Vandals crash cars through synagogue in southeastern France
The Associated Press
March 30, 2002

Vandals crashed two cars through the main entrance of a synagogue in southeastern France early Saturday, then parked one of the vehicles in the main prayer hall and set it on fire, police said.

Recently, gasoline bombs and stones have been hurled at synagogues, and vandals torched part of a Jewish elementary school in southern France, leaving behind spray-painted messages reading: "Death to the Jews" and "Bin Laden will conquer."

"STRUGGLE PUTS A PREMIUM ON BEING ANTI-JEW"

"Struggle puts a premium on being anti-Jew"
By Mark Steyn
The Daily Telegraph,
March 30, 2002

It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do, says Mark Steyn

Easter usually finds me at my little New Hampshire Baptist Church, one of those white clapboard meeting houses that, as medieval stone churches do in English villages, make Christianity seem indigenous. This year, though, I'm en route from Europe to the Middle East, which puts a different spin on things. Jesus never saw a clapboard church or an Anglican vicar in a dog collar. Nineteen hundred and sixty something years ago, He was celebrating Passover. Christ's Last Supper was the first day of Pesach, the same ritual those Israeli diners were observing on Wednesday when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonated himself, killing 20 and injuring almost 200, but no doubt earning big bonus points with those 72 virgins who will surely pleasure him in Paradise all the more assiduously.

In Jesus's Last Supper, one miracle – the Jews' liberation from slavery in Egypt prefigures another, Christ's resurrection. Christians have prospered in the two millennia since: they have the luxury of turning a celebration of survival into an excuse for chocolate eggs and toy bunnies. Not so the Jews. Throughout the same period, they have raised a cup of wine each Passover and spoken the same words from the Haggada: "In every generation, they rise up against us to destroy us." And this year, in Netanya, before they could even say the words, they were blown apart. This wasn't a pizza parlour or a bus: the terrorist struck, as the New York Post's John Podhoretz put it, "at the very core of what it means to be a Jew". It made explicit, as if that were necessary, that this particular "liberation struggle" puts a premium on being anti-Jew rather than pro-Palestinian.

Just as revealing was the reaction from the European media. In the American press, you read things like: "An observer to the bomb-blast scene described a dead young girl, perhaps 10 or 12, lying on the ground with her eyes open, looking as if she was surprised." For Europe, on the other hand, the main significance of this development was that it was "unhelpful" to the "peace process". Before I'm accused of being more upset about dead Jewish than dead Muslim kids, let me say that I take people at their own estimation: in the Palestinian Authority schools, they teach their children about the glories of martyrdom; indeed, the careers guidance counsellor appears to have little information on alternative employment prospects; at social events, the moppets are dressed up as junior jihadi, with toy detonators and play bombs. It's not that I place less value on Palestinian lives, but that Chairman Arafat and his chums in Hamas do. So does Saddam Hussein, whose government (the subject of an admiring article in this week's Spectator) gives $25,000 to the family of each Palestinian suicide bomber. So does the Arab League, which at last year's summit passed a resolution hailing the "spirit of sacrifice" of the Palestinian "martyrs" and thus licensed Wednesday's massacre. As for the "peace process", those Europeans who, just a few months ago, were urging the Americans to cease operations for Ramadan evidently feel no compunction to demand from Chairman Arafat and his dark subsidiaries any similar "bombing pause" for Passover.

In the days after September 11, we were told that Muslims had great respect for their fellow "people of the book" – ie, Jews and Christians. This ought to be so: after all, the dramatis personae of the Koran include Abraham, Moses, David, John the Baptist, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It's one thing to believe that the Israelis are occupiers and oppressors and that the Zionist state should not exist. But no Muslim with any understanding of his shared heritage could in good conscience blow up a Passover Seder. It marks a new low in the Palestinians' descent into nihilism – though, as usual, the silence of the imams is deafening. As for the nonchalance of the Europeans, that too should not surprise us: in my experience, the Continent's Christians, practicing and nominal, find the ceremonies of Jewish life faintly creepy, notwithstanding that these were also the rituals by which their own Saviour lived.

But this year, when the Christians' solar calendar and the Jews' lunar calendar have coincided and Easter and Passover fall together, it's a safe bet that George W Bush will make the connection. The first time I ever heard him speak, he spoke openly about his faith and about Christ in a way that would be unimaginable for a British politician. He will know all the details – "the baby tried to crawl away, but it died, too". Unlike the Europeans, he must know too that Yasser Arafat could never run any kind of state: give him Switzerland and he'd turn it into a sewer. The only question now is whether Bush will realise how disastrous the last month has been in his retreat from the moral clarity displayed after September 11. The President has been reduced to mumbling Beltway shorthand about the need to comply with "Tenet" and "Mitchell", while Dick Cheney's shuttle diplomacy to shore up "moderate" Arab support for war with Iraq has resulted only in spectacular rapprochements between Iraq and Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, etc. Wednesday's bloodbath should open their eyes: just because it's Easter, that's no reason to lay any more huge eggs.

HAMAS: "IT IS A JIHAD, VICTORY OR MARTYRDOM"

Hamas, who have taken responsibility for tonight's terror attack on a Passover seder, have identified the bomber as Abdel-Basset Odeh, from the West Bank city of Tulkarem, which is just 10 kilometers (six miles) east of Netanya. "It is a jihad, victory or martyrdom," Hamas said in its statement, broadcast over Al Jazeera TV in Qatar a short while ago.

Odeh had been on Israel's wanted list for four years. Israel had repeatedly asked the Palestinian Authority to arrest Odeh, but Yasser Arafat refused to do so, despite several agreements Arafat has signed and promises he has made to the European Union and the U.S. to act against Palestinian terrorists.

The British Ambassador to Israel risked causing a diplomatic row with the Arab world yesterday when he offered to help the Israeli military to improve its battered image abroad.

Sherard Cowper-Coles said that the Israelis should copy tactics employed by the British Army in Northern Ireland in its fight against the IRA. "I wish I could do more to help Israel's hasbara (public relations) effort," he told the Jerusalem Post. "I sometimes feel that Israel could make a better case for itself."

He recommended that the army should supply its own pictures from scenes of incidents more often and get its message out faster. "As the British Army learnt from bitter experience fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland, if you do not give the media pictures, the enemy will," he said. "As soon as there's an incident, you have to put up a spokesman, preferably a young, fresh-faced officer, who will give the IDF (Israeli Defence Force) account. In Northern Ireland, every officer received media training, and it's better to show the young officers than crusty old generals."

He said that making Israel's case to the British Government had been made harder over the past 18 months because the "chattering classes" in Britain had turned against the Jewish state. But he insisted that it was possible to improve the image, and cited a recent BBC documentary about an elite IDF unit. "It showed the IDF in the best possible light," he said. "You could see the IDF's courage and professionalism."

Mr Cowper-Coles's remarks risk provoking an angry response from Palestinians. He caused an uproar in November when he compared dealing with Yassir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to "wrestling with jelly".

Sir Cyril Townsend, a former British diplomat and the director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, said that Mr Cowper-Coles had "overstepped the mark" with his comments. "It was imprudent for the British Ambassador to get involved in giving Israel such detailed PR advice," he said. "I like to think that he is working flat out to get the Israeli Government to support the Saudi peace plan."

Mr Cowper-Coles said that his remarks were in response to a question about public relations, and did not mean that Britain was uncritical of the Israeli miliary's behaviour in the occupied territories. "In public and private we have been very critical of the IDF," he said. "We have a very robust dialogue with the Israelis."

"THE BBC – 'NOT USUALLY CONSIDERED A FRIEND OF ISRAEL'"

Language of diplomacy
By Miriam Shaviv,
The Jerusalem Post
March 26, 2002

Britain's Ambasador to Israel Sherard Cowper-Coles has quickly made his presence felt in the country, due in no small part to his determination to grapple with Hebrew. In an interview with Miriam Shaviv, he notes that the 'center of gravity in the chattering classes' in England has shifted against Israel and that 'I wish I could do more to help Israel's hasbara [public relations] effort.'

Exiting the King David Hotel at the end of an interview, British Ambassador Sherard Cowper-Coles spots Israel's former ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, crossing the lobby.

In almost accent-free Hebrew, Cowper-Coles calls out, "Adoni hashagrir, mah shlomcha?" – "Mr. Ambassador, how are you?" Gold, still a few meters away, stops and stares at Cowper-Coles, visibly puzzled. Finally, recognition dawns on him.

"Mr. Ambassador..." says Gold in English, extending his hand. "The Hebrew threw me off."

Gold is probably not the only one to be taken by surprise by the Hebrew-speaking ambassador. When Cowper-Coles began his term in Israel in September, he presented his official credentials to President Moshe Katsav in Hebrew, and has made a point of speaking it ever since. At the beginning of this interview, it was hard to get Cowper-Coles, who introduced himself in Hebrew, to start speaking English.

Indeed, over the last seven months, Cowper-Coles has truly immersed himself in Israeli culture. He has thoroughly toured the country, from cycling in the Golan Heights to coral diving in Eilat. He has taken an active interest in Judaism, experiencing a range of religious experiences, from Hanukka in a Vishnitz yeshiva in Bnei Brak to seder night, next week, on a kibbutz in the North.

A source close to diplomatic circles points out how unusual Cowper-Coles is in this regard, both compared to previous British ambassadors and to other European ambassadors.

"Nothing in his record would have made anyone believe he was going to take such an interest," says the source. "He has previously held postings in the Arab world, and is a product of the British Foreign Office" – which Israelis often perceive as Arabist.

Cowper-Coles's curiosity has certainly resulted in an unusual sympathy for Israel and Israelis. It has not necessarily translated into support for the policies of the Israeli government, but the source notes that at least once, Cowper-Coles betrayed the frustration of dealing with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. "Dealing with Arafat is like wrestling with jelly," he said in November.

While it is hard to tell to what extent Cowper-Coles influences British foreign policy in the Middle East, the source says he certainly has the ear of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

At least one previous ambassador has risen to "dizzy heights," says the source, referring to David Manning who is now foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair. "No one would be surprised if Cowper-Coles also has that kind of future ahead of him."

Cowper-Coles was born in London in 1955, and grew up in Kent. After reading Latin and Greek in Oxford, he joined the diplomatic service in 1977.

His initial contact with the Middle East was the result of a considered academic decision. The Foreign Office thought he was capable of learning a "hard language" and gave him the choice of Arabic, Japanese, or Chinese.

"I chose Arabic," he says, "because of my background in classics. I felt that learning Arabic was closer to home, and would help close a circle." Cowper-Coles was sent to an Arabic school in Lebanon, but was evacuated shortly afterwards because of Syrian shelling in Beirut, and sent to the University of Alexandria in Egypt instead.

To improve his language skills, he chose to live with a local family and their four children, in a two-bedroom apartment.

"I witnessed an exorcism," he still marvels. "They slaughtered two chickens and some pigeons and put the blood across the door's threshold in order to cure the mother of rheumatism." After Arabic lessons in the morning, he would tour Alexandria in the afternoon with his old car.

"It is a very romantic, Mediterranean city," he says. "I saw the death-mask of a Greek poet, and even visited the synagogue there, which was very sad because it was all boarded up." He says he was impressed by the way that Egypt seemed to include cultural elements from many different civilizations.

"It was like the scrolls of the Geniza," he says. "Different people had made their marks over the years, and you could feel all of them – the Greeks, the Romans, the Jews. The Arabs were relatively late arriving."

Cowper-Coles became second secretary to the British Embassy in Cairo in 1980. His reading of the political situation was not always spot-on – he recalls sending a telegram back to England, saying that the new President Hosni Mubarak might not last more than a few months – but he remembers being excited by Egypt's emerging relations with Israel.

"It was a time of hope and excitement, and I felt I was witnessing the beginnings of the peace process," Cowper-Coles says. "I even had a great friend in the Israeli embassy." His friendship with Dan Kurtzer, then a political officer in the US embassy in Cairo and currently the American ambassador to Israel, also dates back to this time. Cowper-Coles says of Kurtzer: "The more I see of his work, the more I admire what he is doing. He's undemonstrative, but a totally dedicated diplomat, totally dedicated to peace and to Israel."

Cowper-Coles also had a family tradition of interest in Israel. "I am a quarter Dutch, and my family there were ardent Zionists," he reveals. "My great-uncle was shot for hiding Jewish children in the Second World War, and my family sent blood to Israel in 1967."

In 1983, Cowper-Coles and his wife Bridget, whom he married in 1982, drove across the Sinai to Israel. They stayed with friends in Jerusalem, toured the Galilee, and swum in the Kinneret.

He was immediately struck by the amount the state had accomplished in the 35-odd years of its existence.

"We felt we were moving from the Third World to the First World in a matter of yards," he says. "Israel was very emotionally engaging, it was very exciting to see the miracles created here – the cultivation. I was impressed by the spirit of can-do, by the sheer excitement of the Jewish people having their own land."

The couple and their nine-month-old son sailed out of Haifa harbor, and returned to London, where Cowper-Coles had little to do with the Middle East for the next 20-odd years. He initially wrote speeches for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher ("very demanding"), and four years later was sent to Washington, where he covered US politics.

In 1991, he again returned to London, where he was seconded to the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and headed the Hong Kong Department of the Foreign Office. After helping to negotiate the return of the last British colony to Communist China, he was sent as the political counselor to the British Embassy in Paris. Twenty months later, in 1999, he received a tough posting as private secretary of then-foreign secretary Robin Cook, whom Cowper-Coles remembers as a highly intelligent man, and a skilled diplomat.

"He is not really understood in Britain, partly because of his manner," Cowper-Coles says.

Cowper-Coles was not yet working for Cook when the latter's March 1998 visit to Israel ended in diplomatic pandemonium after he publicly challenged policies of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. He accompanied him on two subsequent visits, though, where he had "very successful" talks with prime minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami.

"When it came to Israel, [Cook] always took the view that to influence things here, you had to work with Israel," says Cowper-Coles.

Last year, he felt he had a good chance of securing one of the "medium" embassies – the top-rank embassies were still out of his reach because of his young age.

"Both Bridget and I wanted to come to Israel because of the emotional and intellectual excitement," he says. In addition, they felt that peace "might be around the corner" – although he notes that the professional challenge of his job has just increased since the resurgence of the violence.

To prepare for the posting, Cowper-Coles decided to throw himself into a Hebrew-speaking environment, as he had done with Arabic in Alexandria, more than 20 years earlier.

"It was also important to me to get to know more about the Jewish community in Britain," he says. "A lot of my Jewish friends had married out, and I wanted to live in a Jewish community, to get to know Judaism better." For five weeks last summer, Cowper-Coles lodged with a family of Israelis living in Hendon, a heavily-Jewish suburb in North-West London.

"The wife was a beautician, and I had to share a bedroom with her laser machine," he says. "She fed me Israeli salads for breakfast and called me motek [honey]." Every morning, Cowper-Coles cycled to Balfour House, the London headquarters of the Jewish Agency, where a team of Jewish teachers waited to teach him Hebrew.

The experience, Cowper-Coles admits, did not give him "complete insight" into Israeli society, but gave him a sense of "the immense pride in what Israel had achieved and the deep love of the land of Israel" held by many Israeli expatriates.

When he finally arrived here – sailing into Haifa Harbor, this time with a 19-year-old son – he says he did not suffer culture shock. However, he was amazed to discover "the depth of despair" caused by the Palestinian rejection of what Cowper-Coles calls Barak's "offer of unprecedented generous proportions." "I had not realized how high hopes had risen, or how badly people felt left down," says Cowper-Coles.

Soon after he arrived, he went to visit the mother of one of his Hebrew teachers on kibbutz. Her parents had died in the Holocaust, sending their daughter a last letter from Berlin which warned, "We are going on a long journey."

"It upset me to think of a woman who escaped such awfulness in Europe, once again facing a sense of doom and hopelessness for her children," says Cowper-Coles. "I found it very upsetting." Cowper-Coles also quickly realized that he had not appreciated Israelis' sense of international isolation. "Israelis crave love from the rest of the world," he says. "They long to be accepted as a normal member of the family of nations, and you have to live here to appreciate that."

In hindsight, however, Cowper-Coles says that there was a hint of that insecurity in the British Jewish community. "Although I regard the Jewish people as an integral part of British society, it is only by living in Hendon that I realized how many people I knew in England were actually Jewish, although they had never let on," he says. "There is always a fear at the back of people's minds that what happened once could happen again."

How does a man as sensitive to Israelis' frame of mind as Cowper-Coles regard his own Foreign Office, which is traditionally treated with such suspicion by Israelis? Cowper-Coles says that Foreign Office officials are naturally better acquainted with Arab countries than with Israel, since so many more diplomats have to be trained for those states. He says that he is trying to make sure that those who are sent to Israel are better equipped than they have been in the past, beginning by improving their Hebrew skills.

Cowper-Coles is, predictably, reluctant to admit that any systematic bias permeates the Foreign Office. "Individuals may criticize individual policies of Israel, but I have never come across a British diplomat who does not believe in Israel's right to exist in security," he says.

"The overall policy is set by the ministers, who decide on policy. A sensible minister always takes the line that to build peace, you have to work with Israel, because grandstanding on behalf of one party or another deals you out of the game."

He rejects the suggestion that successive British foreign ministers have, in fact, shown considerable hostility to Israel. Robin Cook, for example, enraged Netanyahu in 1998 by touring Jerusalem's Har Homa, and meeting there with Palestinian Legislative Council member Salah Ta'amri. Netanyahu responded by canceling a state dinner, and Cook left the following day without the usual courtesies of an official send-off.

The current minister, Jack Straw, drew fire in October when he wrote in an article published in an Iranian paper, "I understand that one of the factors which helps breed terrorism is the anger which many people in the region feel at events over the years in Palestine."

"[Straw]'s one sentence in one article expressed sentiments which some Israelis may disagree with, but you cannot interpret them as violently anti-Israel," he says. "You need to look at the foreign minister's subsequent visits to Israel as well. On Straw's last visit, he expressed understanding for the suffering of people here, which provides a more balanced and accurate taste of his views."

Cowper-Coles emphasizes that Blair is a strong supporter of Israel. His feelings for the country, says Cowper-Coles, go beyond intellectual calculation. "Touring with him in Israel, I could see he has an emotional connection as well," says Cowper-Coles. "He admires the rule of law here, and the success of Israel and its people."

One segment of the British population where Cowper-Coles does detect an increase in anti-Israel sentiment is the liberal intelligentsia. He will not discuss recent claims by Daily Telegraph columnist Barbara Amiel that the French Ambassador to Britain, Daniel Bernard, referred to Israel during a dinner party she was hosting as "that shitty little country" which threatens world peace.

However, Cowper-Coles agrees that the "center of gravity in the chattering classes has shifted against Israel." He says he is pained by the change, which also makes his work harder, because he has to represent Britain in Israel and make sure that the Israeli case is heard fairly in the British government.

"I wish I could do more to help Israel's hasbara [public relations] effort," he says. "I sometimes feel that Israel could make a better case for itself," he says.

Cowper-Coles recommends that Israel supply pictures from scenes of incidents more often. "As the British army learned from bitter experience fighting terrorism in Northern Ireland, if you do not give the media pictures, the enemy will," he says.

The IDF, he says, should also be quicker to offer its versions of events. "As soon as there's an incident, you have to put up a spokesperson, preferably a young, fresh-faced officer, who will give the IDF account. In Northern Ireland, every officer received media training, and it's better to show the young officers than the crusty old generals."

He believes that an improvement is possible, citing for example a recent documentary by the BBC – "not usually considered a friend of Israel" – about an IDF elite unit's activities. He considered the result so positive that he even sent a letter of congratulation to OC Planning Maj.-Gen. Giora Eiland, one of the military figures interviewed.

"It showed the IDF in the best possible light," says Cowper-Coles. "You could see the IDF's courage and professionalism."

Despite recent reports about an increase in anti-Semitism in Britain, Cowper-Coles says it is difficult to point to hard evidence. He argues that it is important not to label all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, and that a distinction must be made between those who are anti-Sharon, those who are against the IDF, those who are anti-Israel, and a "very nasty" strand of anti-Semitism which sometimes disguises itself as anti-Sharonism.

"What worries me more is the perception that anti-Semitism is on the rise," he says. "This feeds into people's fears and is bad for Britain and for British Jews."

Dealing with the problem, says Cowper-Coles, is not the task of the British government: "We are not into thought control." He recommends that British Jews systematically take up clearly distorted reports in the media, where the facts are indisputably wrong, and refrain from generalized complaining. He also advises British Jews to ignore some of the "sillier and more superficial" attacks.

"I persuaded Robin Cook not to read the papers every day," he says. "Sometimes you have to ignore attacks in order to lower the temperature."

Arafat's harvest of hate
By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
March 26, 2002

Sept. 11 awakened Americans to the anti-American vitriol in the state-controlled media of such apparently friendly states as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We are just beginning to understand how a daily diet of hatred fed through schools and the media – a hatred quietly incubating for years – found its most perfect expression in the slaughter of Sept. 11.

We have failed, however, to see how a similar campaign of hate has laid the groundwork for the orgy of murder-suicide the Palestinians are now engaged in. A mother appears on videotape proudly sending her 18-year-old to his death just so he can kill as many Jews as possible. This is unprecedented. Before the Oslo peace accords of 1993, suicide bombing was a practice almost unheard of among Palestinians.

And it is not as if they had no grievances before 1993. On the contrary. The advent of suicide bombing coincides precisely with the era of Israeli conciliation and peacemaking: recognition of the PLO, repeated concessions of territory, establishment of the Palestinian Authority, acceptance of an armed Palestinian police – all culminating in the unprecedented offer of an independent Palestinian state with its capital in a shared Jerusalem. It is precisely in the context of the most accommodating, most conciliatory, most dovish Israeli policy in history that the suicide bombings took hold.

Where, then, did they come from? During the past eight years – the years of the Oslo "peace process" – Yasser Arafat had complete control of all the organs of Palestinian education and propaganda. It takes an unspeakable hatred for people to send their children to commit Columbine-like murder-suicide. Arafat taught it. His television, his newspapers, his clerics have inculcated an anti-Semitism unmatched in virulence since Nazi Germany.

When U.S. peace negotiator Dennis Ross stepped down last year, he acknowledged, to his credit, that a major error of diplomacy in the Clinton years was turning a diplomatic blind eye to the poisonous incitement in Palestinian media. Just as Osama bin Laden spent the '90s indoctrinating and infiltrating in preparation for murder, Arafat raised an entire generation schooled in hatred of the "Judeo-Nazis."

This indoctrination goes far beyond expunging Israel, literally, from Palestinian maps. It goes far beyond denying, indeed ridiculing, the Holocaust as a Jewish fantasy. It consists of the rawest incitement to murder, as in this sermon by Arafat-appointed and Arafat-funded Ahmad Abu Halabiya broadcast live on official Palestinian Authority television early in the Intifada. The subject is "the Jews." (Note: not the Israelis, but the Jews.) "They must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands.' ... Have no mercy on the Jews, no matter where they are, in any country. Fight them, wherever you are. Wherever you meet them, kill them."

The rationale offered for such murderousness is Jewish villainy as taught not just in Palestine but throughout the Arab world. On March 10, for example, an article in the official Saudi newspaper al-Riyadh described in rich detail how the Jews ritually slaughter Christian and Muslim children to use their blood in their holiday foods. With almost comic pseudo-scholarship, it explained that for one holiday (Purim) the Jew must kill an adolescent, but for Passover the victim must be 10 years or younger.

When the article achieved wide notoriety in translation, the editor apologized under pressure. He said he had been out of town when the article appeared. An odd excuse, given the fact that this elaborate blood libel ran as a two-part series.

A precondition for peace is to prepare your people for peace. Egypt's Anwar Sadat did that after signing his peace treaty with Israel. The Israelis did that after signing Oslo. They changed their textbooks and altered their civic culture to recognize and accept the Palestinians. On the 50th anniversary of Israel's independence, for example, Israel Television aired an epic multipart historical documentary that offered a view of the Palestinians that was deeply sympathetic and understanding.

While Israeli leaders, both political and intellectual, were preparing their people for peace, Arafat was preparing his people for war – the war he unleashed two months after rejecting Israel's Camp David peace offer of July 2000 – with an unrelenting campaign of anti-Semitic vilification carried out by every organ of his media. And how he has succeeded. When Arafat's state-controlled media glorify a "martyrdom operation," it is not just a commendation of the murderer, it is a vindication of their own pedagogy. We now see its fruits in the streets of Jerusalem, where the blood from the latest suicide bombing graces the third floor of surrounding buildings.

"ARAFAT HAS BEEN CLEAR-SIGHTED ABOUT THE WILFUL AMNESIA OF THE WORLD'S CAPITALS, INCLUDING WASHINGTON"

The war on terrorism is suddenly going terribly wrong.
By George F. Will
The New York Post
March 26, 2002

Suicide bombers serving Yasser Arafat, the world's senior and most successful terrorist, have caused U.S. policy in the Middle East to buckle and become more accommodating. So more than six months into the war on terror, terror is more vindicated as a tactic than ever before.

Whether or not Vice President Cheney dashes back to the Middle East to parlay with Arafat, President Bush's policy has become incoherent. This damage was done by saying the vice presidential dash would be made if Arafat would recite (in Arabic; we are quite stern) a perfunctory lie scripted by the United States – yet another reiteration of his vow to abandon violence, which is the vocabulary of his life.

The president professes himself "disappointed" by Arafat. But what are the presidential expectations for Arafat?

It has been 37 years since his Fatah launched its first attack on Israel, which then (as when attempts were made to crush Israel in 1948, 1956 and in 1967) was within the 1967 borders that amnesiacs believe are the key to appeasing Arafat.

Amnesiacs evidently believe that he wants only to be prime minister of a placid little Arab democracy, the only democracy in the Arab world, a sort of Middle Eastern Belgium. Amnesiacs evidently believe he can be mollified by removing Jewish settlements from the West Bank. His undisguised and unambiguous goal is to remove Jewish – what? "settlers"? – from Tel Aviv.

Amnesiacs should read the opening paragraphs of Michael Oren's forthcoming (in June) book, "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East":

"Nighttime, Dec. 31, 1964 - A squad of Palestinian guerrillas crosses from Lebanon into northern Israel. Armed with Soviet-made explosives, their uniforms supplied by the Syrians, they advance toward their target: a pump for conveying Galilee water to the Negev desert. A modest objective, seemingly, yet the Palestinians' purpose is immense.... Their action, they hope, will provoke an Israeli retaliation... igniting an all-Arab offensive to destroy the Zionist state." The explosives failed to detonate, but "the leader of al-Fatah, a 35-year-old former engineer from Gaza named Yasser Arafat, issues a victorious communique extolling 'the duty of Jihad (holy war).'"

Arafat, writes Oren, had to have "a singularly limber imagination" to think that a small act of sabotage could trigger a war leading to the destruction of Israel. But give the devil his due: Arafat has been clear-sighted about the willful amnesia of the world's capitals, including Washington.

Not three months have passed since Israel captured, and Arafat lied to the president about, the ship bearing 50 tons of arms from Iran, a member of the "axis of evil," to Arafat. And yet today U.S. policy-makers, with their singularly limber imaginations, imagine that it is important to coax from Arafat yet another disavowal of violence.

On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Cheney was asked why there are suicide bombers. He replied that "I'm not sure I'm smart enough to understand it" but cited "the depth of feeling and emotion on the Palestinian side."

Does Cheney think suicide bombing could have something to do with virulent and incessant anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda? Another broken Arafat promise is that the Palestinian Authority will stop this.

Suicide bombers live in a social atmosphere heavily dosed with denial of the Holocaust, incitements to genocide, loathsome anti-Semitic libels (e.g., that Jews leaven pastry with the blood of non-Jewish adolescents), exhortations to the holy duty of destroying "the Zionist entity." Could the vice president not have leavened his musings with the thought that no grievance is fit for redress by shredding Jewish children with nail bombs?

The president says regimes that harbor terrorists are as culpable as the terrorists themselves. Yet although Israel has acted against the Palestinian Authority regime, the source of daily terrorism, less aggressively than America has acted against the Afghanistan regime that was complicit in one day of terrorism, the president has said Israel's self-defense is "not helpful."

Not helpful to what? To the Zinni mission for "bridging proposals" to reach the Tenet process for resuscitating the Mitchell plan for "confidence-building measures"? The Weekly Standard recently concocted this parody of the president talking about "confidence-building" measures:

"Say Arafat sends a suicide bomber to blow up a pizzeria on Monday, and then a disco on Tuesday, but then on Wednesday he doesn't send anybody. That's a confidence-building measure!"

That parody is not easily distinguishable from U.S. policy.

A TEACHER FOR DOWNS SYNDROME KIDS IS MURDERED

So far today (Sunday March 24), one Israeli, Esther Klieman, 23, of Neveh Tzuf, has been killed in a terror attack (shot in a bus by a Palestinian sniper).

Klieman was a kindergarten teacher for Downs Syndrome disabled children in Ofra. The gunman escaped into Palestinian Authority-controlled "Area A."

Several of you have asked for more details of terror victims. Below is a list of some of those murdered at random so far this month. Pictures and details are available if you click on the URL's. This list is not complete. I have pulled out seven examples at random. After this list are two other articles about victims. Many of these attacks were carried out by the Fatah movement headed and controlled by Nobel-peace prize winner Yasser Arafat.

-- Tom Gross

Suicide bomber wept tears of joy when chosen for mission
By Mohammed Daraghmeh
The Associated Press
March 20, 2002

When Rafat Abu Diyak heard he was to be Islamic Jihad's next suicide bomber, he wept tears of joy, said Mahmoud Tawalbi, the man who sent him.

Abu Diyak boarded a crowded bus traveling through northern Israel early this morning and detonated explosives strapped to his body, killing himself and seven other passengers.

Tawalbi, head of Islamic Jihad in Jenin, recalled Abu Diyak's reaction when he was chosen for the mission."He started crying like a child from happiness, he started kissing me, saying "thank you, thank you, thank God," Tawalbi said. "He said he wanted to make every Israeli cry like the Palestinians."

Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the blast that killed seven and wounded more than 20 passengers, many of them Israeli Arabs. "I have the honor to do so," Tawalbi said.

Abu Diyak was originally a member of the larger Islamic group, Hamas, but switched to Islamic Jihad and asked to carry out a bombing attack, Tawalbi said. "We checked out his background and his personality," Tawalbi said, "and we agreed."

Reflecting Islamic fundamentalist ideology, Tawalbi said Islamic Jihad operatives would not stop their struggle even if the Palestinians get a state in the West Bank and Gaza. He said the Israelis must leave the Middle East. "We will not follow them to Lithuania or Russia," he said.

Tawalbi expressed regret that some of the wounded in the bus attack were Israeli Arab citizens. "We told Arabs in Israel many times to keep away from Israeli places," he said, noting that the bus line serves Israeli cities.

Abu Diyak's parents grieved quietly in their simple house in Jenin. His mother, 52, sobbing, said she could tell something was unusual when her son kissed her for a last time. "My son is a sacrifice to Palestine. I give him to Palestine," she said. She did not give her name.

Al-Dura was killed during an exchange of fire between IDF soldiers and Palestinian gunmen at the junction, and the event has become a potent symbol of the Palestinian uprising.

A report broadcast Monday by German ARD television said Al-Dura was shot dead by Palestinian militants during the shootout with the soldiers.

ARD said its report by Esther Shapira included photographs and documents proving that contrary to earlier reports the boy had not been shot dead by Israeli soldiers but by Palestinian militants.

Virtually all Israeli media had assumed at the time that Mohammed, was shot dead by soldiers during the 30-minute clash.

The father of Mohammed Al-Dura, Jamal, who was seriously injured in the shootout, rejected the report: "I am 100 percent certain that the Israelis were to blame," he said. "I have medical reports, X-rays and reports by eyewitnesses confirming that we came under fire from Israeli soldiers."

The Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rachman, who filmed the death of Mohammed on September 30, 2000, declined to comment on the ARD report, saying he had to watch the program first.

Abu Rachman had said in his initial testimony that no Palestinian gunmen had fired shots at the time when the boy was killed.

The former GOC Southern Command, Yom-Tov Samia, who headed an investigation into the shooting of Al-Dura, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that the army had erred in hurrying to apologize for the boy's death. Senior IDF officers who issued the apology, said Samia, "made a very grave mistake."

"One day," he added, "it will be proven that the whole story... was one big Palestinian production. And Palestinian propoganda has been riding on this for a long time now."

EXTRA NOTE BY IMRA

[IMRA: Israel Radio's correspondent in Germany reported this morning that the broadcast noted two stages in self-censorship in the coverage of the shooting: the Palestinian cameraman, Talal Abu Rachman, who filmed the death of Mohammed Al-Dura, only provided a few minutes of his film for broadcast and the service that received it released less than a minute of the footage. In addition, a large rock that blocked the view of Al-Dura and his father from the field of vision of IDF forces was replaced by "someone" overnight by a flat rock.]

GERMAN DOCUMENTARY CASTS DOUBT ON AL-DURA DEATH

German documentary casts doubt on Palestinian icon
By Herb Keinon
The Jerusalem Post
March 19, 2002

A documentary aired Sunday night on the German television station ARD has cast doubt on the authenticity of one of the Palestinian icons of the intifada: Muhammed al-Dura.

Al-Dura was the 12-year-old Gazan boy shot to death in a crossfire two days after the beginning of the violence on September 30, 2000, while crouching for safety with his father. The incident was filmed by the France2 television network, and the pictures had a dramatic impact on the public perception of Israel's use of force, with the IDF widely accused of killing the boy.

Israel expressed regret for the tragic incident, though an IDF investigation did not prove conclusively whether it was the IDF or Palestinians firing on IDF troops who shot Al-Dura.

The ARD documentary also did not unequivocally conclude one way or the other, but did raise enough issues to leave the viewer with doubts about the conventional wisdom that Al-Dura was shot by the IDF.

The documentary asked several questions: Who had an interest in killing al-Dura? Did France2 release all its footage? Was it physically possible to hit Al-Dura from the IDF's position? Where are the bullets taken from the boy's body? Why didn't the Palestinians investigate the incident? And who ordered the footage that was then broadcast continuously on Palestinian television?

Daniel Shek, director of the Foreign Ministry's European Division, said the documentary is "very significant" because it leaves doubt.

"I think doubt is healthy, and that even if you have a camera on the spot, you can not be sure that you are seeing everything," Shek said.

But he doesn't necessarily expect the documentary to change people's opinions. "Muhammed al-Dura will remain part of the intifada's mythology, and it will not matter what kind of proof you bring to the contrary," he said.

Shek did express hope the documentary will affect journalists. "I hope this will impact a little on the self-righteousness of some media organizations, and give journalists room for some self-questioning."

Terrorist says orders come from Arafat
By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY
March 14, 2002

A leader of the largest Palestinian terrorist group spearheading suicide bombings and other attacks against Israel says he is following the orders of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"Our group is an integral part of Fatah," says Maslama Thabet, 33, a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. Fatah, headed by Arafat, is the largest group in the Palestinian Authority, the government of the autonomous Palestinian territories.

Thabet spoke from the Tulkarm refugee camp, where he was holed up with about 300 of his heavily armed followers as hundreds of Israeli soldiers swept through the town. Over the past two weeks, Israel has launched massive incursions into Palestinian towns and refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza in search of terrorists.

"The truth is, we are Fatah itself, but we don't operate under the name of Fatah," he said in a recent interview. "We are the armed wing of the organization. We receive our instructions from Fatah. Our commander is Yasser Arafat himself."

Spokesmen for Arafat give differing responses when asked about his ties to Thabet and the brigade. Nabil Abu Rudeineh, Arafat's chief spokesman, says he has never heard of Thabet. "The president has nothing to do with these things, he has nothing to say about this issue," Rudeineh says.

But Mohammed Odwan, Arafat's foreign media spokesman, confirms that the brigade is "loyal to President Arafat."

"They are working for the interests of the Palestinian people," Odwan says. "They are fighting because they think these kind of operations – and I agree – will push forward their independence and their dream of freedom."

Israeli security officials concede Arafat is not involved in directing the on-the-ground operations of militant groups, but they say his regular calls for holy war against Israel's occupation have been taken up as a directive by the extremists.

In a televised address Saturday, as Palestinian terrorists launched suicide attacks in Netanya and Jerusalem, Arafat urged Palestinians to "sacrifice themselves as martyrs in jihad (holy war) for Palestine."

"When Arafat stands in front of a crowd and calls for millions of martyrs to march on Jerusalem and holy war against Israel, he is giving a clear directive to his followers," says Reserve Col. Eran Lerman, former head of research for Israeli Military Intelligence and now the Jerusalem director of the American Jewish Committees. "Marwan Barghouti (secretary-general of Fatah in the West Bank) and the local leaders below him take that directive and transform it into actions... Arafat does not personally approve individual operations, but he provides the money for Barghouti's terrorism."

Barghouti, who often is on the guest list at dinners with Arafat in the Palestinian leader's compound in Ramallah, confirmed last week that one of his lieutenants who was killed in an Israeli assassination was a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

The link between the brigade and Arafat signals a turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It means the Palestinian leadership has openly allied itself with a terrorist group. Palestinian officials openly say dealing in death, not diplomacy, is the only viable way to achieve their end: an independent Palestinian state.

As the Palestinians have ramped up their attacks on Israeli targets, Israel has escalated its response. The result has been some of the worst violence the region has seen in decades. More than 200 people have died – 163 Palestinians and 59 Israelis – since the beginning of March. More than 1,500 people have been killed in the past 18 months, more than 1,000 of them Palestinians. Israel’s incursions into Palestinian territory reached a new level this week: 20,000 troops were deployed, and they searched house-to-house for terrorists and weapons. It has been the biggest Israeli military operation since its invasion of Lebanon in 1982.

The emergence of a radical young branch of Arafat's Fatah faction comes as no surprise to Mahmoud Muhareb, a Palestinian professor of political science at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem. "They are under siege, under blockade and almost at the edge of starvation," he says. "When you dehumanize the life of human beings, they end up feeling their life is not worthy. Five years ago, you might find one suicide bomber in an entire city. Today, it is different. There are many, because they feel there is no meaning to their lives."

Palestinian Authority officials say most members of the brigade receive salaries from the authority. For example, the leader of the brigade in Nablus, Nasser Awes, is a salaried officer in the Palestinian National Security Force, which is one of 14 armed police and security services that report to Arafat.

In the past two weeks, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has claimed responsibility for attacks that include:

* A suicide bombing March 2 in Jerusalem that killed 10 Israelis and injured 44.

* A sniper ambush on a West Bank checkpoint March 3 that killed 10 Israelis and wounded four.

* The shooting attack on a seaside hotel late Saturday in Netanya, north of Tel Aviv, that killed two Israelis and injured dozens.

* An ambush in northern Israel on Tuesday in which gunmen wearing Israeli army uniforms killed six Israelis before soldiers shot two of the attackers dead.

Israeli police say they thwarted a string of other planned attacks by the group in recent weeks.

The brigade, unknown until a year ago, has become the largest armed Palestinian group operating in the West Bank, Gaza and Israel. Unlike two other major Palestinian militant groups, the Islamic fundamentalist Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the brigade is secular. The group grew out of the Fatah youth movement known as the Tanzim. Under the 1993 Oslo peace accords that stated only Palestinian security services may bear arms, Tanzim is an illegal militia of about 10,000 armed young men headed by Barghouti.

As the terrorist wing of Arafat's Fatah faction, the brigade has the support of the largest political and military faction in the Palestinian Authority. Hussein A-Sheikh, a Fatah political leader in the West Bank, seems insulted when asked whether the brigade is under Arafat´s control. "Of course, there is control," he snaps. "What do you think? That we are just a bunch of gangs?"

The Israeli army says Fatah, fueled by the brigade's lethal activities, has surpassed Hamas in Israeli fatalities. Hamas killed 100 Israelis in 2001 and Fatah killed 45, the army says, but since the start of 2002, Fatah has killed 57 Israelis while Hamas has killed 27. The brigade also introduced a lethal twist to its attacks: female suicide bombers. A woman killed an elderly man and wounded 50 people in a suicide attack Jan. 27 in Jerusalem. Another woman blew herself up at a West Bank army checkpoint Feb. 27, injuring two soldiers.

Thabet, who commands the brigade in Tulkarm, attained notoriety a year ago when, with his friend Raed Karmi, he kidnapped and executed two Israeli restaurateurs who had stopped in Tulkarm for lunch. Karmi, founder of the brigade in Tulkarm, died in an explosion in January in a suspected Israeli assassination. Palestinian security forces arrested Thabet last year. He was released, as were dozens of other suspected terrorists.

"Our struggle is against the Israeli occupation," Thabet said. "We are prepared to fight to the last fighter against (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon and his war machine... Israel must pay a heavy price for the atrocities and massacres which they are perpetrating on a daily basis against the Palestinian people."

"FOR ANYONE WHO KNOWS THE REGIONS GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY, THE NIGHTLY NEWS BULLETINS ARE A TORTURE TO WATCH"

The only way to peace
By Peter Hitchens
The Mail on Sunday (UK)
March 10, 2002

Almost everything you think you know about the Middle East is untrue. For anyone who knows the regions geography and history, the nightly news bulletins are a torture to watch, with their sloppy editorialising about 'peace' and their depiction of Arab and Israeli as squabbling children in need of a clip round the ea from wise Western statesmen.

Those world statesmen are not much better. In normal life, it is a sign of being unhinged if you do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. But in the business of Middle East diplomacy such behaviour could earn you a Nobel Peace Prize. Since 1978, Israel has been urged to give up a little more land in return for the promise of peace which always seems to evaporate. The land however is gone for good.

The whole logic is odd and hypocritical. America a vast territorial empire with harmless neighbours to north and south, and vast oceans to east and west urges Israel, one third the size of Florida and with foes on every hand, to give up 'land for peace'. So does Britain, a secure island entirely surrounded by deep water and with no obvious enemies in sight. The phrase 'land for peace' is interesting in itself. It is actually another way of describing the appeasement forced on Czechoslovakia by her supposed friends in 1938. This was also supposed to promise peace, but made the country impossible to defend and opened the gates for invasion a few months later. Those responsible for this cowardly stupidity are still reviled 60 years on. Those who urge it on Israel in the present day are praised.

Israel and territories would fit comfortably within the borders of England with plenty of room to spare, and then look at the absurd shape of it. Any general asked to defend such a country would groan with despair. At one point, between Qalqilya and the Mediterranean, it is so narrow that a tank could cross it in 18 minutes and a jet bomber in 18 seconds. Its only international airport is within easy rocket range of potentially hostile territory. So are its capital and its principal highway. It is worth mentioning that it is also within missile range of Iran and Iraq, not far over the eastern horizon, and that Iraq and Iran agree on only one thing – their loathing of Israel. Within living memory it has three times been the target of invasions from its neighbours, in 1948, 1967, and 1973. During the Gulf War it was bombarded with Iraqi Scud missiles. You might pardon its inhabitants for being a little nervous about their security.

The astounding thing is that so many Israelis, despite this danger, have sought peace treaties with their neighbours based on a trust they have no reason to feel. Almost the entire Israeli media, the country's largest political party, most of its authors, academics and artists, campaign constantly for their own state to make risky concessions to its enemies. Even its conservative leaders have made such concessions, especially by handing back the Sinai desert with its valuable oil and strategically vital territory to the Egypt in 1978. The last left wing premier Ehud Barak was prepared to present half of Jerusalem to Arab control two years ago. He was turned down.

He also sought to give back the Golan Heights to Syria but was rebuffed. This militarily vital piece of ground was originally part of the League of Nations mandate of Palestine when its borders were fixed in 1920. It was then handed over to Britain in a deal with the French, who controlled Syria in 1923. Israel captured in bloody fighting in 1967.

In the same year Israel conquered the famous 'Occupied Territories' which are now supposed to be turned into a Palestinian state alongside Israel. You might think Israel had seized them illegally from their rightful owner. In fact this is not true. They were grabbed by armed force along with the eastern and most holy part of Jerusalem then known as Transjordan in 1948. Transjordan ethnically cleansed all Jews from this land and from its sector of Jerusalem, and promptly renamed itself Jordan. During the 19 years of Jordanian rule, the area was never described as 'Occupied Territory'…

At that time there were also no demands for independence from the Palestinian people, the Gaza strip was gobbled up by Egypt in the same year, to a chorus of silence from the world protest industry.

Israel has many blots on its past and is not a perfect society. Some of its founders were shameful terrorists as many British Army veterans and others have reason to know. During the 1948 war there is little doubt that the Israelis drove some Arabs from their homes, though the Arab radio stations were also urging them to flee to give the Arab invading armies a clear run in their invasion.

But it is not some kind of crude oppressor. Would you know from the BBC that Israel has a million Arab citizens with full civil and voting rights, except that they do not have to serve in the army. This arrangement is far from perfect and in recent years relations have grown worse, but no Arab country gives such rights to Jews, if it even permits them to live within its borders.

Then there are the 'refugees' in these squalid townships. Why are they still there? About 650,000 Arab fled from what is now Israel in 1948. There are now about five million officially classified refugees. More than £1.5 billion has been spent by the UN on housing and feeding them, mainly provided by Western nations. Most of the Arab states refuse to grant them citizenship or to pay towards their maintenance. They have a political interest in preventing this weeping sore from ever healing, since the refugees plight is excellent anti-Israel propaganda. They still promote the idea that they may one day return to their lost homes. For if they did so, Israel would cease to exist, its Jews a minority in an Arab state.

Compare the Palestinians with the 12 million Germans expelled from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Hungary and Roumania after World War Two. All have long since been absorbed into Germany and few seriously dream of returning to their lost homes. This often bloody transfer of population was done with the approval of the great powers of the day, and is now largely forgotten. Or compare them with the 14 million caught in the wrong place in the bloody India-Pakistan partition of 1947. Nearly 8 million Hindus fled from Pakistan and 6 million Moslems streamed out of India. None of them is still in a refugee camp, nor are the 900,000 Jews driven often with great brutality and persecution from Arab countries after the foundation of the State of Israel, most of whom settled in Israel.

Yet none of the supposed efforts for 'peace' has managed to achieve the civilised resettlement in Arab countries of these refugees. Why not, since they share a common religion, language and culture with the whole of the vast Arab world, and might surely have benefited from some of the vast Arab oil wealth.

The reason is that most of the West has lazily accepted the TV news idea that this is a squabble between people who are equally misguided. It has swallowed the Palestinian claim that they are the oppressed. Yet Jewish Israel occupies only a tiny part of the Arab and Muslim Middle East. They have ignored the simple that if Israel is to survive to needs sensible borders. At the moment it would rather have a frontier which is defensible and unrecognised than one which is recognised but cannot be depended.

We are supposed to engage in a war against Terrorism, here is a great opportunity to defeat and finish terrorism in one of its greatest bases. If peace is what the Arab world wants, America is now in a unique position to arrange it. Her military and diplomatic power is at its zenith. Instead of asking Israel to give land for peace, why do we not ask the Arabs who have so much more land so give some of theirs, so that Israel's borders are no longer an invitation to invasion.

At the same the time we could end the grievance which has kept this useless conflict alive, a new Marshall plan could resettle the refugees in a couple of years throughout the area in peace and comfort. Their politically impossible 'right to return' could be bargained away forever. ...Arab world needs to understand that no amount of threats, terror, will shift Western World from its defence of Israzel's right to exist, it must stop using anti-Israel feeling as a safety valve for the discontent in its own mismanaged societies, whose despotism and squalor and brutality rarely if ever feature in the TV news bulletins.

A suicide bomber carrying a powerful explosive device blew himself up in the Moment cafe in Jerusalem's Rehavia neighborhood some 20 minutes ago, killing at least 11 and wounding 54.

One additional person has so far died on arrival in hospital.

The cafe, located on the corner of Aza and Ben-Maimon streets, is less than 100 meters from the residence of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was not at home at the time. The popular cafe was packed with diners when the explosion occurred.

"There was a huge explosion, simply atomic," said one of the cafe's patrons, who only gave his first name, Eran. "There was smoke everywhere and an acrid smell of gunpowder. People were screaming. I've never seen anything like it in my life."

Security forces have sealed off the area and are searching it for possible other explosive devices.

All the casualties have been taken to city hospitals.

In a statement to news agencies, an off-shoot of Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction claimed responsibility for both the Jerusalem attack and the earlier rampage in a Netanya hotel.

In addition to today's attacks, 39 Palestinians, almost all of them armed gunmen, one Israel soldier, and five unarmed Israeli teenagers have been killed in the last two days.

TERRORIST GUNMEN FIRE AND THROW GRENADES IN NETANYA

Terrorist gunmen kill 2, wound 50 in Netanya
The Associated Press
Breaking News (Saturday, 20:50)

Two terrorist gunmen opened fire and threw grenades some 20 minutes ago in the hotel district of Netanya, killing a woman and a man and wounding 50 people.

A border policeman killed the gunmen.

Six of the victims were seriously wounded, four moderately wounded, and the remainder lightly hurt. They were taken to Hillel Yaffe and Laniado hospitals.

The attack occurred at a hotel on Rehov Gad Mahnes, overlooking the sea, which was filled with pedestrians.

Security forces have sealed off all approaches to Netanya and are conducted searches for possible additional terrorists.

Guantanamo, the Auschwitz of the American era: J'accuse!!
By Dr. Rif'at Sayyid Ahmad
Al-Liwa
February 21, 2002

[Translation and Text Courtesy of MEMRI]

Egyptian columnist: Guantanamo is the Real Auschwitz

An article by Islamist Dr. Rif'at Sayyid Ahmad, titled "Guantanamo, the Auschwitz of the American era: J'accuse!!" recently appeared in the Lebanese daily Al-Liwa. The article described the detention of the Al-Qaida and Taliban members at Guantanamo as a war crime. Following are excerpts from the article:

Guantanamo Bay: The American Auschwitz

"... We always see how human beings prey upon each other, how values are trampled, and how tragedies recur. This is exactly what happened, and is still happening, at the 'American Auschwitz' detention camp... excuse me, I meant the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay!! This is one of the worst deeds of the American era in which we live, and one of the most infamous of its crimes, and will go down in history if [history] is written by men of honor, not by traitors. "

"This detention camp reminds me of 'J'accuse' by Emile Zola, who, in 1898, defended Alfred Dreyfus, the French officer of the Jewish faith... This French officer objected to his trial being exploited by the Zionist Jews, led by Herzl. He [also] refused to meet with them because he objected to the Zionist plan and to the establishment of an independent [Jewish] state, and supported Jewish integration into [European] society. He saw [his trial] as fundamentally French, completely unconnected to his religion. This is what spurred Emil Zola to take up the subject in his political-literary article 'J'accuse,' for which he paid a heavy price; he too was sentenced to prison, for a year, for the offense of [publishing] the article..."

"With his article, Emile Zola implanted in the Western conscience principles which, in my opinion, are being completely destroyed today. The first of these is respect for the value of the individual as an individual, regardless of nationality, religion, or the color of his skin. [Second,] the value of resistance to oppression, primarily [oppression] by someone who rules and holds power against the weak and who cannot confront him. [Third,] the value of liberty and the risk of depriving the individual of it..."

"It is interesting how perceptions, values, and history have changed from Zola's time to the war crimes now being committed by the U.S., the length and breadth of the world, primarily in Guantanamo. This detention camp is the outcome of the crime of the destruction of Afghanistan (30,000 dead and hundreds of villages destroyed!!)."

"Has the situation changed? History repeats itself, painfully. This time, we are not talking of a single Dreyfus, but of nearly 2,500 Muslim Dreyufuses, placed in iron cages like animals and treated with a cruelty rarely found even among the wild beasts in the jungles. These are the days of the Stone Age, days in which the difference between human beings, stones, and animals has disappeared!!... This is a cruelty that demands more than one Emil Zola to cry out before the arrogant and bloodthirsty master of the world [President Bush]... 'J'accuse'!!"

"While Zola accused eight high-ranking generals in the French army... I direct my political and moral accusation at the president of the U.S.; his deputy Dick Cheney, that super-racist Jew; his secretary of state, Colin Powell; his intelligence minister [sic]; his national security advisor; his war ministry staff [sic]; his administration in the White House; British Prime Minister Tony Blair... who played the role of procurer, as did all the ministers and presidents of the European Union countries who have participated in and supported the crime being committed at Guantanamo and who, by their declared collaboration or their open silence, have brought to ruin the values that they claim exist in their civilization – the values of Emil Zola, Montesquieu, Russell, and Toynbee. . ."

U.S. Committing War Crimes

"We accuse all these of committing, or participating in committing, the crime of war against humanity taking place before their very eyes in Guantanamo, without opening their mouths. They even exacerbate [the crime and create] another Auschwitz, at the beginning of the new century. Auschwitz, for those who don't know, is the detention camp in which, it is claimed, Hitler burned Jews in gas chambers during World War II."

"The stench of their charred skin filled the nose from dozens of kilometers away. Although I do not believe this exaggerated Jewish yarn, the detention camp [at Auschwitz] did indeed exist, and there was a Nazi crime against all of humanity (not only against the Jews, as they claim)... If the stench filled noses for miles around, then [today] the same stench fills the nose of the 'civilized' West, extorted financially, politically, and educationally, as Holocaust studies are mandatory in European schools, as a supreme value that cannot be ignored or denied."

"If indeed this happened in Hitler's Auschwitz, why can't it happen in Bush's Auschwitz?! Could it be because those whose skin burns in the Cuban sun, in the iron cages exposed [to the sun] from all directions – because these men whose humanity is stripped from them, who are turned into 'objects,' neither men nor beasts – are Muslims?! Is the Western conscience dead, and has it sunk to this level of barbarity?..."

"If what happened in the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (which I oppose from the humane point of view, but nothing more) and the disastrous war in Afghanistan that followed, are termed 'the first war of the century,' then what is happening in Guantanamo is worthy of being called 'the first Auschwitz of the century'..."

Bush Administration Does Not Trust Its 'Impotent Homosexual Military'

"The increased security measures and the restrictions placed on the [Guantanamo] detainees expose the fear of the Muslim that dwells in the heart of the American fighter. These also reveal that the American leadership does not trust the abilities of its impotent and homosexual fighters, who fear for their lives, unlike the [Muslim] prisoners who persistently seek martyrdom..."[1]

[1] Al-Liwa (Lebanon), February 21, 2002.

The media and the Middle East
Editorial
The Jerusalem Post
March 3, 2002

The question of how the international media choose to cover events in the Middle East has long been an irksome issue for Israel and its supporters. Home to one of the largest contingents of foreign journalists in the world, Israel all too often finds itself under the media's magnifying glass, a frequent subject of unflattering, and even biased, coverage. While there are many reporters who work hard to provide balanced and objective views of the situation on the ground, others sadly seem to employ willful misrepresentations and even distortions, in the process betraying not only their craft, but their audiences as well.

Unfortunately, examples of such chicanery abound. After Wafa Idris, a female Palestinian suicide bomber, blew herself up in downtown Jerusalem on January 27, murdering an 81-year old Israeli man and wounding over 150 others, New York Times reporter James Bennet wrote a profile of Idris which seemed designed to elicit sympathy for her. It describes Idris as someone who "raised doves and adored children" and who had "chestnut hair curling past her shoulders." Bennet's account portrays Idris, whose goal was to murder as many innocent Israelis as possible, as a victim of "hardship," and closes with a description of her mother bursting into tears. Rarely, it should be noted, have such moving accounts appeared about any of the nearly 300 Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists in the past 17 months.

In addition to sins of commission, the media frequently commit sins of omission, when important contextual facts are left out, either through sloppiness or by design. An article posted on the CNN Web site on February 17, for example, reported that "Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian in a gun battle Sunday near an army base in northern Israel, and another Palestinian died nearby when a car exploded, a police spokesman said." What the article failed to note was that the two Palestinians in question were in fact terrorists attempting to carry out a double-suicide bombing, which was fortunately thwarted by the police. This detail, when left out of the story by CNN, leaves the reader with an entirely different understanding of what occurred. Similar shenanigans can also be found in other prominent news outlets as well. On January 28, a Palestinian driving a stolen vehicle went on a rampage for several hours, intentionally running down a soldier and a policeman before being shot after a high-speed car chase. The headline in the Times of London the next day read, "Palestinian shot dead in Tel Aviv," giving the cursory reader the false impression that yet another innocent Palestinian had been killed by those nasty Israelis.

It is easy to dismiss such occurrences as inconsequential, for why should it matter what people abroad may think about how Israel handles the crisis with the Palestinians? Such an approach, however, is both short-sighted and self-defeating. Words and ideas are what move people to action, and in this respect the media enjoy immense power to shape attitudes and policy, often wielding considerable influence over decision-makers in Washington and elsewhere. For many years, Israel devoted far too little effort to polishing its image in the Western media, leaving the playing-field open to the Palestinians, who have succeeded in exploiting it to their advantage. The government must redouble its efforts in this regard, and work more aggressively to counter anti-Israel propaganda and media bias abroad.

An important conference being convened today at the College of Judea and Samaria in Ariel addresses just this issue. Titled "Media Accuracy and the Middle East," the conference is being held in honor of former Jerusalem Post editor and media critic David Bar-Illan, who was one of the pioneers in exposing and combating media bias toward Israel. The conference is a fitting tribute to Bar-Illan, whose regular "Eye on the Media" column took aim at media inconsistencies, inventions, and injustice, setting the record straight when others refused to do so.

While his insistence on truth and accuracy in reporting was not always welcome by the subjects of his columns, Bar-Illan was unwavering in his commitment, never shying away from a good, old-fashioned exchange of views. Though Bar-Illan's pen has been silenced due to illness, the launching of this conference, which aims to become an annual event, will ensure that the cause which David Bar-Illan championed with such passion and skill – that of monitoring the media and keeping them honest – will endure.

"SCENES OF HORROR"

Four people remain in critical condition at Jerusalem's Hadassah-University Hospital at Ein Kerem, including an unconscious seven-year-old boy suffering from second-degree burns. Others among the 57 injured, many children, have lost limbs.

"We arrived at the site and saw scenes of horror: young children, old people, women, lying in the road without hands, without legs, blood everywhere and enormous destruction all about," said Eitan, a volunteer with Magen David Adom who helped evacuate the wounded. "Only some had the strength to scream or cry. The quiet was the thing I remember most... This was one of the worst attacks I can remember."

In addition to the dead and wounded, two unhurt babies were accidentally brought to Bikur Holim Hospital without their parents. For hours, hospital staff tried to locate the families, and finally discovered that the parents of one, a baby boy, had been injured and were in another hospital, Shaare Zedek. Other relatives were summoned to take him home. Later, the second baby's mother was located. She had also been in Shaare Zedek, accompanying her wounded son.

The pavement near the Mahane Yisrael centre, which hosts secular Jews seeking to experience the ultra-Orthodox Sabbath was spattered with body parts, and the white shirts of several men were flecked with blood.

Many people were seriously wounded. "I saw one man holding his intestines in his hands, and with his arm bleeding and torn up in two places," said Shlomo Beer, who ran out of his yeshiva (Jewish religious school) dormitory barely 50 yards from the explosion.

Passing cars ferried the wounded to hospital before the arrival of the ambulances.

PEACE GROUPS RALLY IN JERUSALEM DEPRIVES POLICE OF VITAL MANPOWER DURING TERROR ATTACK

The "Peace Coalition" of left-wing Israeli groups held a protest march in Jerusalem last night to the prime minister's residence, calling on the government to "get out of the territories and get back to ourselves."

The march started at Kikar Zion when participants, which included Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg, opposition leader Yossi Sarid, and Meretz MKs Zahava Gal-On and Mossy Raz received word of the terrorist attack in Jerusalem.

Police pleaded with the marchers to call off the rally because officers providing security for the march were needed to deal with the attack, a few hundred meters away, but after a minute's silence for the victims, the marchers insisted on continuing.

I attach four news reports about last night's terror attacks.

-- Tom Gross