat Shalom to all our readers!

__________________________________

For America and Israel
“Interfaith Zionist Leadership Summit”

May 17-18
Omni Shoreham Hotel
(Washington, D.C.)

Partial listing of speakers:
Gary Bauer, American Values, Roberta Combs, President, Christian Coalition,
Frank Gaffney, Center for Security Policy, Michael Ledeen, American Enterprise Institute,
Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Alex Safian, CAMERA.

Sponsored by: Zionist House, Boston, with the National Unity Coalition for Israel

For Information and Registration

www.zionistleadership.com / email: amsoloway@aol.com
Tel.: 301-592-1611 or 508-405-1337

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To Our Montreal Readership

HOLD THE FOLLOWING DATES:

Canadian Institute for Jewish Research
Congregation Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem

“AFTER IRAQ:
ISRAEL & MIDDLE EAST PEACE”

Sunday, May 4, 2003, 9:00 AM

Tifereth Beth David Jerusalem
6519 Baily Road, Cote St. Luc

Prof. Julien Bauer
(Dept. of Political Science,
Université du Québec à Montréal)

Prof. Frederick Krantz
(Dept. of History & Liberal Arts College,
Concordia University)

Prof. Harold Waller
(Dept. of Political Science,
McGill University)

_____________________________________________

Make a commitment to be there and bring a friend!

STANDING TOGETHER WITH ISRAEL

YOM HA’ATZMAUT
MEGA SOLIDARITY RALLY

Keynote speaker
Former Quebec Premier
Lucien Bouchard

Wednesday, May 7, 2003

Downtown Phillips Square at 11:00 am

For more information and bus reservations: 514-345-2657
Visit the website: www.montrealisraelrally.com

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Volume III, No. 619 • Thursday, May 1, 2003

A MAP TO NATIONAL DISASTER
Uzi Landau
Ha’aretz, April 8, 2003

If the Quartet's road map is accepted, Yasser Arafat will win the greatest victory of his life. Despite the blatant violation of all his commitments in the Oslo agreements and his responsibility for the murder of more than 1,000 Israelis--nearly 800 of them during the last two years of terror--he has not been punished. On the contrary, he is holding on to the far-reaching concessions granted him at Oslo and in addition will get what even Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres refused to give him: the establishment of a state, "independent, viable, sovereign with maximum territorial contiguity," in principle, and without negotiation. That state is the main goal of the map, resulting from a childish belief on the part of the Quartet that the mere creation of the state will guarantee peace.

At the same time there's no mention in the map of any of the conditions noted by the government as essential for our existential security: demilitarization; our complete control of the air space; a ban on the authority to sign international agreements, for example.

As far as we are concerned, there are two inviolate conditions: public recognition of Israel's right to exist, including an end to the incitement educating toward our destruction in the Palestinian school system and inculcating peace as a value from an early age, and Palestinian relinquishment of their demand for the refugees to return to Israel. These demands…do not appear as a condition. Moreover, the Saudi Arabian initiative, which the map says has "ongoing importance," speaks of solving the refugee problem through UN Resolution 194, which includes the "right of return," as its centerpiece.

Borders: Those who believed Israel would be able to maintain control over areas of decisive strategic importance for our defense, find the map speaks about "ending the occupation that began in 1967," in other words, a return to what Abba Eban called "the Auschwitz borders."

Internationalization of the conflict: In the first year of the previous, unity government, Israel was careful not to use all that was necessary to defeat the terrorist organizations…[It] did not topple the Palestinian Authority and did not expel Arafat. The price: hundreds of killed, thousands of wounded, and a rapid deterioration to a deep and unprecedented economic depression…We did so to prevent the internationalization of the conflict by the entry of foreign observers and international conferences, that would, in effect, take out of our hands the sovereignty over management of the conflict and harm our ability to defend ourselves effectively. That's exactly what the road map does…It convenes two international conferences meant to establish the Palestinian state and lead to a permanent agreement, accompany the process, establish a supervisory mechanism for the implementation, judge the disputes between the PA and Israel, set a "realistic timetable" for progress and become involved in the negotiations "when necessary."

Jerusalem: The road map gives the Palestinians a political status equal to ours and determines that the decisions in the negotiations over the city's status will be with regard to "the political and religious interest of both sides." In other words, the division of Jerusalem. [The] road map emphasizes, "the government of Israel will reopen Palestinian institutions closed in East Jerusalem."…

A prize for terror: Without any condition for an end to terror first, Israel is ordered to immediately dismantle all the outposts and freeze all settlement activity, including natural growth--another bonus the Palestinians didn't even get at Oslo.

The road map is a huge prize for terror. In its wake the Palestinians will not only achieve their strategic goals, but will reach a clear conclusion: terror pays. They will get all the concessions we shower on them, organize themselves with money they get from the world and us, rebuild their terror units and attack us at the moment convenient for them… The road map does not express the "Bush vision" as expressed last June… Accepting it will lead to terror and war under far more difficult conditions than we've ever known. If Israel wants to live, it must make as clear as possible and as early as possible that without basic preconditions, the map is totally unacceptable.

(Uzi Landau, a Likud member of Knesset,
is a current minister in the Prime Minister’s Office.)

______________________________________________________

WRONG TURN IN MIDEAST 'ROAD MAP'
Yossi Klein Halevi
Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2003

For the first time since the Palestinian leadership launched its war of national suicide against civilian Israel in September 2000, a chance exists to renew negotiations and create a more rational Middle East. Thanks to Israeli resolve against the suicide bombers, and to the American victory over Saddam Hussein, some Palestinian leaders now realize that the ground rules have changed and terrorism won't produce territorial concessions, only a tougher military response.

It is heartening that the newly appointed Palestinian prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas--although a Holocaust denier in his youth and a hard-liner on the issue of Palestinian refugees--clearly believes that negotiations with Israel are the path to peace. But that tentative opening is being jeopardized by conceptual sloppiness in the "road map" devised by Washington, along with the European Union, Russia and the United Nations...

The problem begins with the road map's vagueness about controlling terrorism. To its credit, the road map does insist on an end to Palestinian terrorism as a first step, to be followed by an Israeli settlement freeze. Israel's centrist majority is ready to pay that price. But not for a mere cease-fire. Declaring a cease-fire without disarming the terrorist groups, including those aligned with Yasser Arafat, would only allow terrorists to recover their losses inflicted by Israel's effective military response in recent months…

The credibility of the road map depends on an explicit insistence that, this time, the Palestinian Authority act like a real authority and uproot the terrorist infrastructure. Before Israel can be asked for a reciprocal gesture like a freezing of the settlements, there must be tangible, measurable evidence of disarmament.

Then there's the road map's insistence on a timetable. Like the Oslo process…the road map is driven by the clock. It envisions an interim Palestinian state emerging as early as a year from now, to be followed in 2005 by a permanent solution on the thorniest issues…refugees, final borders and the status of Jerusalem… The fact is, it will take years, not months, to test the transformation of Palestinian society, which has been subjected to an official, relentless hate campaign in mosques, schools and media. Adequate time to test Palestinian intentions is crucial for restoring the trust of Israeli centrists…

When the Palestinians declared war in September 2000 against Israel's most left-wing and conciliatory government and violently rejected Israel's offer to become the first country in history to offer shared sovereignty over its capital, the Israeli public's faith in the peace process shattered. Although polls still show a strong majority willingness to trade land for peace, they also show deep skepticism about whether withdrawal even to the 1967 borders would bring that peace. Without the support of this pragmatic but skeptical majority, the road map will go nowhere. Another enormous problem for Israel is that the road map does not promise an end to the Palestinian demand that refugees be allowed to return to Israel proper, rather than to a Palestinian state…

Perhaps the road map's greatest conceptual flaw is its relentless symmetry in apportioning blame… After insisting, for example, on an end to official Palestinian incitement against Jews, it demands a parallel end to supposed Israeli government incitement against Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority's incitement campaign includes Holocaust denial and the routine dehumanization of Jews. Nothing remotely comparable occurs in mainstream Israel… By reinforcing a false moral symmetry, the road map makes a fatal wrong turn, allowing Palestinians to evade responsibility for what has become a self- inflicted occupation.

(Yossi Klein Halevi is the Israel correspondent for The New Republic
and author of "At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden" [Harper Collins, 2002].)

______________________________________________________

IT'S TIME TO ABOLISH THE QUARTET
Martin Peretz
Ha’aretz, April 21, 2003

The Quartet is a work of the antebellum period, that is, of the era before the U.S. tried unsuccessfully to enlist the Europeans, the Russians and the UN in its venture against Saddam Hussein's charnel house. We don't have to exaggerate the recent achievements in Baghdad to grasp that all of these recalcitrants are now scraping to retain some presence in Iraq. What finally happens will be up to the U.S. The presence will not be very great. It has no great interest in the presence of these parties in the negotiations that it hopes to convene for another go at peace between Israel and Palestinians. But Israel has no interest at all being euchred and then judged by these, its standing impugners.

And this is a matter that Israel should be able to decide for itself. The U.S. is an honest broker in this situation. It is an ally of Israel and it has sympathies, real sympathies, for the Palestinians' political aspirations. When Ehud Barak made concessions…he understood that he was making them as much to Bill Clinton and the U.S. as to Yasser Arafat and the PA, perhaps even more. Clinton and the U.S. were brokers, the underwriters of the deal, and the American political system would be its guarantors. Of course the deal was rejected by the Palestinians. And now they will get less favorable terms, not only because of the intifada, but also because of Iraq. The rules on the ground have changed…

Nonetheless, the concessions expected from Israel are onerous ones. [Peace] is a painful process whose particulars must be interpreted (but not interpolated) by others. The UN, the EU and Russia cannot be trusted after the fact either. They are parti pris for any Palestinians, including, as it happens, the Islamic terror groups. It is surely the case that Abu Mazen would prefer to have Xavier Solana hover over the proceedings. Why not? But he should not have the choice. He is, moreover, too weak to insist, and so are the Palestinians whom he represents.

Clinton is no longer president, George W. Bush is. He is not his father and, for that matter, Colin Powell isn't James Baker. In any case, the secretary of state is not the only interlocutor in this process. There are also those who won out over him in Iraq--Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, others. There will be inevitable differences between them and the Israelis. But, on the U.S. side, these won't be differences motivated by rancor. Therefore, Israel will be able to be more accommodating than it would if Kofi Annan, or Dominique de Villepin, were in the room.

…Let's face facts--the incessant chiming for Arafat of [the] plenipotentiaries of old Europe is very much off-key. It doubtless encouraged him, yet again, to try to put wraps around Abu Mazen, and specifically with reference to the one condition that the United States had put on the publication of the road map, that the new Palestinian cabinet actually be the prime minister's and not the president's...

…Three of the players in the Quartet are habitually at odds with the U.S. More to the point, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia have historically been at odds with Israel… Russia is the least of these antagonists. But what "the least" means can be gauged by the fact that Moscow is the place where the now expired Iraqis, the Syrians and the Iranians routinely did their military shopping…

There are times when the essential business of the UN seems to be the chastisement of Israel… Whether the venue is the UN Human Rights Commission (currently chaired by that beacon of freedom, Libya), Security Council, General Assembly or a press conference by its secretary-general, Israel is always in the dock. It is true that Annan is not Kurt Waldheim… Still… Annan has presided over so many recent fiascoes, from the kidnap-murders of Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese border under the very eyes of blue helmets, to deliberate and knowing libel of IDF operations in Jenin by his own representatives, that his charms no longer even do for Upper East Side dinner parties in New York…

Which bring us to the EU… Its hazy relevance to the Israeli-Arab conflict is a consequence only of its insistence that it is relevant. The situation would have been different had the EU produced a concession from the Palestinians. But it hasn't. Nothing. What it has produced is checks endorsed to the PA, for the expenditure of which it cannot make a trustworthy accounting. Its eminences have been Arafat's ready emissaries, and in this they have been arrayed against those Palestinians who did not want the terror to begin or, at least, arrived at the point where they wanted it to end.

(Martin Peretz is editor-in-chief and chairman of The New Republic.)

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