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Mike's Survivor

05.06.04 (11:27 am) [edit]

[i]One year ago, a young Stanmore-born man was among those whose lives changed forever when a British suicide bomber blew up outside a Tel Aviv beachfront bar.

This week, Daniella Peled hears how he found a way to heal the emotional trauma of the night when three of his friends were killed. [/i]

David Leigh was running late. Due to start his shift as a barman at the popular Mike’s Place pub, the former Londoner had stopped to have a shave before leaving his flat. So he was still 100 yards away when a suicide bomber detonated his charge outside the packed venue.

That mundane delay may have saved David’s life. Three of his workmates and friends - waitress Dominique Hass, a 29-year-old who had only recently arrived from France, along with musicians Yanai Weiss, 46, and Ran Baron, 23 - died in the explosion. Dozens more sustained horrifying injuries.

Moments after the blast, 28-year old David arrived to find a scene of utter devastation. “The front of Mike’s Place was dark – completely covered in black ash,” he recalls, sipping a pint of Guinness outside the rebuilt pub, a year on filled once again with music and laughter.

“The ambulances hadn’t arrived yet and everyone on the street was just looking on in shock. It was just bodies and body parts. I remember seeing a leg very distinctly, among the black ash everywhere the flesh was bright white and it really stood out.”

Amid the confusion, David did his best to help, but with no first-aid training, he could only cradle a friend, whose leg had been torn to shreds, and try to comfort her.

Ironically, just the week before he had told his boss, pub owner Gal Ganzman, he wanted to do a first aid course with Israeli ambulance service, Magen David Adom. But Gal had said the bar was particularly busy and he couldn’t spare him.

“I had an incredible sense of clarity,” says David. “I remember crouching by my friend, thinking, “I really must tell Gal I’m going to do that medic’s course.””

When David, a veteran of Jewish student groups, made aliya five years ago, the peace process was still active. Soon, like all Israelis, security concerns became part and parcel of his daily life.

And his response following the blast was typically Israeli, just like the other mainly Anglo immigrants who make up the staff and regulars of Mike’s Place.

They unanimously decided to carry on, undefeated by terror, mobilising to reopen the bar in just seven days. Friends and relatives established the Life After Terror Fund to help other victims. Security guard Avi Tabib, - severely wounded after he prevented the bomber from entering the bar, saving many more lives – fought his injuries to return to work as soon as could.

Barman Joshua Faudem and his girlfriend Pavla Fleishcher, who had been making a film about the bar – the producer, Jack Baxter was badly hurt in the blast –carried on filming. The result, Blues on the Beach, previewed in Tel Aviv last week, shows the shocked survivors struggling with the immediate aftermath of the bombing and trying to find a way to cope with the trauma.

For David, the solution was never in doubt. Eight days after the attack, he presented himself at his first MDA training session. The reason? “Empowerment,” he says simply. “You have to take the energy you find in bad situations and use it for something good.”

He got the opportunity all too soon. In MDA headquarters in Jerusalem on 11 June 2003 as part of his 140 hours of instruction to become an ambulance driver, Egged bus number 14A was hit by a suicide bomber on the central Jaffa Road. When the call came in, he jumped on an ambulance. “I shouldn’t have,” he admits sheepishly, “I hadn’t finished my training”.

He was one of the first on the scene and immediately began to put what he had learnt into practice, running towards the most badly injured and assessing who could still be helped.

The first casualty he carried to the ambulance looked barely injured; he began CPR before he realised the man was already dead. “So I went back to the bus,” he says simply. “It felt very good to be doing something and putting my training into use.”

The grisly scenes he saw that day – even finding a part of the suicide bomber’s head on the opposite side of the street – did nothing to deter him from finishing his training.

He now keeps his MDA vest, with all of his equipment, in his car at all times. MDA, like Mike’s Place, he says, is a family. And that sense of belonging is what he made aliyah to experience.

Vanunu Release

04.15.04 (10:49 am) [edit]

by Edmund Colley

[i]Next week Israel’s nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu walks free after 18 years behind bars. Here Edmund Colley analyses the impact of his betrayal and the implications his release may have on Israel’s security.[/i]

Jailed in 1986 for handing The Sunday Times images and information about Israel’s alleged nuclear capability at its Demona reactor, Mordechai Vanunu’s actions and incarceration have made worldwide headlines for almost two decades.

He’s considered by some to be a traitor who betrayed his country by releasing security secrets of a vulnerable nation, while others hail him a hero who alerted the world to dangers of nuclear technology.

As such, Vanunu’s imminent release holds two primary concerns for Israel. First is the possible threat to national security he again represents, in the form of the two main issues he has not already revealed: security arrangements at Dimona and the identities of his former co-workers there.

Israeli officials seem convinced that Vanunu has the potential to cause further damage to the country. Attorney general Meni Mazuz recently claimed at a Knesset judicial committee that, "the security establishment has determined that Mordechai Vanunu still poses a threat to Israel's security and that he is in possession of nuclear secrets which have insofar been unreported."

Because of this, Vanunu will face restrictions upon his release next Wednesday. He will not be granted a passport and although he has made a request for foreign citizenship, a plan to prevent him entering foreign embassies or requesting political asylum is being debated.

Since it is legally impossible to hold Vanunu in administrative detention, it will be hard to monitor his movements.

Others in Israel, however, no longer perceive Vanunu as a threat, as what he knows describes Israel’s capabilities as it was 20 years ago. As Alon Ben David, defence analyst for Israel’s Channel 10 television, told the Jewish News: ‘The main concern is not the information he still has, but that he will lead a media campaign against Israel's defensive capabilities.

Vanunu has not concealed that this is still his intention upon earning his freedom and many who believe Israel has no right to defend itself, let alone to posses nuclear weapons, will use him as an argument for Israel to disarm.’

To counter this threat, Vanunu’s phone and computer may be monitored and he will be warned that any media appearance regarding his nuclear knowledge will see him fast-tracked back to jail.

These restrictions raise questions regarding the treatment he has received and will continue to receive at the hands of Israeli authorities.

Vanunu himself has said: “I had positive intentions for what I did but the state turned me into a monster. I wanted to save the population of Israel from the disaster of a nuclear war and they turned me into a traitor and a spy.”

Yet no matter how severe Vanunu’s punishment was (he has spent 11 years in solitary confinement) and continues to be, other countries have meted out similar treatment to those individuals who betray their security secrets.

Indeed, American national Jonathan Pollard is 19 years into a life sentence for handing over his country’s nuclear secrets to Israel. Alon Ben David said: “Like any other democracy, Israel too has laws against traitors. Can you think of a democracy that was tolerant to a traitor?”

There is also a mounting concern that his release will provoke a concerted campaign to bring Israel’s nuclear capability to the world’s attention at a time when countries like Iran and North Korea are being pressurised into abandoning theirs.

And with former pariah state Libya beeing welcomed back to the international fold after actively abandoning of its weapons programme, Israel now faces more pressure than ever to follow suit and allow international inspectors access to Demona.

Given the conflicting emotions Vanunu elicits, and the controversial nature of the information that he may or may not still have, there is little doubt that although his sentence is almost at an end, world media interest in Israel’s infamous whistleblower will intensify in the weeks and months after he finally earns his freedom.

Great Escape

04.08.04 (9:28 am) [edit]

by Eliana Schneider

[i]This week marks the 60th anniversary of one of the most remarkable events of the Holocaust – an escape from Auschwitz by four Jews who wanted to warn the world of about the mass murders perpetrated by their German captors.

Here Eliana Schneider retells a story of courage and commitment.[/i]

In 1944, 20-year old Auschwitz inmate Rudolf Vrba heard that the Nazis were planning to deport all of Hungary's Jews to the notorious death camp. Along with fellow prisoner Alfred Wetzler, he decided to do something about it.

They decided to escape in an attempt to warn their fellow Jews. With the help of two others, Vrba and Wetzler set to work on a daring plan that would lead them out of the camp and into their native Slovakia where they could tell the world about the atrocities they had encountered first hand at Auschwitz.

Sixty years later, the impact of what is believed to be one of the most important testimonies of the 20th century is still being felt around the world.

The 32-page Vrba-Wetzler Report was the first detailed account of the camp that was heeded. It made its way around the world in June 1944 and turned public opinion towards attempting to rescue the Jews.

"They are great Jewish heroes," says Yad Vashem academic advisor Professor Yehuda Bauer. "These young men decided to risk their lives to save hundreds of thousand of Jews. They made more impact than even they thought."

Today Vrba is the only survivor of the foursome and just this week he was on a speaking tour in Frankfurt although he could not be reached for comment.

But the miraculous tale has been widely publicised over the years. It was an elaborate escape plan - and it had to be.

According to Bauer, only one other person managed to flee Auschwitz. "This was a partnership of all four men," he says.

Both Vrba - who had already been at Auschwitz for two years - and Wetzler were clerks in the camp, allowing them ease of movement as well as extra food to bulk up their strength for the arduous and dangerous journey that lay ahead of them.

Together with Czeslaw Mordowicz and Arnost Rosin, who would follow them six weeks later, Vrba and Wetzler prepared a bunker underneath a woodpile. Just hours before the first night of Passover - April 7, 1944 - they hid inside their bolt hole. They failed to answer the evening roll call, but an alert did not go out for another hour, as the guards were so shocked.

An escape from the camp was unheard of.

Vrba and Wetzler remained in the bunker for three days while hundreds of dogs sniffed around nearby. Vrba had spread a tobacco concoction around the area, which could not be tolerated by police dogs. The search was eventually called off, and the two headed towards their native Slovakia.

Vrba wrote several years ago: "I believed that if I escaped the confines of Auschwitz and managed to get back in the world outside and spread the news I could make some significant differences."

He, along with the others, believed that they could halt the impending deportations of 800,000 Jews.

The pair were hidden by what was left of the Slovakian Jewish community and contacted its Jewish council. In late April they gave their eyewitness accounts to the council and warned of coming transports. The Hungarian Jewish leadership was advised.

By June, along with testimonies by Mordowicz and Rosin who had escaped in May and the earlier account of a Polish officer, a report, known as the Auschwitz Protocols, was assembled.

It was sent to the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, the British, US and Czech governments and the Vatican.
Discussions about a possible rescue took place in London and Washington, but no action was taken.

Excerpts from the report were published in several Swiss newspapers. "They were neutral, so not everything was printed," says Bauer.

"But it was the first real information that was paid attention to," adds Bauer, who points out that other accounts had trickled through the year before but were dismissed as rumours.

The Jewish leadership and the Vatican made appeals in late June to the Hungarian Regent, Admiral Horty, to stop the deportations. But it was too late for most. Hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews had already been sent to Auschwitz.

Yet 200,000 Budapest Jews were saved from transportation, according to Bauer. "No doubt one of the factors in stopping the deportation was the warning by Vrba and Wetzler," he says. Still, for the four escapees it was viewed as too little too late. Their hopes for saving many of their fellow Jews had been dashed.

While Vrba attacks the Slovak and Hungarian Jewish leadership for not moving faster, Bauer says: "They couldn't stop the rest of the deportations. It was too late and the leadership was too weak."

He says it was the fault of the Western powers for not taking action. "Until then there was a lack of detailed information. But they could have used this information and didn't. They needed a political decision to get something done. Instead there was a decision not to do anything."

Frustrated, both Vrba and Wetzler joined the Slovakian partisans and fought until the end of the war.Mordowicz was discovered and taken back to Auschwitz, but survived.

Though the protocols - which are now housed in Yad Vashem and the Vatican - were entered into evidence at Nuremberg, none of its authors were called to testify. "By that time everything was well known, so it didn't play a major part," says Bauer.

After the war, Wetzler returned to Bratislava as a journalist. He wrote a detailed book of the escape, What Dante Did Not See, and died in the 1980s.

Vrba studied chemistry at the University of Prague, and moved to Canada where he is an associate professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia.

He published an autobiography: I Cannot Forgive, in 1963, and was awarded an honorary PhD from Haifa University. He said several years ago: "People must know what really happened, how they were deceived, how this deceit was propagated."

ADL Sued

04.02.04 (8:42 am) [edit]

by Alex Sholem

America’s leading race watchdog has been forced to pay out more than $12 million (£6.6m) after it branded a Denver couple as anti-semites.

The Anti-Defamation League accused William and Dorothy Quigley of planning a campaign of anti-semitic intimidation against their Jewish neighbours, the Aronsons, in 1994.

The accusation came after the Aronsons recorded a telephone conversation in which the Quigleys discussed playing on Holocaust imagery in a bid to scare their Jewish neighbours away.

But, although prosecutors brought a case against the Quigleys, it was found the conversation had been taped illegally and could not be used in court.

The case was settled after the ADL appealed to the Supreme Court.

A Cold Peace

04.01.04 (11:48 am) [edit]

by James Kaye

[i]This week marks the 25th anniversary of the peace treaty signed by Israel and Egypt on the White House Lawn. Here James Kaye takes a look at the hopes raised.[/i]

It is remarkable that the Israel-Egypt peace treaty, signed on 26 March 1979 has successfully endured for 25 years. Yet more remarkable still is that Israel’s first ever peace treaty with a neighbouring Arab state - culminating in the meeting of Menachem Begin Anwar Sadat and United States President Jimmy Carter on the White House lawn - ever happened at all.

Since Israel’s inception 20 years earlier, Egypt, the mightiest Arab country, had been its arch enemy. The two countries had crossed swords four times in four successive decades. Even in 1970, after the death of President Gamal Abdul Nasser - who led Egypt for 16 years - little seemed to change.

In 1971, Sadat stood shoulder to shoulder with Arab leaders in issuing "a reply to the illusions of the Zionist enemy" saying there would be no reconciliation or negotiations with Israel.

Begin was not an obvious peacemaker either. The Likud leader was the former leader of the underground Irgun during pre-Independence days. Matters came to a head in the 1973 Yom Kippur war when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel and were defeated.

But despite their belligerent facades Israel and Egypt were thinking peace.
Egypt was not what it was, as the archives of the Jimmy Carter library and museum illustrate: "Sadat was faced with severe domestic problems caused by the growing failure of socialism, the economic drain of the six day war, and the constant prospect of more war in the future."

So diplomatic engagement began, and in an unprecedented move, President Sadat visited Israel in November 1977 to addressed the Knesset: He announced: "I have come to you so that together we should build a durable peace based on justice to avoid the shedding of one single drop of blood by both sides. I have proclaimed my readiness to go to the farthest corner of the earth.”

The following September, 12 days of intensive secret negotiations in Camp David - the US presidents woodland retreat in Maryland - culminated in the Camp David Accords.

Former Israeli President, Chaim Herzog, in his autobiography Living History, says Carter deserves credit: "Sadat and Begin disliked each other, yet Cater locked them up in negotiation."

Begin and Sadat picked up the Joint Nobel Peace Prize in 1978. The treaty was done and dusted the following year.

Sadat and Begin declared it a "historic turning point". Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula, including its oil wells and strategic location, as well as dismantle Israeli settlements removing the Jewish population of the area.
Egypt became the first Arab country to recognise Israel's right to exist and pledged not to attack it again.

There was also an arrangement of autonomy for the Palestinian
population of the disputed Israeli territories of Judea Samaria and the Gaza
Strip.

Full diplomatic relations were established. Israel's embassy in Cairo - the first of its kind in any Arab country - was opened in February 1980, and Egypt's embassy in Israel was opened in March 1980.

But Sadat immediately became a pariah in the Arab world. The Arab league condemned him and Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, told a rally: "Let them sign what they like. False peace will not last."

Two years later Sadat was dead, assassinated by extremists. So what is the legacy of the Israel-Egypt peace treaty?

Professor Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told TJ: "The treaty removed Egypt from the Arab-Israeli conflict. As the strongest Arab country it reduced the military capabilities of the Arabs and meant there was no longer a two front war scenario.

But he adds: "It's impact on Israeli/Egyptian society was very limited because there were no people to people interactions. It also set a bad precedent of returning to the 1967 line. It did not deal with the refugee problem and set a precedent of cold peace for the rest of the Arab world."

Dan Eldar, a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan center for middle eastern and African studies, paints a bleaker picture: "Today, the Egyptian perception of peace with Israel still regards the two countries to be in conflict in ways that could lead them to the brink of war.”

Meanwhile, Egyptian popular animosity towards Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people continues. Recently Egyptian state television broadcast a 30-part series based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Yet Camp David is still considered the model peace agreement.

In 1993, President Rabin, Chairman Arafat and President Bill Clinton stood on the White House lawn to sign another peace agreement. Clinton, never one to miss a trick, drew parallels between the Camp David initiative by saying: "The peace between Egypt and Israel has endured, just so this bold new venture today," he said.
And whatever the real effects of the Israeli-Egypt peace treaty, its lofty ideals live on.

As Begin told the Knesset at the time: "To breach the ring of enmity – that is our goal, that is our aspiration, that was our dream...it is worth it, we must, we should take this step: for our people, for all our sons and daughters, for our future, for the peace and security of our neighbours, too."

But in the wake of Monday’s assassination of Ahmed Yassin Egypt has cancelled a visit by lawmakers and other dignitaries to mark the anniversary.

Israel must not surrender to terror

03.26.04 (7:12 am) [edit]

By Arieh Eldad, MK
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

The proposed unilateral Israeli withdrawal of from the Gaza Strip is the newest (and arguably the most promising) victory awaiting the masters of terror. The fundamental tenet of the West's almost 3-year-old War on Terror is moral clarity – the courage of consistency. Such manifest principles shudder in humiliation by the anticipated Israeli pullout from Gaza. Once the sole battlefront in the Terror War, Israel has sorrowfully become only one of the many new war zones of this gruesome conflict.

The Jewish state continues to suffer as no other – however, a number of nations have come to experience the horrors of indiscriminate murder, the fear of sudden and unreserved violence and the mourning of fallen innocents. Yet with no true examination, no attempt to look beyond the myth of rhetoric, the West continues to encourage Israeli capitulation to terror. This must end for, if no other reason, than the defense of democracies throughout the world.

Sadly, Israel's greatest ally and the victim of one of the most depraved acts of terror, also seeks to have Israel give in to the terrorists in exchange for dreamy, tired and ill-conceived "peace plans" with the radicalized Arab-Islamic enemy. The "Bush Doctrine" defines capitulation to terror as a defeat, that those who aid the terrorists are as responsible and therefore as guilty as the terrorists.

With this faultless cognition, moral clarity demands that Israel be forbidden to capitulate to terror. And, with the unanticipated outcome of the Spanish elections and the conceivable loss of a staunch U.S. coalition partner, President Bush stated unequivocally: "Any sign or weakness or retreat is a victory for the terrorists." The partnership of nations who seek to do battle against terror must re-evaluate their automatic, and frankly, illogical, reactions to the Israeli-Arab conflict and understand that in the face of the bombing in Madrid, their future many hinge upon yet another terrorist victory.

Gaza

In 1967, during the Six-Day War, Israel captured the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt. That war broke out after Egypt had poured large military forces into the Sinai, closed the Tiran Straits to Israeli shipping and concluded a joint plan, with Syria, for an attack on Israel. Twenty-two years later, as part of the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt and following the Camp David talks between Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat under the auspices of President Carter, Israel returned the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt. However, Egypt declined to re-assume control of the Gaza Strip, which remained in Israel's possession.

After ruling Gaza for 37 years, Israel, in the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords, handed over most of the area of the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. With all agreements signed, Israel held on to 20 flourishing communities in a small section of Gaza.

Until recently, it was Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who took the position that Israel must continue to maintain and develop these Jewish communities under Israeli rule in perpetuity. More importantly, the prime minister frequently expressed the view that the very existence of these Israeli communities in Gaza was essential to the prevention of a takeover of Gaza by extremist terrorist groups and the resultant creation there of the biggest terrorist base in the world.

The Roadmap: conditions unmet

The "Roadmap," based on President Bush's vision requires, first and primarily, the cessation of terror. The plan was never implemented, very simply because the terror not only continued, but increased. The leadership of the Palestinian Authority was fleeting and Yasser Arafat remained the Authority's strongman who, to this day, continues to rule the PA as a terrorist organization.

Israel rightfully continued to maintain that, unless and until there is a cessation to terror, the thought of territorial concessions was, in fact, out of the question and that action would be seen as a reward for violence. In all, nearly 1,000 Israelis have been killed in terror attacks over the past three years. Suicide-killers have indiscriminately taken the lives of women and children in the streets of Israeli towns and cities.

Against this background of ongoing and ever increasing terror, came an astounding turnabout in the long-standing policy of Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon. In what is clearly an act of desperation, Mr. Sharon decided that Israel would unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip, and possibly from areas in Judea and Samaria.

The prime minister's proposal has all the signs of a man brought to the brink, frustrated by the outrageous behavior of the Palestinian Authority, its blatant flaunting of all civilized norms, its disregard of any legal agreements and the refusal of the world community to disqualify the PA as an entity with any standing. The prime minister would capitulate to the terrorists through despair and fatigue, uprooting dozens of Jewish communities, transferring their inhabitants in the thousands and redeploying to a new and dangerous line of defense. Such matters should not be left to the tired and depressed.

The lesson of Lebanon

It was Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the extremist Lebanese Muslim terror organization Hezbollah, who described Israel as "a spider-web state." A few years ago, when Israel was fighting in Lebanon, Nasrallah believed that if he just kept up Hezbollah's terrorist strikes against the Jewish state, it would eventually break and retreat. This, indeed, is what happened and, in the year 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanese territory. That retreat, and the hastiness in which it was carried out, represented a tremendous victory for the Hezbollah, and gave living proof of the truth of Nasrallah's theory – the theory of terror.

The Palestinian Authority learned that lesson well.

Ariel Sharon's announcement of his intention to leave Gaza unilaterally in order to improve Israel's position and establish a new line of defense is decisive proof that terror pays. Such a move would indicate that Israel – at one time the very symbol of consistent refusal to surrender to terror and, in this sense, an example and model for the entire free world – was now signaling to all the terrorist organizations that terror pays. Israel, moreover, would become living proof that it is possible to overcome even a country enjoying overwhelming military superiority – if one simply persists in the mass killing of that country's citizens.

Should the terrorists' victory in Spain be topped off with the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the methodology will be set in stone. The threat to the lives of American and British soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will increase substantially, because Islamic terror will then have incontrovertible proof that all it need do is redouble its efforts and step up the slaughter in order to defeat the Western democracies. Such a victory for the terrorists in Gaza would be the opening signal for a worldwide terrorist offensive of unprecedented proportions.

The extremists will take over

It may be safely assumed that if the Israel Defense Forces evacuate Gaza, the most extreme terrorist groups will seize control of the area. Hamas, and perhaps Hezbollah as well, will gain sharply in strength, which will be understood in one way only: that they have succeeded in driving the Israelis out. A shot in the arm of this kind for the extremist organizations will, in effect, put an end to any prospect that a moderate Arab regime would ever take hold, carry out reforms, fight terror and realize President Bush's vision and the Roadmap.

Moreover, an Israeli surrender to terror, in the form of a unilateral retreat from the Gaza Strip, would deal a severe blow to the courageous American resolve to fight terror everywhere. The United States would be compelled to invest billions of dollars, and possibly send tens of thousands of additional armed forces to the Middle East, to avert defeat in the War on Terror. The bold and noble effort to recreate the Middle East based on a democratic Iraq will forever be damaged. If the U.S. experiment is able to survive the proposed terror victory, countless years will be added to the task, not to mention the added blood and treasure of the already put-upon American people.

A new dimension has been added to the strategic alliance between Israel and the United States. In the world of fundamentalist Islam, Israel is called "the small Satan." In Muslim eyes, the small Satan's surrender to terror would surely pave the way for victory over "the great Satan" – the United States. For this reason, if for no other, the United States must to strengthen Israel's resolve and urge its leaders to stand firm against terror. The level heads in Washington must expose the defeatist policy proposed by Prime Minister Sharon as the ill-conceived byproduct of desperation and fatigue.

[i]Professor Arieh Eldad, a brigadier-general (Reserves), has served in the past as chief medical officer of the Israel Defense Forces, and is a member of Israel's Knesset. His party, the National Union, is part of the coalition making up the Sharon government.[/i]

Anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism

03.25.04 (3:40 pm) [edit]

by the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

". . . You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist.' And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of God's green earth: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is God's own truth.
"Antisemitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionist is inherently antisemitic, and ever will be so.

"Why is this? You know that Zionism is nothing less than the dream and ideal of the Jewish people returning to live in their own land. The Jewish people, the Scriptures tell us, once enjoyed a flourishing Commonwealth in the Holy Land. From this they were expelled by the Roman tyrant, the same Romans who cruelly murdered Our Lord. Driven from their homeland, their nation in ashes, forced to wander the globe, the Jewish people time and again suffered the lash of whichever tyrant happened to rule over them.

"The Negro people, my friend, know what it is to suffer the torment of tyranny under rulers not of our choosing. Our brothers in Africa have begged, pleaded, requested--DEMANDED the recognition and realization of our inborn right to live in peace under our own sovereignty in our own country.

"How easy it should be, for anyone who holds dear this inalienable right of all mankind, to understand and support the right of the Jewish People to live in their ancient Land of Israel. All men of good will exult in the fulfilment of God's promise, that his People should return in joy to rebuild their plundered land.

This is Zionism, nothing more, nothing less.

"And what is anti-Zionist? It is the denial to the Jewish people of a fundamental right that we justly claim for the people of Africa and freely accord all other nations of the Globe. It is discrimination against Jews, my friend, because they are Jews. In short, it is antisemitism.

"The antisemite rejoices at any opportunity to vent his malice. The times have made it unpopular, in the West, to proclaim openly a hatred of the Jews. This being the case, the antisemite must constantly seek new forms and forums for his poison. How he must revel in the new masquerade! He does not hate the Jews, he is just 'anti-Zionist'!

"My friend, I do not accuse you of deliberate antisemitism. I know you feel, as I do, a deep love of truth and justice and a revulsion for racism, prejudice, and discrimination. But I know you have been misled--as others have been--into thinking you can be 'anti-Zionist' and yet remain true to these heartfelt principles that you and I share.

Let my words echo in the depths of your soul: When people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--make no mistake about it."

[i]From M.L. King Jr., "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend," Saturday Review_XLVII (Aug. 1967), p. 76.
Reprinted in M.L. King Jr., "This I Believe: Selections from the Writings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr."[/i]

A Cold Peace

03.25.04 (3:28 pm) [edit]

Shin Bet Opposition

03.24.04 (9:53 am) [edit]

by Jeremy Last

[i]The head of Israeli secret service Shin Bet opposed yesterday’s killing of Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin it has emerged. [/i]

According to Israeli media reports Avi Dichter told a cabinet meeting last week that the hit would be "more harmful than useful for Israel" as it would be more effective to target the entire Hamas leadership in one blow.

Interior Minister Avraham Poraz and Justice minister Yosef Lapid, both of the centrist Shinui party, were the only cabinet members to have objected to the action.

Following the strike Poraz said yesterday: "I fear we have opened up a cycle here and that many will pay for it with their lives.

"I am afraid that Hamas's motivation will increase. Yassin will become some sort of martyr, a national hero for them and I'm very sorry to say, this won't prevent Hamas from continuing its activities."

The wheel-chair bound Yassin was killed by an Israeli helicopter missile at dawn as he left morning prayers at a mosque close to his home in Gaza City.

Israeli security forces have been put on high alert following the strike with roadblocks set up at the entrances to major cities and along main roads.

Overnight IDF tanks entered the north of the Gaza Strip in an attempt to prevent rocket attacks on nearby Israeli towns.

Hamas released a statement vowing to avenge the killing saying that “Zionists on every street, in every city and everywhere in the occupied lands” are a target.

Meanwhile the Israeli army has vowed to continue to target Hamas leaders. Ground forces commander major general Yiftach Rontal said: “As long as no one on the Palestinian side will fight terror, it is the IDF which will continue to fight, hitting everyone involved in terror, including its leaders.”

When the news hit Iraq yesterday some 500 Iraqi protesters showered British troops with petrol bombs and rocks chanting “We are all the sons of Yassin” and “Yes, yes to Yassin. No, no to America, Britain and Israel”.

More world leaders criticised Israel’s following British foreign secretary Jack Straw’s strong condemnation of the attack.

United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan said: “Such actions are not only contrary to international law, but they do not do anything to help the search for a peaceful solution. I appeal to all in the region to remain calm and avoid any further escalation in tensions."

And European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solano echoed Annan’s views saying the assassination was “bad news for the peace process”.

He said: “The European Union has consistently condemned extra-judicial killings. In this particular case the condemnation has to be even stronger. These types of actions do not contribute to dialogue and peace in the region."

Campaign Controversy

03.19.04 (11:56 am) [edit]

by Jeremy Last

An Israeli PR consultant has drawn international condemnation after agreeing to coordinate the election campaign of an anti-semitic Romanian politician.

Eyal Arad, head of the Tel-Aviv-based Arad Communications, announced on Friday he is to manage the presidential campaign of Vadim Tudor, the leader of the nationalist Romania Mere party this autumn.

In the past Tudor has denied that the Holocaust took place in Romania and currently edits the Romania Mere magazine which last month carried an article claiming Jews staged a 1941 pogrom.

Dr Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal centre in Israel, said Arad was “stupid” to believe Tudor has changed his views even though the Romanian is now insisting he regrets earlier statements.

Zuroff said: “Rushing to sign a contract to assist Tudor in his election campaign at this early date, while ignoring the advice and requests of practically every single group connected to Romanian Jewry, looks like a terrible combination of greed and stupidity.”

Arad, a former aide to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, said: “I understand not everyone is happy about my signing the contract, but that’s democracy.”

Meanwhile, last week the Romanian president Ion Iliescu attended the funeral of Nicolae Cjal, the chairman of the country’s Jewish community, who died earlier this month.

Spain's Surrender

03.18.04 (11:13 am) [edit]

By Jamie Glazov
FrontPageMagazine.com

[i]Frontpage Interview has the pleasure to have Victor Hanson, author of the new book Between War and Peace: Lessons from Afghanistan to Iraq, as its guest today. [/i]

Frontpage Magazine: Mr. Hanson, it is a pleasure to have you join Frontpage Interview. Welcome.

Hanson: Thank you for having me again.

FP: This collection of your 35 previously published essays, most of them from NRO, is extremely impressive. Their themes apply exactly to our latest tragedy and crisis in Spain.

One of your special expertises is on how leftists, and some of our European allies, have chosen to side with our enemy. Now, after the Madrid terror attack, we see another European ally succumb to appeasement. Let’s start our discussion with your general thoughts on this development.

Hanson: Well, even before the terrorists' communiques were fully disseminated the Spanish electorate voted for appeasement and a socialist government that would distance itself from the United States. This is the most profound example of capitulation since Daladier and Chamberlain and sets a truly awful example: will British, Polish, Italian, and American elections now be presaged by mass murder on the assumption that decadent, affluent Westerners can be intimidated in fear of attacks?

Worse, this was not panic from a fickle leader but an overwhelming expression of public fear and intimidation. I am afraid it confirms what most of us have thought for some time about the Europeans: they want our bases and troops, but only in the shadows and with avenues of distance and denial, as a last guarantee only of their safety in extremis. I wish the Spanish had voted to expel our soldiers as well--but perhaps that will be in the next terrorist demand. And note that the Greeks, who slurred NATO in the Balkans, did nothing for it in Aghanistan, and trashed the US over Iraq, find a bomb at a Citibank office and suddenly are talking of NATO help in their Olympic security-even as the hated Americans are offering our commandos for joint practice operations with them against potential terrorist-like incursions.

As for Spain-and I say this with real remorse given their suffering and national catastrophe-not since Theodosius and the late Romans paid their annual bribe money to Attila have we seen such success in bullying and terrifying a Western nation. It is right off the pages of Gibbon in his discussion of how weak, wealthy, and fearful Westerners paid Goths and Huns before Adrianople and Chalons. And this is the beginning not the end of it, as we shall soon see.

All Americans feel terrible about the Spanish mass murder, but how can we express our solidarity when the reaction is to repudiate both us and Spaniards who were allied with us? And contrast the American example: 26 days after 9-11 we were in Afghanistan attacking the Taliban and al Qaeda; the Spaniards n 48 hours were turning out to apologize. A sad day for the West.

FP: And so what do you think of the Spanish reaction to the terror in Madrid, in terms of the turning to appeasement specifically?

Hanson: I am nauseated by it.

FP: Expand a bit on why you say this.

Hanson: I can understand a shocked public acting on emotion rather than reason. But to channel that grief so immediately toward a political end, and have the Socialists almost immediately employ invective against the United States, promising to take the troops out by June and rethink relations with the United States. It is an al Qaeda fantasy come true.

Our own NY-DC political-military axis should take a hard look at all this, and start crafting some long-term strategies, inasmuch as this appeasement is a grass-roots phenomenon, and apparently independent of a ruling elite. Greece (which will soon have one worker per one state pensioner) just cut defense spending, asked NATO to help with its security, went on joint manoeuvres with American anti-terrorist forces-all during a year-long spasm of anti-Americanism.

It may well be that the Europeans are angry with us not despite our principled help and NATO basing, but rather precisely because of it. And I don't mean our too visible presence, but rather due to deep-seeded feelings of inferiority, envy, and spite that they are weak militarily and being protected and thus vent with the antics like what we just saw from the newly-elected Spanish minister.

Perhaps a very quiet, very professional downsizing of all our troops from the Mediterranean would send a powerful message toour allies that our alliance is based on friendship and mutual sacrifice, and does not rest in perpetuity, but only as long as there is a group effort to combat a common threat. Those circumstances simply no longer exist.

Again, we really are a different people if you contrast the American and Spanish reactions to al Qaeda's unprovoked mass murder on their shores. So sad-this idea that bin Laden knows far better than we the true nature of the Spanish citizenry. Why John Kerry would wish to hint that such leaders who are angry with the United States praise him through back channels, I don't know. That may play well with his wife's foundation friends and at the Kennedy School of Government, but out here in middle America it would seem to me the kiss of death.

FP: Kerry’s behavior, of course, is part of a long leftist tradition of siding with our totalitarian enemies. Tell us a bit about why the Left is now so excited with siding with the bin Ladens and Husseins of this world. As always, it admires the tyrants that extinguish all supposed sacred leftist values themselves. Give us an insight into the psychology here.

Hanson: It's not so much that they prefer such monsters per se--after all a Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore are not dying to move to Haiti, Syria, or the West Bank.

Rather they start with the premise that what America does is probably wrong, and therefore its enemies de facto can claim the moral high ground. Lately this deductive anti-Americanism is becoming laughable. Look at the rogues' gallery of our dethroned opponents--the Grenada thugs, Noriega, Milosevic, the Taliban, and Saddam are hardly national liberationists.

While there is genuine disagreement in America over foreign policy, this shrill near-hatred of the United States government is largely a different phenomenon of a very pampered elite in the media, universities, bureaucracies, and entertainment.

Perhaps because they are divorced from the real world through their wealth, they demand instantaneously their own utopia for the rest of us 'victims'--or else. They feel guilty about their privilege, of course. but rather than moving to more pedestrian digs or teaching at a JC or sending their kids to the local public school downtown, they sign petitions and go to up-scale rallies.

They resent bitterly that our plutocratic society rewards CEO's far more than in-the-know actors and glib professors, who "really" fathom what this country is supposedly all about. Beneath all this hysteria of invective, there really is a sense of class privilege and intellectual disdain.

FP: Fair enough. But Mr. Hanson, I disagree with you when you say that the Left does not prefer monsters. Chomsky and Moore are not dying to move to Haiti or Syria. . .well yes, the Left has always been hypocritical on this level. But this is not just about silliness or some kind of dishonesty on their part. Throughout the 20th century leftist Western intellectuals worshipped Stalin, Mao and other mass killers. They went in droves to visit the communist concentration camps and they praised these societies while the killing fields were in their highest gear.

It is not just a coincidence that leftists venerate every despot that opposes the United States. The Left’s embrace of militant Islam today is just a logical continuation of Western intellectuals who travelled to Soviet Russia in the 1930s and worshipped Stalin -- and of Jane Fonda praising the North Vietnamese despots.

What I am getting at here is that there is a malicious and sinister objective within the heart of the Left. It craves totalitarianism, because totalitarianism will suffocate freedom and, ultimately, human life itself – which the Left hates the most. That every communist revolution ate its own children reveals a pernicious death wish in the heart of the Left, and I think it is very much in prominence once again in the War on Terror, in which the left is now in love with those despots who, once again, offer them the dream of extinguishing their own civil society and the freedom within it.

You find this interpretation to extreme?

Hanson: But we are talking about apples and oranges-on the one hand, hard-core, thuggish revolutionaries abroad who want power and all that it brings under the cynical aegis of "equality" and "social justice;" and on the other, mostly pampered intellectuals here at home at the trough of American splendor and luxury, in the manner of court jesters, jetting around trashing their alma mater.

Again, while there were a few deluded who really did cut sugar cane in Cuba, committed treason of sorts in Hanoi, and went down to idolize Daniel Ortega, most on the radical Left are really indistinguishable from most Americans in their patterns of consumption, tastes, jobs, etc.

So we are not confronted with Stalinists, hard-core Marxists, or fifth-columnists as much as those afflicted with the "Western disease"-a sort of glib self-hatred of the very society that imparts such freedom and affluence.

Of course we don't want to downplay the pernicious effects of such a malady. These fakers are serious and in fact pose our greatest challenge in the current struggle by unleashing a constant stream of negativism that encourages our enemies and weakens our resolve. The hysteria over the looting, the missing WMD, and the President's aircraft carrier landing--all that and more have clouded a stellar military victory and a largely successful effort so far to foster consensual government under impossible circumstances--something that 50 years from now we will look back on with awe.

The transmogrification of Islamofascists into the "other" is one of the most stunning developments in American intellectual history-but inexplicable apart from this postmodern, trendy left-wing dogma. We overlooked 25 years of continued terrorist assaults from November 1979 in Teheran to the USS Cole, in part because multiculturalism and cultural relativism were so entrenched that we dared not condemn as evil and wrong those creepy people who believed in gender apartheid, fundamentalism, autocracy, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism, but instead romanticized or at least ignored them.

Ditto Arafat's Tunisian Mafia-and all the assorted Middle East manipulators who grasped that an NPR, New York Times columnist, ABC evening news lead-in, or Kennedy School of Government symposium would always prefer to hector Israeli self-defense, rather than suicide bombing, or scream over an American missed bomb rather than Taliban lynching, or looters in museums rather than Saddam's garrish destruction of Babylon.

So I am talking about a secular religion of anti-Americanism brought on by our very success that allows such utopianism and cheap caring-and it does weaken and tire our efforts to win this war.

A final example: the President has raised domestic spending by 8% per annum, lavished funds on health care and education, offered near amnesty to illegal immigrants from Mexico, appointed a plethora of minority judges, cabinet officials, and administrators, and committed more AIDs relief funds than all prior administrations put together-and is still hated by our Left, simply because his demeanor, accent, religion, and even appearance don't validate the aristocratic Left's rhetoric about sex, class, gender, and the other. It really is a make-believe world in which a Barbra Streisand, Gore Vidal, or Arianna Huffington cheaply sound off from their estates about some purported cosmic evil fostered by poor deluded Americans hooked on K-Mart and NASCAR.

FP: Some of our European allies stooped to a pretty low level in the Iraq war. The French are quite a case study. What is their problem? Has anti-Americanism become so pathological there now that they think Saddam is Mother Theresa? It’s like George Bernard Shaw prostrating himself before Stalin. Give us your perspective.

Hanson: Funny, isn't it? Europe is to New York and Boston like the latter are in turn to Boise and Bakersfield--affluent, elite, culturally aristocratic, and largely ignorant that the rest of the world does not operate on the premises of The Hague or Geneva. But why this European hobbits-in-the-Shire fantasy?

We've protected them for 60 years. They spend almost nothing on defense. And they see this wild, dynamic and utterly democratic popular American culture everywhere---and wonder why would the world want that crassness over French film or a German play? Who would prefer Starbucks to Vienese coffee, after all?

Once we withdraw some troops, once they begin to fathom the jam they've gotten themselves into through appeasing Middle East dictators and large, unassimilated Islamic minorities, and once-- terribile dictu--terrorists divert their attention to such easier targets, they will slowly and ever so insidiously began to talk about NATO, the Atlantic alliance, and the friendship of the United States.

The irony? George Bush was the best friend that the Europeans ever had. He really believes in making sacrifices for Western Civilization and promoting, not just talking about, our shared vision of liberal democracy that after all began in Europe.

His muscular action and courage to address the corrupt status quo in the Middle East (whether Arafat, Saddam, or the Taliban) allows Euros to triangulate like never before, playing good cop to our bad, and touting their soft power as the civilized alternative to us. The Euro diplomats and elites I've talked to are more worried about our growing pique than promulgating their own.

FP: Anti-Americanism is just skyrocketing throughout the world now. What’s going on?

Hanson:I don't think it is. The strange world of intellectual journals, CNN pundits, state radio andTV, etc. is perhaps comfortably anti-U.S., but the real world of immigration, fascination with U.S. products, mimicry of American culture, desire to visit and study in America is quite different.

Jamie, what do Bin Laden, President Musharref, Hanna Ahsrawi, the Saudi Royal Family, Iranian mullahs, Hans Blix, the German ambassador to the U.S., etc all have in common? Their kin are either in or were in the Great Satan to study, work, or play. Of course, boutique anti-Americanism is cheap, pyschologically satisfying (envy being a powerful emotion), and sort of hip--especially when the current U.S. president has a drawl, is Christian, from Texas, says “nuclar,” cares little for the NY Times op-eds, and pretty much thinks Crawford is a nicer place than Beacon Hill or Paris.

FP: But Mr. Hanson, because Saudis study in the U.S. does not mean they love the U.S. They exploit the U.S., and coming to the U.S. only escalates their hatred of us. The very fact that bin Laden was Westernized shows the great danger of anti-Americanism, no? Surely you are cognizant of the fact that many who come to the West seek to destroy it, exploiting our tolerance and freedom to ultimately suffocate it? Look at the Islamists in France and Europe.

Hanson: Of course, I understand that. But again you miss my point. Their hatred arises precisely out of desire--fascination with our wealth, freedom, tolerance, and liberality that turns to envy and finally to hatred (both for us and themselves)-when they ultimately realize that their own allegiance to fundamentalism, statism, autocracy, and sexual apartheid are responsible for their own misery.

So again, it is an Alice in Wonderland phenomenon of a pampered bin Laden with his video technicians and cell phones, or jet-setting Saudis with Mayo Clinic doctor visits-entirely parasitic yes, but also instructive because their own actions belie their rhetoric.

They do sense that they have failed and want the West they hate. It is our duty not to facilitate that hatred by appeasement or multicultural goobly-gook, but instead offer the carrot of reform and help-and the stick that lets them know in no uncertain terms our ancestors didn't die at Gettysburg, Iwo, or Pusan to give into their pathetic Dark Age fantasies. They must accept that the next regime, rogue nation-call what you will- who has any remote connection with those who commit a 9-11 like attack on the United States will learn that their complicity is synonymous with their utter destruction.

FP: Mr. Hanson, your new book also contains some material on one of your key interests: the strange connection between affluence and privilege and venom. True enough, ever since the counter culture, we see many of the most privileged people in the world full of rage and hating their own society. Tell us a bit about this phenomenon.

Hanson: What to call it? Prep-school populism? Isn't it grating to hear a Howard Dean of Park Avenue, Al Gore of a swanky DC hotel, John Kerry of Beacon Hill, or various endowed professors and spoiled millionaire actors screaming about economic justice and "the people"?

Do they think their education, money, travel, or class has given them some special "insight" into the machinations of a George Bush who has pulled the wool over all us yokels in places like Fresno? Are we all suffering from false consciousness and slavish consumerism that need the morality and wisdom of a Sean Penn, Gore Vidal, Tim Robbins, or Al Franken to free us?

Aristocratic angst is not new, but reminds me a lot of the sophists at Athens who were upset that their rhetoric--a product of investment in very expensive "thinkery"- did not always win praise for wisdom.

So we have this strange, rather sick idea in the United States-should we call it "Clintonism" or even "Gorism"?-that an 'educated' person from the Ivy League or a product of prep school, who can spin a sophisticated argument, replete with all sorts of sarcastic asides, smug name-dropping, and allusions to esoterica, is de facto either a genius to be listened to, courageous enough to follow, or moral enough to admire.

The fact is that since 9-11 those who have saved this culture--Army Rangers sleeping in the Afghan Mts., marines in the Sunni Triangle, millions of ordinary Americans who cleaned tables and poured cement, tough policy makers who endured terrible invective like a Puall Wolfowitz or Don Rumsfeld, and of course the President himself did so through skills other than verbage. Thank god for all of them in this hour of crisis.

FP: So how do you see the war in Iraq and the War on Terror in general right now? What course must we take? In what objectives and tactics in victory rooted?

Hanson: Beneath the hype? In less than 3 years we took out the world's 2 worst regimes--and fostered consensual government, not dictators in their place. Al Qaeda is on the run. No more 9-11-like attacks so far--knock on wood. Europe is learning that the US is really its best friend, but that Europeans' own cheap rhetoric and triangulation is a suicidal policy that will leave them alone and defenseless while we move on.

Libya is coming clean. Pakistan is helping hunt down OBL and revealing its nuclear roguery, a far cry from its pre-911 behavior. Iran is worried about a revolution and an unpredictable US. Soon no more troops in Saudi Arabia. Arafat is lord of his rubble heap, not in the Lincoln bedroom each month. So despite the tragic sacrifices of 600 American dead overseas, many hundreds wounded, billions spent, and perhaps a trillion committed to security and economic recovery from 9-11, America is doing pretty well and turning the corner.

We must press on in Iraq. Continue the pressure on the Saudis to join in the war against al Qaeda and embrace reform--or end up on the wrong side of a very angry US. We will not win until terrorists feel that they cannot live in Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. Those countries must change and they have a choice between voluntary radical domestic reform (unlikely), revolution by a democratic opposition (preferable) or military confrontation with the United States (the turmoil in Afghanistan and Iraq will not last for ever).

Victory will come when Americans accept that terror is but a method, not an enemy. We are at war with Islamic fascists who out of conventional military impotence employ terror, along with their autocratic patrons that either actively abet them or knowingly ignore them.

We will win when such regimes either fall or at least choose the Khadafy option of compliance (we will see whether it is genuine). That goal of ending the pathological landscape that gave us 9-11 is accomplished by military action, promotion of local reformers, and a massive ideological campaign to explain Western civilization and its transcendent values- not only to Arabs but to our own citizens who so often, almost criminally so, take it for granted or have not a clue about what allows them to prosper as we do.

All this can be done-but only if we learn from the past wages of appeasement, have confidence in our ability to defend our culture intellectually and spiritually, and never give into our fears.

FP: Mr. Hanson, thank you, our time is up. It was an honor to ahve you here. We hope you can visit us again soon.

Hanson: My pleasure Jamie.

*

Gaza Pull-Out

03.18.04 (7:06 am) [edit]

by Daniella Peled

[i]As Israel considers unilateral disengagement from Gaza, terror activity in the strip is soaring. Here, Daniella Peled looks at whether Palestinian terror groups are embarking on a new strategy ahead of the planned pull-out – and what the security consequences are likely to be.[/i]

The sight of rescue workers, injured civilians and chaos following Sunday’s double suicide bombing in the port of Ashdod was sadly familiar. But the attack not only marked a precedent – the first time Palestinian terrorists had penetrated the Gaza security fence – but was also the latest in an escalating terror wave emanating from the strip.

Well organised, aimed at a strategic target and carried out through cooperation between Hamas and the Fatah-linked al Aqsa Martyrs brigades, the Ashdod attack was claimed as “the next stage of the armed intifada”.

It came as part of a concerted series of attacks, with increasing collaboration between factions, such as in a joint attack foiled two weeks ago when car bombs and armed men attempted to strike military targets at the Gaza border.

From the Palestinian viewpoint, an intensive wave of terror would serve to strengthen the impression of inflicting a military defeat on Israel.

Shlomi Eldar, Arab affairs correspondent for Israeli television’s channel 10, told TJ that Hamas, Fatah and even Islamic Jihad were joining together in this latest tactic. He said: “Everyone wants to claim the credit for throwing the IDF out of Gaza.”

In turn, Israel is formulating its own comprehensive anti-terror measures for the strip, with the bonus that increased military activity would demonstrate the withdrawal was not an indication of Israeli weakness.

The IDF has long warned that a unilateral exit will give the appearance of a retreat under fire, something they wish to avoid under all costs after the humiliation they suffered in their rapid May 2000 departure from Lebanon.

Military intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Zeevi warned last month that unilateral Gaza withdrawal “will be seen as surrender to terrorism” and “might motivate further terrorism”.

And his predecessor Shlomo Gazit, envisaged Gaza becoming “ a big armed camp” and a conduit for weapons.
That would have severe implications for Israeli security if the strip dissolves into civil war, with the various armed groups eager to exert their dominance in a bloody fight for control after Israel leaves.

Although the PA is preparing its own security plan (see box), with its infrastructure in tatters from repeated Israeli attacks, it will be tough for it to inflict its will on the other factions.

Hamas, defiantly opposed to assimilation into the PA, also enjoys wide popular support.

Washington institute middle east scholar, Jonathan Schanzer, told Jewish News, “Hamas is certainly seen as an alternative to the PA, particularly in Gaza. Their infrastructure, which includes about two dozen medical health clinics and around 100 educational establishments, give them more sway on the street.”

The resulting battle may see what he describes as “fawda – “chaos” with different parts of Gaza ruled by competing factions.

One man widely mooted as able to wield control is former Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan, Palestinian security minister under the previous premier, Mahmoud Abbas. Backed by both Israel and the US, and with CIA trained personnel under his command, he may have the potential to stop clashes between Gaza factions.

Eldar said: “Dahlan is the strongest man, the only one who can make order in Gaza. But he isn’t in the game - because of Arafat.”

With the Palestinian president’s long-proven skill in undermining potential successors, Gaza may yet face a power vacuum lethal to both Israel and its own citizens.

Muslims Surveyed

03.17.04 (11:40 am) [edit]

by Daniella Peled

Almost 50 per cent of UK Muslims would consider becoming a suicide bomber if they lived in the Palestinian territories, according to a new poll released this week.

The survey, carried out for the Guardian newspaper, also revealed that 13 per cent of those questioned believed that further attacks on the US by terrorist groups would be justified.

Forty-seven per cent said they agreed with the Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Tonge’s statement that she could imagine becoming a suicide terrorist if forced to live under the same conditions as Palestinians.

Only 15 per cent of a sample of non-Muslim Britons agreed with the same statement, with 78 per cent disagreeing.

The poll also found that 80 per cent of UK Muslims believed the military campaign against Iraq had been unjustified, and 55 per cent believe their community’s relations with non-Muslims had deteriorated since the war began.

Lessons From Solidarity

03.12.04 (12:00 pm) [edit]

by Marian Lebor

It’s been raining solidarity missions to Israel in recent months, which is good news for the tourist industry.

But I’m ambivalent about the value of some of these trips, when the packed itinerary includes meetings with the great and the good, which neither inform the mission participant about various aspects of life here, nor bring any cheer to “ordinary” Israelis.

I’m pleased to report that I recently met several visiting British groups, whose missions did manage successfully to combine these two elements.

During last month’s AJEX solidarity mission, I spoke to a gathering of Jewish ex-servicemen and women about everyday life in Israel and the work of the British Israel Group.

The average age of the mission participants was late seventies to early eighties and most of them were frequent visitors to Israel, so I was more interested in hearing their views on the current situation than in imparting my own.

“I’m always struck by the normalcy of life here, despite everything,” commented one of the participants. “I was really impressed by our visit to Magen David Adom’s Jerusalem station and the way professionals work so effectively with volunteers,” added another.

At the other end of the scale, I met Nick Jaye during the Shabbaton choir’s recent “solidarity through song” mission. A soloist with the choir, Nick has just turned 13 and this was his first trip to Israel. “It’s an amazing, brilliant country,” he told me. “I want to come back again soon on holiday.”

It was good to be reminded by such a young first-time visitor that Israel is an impressive place. I was similarly struck when I was embedded, so to speak, with a JNF mission as it toured Beit Issie Shapiro, a local organisation that provides a wide range of services for people with developmental disabilities and special needs.

I discovered during the tour that the JNF UK is funding an amazing new park that is being constructed within Ra’anana Park, where all the equipment can be used by children with a wide range of disabilities.

These experiences showed me that sometimes it is we Israelis who need to be reminded of the many excellent projects that exist here, and perhaps it’s time we organised some morale-boosting “missions” for ourselves.

George F. Will: Modern Anti-Semitism

03.04.04 (11:45 am) [edit]

By George F. Will

Published 2:15 a.m. PST Thursday, February 26, 2004
WASHINGTON -- It used to be said that anti-Catholicism was the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals. Today, anti-Semitism is the anti-Semitism of the intellectuals.

Not all intellectuals, of course. And the seepage of this ancient poison into the intelligentsia -- always so militantly modern -- is much more pronounced in Europe than here. But as anti-Semitism migrates across the political spectrum from right to left, it infects the intelligentsia, which has leaned left for two centuries.

Here the term intellectual is used loosely, to denote not only people who think about ideas -- about thinking -- but also people who think they do. The term anti-Semitism is used precisely, to denote people who dislike Jews. These people include those who say: We do not dislike Jews, we only dislike Zionists -- although to live in Israel is to endorse the Zionist enterprise, and all Jews are implicated, as sympathizers, in the crime that is Israel.

Wednesday's release of Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" has catalyzed fears of resurgent anti-Semitism. Some critics say the movie portrays the governor of Judea -- Pontius Pilate, the Roman prefect responsible for the crucifixion -- as more benign and less in control than he actually was, and ascribes too much power and malignity to Jerusalem's Jewish elite.

Jon Meacham's deeply informed cover story "Who Killed Jesus?" in the Feb. 16 Newsweek renders this measured judgment: The movie implies more blame for the Jewish religious leaders of Judea of that time than sound scholarship suggests. However, Meacham rightly refrains from discerning disreputable intentions in Gibson's presentation of matters about which scholars, too, must speculate, and do disagree. Besides, this being a healthy nation, Americans are unlikely to be swayed by the movie's misreading, as Meacham delicately suggests, of the actions of a few Jews 2,000 years ago.

Fears about the movie exacerbating religiously motivated anti-Semitism are missing the larger menace -- the upsurge of political anti-Semitism. Like traditional anti-Semitism, but with secular sources and motives, the political version, which condemns Jews as a social element, is becoming mainstream, and chic among political and cultural elites, mostly in Europe. Consider:

-- A cartoon in a mainstream Italian newspaper depicts the infant Jesus in a manger, menaced by an Israeli tank and saying "Don't tell me they want to kill me again." This expresses animus against Israel rather than twisted Christian zeal.

-- The European Union has suppressed a study it commissioned, because the study blamed the upsurge in anti-Jewish acts on European Muslims -- and the European left.

-- An EU poll reveals that a European majority believes the greatest threat to world peace is Israel.

-- Nineteen percent of Germans believe what a best-selling German book asserts: the CIA and Israel's Mossad organized the Sept. 11 attacks.

-- On French television, a comedian wearing a Jewish skullcap gives a Nazi salute while yelling "Isra-Heil!"

-- If Israel is not the Great Satan, it is allied with him -- America. European anti-American demonstrations often include Israel's blue and while flag with a swastika replacing the star of David, and signs perpetuating the myth, concocted by Palestinians and cooperative Western journalists, of an Israeli massacre in Jenin: "1943: Warsaw / 2002: Jenin."

-- Omer Bartov, historian at Brown University, writes in The New Republic that much of what Hitler said "can be found today in innumerable places: on Internet sites, propaganda brochures, political speeches, protest placards, academic publications, religious sermons, you name it."

The appallingly brief eclipse of anti-Semitism after Auschwitz demonstrates how beguiling is the simplicity of pure stupidity. All of the left's prescriptions for curing what ails society -- socialism, communism, psychoanalysis, "progressive" education, etc. -- have been discarded, so now the left is reduced to adapting that hardy perennial of the right, anti-Semitism.

This is a new twist to the left's recipe for salvation through elimination: All will be well if we eliminate capitalists, or private property, or the ruling class, or "special interests," or neuroses, or inhibitions. Now, let's try eliminating a people, starting with their nation, which is obnoxiously pro-American and insufferably Spartan.

Europe's susceptibility to political lunacy, and the Arab world's addiction to it, is not news. And the paranoid style is a political constant. Those who believe a vast conspiracy assassinated President Kennedy say: Proof of the conspiracy's diabolical subtlety is that no evidence of it remains. Today's anti-Semites say: Proof of the Jews' potent menace is that there are so few of them -- just 13 million of the planet's 6 billion people -- yet they cause so many political, economic and cultural ills.

Gosh. Imagine if they were, say, 1 percent of Earth's population -- 63 million.

Church Sign Furore

03.03.04 (9:40 am) [edit]

by Alex Sholem

An American pastor has apologised after he erected a sign outside his church accusing Jews of killing Jesus.

Reverend Maurice Gordon has since removed the sign, which read, “Jews killed the Lord Jesus”, from outside the Lovingway united pentacostal church in Denver, replacing it with one apologising to the Jewish people.

The original sign appeared outside the church on the same day as Mel Gibson’s The Passion opened in cinemas across the US, provoking protests in the street and hundreds of angry phone calls to Gordon.

Gordon said this week the sign was intended only to provoke debate, adding: “We never intended to hurt any people, I never dreamed we would be inciting hatred for Jews.”

Reverend Billy Hale of the united pentecostal church said: “Rev. Maurice Gordon has acted individually and separately from the united pentacostal church international and all of its affiliates.

"Rev. Gordon’s decision was made without support or contribution from the united pentacostal church and does not reflect our position on this matter. We regret any offence his actions have caused.”

Hizbollah Jaunt

02.19.04 (10:07 am) [edit]

For most students, foreign trips are a valuable and fun addition to their time at university, generally providing a great opportunity to complement their studies.

It is hard to see where a session with brutal terror group Hizbollah fits in with these extra-curricular activities.

But the Grimshaw club, from the London school of economics international relations department, plans to do exactly that.

It certainly doesn’t take a university education to know Hizbollah is a terrorist organisation Its military wing is recognised as such by the EU.

What new insights on the middle east conflict are these youngsters, whose education is being subsidised by UK taxpayers, likely to receive from a group of thugs who call for the utter destruction of Israel and thrive on hatred of the Jewish people?

The students may like to think they are being very brave and clever in arranging this exciting spring break.

They clearly have a lot to learn.

The Jewish Vote

02.19.04 (10:03 am) [edit]

by Alex Sholem

With his warm relationship with Ariel Sharon and determination to rid the world of terrorism, George Bush’s popularity is on the rise among American Jews. As November’s presidential election nears Alex Sholem asks whether he can earn the vote of the country’s Jews.

It is too early to tell whether Massachusetts senator John Kerry, or any of his rivals currently contesting the Democratic primaries, can return their party to the White House.

But there is one thing they can count on - the vast majority of Jewish voters will choose the Democratic candidate, no matter who he turns out to be.

The party, perceived as the natural home for a liberal, socially-conscious community, has long been the popular choice of American Jews.

Indeed, over the years the community has remained remarkably loyal – 82 per cent voted for John F Kennedy, 80 per cent for Bill Clinton in 1992, even Al Gore won 79 per cent of the Jewish vote in his losing campaign in 2000.

But since Bush won the presidency by a hair’s breadth that year there have been indications that the Democratic party’s vice-like grip on the Jewish vote is no longer as strong as it once was.

An independent poll published in January by the American Jewish Committee, one of the country’s leading Jewish interest groups, showed that 31 per cent of Jews would vote for Bush at the next election, a more than 50 per cent increase on his Jewish support in 2000.

Just last month Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matthew Brooks said: “It now undeniable that there is a major shift taking place among Jewish voters. At this point, the question isn’t will more Jews support the President, but rather, how many more will do so.”

But Steve Rabinowitz, a political strategist for the Clinton administration, rejects the findings of the AJC poll.

He claims that because those questioned were not offered a Democratic party alternative, the result do not predict how Bush would fare against a popular candidate such as Kerry.

He told us: “This supposed phenomenon of Jewish voters moving to the right is an issue Republican Jews put forward every two years, and every subsequent December when the election results come in, they are proved wrong.”

Richard Foltin, the AJC’s legislative director, also rejects the notion that the country’s Jewish population is undergoing a fundamental shift in its political beliefs.

He said: “I think there’s a certain number of people in the country who would vote for the Democratic party candidate no matter what, with a much smaller proportion who would always vote Republican. But there is a definite swing vote, who will go for the candidate they feel is strongest on the issues that matter to them.”

Foltin believes that uncertainty over exactly who Bush will face, and most importantly, his performance on key issues, are the main reasons for the current shift towards the Republican party.

“In Bush’s case he has come to be seen as a friend of Israel and he is also perceived as understanding the threat from terror, which affects both Israel and the United States.”

Indeed, Israel is often seen as a make or break issue when it comes to attracting the Jewish vote.

In the 1980 election the Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter won only 45 per cent of the Jewish vote against the Republican candidate Ronald Reagan, who was perceived as a staunch supporter of Israel.

But Rabinowitz believes the community’s left-leaning stance on domestic issues, such as the economy and education, is much more important to a candidate’s success than a hard-line stance on Israel.

He explained: “The Middle East is not the single most important issue. I call it a threshold issue – a candidate has to be good on Israel, though not necessarily the best, to gain acceptance, then the focus shifts to domestic issues.

“The community hasn’t traditionally voted with its pocketbook but with its social conscience. It’s a very liberal community, and always tends to vote for the more liberal candidate, even if the conservative candidate is Jewish.”

That could favour Kerry, who is seen as liberal on domestic issues and a friend of Israel, but the real question is whether the Jewish vote help him to the White House.

There are some six million Jews living in the US, most of them concentrated in just a handful of states, which would seem to suggest that the Jewish vote could help a candidate win in those states.

But very few swing states - those that could go to either a Republican or Democratic candidate - have a measurable Jewish population.

Rabinowitz said: “States with large Jewish populations – such as New York, Maryland and California – are not swing states, so carrying 90 per cent of the Jewish vote instead of 80 per cent doesn’t make a difference.”

But the Jewish community’s contributions to political causes is grossly disproportionate for its size. And for that reason, if for no other, the two parties will continue to fight for the Jewish electorate’s affections.

Google Yiddish Launched

02.17.04 (9:31 am) [edit]

by Daniella Peled

Here’s a question fit to pucker the brow of any language scholar. What do Serbo-Croatian, Kyrgyz, Turkmen or Twi have in common with Yiddish?

The answer is that they are all recent additions to the languages in which internet users can browse the web via the world’s most popular search engine.

Last month, Google added mama-loschen to the list of nearly 100 languages – including the Star Trek alien favourite, Klingon - which surfers can use to find and access pages on the world wide web.

A Google spokesman told Jewish News: “It is part of our ongoing efforts to expand the availability of our search services worldwide.”

Meanwhile, the first Yiddish library in the UK accessible to the public was launched in London last week.

The Spiro Ark’s library comprises several hundred books and magazines, including volumes donated by authors, members of the public and a shipment sent by the South African board of deputies.

In its inaugural event, David Mazower, great-grandson of the famous Yiddish writer, Sholem Asch, spoke about the treasures from his own personal collection of Yiddish memorabilia.

Nitza Spiro of the Ark, which has run Yiddish classes for more than 15 years, told Jewish News that the library was a way to remember the language and lifestyle of the east European Jews who died in the Holocaust.

She said: “We have to invest in commemorating not only their death but their lives, through learning their language and absorbing the culture they treasured.

“If we sing their songs and read their literature, we give them a living memorial.”

Hip Hop Hate

02.13.04 (11:16 am) [edit]

[i]The Jewish community has become all too familiar with the prevalence of vicious hate material in the popular culture of certain Arab countries. [/i]

After all, the soaraway Egyptian pop hit of 2001 was a ditty charmingly entitled I Hate Israel.

But the news that a vile rap video is being circulated in the UK, urging jihad and exulting at terrorism, has brought the reality of Islamist propaganda shockingly close to home.

This song, available in the heart of London, breaks all boundaries of decency by attempting to give a glamorous edge to murder.

It features gruesome shots of bloodshed, destruction, and the death of innocents all set to hip-hop beats and a thunderous chant urging death to non-believers.

Ironically, the very Islamic fundamentalists who reject all that is good about Western culture, are now trying to appropriate its decadent pop culture and exploit it for their own ends.

This so-called music artist, posing as Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew, dressed up in the hip guise of urban rappers, presents himself as brave warriors in the fight against globalisation and champions of the rights of the oppressed.

But he is playing a vile and cynical game, spreading racial hatred and trying to recruit vulnerable British youngsters to the cause of radical Islam.

The idea that it is being handed out at the London central mosque in Regents Park, a highly visible and respected place of worship, is particularly disturbing.

With its soaring, gilded dome, the centre is one of the best-known symbols of moderate Islam in the country. But where better for the hate-mongers to try and spread their dangerous propaganda?

Islamic extremist Mohammed al-Massari boasted this week that this song was all the rage among the Muslim youth of London. There is no reason to believe him.

But only last year, the Jewish News reported on a Hizbollah-sponsored video game being sold in the UK, where the player hunted down and shot Israeli soldiers.

The culmination of Special Force was the opportunity to gun down Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

With the news that this hate music is being peddled in the heart of London, we have to ask just how much of this material is being circulated on London’s streets.

This insidious cult must be stamped out as soon as possible. We urge the strongest action to be taken against this vile video and its creators.

One Week Later

02.09.04 (7:38 am) [edit]

Judy Lash Balint is an award-winning Jerusalem based writer and author of Jerusalem Diaries: In Tense Times.

The shiva week is over. For the families of the eleven victims of the No.19 bus bomb the initial mourning period draws to a close.

The rituals of mourning ratchet down a few notches for the next 30 days, and even further over the next 11 months, but the real pain of living without a father, sister, daughter, husband, son or brother has only just begun.

On the surface, the speed with which the city returns to “normal” is almost obscene. The area of the horror is cleaned with lightning speed, leaving only two wreaths and a score of memorial candles at the site. People are back waiting at the No.19 bus stop with no visible signs of discomfort. Politics dominates the news again.

But beneath the surface, this attack seems to have had a particularly jarring effect on many of us. Like Café Hillel, last September, this one occurred on our turf, everyone knows someone killed or injured. In countless conversations this past week, friends have expressed their profound feelings of grief, loss, depression, resignation and helplessness.

For one, a nurse at Hadassah Hospital who rides the 19 to work every day, it was the swift discovery that the son of a colleague lay in a ward upstairs with “moderate” injuries—the loss of an eye, limited hearing and shrapnel all over the place. Another friend, who was walking a block away when the bus blew and saw everything, has had trouble doing anything except sleep all week.

Someone else was surprised to find herself so upset over the realization that one 23 year-old victim shared her rather unusual last name. I was shaken to discover that father of seven, Chezi Goldberg, 42, an e-mail acquaintance, was supposed to be the third member of my Hebrew conversation class that started this week. It’s the severing of a life in full swing that’s so jarring.

Driving a couple of American guests around town at the beginning of the week, I realize that there’s almost nowhere to go that doesn’t harbor a reminder of the terror we’ve endured. Here Sbarros; there Café Moment, the #4 bus stop on Jaffa Road, the site of the stabbing in front of the Anglican School, Café Hillel, Ben Yehuda Mall, Hebrew U, the shoe store next to my coffee bar where the owner’s wife was murdered in a bus bombing etc. etc

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to lift oneself out of the reality of the effects of Arab terror. Especially this week when the lop-sided body/prisoner exchange takes place and our prime minister decides to give the appearance of rewarding terror by announcing his plans to remove thousands of Jews from their homes.

This shiva week is over, but who knows what next week will bring?

A Heavy Price To Pay

02.02.04 (11:12 am) [edit]

Israel seems to be preparing to pay a heavy price in the prisoner exchange due to take place this week.

The release of more than 400 Arab detainees in return for the bodies of three soldiers and an Israeli businessman who was kidnapped by Hizbollah in dubious circumstances three years ago throws up some agonising issues.

It is true that Israeli society cleaves strongly to the principle of never abandoning soldiers in the field. It is impossible not to sympathise with the families of those lost Israelis, who yearn for their safe return or at least a grave to mourn at.

But the swap sends certain messages to both Hizbollah and Palestinian extremists.

When Israel withdrew from south Lebanon in May 2000, it did so unilaterally and in chaos, a clear consequence of the war of attrition Hizbollah had successfully prosecuted for 18 years.

That, at least, was the conclusion drawn by the Palestinians. Terror had worked, pure and simple. Months later, far from spontaneously, the so-called al-Aqsa intifada broke out.

Now, more than three years of concerted Palestinian terrorism seems to have led to prime minister Ariel Sharon abandoning his previous status as protector of the settlements and making plans of unilateral withdrawal.

His vision of such a pullout may not mirror Palestinian national aspirations, but if acted upon it will doubtless be viewed precisely as a triumph of terrorist might.

Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah has already publicly boasted the group plans to kidnap more Israelis. Armed force had been seen to be a most effective weapon against the Jewish state.

It seems that emotions may have over-ruled strategic thought. It remains to be seen whether Israel will yet pay an even heavier price for this decision.

Jenny Regrette Rien

02.02.04 (6:34 am) [edit]

Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Tonge represents the very worst of the limp-wristed liberalism that seems to plague British thought on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Her statements of empathy with Palestinian suicide bombers, which she defended to TJ this week, embody the kind of muddle-headed thinking that adds exactly nothing to our understanding of the middle east.

Overflowing with sympathy and compassion, she insists that suicide bombers are driven to carry out their terrible acts of murder by destitution and desperation.

It seems to have escaped her attention that billions of people live in conditions of appalling hopelessness, brutality, and poverty, certainly without being shored up by the united nations works and refugee agency, solely dedicated to helping Palestinians for more than 50 years.

And for most of these people, their despair does not make them strap explosives to their bodies and kill innocent civilians.

She also fails to factor in the anti-Jewish incitement that has become an integral part of both the Palestinian educational system and the mainstream media.

Nor does she consider the rising Islamic fundamentalism that has as its aim jihad and the establishment of an Islamic state, rather than peaceful coexistence with Israel.

And her understanding of the situation does not include the massive funding by foreign Muslim states that allows the terror groups to so effectively arm themselves and recruit on the most vulnerable and damaged in Palestinian society to become their human bombs.

Predictably, commentators from around the Muslim world applauded the courage and honesty of her comments.

Her observations were not just silly, misguided and duplicitous. Speaking as she did from a position of respectability, they were shockingly irresponsible.

PA elections must include East Jerusalem, officials tell U.S.

01.30.04 (2:46 pm) [edit]

By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz Correspondent

Elections to the Palestinian Legislative Council must also take place in East Jerusalem, as was the case in the previous elections in 1996, Palestinian representatives recently told their American counterparts.

The Palestinian Election Law of 1995 divides the Palestinian Authority territories into 16 regions, including East Jerusalem. Today, as in previous elections, the regional elections system has come under heavy criticism, as it discriminates against smaller parliamentary lists and encourages voting on a personal rather than a political-ideological basis. However, no Palestinian faction is actually planning to demand a change in the electoral system because this could lead to the annulment of the 1996 precedent in which the residents of East Jerusalem voted for the Palestinian Legislative Council.

Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian Minister of Local Government, who heads the reform committee preparing the next elections, denied on Saturday that a senior American official had suggested changing the Palestinian electoral law in order to include elections for a prime minister, and to cancel the participation of East Jerusalem in the elections.

"Neither Condoleezza Rice nor Colin Powell mentioned 'Jerusalem' or 'prime minister' in our talks," Erekat said and added that the Palestinians had made it clear that this was an internal Palestinian affair.

Recent reports from both the PA and the United States claim that the Americans are insisting that the Palestinians elect a prime minister (as a way to push PA chairman Yasser Arafat aside).

Erekat has already prepared detailed plans for both presidential and parliamentary elections.

According to a Palestinian source who took part in Friday's meeting with the Middle East Quartet [comprising the U.S., United Nations, European Union and Russia] in Paris, the American delegation suggested that a new election law be drafted in order to change the system from a presidential to a parliamentary system namely, by authorizing parliament to choose a prime minister.

The Palestinian Basic Law, which Arafat only authorized two months ago despite the fact that it was passed by the legislative council five years ago, does not include a prime minister.

The Oslo Accords, which served as the basis for elections to the legislative council, do not mention elections for a prime minister. Therefore, such elections would necessitate a constitutional change that would require extensive hearings by the legislative council.

Israelis arrest 12 in raid on Bethlehem

01.30.04 (12:44 pm) [edit]

By Sharmila Devi in Jerusalem

Israeli soldiers raided the West Bank city of Bethlehem for the first time in six months on Friday, arresting 12 people and demolishing the refugee camp home of a Palestinian suicide bomber who killed 10 Israelis on Jerusalem bus.

Israel called the raid a "measured response" to Thursday's attack.

In separate violence, two Palestinians were killed in the Gaza Strip and another was shot dead in Hebron by Israeli troops on Friday.

Two militant groups, Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, issued separate claims of responsibility for Thursday's attack.

Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, also threatened on Friday to kidnap Israeli soldiers in order to secure the release of some 7,000 Palestinian prisoners.

"I confirm that Palestinian factions have not spared any effort to reach Israeli soldiers and they have carried out several attempts," Sheikh Yassin said. "Israeli soldiers nowadays are as cautious as birds who fear being trapped."

An Israeli official warned the Hamas leader not to "mess with us". Two weeks ago, an Israeli minister said Sheikh Yassin was "marked for death" and he narrowly escaped assassination last September.

Sheikh Yassin's threat on Friday came as Israel was burying three soldiers swapped by the Lebanese guerrilla group Hizbollah for more than 400 mainly Palestinian prisoners on Thursday.

A kidnapped Israeli businessman was also released under the deal, which has been criticised by many Israelis as too generous to what they call a terrorist group.

In other developments, Israel on Friday submitted a challenge to the World Court in The Hague on its right to rule on the legality of a separation barrier under construction in the West Bank.

Other countries, such as the US and the UK which have criticised the barrier's route, were also expected to challenge the court's competence. The court begins deliberations on February 23.

The barrier cuts deep into the occupied territories to encircle Jewish settlements.

The Palestinians call it an "apartheid wall" designed to grab territory while Israel says it is necessary to prevent attacks.

"We believe that the court should not and cannot deal with this political issue, which has to be dealt with by direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians," said an Israeli official.

However, Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister, has threatened to impose a unilateral settlement, which would leave the Palestinians in isolated enclaves, if there is no progress on the US-backed road map towards a two-state solution within the next few months.