* Yesterday I sent a dispatch outlining some small improvements in relations between Israelis and Arabs. Today’s dispatch, by contrast, deals with the greater reality: the grim situation Israel still faces.
CONTENTS
1. Israelis find grenade hidden by Palestinians under a baby
2. Iranian President: Israel should be “wiped off the map”
3. U.S. accepts Abbas’s decision to include Hamas
4. Palestinian Authority to build huge Arafat Mausoleum
5. Palestinian prisoners released by Israel kill again
6. Palestinians preparing to launch rocket attacks on Jerusalem
7. Two Israeli-Arab dentists arrested for terror links with Hamas
8. Palestinian TV: Israelis murder brides
9. The CIA trained Palestinian terrorists
10. “Israel Finds a Grenade Under Baby” (Associated Press, October 23, 2005)
11. “A History of Violence” (By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2005)
ISRAELIS FIND GRENADE HIDDEN UNDER INFANT
During the course of an anti-terrorism raid in the West Bank, Israeli forces have found a hand grenade hidden by Palestinians under a baby. In a briefing following the discovery, Lieutenant General Arik Khen of the Israeli army said, “We felt something wasn’t right. We demanded to search the baby and we found she (the wife of a wanted Palestinian) was carrying a grenade that she attempted to hide under the baby.”
The army said that the apprehension of five wanted terrorists in this raid almost certainly prevented a deadly attack against Israeli civilians. The IDF general added that searches were ongoing and daily attempts to carry out “terror attacks by Palestinian groups against Israeli civilians have not stopped even for a minute.”
IRANIAN PRESIDENT: ISRAEL SHOULD BE “WIPED OFF THE MAP”
In a conference yesterday in Teheran called “The world without Zionism,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Israel should be “wiped off the map.”
Ahmadinejad said a new wave of Palestinian attacks would destroy the Jewish state and he denounced attempts by anyone in the Muslim world to recognize Israel. The 3,000 students who attended the conference then chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America”.
Britain, Germany and France are among the countries to condemn the comments by the Iranian President. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso called his comments “unacceptable” but would not go so far as to call for Iran to be expelled from the United Nations.
Using stronger language, Canada blasted Ahmadinejad’s “anti-Semitic statement, so full of hate and intolerance, unacceptable in 21st century.” In light of yesterday’s comments, Canadian Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew called on the world community to unite in rejecting Teheran’s nuclear program.
“WOULD HAVE MADE HITLER PROUD”
Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, heads of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (both of whom are long-time subscribers to this email list) said “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech would have made Hitler proud.”
David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee (and also a subscriber to this email list) commented: “Let there be no further doubt, if ever there was, about Iran’s intentions. The Iranian president has made clear his views of Israel. In doing so, he has reaffirmed longstanding Iranian policy. Will the world react or turn a blind eye? Let’s hope the Iranians get the right message, and fast.”
The Washington Post made no mention of Ahmadinejad’s comments today, according to their website.
U.S. ACCEPTS ABBAS’S DECISION TO INCLUDE HAMAS – CONTRARY TO THE ROAD MAP
During Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s meeting with U.S President George W. Bush last Thursday, Bush agreed that Palestinian terrorists could be absorbed into the official Palestinian security organizations, and groups such as Hamas would not be disbanded as Israel and the Road Map demand.
President Bush is supporting Abbas’s decision to try and work with Hamas even though the Americans have consistently repeated that violent groups have no place in a democratic process.
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY TO BUILD HUGE ARAFAT MAUSOLEUM
The Palestinian Authority is to build what they describe as “a huge and magnificent mausoleum” for Yasser Arafat to replace the current burial site that is located in the Mukata “presidential” compound in Ramallah.
A museum and a mosque will be attached to the mausoleum. The overall cost is estimated at over one million dollars.
A previous dispatch on this list, A tale of two museums: (1) Arafat’s belongings (2) Arabs respecting the Holocaust (June 16, 2005), dealt with plans to create a museum for Yasser Arafat’s belongings.
PALESTINIAN PRISONERS RELEASED BY ISRAEL KILL AGAIN
At the beginning of this week Luay Saadi the leader of Islamic Jihad’s military wing in the West Bank was killed in clashes with Israeli troops. Saadi is believed to have been responsible for two recent suicide bombings. (Islamic Jihad said yesterday’s suicide bombing in Hadera was revenge for the killing of Saadi. Israeli military sources pointed out that a bomb of this magnitude takes longer than two days to plan.)
This year alone Saadi was responsible for organizing suicide attacks which led to the killing of 12 Israelis and the injuring of 150 others in suicide attacks. He was originally arrested in 1999 by Israel but freed from prison in January 2004. Israel is under constant pressure from other countries, including Western democracies, to release Palestinian prisoners.
50 PERCENT OF RELEASED TERRORISTS RETURN TO THEIR PREVIOUS ACTIVITIES
Saadi was not the first released Palestinian prisoner to quickly go on to kill Israelis again. For example, the Palestinian terrorist who blew himself up on August 28, 2005, at the Beersheba bus station was released in 2004 as part of a prisoner exchange with the Palestinian Authority.
Barak Moore, a subscriber to this list, points out on his website (www.iris.org.il/blog) that Israeli security experts estimate that 50% of released terrorists return to their previous activities.
YET MORE PRESSURE ON ISRAEL
The Jerusalem Post writes today: “Even today, as the victims of the Hadera bombing are buried, Israel’s government is being criticized for the way it protects its citizens... The basic truth must be constantly restated and implemented because it is constantly forgotten: If the Palestinians do not combat terrorism from their midst, Israel must. All those who once again revert to the language and logic of the “cycle of violence” should remember that if the Palestinians truly abandon and combat terrorism, Israel will gladly end its efforts to do so. The reverse is demonstrably not true: Israeli restraint does not automatically lead to an end to attacks but, absent Palestinian will to crush terrorism, to a gift of time for the terrorists to recover and regroup.”
PALESTINIANS PREPARING TO LAUNCH ROCKET ATTACKS ON JERUSALEM
The Israeli military has discovered that Palestinian terrorists are preparing to launch mortar and rocket attacks on Jerusalem. Palestinians have smuggled launchers and mortars into Palestinian suburbs near to Jerusalem.
On October 16, the Israeli army detained a 50-year-old Palestinian who was in the process of smuggling a mortar shell and firing mechanism from Bir Zeit to Jerusalem in the trunk of his vehicle.
Meanwhile Palestinians continue to fire Qassam rockets into southern Israel. A Qassam rocket was fired into the Israeli town of Sderot from Gaza yesterday morning, prior to the suicide attack in Hadera. Five Qassams were fired into Israel on Tuesday.
15 YEAR-OLD PALESTINIAN STOPPED WITH MORTAR SHELL AND TWO KNIVES
Israeli soldiers prevented a 15-year old Palestinian from crossing a checkpoint south of Nablus after he had attempted to avoid the security check. The Palestinian boy had in his possession a mortar shell and two knives. The mortar shell was detonated in a controlled manner by border police. This is the sixth weaponry smuggling attempt stopped by the Israeli army at the Hawara security crossing in the last two months.
TWO ISRAELI-ARAB DENTISTS ARRESTED FOR TERROR LINKS WITH HAMAS
Israeli authorities have revealed that two Israeli-Arab dentists were arrested as a result of their ties to Hamas. The two dentists, both residents of Nazareth, were recruited by Hamas through their local mosque.
They received training in Turkey that included locating safe houses, intelligence gathering, and the recruiting of operatives. It is also suspected that one received instruction in bomb making. Plans to send the pair to Iran for further military training fell through.
Israeli police are also questioning the owner of an ambulance company living in Acre suspected of having sold the Palestinian Authority a vehicle with Israeli logos.
In one of several such incidents, in February 2002 Palestinian terrorists used a Red Crescent ambulance to smuggle a suicide bomber into Israel. This was highlighted in the dispatch (1) Arafat interviewed (2) Red Crescent ambulance delivers terrorist (February 6, 2002).
PA TV: ISRAELIS MURDER BRIDES AND JAFFA IS PALESTINIAN
The Palestinian Authority continues to promote hate ideology on its television channels. PA TV has broadcast two shows that deny Israel’s legitimacy as a state and another that depict Israelis as cruel and inhumane murderers.
A play filmed in front of a live audience and broadcast on PA TV shows Palestinian “resistance fighters” in Israeli jails. A prisoner recounts how he was repeatedly beaten by an Israeli soldier for saying he comes from Jaffa.
In “The Canaanite,” a Palestinian-produced series for daily viewing during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, an actor depicting an Israeli soldier gleefully and cold-bloodedly murders a bride in her wedding gown.
On Jordanian TV during the month of Ramadan, the series “al-Shatat” (the Diaspora) has been aired. The series features a “Jewish conspiracy theory” showing Jewish plans to dominate the world and repeats the blood libel lie that Jews ritually kill Palestinian children.
THE CIA TRAINED PALESTINIAN TERRORISTS
An NBC news correspondent met with Jihad Jaara last month, a senior Palestinian terrorist expelled following the Bethlehem Church of the Nativity siege and presently living in Ireland.
Jaara, a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, says he planned many assassinations and bombings whilst he was still serving as an officer in the Palestinian Preventive Security Service.
In the NBC interview, Jaara said that the factor that contributed most to his grooming into a successful terrorist was the small arms training supervised by officers of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
Between 1996 and 1998, Palestinian units were brought to the U.S. for advanced arms training. More than half of the 18 Palestinians brought to a secret location near CIA headquarters in 1998 went on to be active terrorists in the Al-Aqsa Brigades.
I attach two articles below, with summaries first.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
ISRAEL FINDS A GRENADE UNDER BABY
“Israel Finds a Grenade Under Baby” (The Associated Press, October 23, 2005)
A Palestinian woman was found Saturday with a hand grenade under her baby during a West Bank raid, an Israeli army officer said.
The woman, Aziza Jawabra, said the grenade was in the pocket of her jacket and she did not know it was there.
The grenade was found while soldiers searched a house in Assira, north of Nablus. Soldiers arrested five fugitives, including Jawabra’s husband, Israeli Lt. Col. Arik Chen said. The troops found 22 pounds of explosives in the house, he added...
HOW DID THE PALESTINIANS DESCEND INTO BARBARISM?
“A History of Violence” (By Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2005)
... The Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer rivets world attention the way it did a few years ago. Still it rolls along, as it has for decades and as it probably will for decades to come. And the reason for this is well-captured by Mr. Abbas’s use of the term “prisoners of freedom.”
Who are some of these prisoners? One is Ibrahim Ighnamat, a Hamas leader arrested last week by Israel in connection to his role in organizing a March 1997 suicide bombing at the Apropos cafe in Tel Aviv, which killed three and wounded 48. Another is Jamal Tirawi of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: Mr. Tirawi had bullied a 14-year-old boy into becoming a suicide bomber by threatening to denounce him as a “collaborator, ” which in Palestinian society frequently amounts to a death sentence.
And then there is 21-year-old Wafa Samir al-Bis, who was detained in June after the explosives she was carrying failed to detonate at an Israeli checkpoint on the border with Gaza. As Ms. Bis later testified, her target was an Israeli hospital where she had previously been treated – as a humanitarian gesture – for burns suffered in a kitchen accident. “I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews,” she explained at a press conference after her arraignment...
While Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn’t hold. How, then, are the Ighnamats, Tirawis and Bises of Palestinian society to be explained?
... The Palestinian president leads a society in which dignity and violence have long been entwined, in which the absence of the latter risks the loss of the former. This is not to say that Mr. Abbas himself is a violent man. But his fate as a politician rests in the hands of violent men, and so far he has shown no appetite for confronting them...
For Mr. Abbas, the problem is that statehood and dignity are not a package. They are a choice. And if history is any guide, the choice he must make is not one he is likely to survive.
ISRAEL FINDS A GRENADE UNDER BABY
Israel Finds a Grenade Under Baby
The Associated Press
October 23, 2005
A Palestinian woman was found Saturday with a hand grenade under her baby during a West Bank raid, an Israeli army officer said.
The woman, Aziza Jawabra, said the grenade was in the pocket of her jacket and she did not know it was there.
The grenade was found while soldiers searched a house in Assira, north of Nablus. Soldiers arrested five fugitives, including Jawabra’s husband, Israeli Lt. Col. Arik Chen said. The troops found 22 pounds of explosives in the house, he added.
Jawabra, who said she didn’t know that explosives were hidden in the house, called the raid traumatic. The troops arrived about 2 a.m. and forced her to leave the house with her children, refusing to let her get dressed or put on shoes. Jawabra said the soldiers tried to get her to hand the baby to someone else, but she refused.
The soldiers searched Jawabra after they became suspicious of the way she was carrying her month-old son. She was holding the grenade just under the baby’s backside, Chen said. “To see a woman using her baby to hide a grenade is not typical.”
In a separate incident, Israeli soldiers shot and killed an 18-year-old Palestinian suspected of planting a bomb on a road near Ramallah, the army said.
HOW DID THE PALESTINIANS DESCEND INTO BARBARISM?
A History of Violence
How did the Palestinians descend into barbarism?
By Bret Stephens
Wall Street Journal
October 22, 2005
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas paid George Bush a friendly visit Thursday in the Oval Office. At the Rose Garden press conference that followed, Mr. Bush stressed Mr. Abbas’s responsibility to “end terror attacks, dismantle terrorist infrastructure, maintain law and order and one day provide security for their own state.” Mr. Abbas himself made no mention of the words “terrorism” or “terrorists.” But he did demand the release of those he called “prisoners of freedom,” now being held in Israeli jails.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer rivets world attention the way it did a few years ago. Still it rolls along, as it has for decades and as it probably will for decades to come. And the reason for this is well-captured by Mr. Abbas’s use of the term “prisoners of freedom.”
Who are some of these prisoners? One is Ibrahim Ighnamat, a Hamas leader arrested last week by Israel in connection to his role in organizing a March 1997 suicide bombing at the Apropos cafe in Tel Aviv, which killed three and wounded 48. Another is Jamal Tirawi of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades: Mr. Tirawi had bullied a 14-year-old boy into becoming a suicide bomber by threatening to denounce him as a “collaborator, ” which in Palestinian society frequently amounts to a death sentence.
And then there is 21-year-old Wafa Samir al-Bis, who was detained in June after the explosives she was carrying failed to detonate at an Israeli checkpoint on the border with Gaza. As Ms. Bis later testified, her target was an Israeli hospital where she had previously been treated – as a humanitarian gesture – for burns suffered in a kitchen accident. “I wanted to kill 20, 50 Jews,” she explained at a press conference after her arraignment.
Many explanations have been given to account for the almost matchless barbarism into which Palestinian society has descended in recent years. One is the effect of Israeli occupation and all that has, in recent years, gone with it: the checkpoints, the closures, the petty harassments, the targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders. I witnessed much of this personally when I lived in Israel, and there can be no discounting the embittering effect that a weeks-long, 18-hour daily military curfew has on the ordinary Palestinians living under it.
Yet the checkpoints and curfews are not gratuitous acts of unkindness by Israel, nor are they artifacts of occupation. On the contrary, in the years when Israel was in full control of the territories there were no checkpoints or curfews, and Palestinians could move freely (and find employment) throughout the country. It was only with the start of the peace process in 1993 and the creation of autonomous Palestinian areas under the control of the late Yasser Arafat that terrorism became a commonplace fact of Israeli life. And it was only then that the checkpoints went up and the clampdowns began in earnest.
In other words, while Palestinian actions go far to explain Israeli behavior, the reverse doesn’t hold. How, then, are the Ighnamats, Tirawis and Bises of Palestinian society to be explained?
Consider a statistic: In the first nine months of 2005 more Palestinians were killed by other Palestinians than by Israelis – 219 to 218, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Interior, although the former figure is probably in truth much higher. In the Gaza Strip, the departure of Israeli troops and settlers has brought anarchy, not freedom. Members of Hamas routinely fight gun battles with members of Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling political party. Just as often, the killing takes place between clans, or hamullas. So-called collaborators are put to the gun by street mobs, their “guilt” sometimes nothing more than being the object of a neighbor’s spite. Palestinian social outsiders are also at mortal risk: Honor killings of “loose” women are common, as is the torture and murder of homosexuals.
Atop this culture of violence are the Hamas and Fatah leaders, the hamulla chieftains, the Palestinian Authority’s “generals” and “ministers.” And standing atop them – theoretically, at least – is the Palestinian president. All were raised in this culture; most have had their uses for violence. For Arafat, those uses were to achieve mastery of his movement, and to harness its energies to his political purpose. Among Palestinians, his popularity owed chiefly to the fact that under his leadership all this violence achieved an astonishing measure of international respectability.
Hence Mr. Abbas’s Rose Garden obeisances to the “prisoners of freedom.” The Palestinian president leads a society in which dignity and violence have long been entwined, in which the absence of the latter risks the loss of the former. This is not to say that Mr. Abbas himself is a violent man. But his fate as a politician rests in the hands of violent men, and so far he has shown no appetite for confronting them.
Instead, he has sought to entice groups such as Hamas into a democratic process. As with Hezbollah in Lebanon, they have been happy to get what they can out of politics while refusing to lay down their arms. In doing so, they make a mockery of Mr. Abbas’s stated commitment to “one authority, one law and one gun” – that is, to the very idea of a state, and therefore to Mr. Abbas’s presidency of it.
Talk to Palestinians, and you will often hear it said, like a mantra, that Palestinian dignity requires Palestinian statehood. This is either a conceit or a lie. Should a Palestinian state ever come into existence in Gaza and the West Bank, it will be a small place, mostly poor, culturally marginal, most of it desert, rock, slums and dust. One can well understand why Arafat, a man of terrible vices but impressive vanities, spurned the offer of it – and why his people cheered wildly when he did. Their dignity has always rested upon their violence, their struggle, their “prisoners of freedom.”
For Mr. Abbas, the problem is that statehood and dignity are not a package. They are a choice. And if history is any guide, the choice he must make is not one he is likely to survive.