FULL ITEMS

THE AP STORY ON THE CEASEFIRE

Palestinian militant groups approve deal to end violence
The Associated Press
June 29, 2003

The militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups announced a three-month suspension of attacks against Israel on Sunday – effective immediately – a breakthrough in attempts to end almost three years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

Israel expressed skepticism about the announcement. The announcement came as Israelis and Palestinians worked out details of an Israeli troop pullback in the Gaza Strip, a condition of the so-called road map to peace and a Palestinian state by 2005. Israeli reports said the pullback could start Sunday, while Palestinians said they expected it to begin Monday. The timing of the militants' truce declaration came as a surprise, after Palestinian officials said it would be delayed at least until Monday because of political infighting in Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, a partner in the three-way deal.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad apparently did not want to wait for Fatah to resolve its internal agreements. In response to the announcement, Fatah officials said they were still not ready to join the declaration. Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader, read the truce announcement in a phone call to The Associated Press.

"The two movements (Hamas and Islamic Jihad) decided to suspend military operations against the Zionist enemy for three months, starting today," Rantisi said.

Islamic Jihad leader Mohammed al-Hindi confirmed that the truce took effect Sunday.

"This is a joint declaration between Islamic Jihad and Hamas and I think our brothers in Fatah are going to declare their position soon,'' al-Hindi told the AP.

Israeli officials said they fear the truce will be used by militants to regroup for more attacks against Israel. The government wants the Palestinian Authority to dismantle militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as required by the U.S.-backed road map to Mideast peace and Palestinian statehood by 2005.

"We are not holding our breath," Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said. "We here in Israel fully support the road map, and we want it to be implemented chapter and verse."

Rantisi reiterated a list of demands – although not preconditions – for the suspension of attacks. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have said they want Israel to halt all military strikes, including targeted killings of wanted militants such as a recent attack on Rantisi.

The groups also want a release of Palestinian prisoners. "We consider ourselves free from this initiative if the Israeli enemy does not implement all the conditions," Rantisi said. The Fatah Central Committee met Sunday to try to defuse its crisis over the truce. Key members of the group – led by Arafat and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas – were upset at being kept out of negotiations. Talks with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the main political rivals of Fatah, were largely handled by Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader jailed by Israel. "It is impossible to recognize an agreement prepared by one person who is in prison,'' said Sakher Habash, a member of the Fatah Central Committee. Fatah members angered by the back-channel talks insisted Sunday that the introduction to the document be changed and that the U.S.-backed "road map" be mentioned, according to officials close to the dispute. Such an addition would be unacceptable to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have rejected the plan.

Palestinian Foreign Affairs Minister Nabil Shaath said after the meeting that Fatah remained committed to the truce, but that factions might issue separate statements.

"If we cannot agree on one joint declaration by all the factions, then each faction will make a declaration using whatever political language they choose. The important thing is a commitment to the cease-fire," he said. It was not clear if Shaath's comments reflected the opinions of all committee members.

Sunday's renewed debate in the central committee came even though Fatah endorsed the truce declaration in principle Saturday, said Palestinian Parliament Speaker Ahmed Qureia, a committee member. Over the weekend, the three main groups held talks with 10 smaller factions on joining the truce. Most factions were expected to go along with the deal but none was part of the joint Hamas-Islamic Jihad announcement.

In one snag, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction, told Palestinian officials Sunday that while it would not join a declaration, it would not violate a truce.

A Fatah-affiliated militia, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, also said in a leaflet that it rejected the truce. The militia consists of several armed gangs, however, and it was unclear whether the statement reflected the majority. It is widely believed that the militia could be brought in line with pressure from Arafat and Barghouti. In Jerusalem, meanwhile, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice held talks Sunday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, a day after meeting with Abbas. Rice is talking to both sides about implementation of the road map.

Israel Army Radio said Rice and Sharon discussed details of Israel's troop pullback and an easing of restrictions, including a release of Palestinian prisoners and the possible rebuilding of the Palestinians' international airport in southern Gaza. Israeli troops destroyed the runway in 2001. During Saturday's meeting, Rice invited Abbas to the White House in the coming days, and he accepted, a senior Palestinian official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The White House did not immediately confirm the invitation.

Abbas would be the first Palestinian leader in three years at the White House. President Bush has boycotted Arafat, saying he is tainted by terror, while Sharon has met repeatedly with the president. Abed Rabbo said the Palestinians told Rice of the importance of getting Israel to halt attacks against militants and release prisoners, including Barghouti. "We told her that this would create a positive atmosphere to implement the road map,'' the cabinet minister said. Israeli media said troops could start pulling out of the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun as soon as Sunday night. However, Palestinian Brig. Gen. Abdel Razek Majaide, head of public security in the strip, said both sides first wanted to tour the areas in question, and the withdrawal would start Monday morning.

During the meeting, Israeli officials agreed to Palestinian demands for greater freedom of movement and the lifting of a travel ban on Palestinians under age 35, Majaide said. Israel will issue entry permits for 10,000 day laborers and 5,000 merchants, he said. Israel sealed crossing points from Palestinian territories at the start of fighting, nearly three years ago, preventing more than 100,000 Palestinians from reaching jobs inside Israel. The security deal, negotiated by Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan and Israel's Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, came with an Israeli pledge to halt targeted killings of wanted Palestinians – a key militant demand for continuing with a truce. Palestinians in turn agreed to act against what Israel calls "ticking bombs'' – assailants on their way to attack Israelis. But Israel has reserved the right to go after assailants themselves if Palestinians do not.

 

STATEMENT OF INITIATIVE

An unofficial translation by an Arabic language expert of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad declaration

Out of our desire for the unity of the Palestinian ranks at this dangerous phase which our people and our cause are going through, and in order to protect our national unity achieved through the intifada and the resistance and documented by the blood of the martyrs, and as our contribution to consolidating Palestinian national dialogue on the basis of adherence to the rights of our people, and in order to protect our internal front from the danger of schism and confrontation, and in order to prevent the enemy from having any excuse to wreck it, and in an assertion of the legitimate right to resist the occupation as a strategic option until the end of the Zionist occupation of our homeland and until we achieve all our national rights, and in response to efforts by many in the Palestinian and Arab arena who care about the unity of the Palestinian national ranks, we declare the following initiative:

A. Suspension of the military operations against the Zionist enemy for three months, effective today, in return for the following conditions:

1. An immediate cessation of all forms of Zionist aggression against our Palestinian people including incursions, demolitions, closures and sieges on cities, villages and refugee camps. This includes the siege imposed on President Yasser Arafat, house demolitions, levelling of agricultural land and assaults against land, property and Christian and Islamic holy sites, especially the holy Al-Aqsa Mosque. In addition, the immediate cessation of all individual assassination operations, massacres, all arrests and deportations against our people, leaders, cadres and fighters.

2. The release of all prisoners and detainees, Palestinian and Arab, from occupation prisons without condition or restriction and the return to their homes first and foremost of those who have spent long periods and those with lengthy sentences, women, children, the sick and elderly.

B. In the event that the enemy does not heed these conditions and commitments, or breaches any of them, we see ourselves unencumbered by this initiative and we hold the enemy responsible for the consequences.

Hamas (Islamic Resistance Movement)
Islamic Jihad

29.6.2003

THE BBC

Here is some additional information on the contents of the program which aired yesterday on BBC World, and which the Israeli government has called the "final straw" in the BBC's campaign to demonize the state of Israel. (The program aired several hours after my dispatch "Israel breaks links with BBC in anger at 'demonization'" was sent, which is why I include this new information in this follow-up dispatch.)

The program compared Israel's democracy to the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Both were said to possess weapons of mass destruction.

The BBC claimed (wrongly) that an Israeli commission of inquiry found Ariel Sharon "personally responsible" for the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Lebanon.

According to press reports, no mention was made by the BBC that a Christian Lebanese militia committed the killings, or that the 1983 Kahan Commission stated that "no Israeli was directly responsible for the events which occurred in the camps." (Sharon, who was then defense minister, was chastised for not anticipating that the Christian Phalangists would attack Palestinian civilians in revenge for the various PLO massacres of Christian civilians in Lebanon.)

The program also quoted Palestinians who accused Israel of using new, mysterious gases against Palestinians.

When asked by the BBC why Israel would not reveal its military secrets, Shimon Peres told the BBC: "You are now having a dialogue with yourself."

Tom Gross adds:

The BBC is the world's biggest television and radio news broadcaster. BBC World – "The BBC's 24 Hour Global TV News Channel" – is now widely watched as the international television station of choice in many Middle East, Asian and African countries.

BBC World Service Radio also attracts 153 million listeners daily.

The BBC's reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been widely criticized in Israel and elsewhere as unbalanced and supportive of Palestinian terrorism. Israeli cable television operators dropped the BBC World news channel from their roster of stations in April.

Here are some other examples of BBC reporting extracted from my own previous writings on the subject:

* In 2001, the BBC's then chief Jerusalem correspondent Hillary Anderson began a report by saying: "Deep underground in Bethlehem are the remnants of an atrocity so vile, so far back in history, King Herod's slaughter of the innocents." (The camera then shows a pile of skulls without identifying them.) Then Anderson moved on to the deaths of Palestinian children, evoking Herod's Massacre of the Innocents, to remind the viewer that Jews, who tried to kill the infant Christ, are busy killing innocent children once again.

The allegation that Israel deliberately kills Palestinian children is horrible and deeply upsetting to anyone who cares about the truth. But equally upsetting is the possibility that Hillary Anderson and her producers at the BBC, are so ignorant of the history of anti-Semitism, that they do not know that the myth of Herod's slaughter is the original anti-Semitic blood libel, which arguably gave rise to centuries of persecution and pogroms, culminating in the Holocaust.

* In June 2001, a flagship BBC "Panorama" documentary, entitled "The Accused" singled out Ariel Sharon from among all the world's leaders and suggested he should be indicted for war crimes. (Shortly after this, attempts to have Sharon indicted in Belgium for "war crimes" intensified. The BBC program was shown in Belgium, as elsewhere.) The BBC regarded this "Panorama" program as so important that they aired it four times in a single weekend (a highly unusual policy for the BBC).

In the 1980s Sharon successfully sued Time Magazine for similar libels in connection with his alleged failure to prevent the Sabra and Shatilla massacre. The BBC has simply ignored the overwhelming evidence and ruling for Sharon in the case against Time magazine.

* On May 6, 2001, Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC's Arabic service Gaza correspondent for the past ten years, told a Hamas rally in Gaza on that "journalists and media organizations [are] waging the campaign shoulder-to-shoulder together with the Palestinian people." The best the BBC could do in response to requests at the time from the Israeli government that they distance themselves from these remarks, was to issue a statement saying, "Fayad's remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC."

 

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS RELEASE

Press release by Oxford University public relations office.
June 2003

Concerning Comments by Professor Andrew Wilkie

A spokesperson for the University of Oxford said:

"Our staff may hold strongly felt personal opinions. Freedom of expression is a fundamental tenet of University life, but under no circumstances are we prepared to accept or condone conduct that appears to, or does, discriminate against anyone on grounds of ethnicity or nationality, whether directly or indirectly. This candidate is entitled to submit an application and to have it dealt with fairly according to our normal criteria.

"Professor Wilkie has issued a personal apology regarding remarks he made by e mail to an applicant for a research degree at Oxford. An immediate and thorough investigation of this matter is now being carried out in accordance with the University's procedures and a report will be presented to the Vice-Chancellor next week."

Note to news editors from Oxford University:

The full text of Professor Wilkie's apology is:

"I recognise and apologise for any distress caused by my e mail of 23 June and the wholly inappropriate expression of my personal opinions in that document. I was not speaking on behalf of Oxford University or any of its constituent parts. I entirely accept the University of Oxford's Equal Opportunities and Race Equality policies."

FULL ARTICLES

THE BBC “DEMONISES THE ISRAELIS AND GIVES OUR TERRORIST ENEMIES REASONS TO ATTACK US”

Israel breaks links with BBC in anger at 'demonisation'
By Christopher Walker
The Times (of London)
June 28, 2003

Israel broke all contact with the BBC yesterday in protest at its repeated "demonisation" of the country and today's planned showing on BBC World of a critical documentary on Israel's nuclear, biological and chemical arsenal. The move will involve a refusal to put up official spokesmen for BBC interviews. There will be visa restrictions, not imposed on other news organisations in Israel, to ensure that the bureau chief is rotated every few months and to make it hard for BBC staff to report.

"The BBC will discover that bureaucracy can be applied with goodwill or without it. And after the way that they have repeatedly tried to delegitimise the state of Israel, we, as hosts, have none left for them," Daniel Seaman, director of the government press office, told The Times.

"We see the well-known pro-Arab touch of the Foreign Office and the traditional anti-Semitism of parts of Britain's Establishment in the way they are acting against us."

Also planned are non-co-operation in all requests for assistance with such restrictions as military road blocks in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. A decision to expel all BBC correspondents has been put on ice, but not dismissed out of hand. The first test comes today when the BBC requests that Israeli officials go to its studios to comment on the weekend visit of Condoleezza Rice, the US National Security Adviser, who is to have talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders about the "road map" to peace.

Mr Seaman, 42, said the sanctions had been decided at an angry meeting of representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister, the Foreign Ministry and the government press office because of what was seen as an overall BBC attitude towards Israel "verging on the anti-Semitic". They were in reaction to a series of programmes which had sought "to delegitimise Israel and showed some of the attitudes once familiar in Der Stürmer (the Nazi journal)."

Mr Seaman added: "Our complaint is with the BBC as an organisation rather than its bureau here, which does try from time to time to rectify its mistakes. The weapons programme, which contains the ridiculous false assertion that we used nerve gas against the Palestinians, was the last straw.

"We decided that we had to draw a red line rather than just complain about a consistent attitude in which successive BBC programmes attempt to place us in the same context as totalitarian, axis-of-evil countries such as Iraq and Iran."

"The attitude of the BBC is more than a pure journalistic matter; it is dangerous to the existence of the state of Israel because it demonises the Israelis and gives our terrorist enemies reasons to attack us. There is no dialogue between Israel and the BBC and no recognition inside the corporation of the sensitivity of a people who have faced attempted annihilation. The questions about nuclear weapons asked by the BBC are never directed against the US or Britain. Mr Sharon is never mentioned without some critical reference to his alleged right-wing tendencies or military past, while Islamic terrorists are politely referred to as 'militants' out of a reluctance by the BBC to upset Muslims by telling the truth."

The final element in Israel's frustration was the BBC's promotion of the programme Israel's Secret Weapon, shown in Britain in March on BBC Two, with a series of provocative questions onscreen: "Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear weapons? Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical weapons capabilities? Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections? Which country jailed its nuclear whistleblower for 18 years?" Israel said it would refuse to put up spokesmen to be interviewed on BBC programmes and would not co-operate with BBC requests for help in such matters as correspondents getting through road blocks and Tel Aviv airport, and in the issuing of press cards.

Israel has applied heavy pressure on the BBC not to re-broadcast the weapons programme. The sections that have caused such anger in Israel compare Israel to Iraq and raise the question of why the world had demanded UN inspections in Iraq, but not similar inspections on Israel.

Andrew Steele, chief of the BBC's six-strong bureau in Jerusalem, which includes the correspondents Orla Guerin, Jeremy Cooke and James Reynolds, said that he had not even seen the programme. He had referred all queries to the BBC press office in London.

Richard Sambrook, Director of BBC News said last night: "We regret that the Israelis felt the need to take this action but we stand behind the veracity of the film."

The questions posed by the BBC trailers

Which country in the Middle East has undeclared nuclear weapons?

Which country in the Middle East has undeclared biological and chemical capabilities?

Which country in the Middle East has no outside inspections?

Which country jailed its nuclear whistleblower for 18 years?

 

EMAIL FROM ANDREW WILKIE

From: "Andrew Wilkie"
To: "Amit Duvshani"
Sent: Monday, June 23, 2003 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: PhD application

Dear Amit Duvshani,

Thank you for contacting me, but I don't think this would work. I have a huge problem with the way that the Israelis take the moral high ground from their appalling treatment in the Holocaust, and then inflict gross human rights abuses on the Palestinians because the (the Palestinians) wish to live in their own country.

I am sure that you are perfectly nice at a personal level, but no way would I take on somebody who had served in the Israeli army. As you may be aware, I am not the only UK scientist with these views but I'm sure you will find another suitable lab if you look around.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Wilkie
Nuffield Professor of Pathology,
Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine,
The John Radcliffe,
Headington,
Oxford OX3 9DS,
UK.

Fax (44)-1865-222500
awilkie@worf.molbiol.ox.ac.uk

 

BBC REFUSES TO SAY SORRY FOR IRAQ REPORTING

BBC refuses to say sorry for Iraq reporting
AFP (Agence France Presse)
June 26, 2003

The BBC dug in its heels and refused to bow to demands by British Prime Minister Tony Blair's "sultan of spin" to apologize for its reporting on the Iraq war and weapons of mass destruction.

Blair's powerful director of communications, Alastair Campbell, took the world's biggest and best-known public broadcaster to task Wednesday when he appeared before a parliamentary committee.

He told the House of Commons foreign affairs committee that there was no truth to a BBC radio report, quoting an unnamed source, that Downing Street embellished a September 2002 dossier on Iraq to beef up the case for war.

"In relation to the BBC story: it is a lie, it was a lie, it's a lie that's continually repeated and until we get an apology for it I will continue making sure people know it's a lie," Campbell said.

But, speaking on BBC radio Thursday, the network's director of news Richard Sambrook snapped back at Campbell for "seriously misrepresenting" BBC journalism.

"He said we had accused him and the prime minister of lying. That's not true. We haven't," Sambrook said.

"He said we accused the prime minister of misleading the Commons. We have never said any such thing. He said we were trying to suggest the prime minister had led the country into war on a false basis. We've never suggested that," he said.

"He said the BBC had an anti-war agenda. That's untrue, we have no agenda. Finally he said we've not apologised. Well, that is true – because we have nothing to apologise for."

Sambrook spoke on the Today program, the early-morning soap box of Britain's political class, whose defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan had orignally reported the allegation about the September dossier.

It was made by an unidentified individual close to the intelligence community who, Sambrook said, was "a senior, credible and reliable source."

According to the BBC, a one-sentence claim in the 50-page dossier – that Iraq could deploy chemical and biological weapons within just 45 minutes – was inserted under political pressure from Downing Street.

Many assumed that that pressure came straight from Campbell, a former tabloid political reporter with no shortage of enemies among politicians and journalists who resent the power he wields behind the scenes.

As Blair's media strategist, and first official spokesman, the 46-year-old Campbell is nicknamed "the sultan of spin" for his presumed ability to manipulate the news media.

Though nominally part of the government, the British Broadcasting Corp. – a vast web of radio stations, television channels, magazines and Internet sites, largely financed by a rigorously enforced tax on television sets – is fiercely protective of its editorial independence.

Gilligan, who like many BBC star reporters also writes for non-BBC print media, stood by his story when he appeared before the foreign affairs committee last week.

It is looking into the decisions that led to Britain's participation in the Iraq war. On Friday it will hear from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw for the second time this week, but behind closed doors.

Blair has ordered a separate inquiry by parliament's intelligence and security committee. Though it usually meets in camera, he has promised that its findings will be published.

 

BLAIR AND THE BBC

Blair-BBC
By Michael Mcdonough
The Associated Press
June 27, 2003

The British Broadcasting Corp. on Thursday sharply rejected a charge by Prime Minister Tony Blair's communications director that it lied about the government's use of intelligence on Iraqi weapons.

The dispute centers on a BBC report that Blair's spokesman, Alastair Campbell, was involved in redrafting an intelligence service dossier to emphasize a claim that Iraq could deploy chemical or biological weapons within 45 minutes of Saddam Hussein giving the order.

On Wednesday, Campbell testified before a parliamentary inquiry into the government's use of intelligence to bolster its case that the threat from Iraqi weapons justified military action.

"I find it incredible ... that people can report, based on one single anonymous, uncorroborated source ... that the prime minister, the Cabinet, the intelligence agencies, people like myself, connived to persuade Parliament to send British forces into action on a lie," Campbell told the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee.

"Until the BBC acknowledge that is a lie, I will keep banging on ... and they better issue an apology pretty quick."

But the director of BBC News, Richard Sambrook, on Thursday denied that the network had ever accused Blair of lying and leading the country to war on a false premise.

"We have never suggested anything of that kind," he told BBC radio. "We're not going to apologize for something we haven't said. ... I think Alastair Campbell seriously misrepresented the BBC's journalism."

Sambrook defended a report by BBC defense correspondent Andrew Gilligan claiming that British intelligence sources were unhappy about the prominence of the 45-minute claim in a dossier published last September.

"We have always said that we had one senior and credible source in the intelligence services who told us that some of those involved in compiling the September dossier were unhappy about how it was finally presented," he said.

In Wednesday's hearing, Campbell sought to discredit the initial BBC report on the 45-minute claim.

"I've seen the defense correspondent change his story time and time again, talk about one source, then there were four sources, then his sources were journalists on other newspapers," Campbell told the inquiry. "If that is BBC journalism, then God help them."

But Sambrook robustly rejected that attack.

"I'm entirely satisfied that it is a senior, credible and reliable source," he said. "And frankly ... I don't think the BBC needs to be taught lessons in the use of sources by a communications department which plagiarized a 12-year-old thesis and distributed it unattributed."

The government has admitted it lifted material from a graduate thesis posted on the Internet in another dossier on Iraq published in February.

Campbell pressed again, writing to Sambrook on Thursday afternoon to ask whether the BBC stood by its reports on the September dossier, and how it obtained them. He said he wanted a reply "by the end of the day."

Sambrook issued a statement saying, "We stand by our entire story," and adding, "In my experience, this is an unprecedented level of pressure on the BBC from Downing Street.

"The BBC will respond properly to these matters, but not to a deadline dictated by Mr. Campbell," Sambrook said.

FULL ARTICLES

EGYPT BANS “MATRIX RELOADED” BECAUSE THE FILM IS TOO VIOLENT

Egypt bans 'Matrix Reloaded'
Associated Press
Cairo, Egypt
June 15, 2003

Back in the day, racy productions would be described as "Banned in Boston." Now, they're criticized in Cairo.

Officials in Egypt have banned the box office hit "The Matrix Reloaded." The ban is done on religious grounds because the film is too violent.

The head of the Egyptian censorship body says the country's highest committee decided not to let the movie be shown. An official with the censorship body says there's no one scene the panel had problems with; it was the movie as a whole.

But in a statement the committee said it did like the high-tech effects, which they describe as "fabulous."

The "Matrix" sequel, starring Keanu Reeves is still among the top five movies in the United States and has taken in more than $200 million in four weeks.

 

“SHEIKH SAUD DOES NOT FEEL THERE IS A PLACE FOR WOMEN IN TODAY’S ARAB SOCIETY”

Emirate prince ousted in women's rights row
By Susan Bisset
The Daily Telegraph (London)
June 15, 2003

The ruling family of one of the seven United Arab Emirates has deposed its crown prince over claims that he was too sympathetic to women's rights.

An official decree issued yesterday announced that Sheikh Khalid bin Saqr al-Qassimi, 63, had been dethroned in favour of one of his younger brothers.

Sheikh Khalid had been the de facto ruler of the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah for the past four years since his elderly father, Sheikh Saqr bin Mohammed al-Qassimi, became frail. Sheikh Saqr is one of the world's longest-serving heads of state, having been ruler since 1948.

The decree appoints Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al-Qassimi, 48, as the crown prince, replacing Sheikh Khalid who has been heir to the throne for 37 years, according to WAM, the official Emirates news agency.

WAM reported that it was not immediately clear why Sheikh Khalid was removed. However, a government employee close to the ruling family said that the effective coup centred on Sheikh Khalid's wife, Shaikah Fawqai al-Qassimi, a playwright and women's rights activist in her early 40s.

"Sheikh Khalid was told, at a meeting with his father and six of his brothers, that he had to banish his wife from the emirate and demolish the ladies' club that helps women here if they have problems," said the employee.

"She has done a lot to bring the country forward, but Sheikh Saud does not feel there is a place for women in today's Arab society. Sheikh Khalid said he would think about it, but they did not give him time to come back with his answer – they just issued the decree."

Last night, about 1,000 supporters of Sheikh Khalid, including tribal leaders, gathered outside his palace in a peaceful protest against his brother. The government employee said that the army fired machinegun bursts over the protesters' heads. "There were also about 50 to 60 police vehicles. The crowd has now dispersed, but it is too soon to say what will happen. It's going to be a very long night."

Before his appointment as crown prince, Sheikh Saud chaired Ras al-Khaimah's royal court, which handles mainly administrative responsibilities. He is the son of Sheikh Saqr's third wife, the daughter of one of the UAE's most prominent businessmen, Ahmed al-Ghurair.

Sheik Saqr has six other sons, from three wives.

The dethronement of Ras al-Khaimah's crown prince is the first such dramatic shake-up in the history of the seven emirates, which are comprised of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras al-Khaimah, Umm al-Qaiwain Sharjah, Fujairah and Ajman.

The crown princes are appointed by each emirate's ruler and approved by the federal government in Abu Dhabi.

A coup attempt in the early 1990s in Sharjah was put down by the federal government.

Ras al-Khaimah is one of the poorer emirates. Its economy survives largely on the generosity of neighbouring emirates. It has no oil and relies on traditional trades of fishing and dhow building. Its population of 170,000 live with traditions and values unchanged for many generations.

 

SAUDI-BEHEADING

Saudi-beheading
The Associated Press
June 15, 2003

A Saudi man convicted of murder was beheaded in public in the eastern city of Ihsa, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Mohammed bin Jowainan al-Arjani al-Ajmi was found guilty of killing Musfir bin Mohammed al-Arjani al-Ajmi following an argument, the statement said.

Al-Ajmi's execution on Saturday, carried out by sword, brings the number of beheadings in the kingdom this year to 13. A Pakistani convicted with drug trafficking was beheaded Friday.

The statement said al-Ajmi drove after his victim, who was on foot, and ran over him over repeatedly until he died. It was unclear how many times al-Ajmi drove over his victim. Their relationship also was unclear.

Last year, at least 49 people – including two women – were beheaded. At least 81 people were beheaded in 2001.

Under laws rooted in a strict interpretation of Islam, Saudi Arabia imposes the death penalty for murder, rape, apostasy, drug trafficking and armed robbery. Executions are carried out in public to serve as a deterrent.

 

AT LEAST 13 PEOPLE HAVE BEEN PUT TO DEATH IN SAUDI ARABIA THIS YEAR

Saudi Arabia beheads Pakistani for drug smuggling
Reuters
June 16, 2003

Saudi Arabia, which implements strict Islamic sharia law, beheaded a Pakistani man on Monday for smuggling heroin into the conservative kingdom, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The execution raised the number of people reported to have been put to death in the country this year to at least 13.

The Gulf Arab state executes murderers, rapists and drug smugglers, usually by public beheading.

At least 45 people were executed last year, 75 in 2001 and 121 in 2000.

 

AMERICAN WOMAN TAKES REFUGE IN CONSULATE IN JEDDAH

American woman takes refuge in consulate in Jeddah
Reuters
June 19, 2003

An American-born woman married to a Saudi man who fled to the U.S. consulate in Jeddah last weekend with her children said on Thursday she would stay there until given safe passage to the United States.

In a telephone interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" show, Sarah Saga said she would not leave the consulate because she feared her husband and father would hurt her and her children.

"It's very dangerous for me to go out of the consulate. I have no choice but to stay here until I can take my kids with me," Saga said.

"The kids might be taken. There is my father out there and my husband. They are both angry and I don't know what they are capable of," she added.

Saga has been living in Saudi Arabia for the past 18 years after being separated from her American mother, Debbie Dournier when her father took her to Saudi Arabia.

Saga said she had been told she could stay in the consulate until her case was resolved.

Under Saudi law, husbands have a strong claim to custody over the children, who are considered Saudi citizens. The husbands also have the right to decide whether their wives and children can leave the country.

The U.S. State Department has been widely criticized over the past two years, both for turning an American woman away from the embassy in the Saudi capital Riyadh and for failing to secure access to children held by Saudi fathers.

 

U.S. PUTS 15 COUNTRIES ON SANCTIONS LIST FOR HUMAN TRAFFICKING

U.S. puts 15 countries on sanctions list for human trafficking
By Yoichi Kosukegawa
Kyodo News
June 12, 2003

The United States designated 15 countries, including North Korea and Myanmar, Wednesday as subject to potential U.S. economic sanctions for insubstantial efforts to combat international human trafficking. The 13 other countries the U.S. State Department cited as subject to potential sanctions in its third annual Trafficking in Persons Report are Belize, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Georgia, Greece, Haiti, Kazakstan, Liberia, Sudan, Suriname, Turkey and Uzbekistan.

"In our 21st century world, where freedom and democracy are spreading to every continent, it is appalling and morally unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are exploited, abused and enslaved by peddlers in human misery," Secretary of State Colin Powell said in releasing the report at a news conference.

The U.S. Trafficking Victims Protection Act, enacted in October 2000, requires the department to submit an annual report to Congress on the status of severe forms of trafficking in persons.

The department classifies countries into three tiers. The 15 countries were put on the Tier 3 list of those that do not fully comply with the act's minimum standards and are making insignificant efforts to come into compliance.

Tier 2 countries, such as Japan and Canada, do not fully comply but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance. Tier 1 countries are in full compliance with the act's minimum standards.

The number of Tier 3 countries was lower than the 19 cited in last year's report.

For the first time, Tier 3 countries could face sanctions including losing certain types of U.S. assistance. The sanctions would be effective Oct. 1, though the U.S. government can waive any penalties.

Among this year's 15 Tier 3 countries, North Korea was cited as a source country for persons trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation and forced labor.

"Economic and political conditions in North Korea drive large numbers of Koreans to seek a way out of the country, putting them at risk of victimization by traffickers," the report said.

North Korean women who enter northern China may be sold as brides and exploited into prostitution while people are transported to work in isolated regions of Russia for forced labor to pay down the North Korean government's foreign debt to Moscow, it said.

The report also listed Myanmar for allowing continued internal forced labor by the military.

Many industrialized countries were designated Tier 1 countries, defined as those that fully comply with the act's minimum standards, but Japan was again listed in the Tier 2 category of countries that do not yet fully comply with the minimum standards but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance.

"Japan is a country of destination for men, women, and children trafficked for sexual exploitation," the report said, adding that victims come mainly from China, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the Philippines, Colombia and Eastern Europe.

"Japan's law enforcement and immigration response is seriously hindered because government officials, unclear on the nature of trafficking, tend to define the crime too narrowly and disagree among themselves about who is a trafficking victim," it said.

A total of 75 countries appear on the Tier 2 list, up from the 52 cited in last year's report. Other Tier 2 countries listed in this year's report include Canada, China, Indonesia, Laos and Mexico.

There are 26 Tier 1 countries and territories in this year's report, including Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates. Last year's Tier 1 list had 18 countries and territories.

 

EGYPTIAN BIOLOGIST: ISRAEL PRODUCES ANTI-PALESTINIAN BACTERIA

Egyptian Biologist: Israel produces anti-Palestinian bacteria
The Media Line
May 23, 2003

Are Jews still poisoning wells? This prevalent anti-Jewish allegation from the dark ages took a modern form on Wednesday. The accuser is an Egyptian Professor of micro-genetic engineering, Professor Wagdi 'Abd Al-Fatah Sawahil. Sawahil gave the lecture at the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-up in Abu Dabi, a center supported by the Arab League.

"Israel not only uses chemical drugs as means for getting information from Palestinian prisoners and detainees, but it also intends to use the Palestinians as guinea pigs," said Dr. Sawahil during his lecture. "The Israelis are designing and producing new types of diseases, viruses, bacteria and some genetically modified substances, which specifically attack body cells that contain a Palestinian hereditary substance."

"Nonsense," says Adam Friedman, a Professor from the Genetics Department at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem told The Media Line. "It's impossible to specifically target genes from a particular ethnic group. Furthermore, the Palestinians don't have a pool of distinctive genes. Note also that Palestinians – and Arabs in general – have genes very similar to those of Jews. It is worth checking where this so-called scientist studied and the source of his professional knowledge."

"This isn't the first time that the Egyptians have accused Israel of a series of scientific 'developments' targeted at Egypt," says Dr. Rivka Yadlin, a researcher at the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University. "Israel was accused of exporting poisonous plants during the nineties; it was accused of standing behind rat epidemics as well as developing aphrodisiac chewing gum meant to lure virgins. Developing an anti-Palestinian virus is just as ludicrous as these allegations."

In his lecture, Prof. Sawahil also attacked the U.S. and Britain. "One of the objectives of the Anglo-American war on Iraq was to eliminate Iraqi scholars, experts and scientists" he said. "The object of this is to implement the Israeli plan to eliminate all Arab atom scientists... and to intimidate Arab intellectuals to stay clear of fields of research which Washington regards as prohibited... because they pose a threat to the Israeli entity."

The Professor doesn't mention Israel specifically, instead calling it "the Israeli entity." This is a reincarnation of the term "Zionist entity" used by Arab states for many years after Israel was established, aimed to show they do not recognize Israel. Various Islamic organizations such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad still use this term at times.

"The war on Iraq caused not only dead and wounded but also the destruction of infrastructure and archeological sites" continued professor Sawahil. He claims that the war also caused "medical and environmental hazards as a result of the occupying forces using a dreadful amount of weapons with vast power of death and destruction, including depleted Uranium, prohibited by international [agreements]."

"The future of the Arab nation depends on the development of science, and Arab businessmen and investors should take on the task of developing science by financially supporting research institutes... Moreover, there is a vital need for Arab scientists living outside [of the Arab states] and within the Arab nation to exchange knowledge and experience" Sawahil concluded.

The Media Line asked for the response of the Israeli General Security Service (Shin Bet) on the subject. When asked if the GSS is indeed developing biological substances made to break the resistance of Palestinian prisoners, the unsurprising response was "No."

Note: The Zayed Center was established in 1999 in Abu Dabi and is managed by Sheikh Sultan Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Emirates. The center claims its aims are "to promote Arab solidarity and to resolve a strategic and unified Arab stand in the fields of politics, economics, society and culture." The center holds exhibitions and conferences and publishes books on various topics.

 

“MUSLIMS LAMENT ISRAEL’S EXISTENCE”

"Muslims lament Israel's existence"
By Meg Bortin
International Herald Tribune
June 4, 2003

If the American threat of preemptive military action against Iraq inflamed the Muslim world over the winter, the war itself fanned the flames, with a sharp new rise in hostility toward the United States, the latest Pew survey has found.

Animosity is so high that solid majorities in five populations surveyed expressed confidence in Osama bin Laden to "do the right thing" in world affairs.

And, at a time when the Israeli government has accepted the right of Palestinians to statehood, most Muslim populations surveyed believe by wide margins that the needs of Palestinians cannot be met so long as the state of Israel exists.

The poll, conducted by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, surveyed more than 15,000 people in May. Muslim populations included were Indonesia, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority and Turkey.

The survey shows that negative attitudes among Muslims toward the United States have soared anew since the war, both in the Middle East and beyond.

Anti-Americanism peaked in Jordan, where 99 percent of the people now have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of the United States, up from 75 percent last summer, the survey found. Hostility was also extremely high in the Palestinian Authority (98 percent).

More than eight out of 10 in Turkey and Pakistan questioned since the war have a negative view of the United States, as do seven out of 10 in Lebanon and two-thirds in Morocco. The most extreme shift was seen in Indonesia, where 61 percent had a favorable opinion last summer but now only 15 percent do.

Steven Simon, an analyst of Muslim affairs with the Rand Corporation, said the about-face in Indonesia could be explained by "a rising sense of Islamic identity of a kind that is new" for that country.

Part of this new self-perception, he said, is tied to the return of people who went through the Islamic fundamentalist camps in Afghanistan and became radicalized there. "The way they see the United States as having acted in the last couple of years confirms views like, 'The United States is evil, the United States wants to devour the Muslim world.'"

As for the spike in hostility in Jordan, he said, the war in Iraq was "colossally unpopular" there and heightened the resentment of the country's largely Palestinian population, who already saw U.S. policies in the Middle East as "helping to perpetuate a situation that is grossly unfair to Palestinians."

Even in Nigeria, traditionally a friend of the United States, favorable opinion sank to 61 percent after the war from 77 percent last summer.

Several Muslim populations also express strong dislike of Americans as people. Nine out of 10 Palestinians, eight out of 10 Jordanians and 60 percent of Turks say they feel somewhat or very unfavorable toward Americans. The rise is sharpest in Jordan, where fewer than half had a negative view last summer.

Still, among Muslims with an unfavorable view of the United States, most put the onus on President George W. Bush – who has included two Muslim countries in his "axis of evil" and has focused his war on terror on the Islamic world – rather than America in general.

Distrust today blazes so brightly that majorities in seven of eight Muslim populations surveyed – Turkey, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan and Kuwait – expressed fears that the United States could become a military threat to their country.

In Morocco, 79 percent said they felt Islam was under serious threat today, and people in other countries largely agreed, in many cases far more strongly than last summer. In Pakistan, for example, 64 percent now say Islam is seriously threatened, up from 28 percent in summer 2002. The threat is perceived most sharply in Jordan, by 97 percent, up from 81 percent last summer.

Perhaps as a consequence, bin Laden was one of the three "leaders" most trusted by the nine Muslim populations surveyed, outranking even the UN secretary-general, Kofi Annan. The Qaeda leader's confidence rating was matched only by Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia.

As for the crisis in the Middle East, in a wave of sentiment that bodes ill for the future of the U.S.-sponsored "road map" to peace, Muslims lined up strongly behind the opinion that "the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists."

The conviction that no way can be found for Israel and the Palestinians to coexist is strongest in Morocco (90 percent), followed by Jordan (85 percent), the Palestinian Authority (80 percent), Kuwait (72 percent), Lebanon (65 percent), Indonesia (58 percent) and Pakistan (57 percent).

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who chairs the Pew project, called these results "very disheartening, and very dangerous, frankly."

"I hope that this is temporary and that, if there are some improvements in the situation because of the peace process, it will change," she said. "There is no way Israel is going to disappear. We will just have to find some way to mitigate those feelings."

Even beyond the Muslim world, the United States is seen as favoring Israel over the Palestinians unfairly. Those sharing this attitude range from 99 percent in Jordan to a surprising 47 percent in Israel itself. Only in the United States does a plurality say that U.S. policies in the Middle East are fair.

Overall, Muslim populations see U.S. policies as destabilizing the Middle East, as do pluralities in many other countries surveyed. Nearly 50 percent take this view in France and Spain, as do 63 percent in Morocco, 74 percent in Indonesia, and 91 percent in Jordan.

Regarding the U.S.-led war, disappointment was widespread among Muslims that Iraq put up so little resistance. More than 70 percent shared this view in Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco and the Palestinian Authority. The notable exception was Kuwait, which was invaded by Iraq in 1990 and where 61 percent said they were happy Iraq did not put up much of a fight.

Despite the animosity toward America, the survey found "a considerable appetite in the Muslim world for political freedoms," the Pew report says.

In eight of the nine Muslim populations surveyed, at least 50 percent believe Western-style democracy can work in their countries. The exception is Indonesia, where 53 percent see democracy as a Western way of doing things that would not work in their country.

 

“BEWARE OF THE THE WOMAN OF STEEL”

Condi Rice: "The Woman of Steel"
By MEMRI
June 24, 2003

In his article titled "Beware of the Woman of Steel," which was published in the Palestinian Authority daily Al-Ayyam, Palestinian columnist Hassan Al-Batal strongly criticized U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice for her position on the implementation of the road map, and her attachment to Israel. The article came out several days before Dr. Rice's scheduled visit to the region. The following are excerpts from the article:

"She has a figure no less fine than that of supermodel Naomi Campbell, and is more intelligent than 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher. She is Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor with the most influence over the American presidency since 'dear Henry Kissinger,' also called 'The American Metternich' after the shrewd, famous German politician."

"A number of women with powerful personalities have passed through the White House, such as 'The Dominatrix,' Ronald Reagan's wife, 'The Wise and Ambitious,' Bill Clinton's wife, or the 'Beloved,' John Kennedy's wife. But Condoleezza Rice is the first woman, [or to be more accurate] the first black woman to fill the most important post in the White House. She is the 'brain' of the president, particularly [in light of the fact that] the current American president is the strongest in the international arena but one of the weakest presidents in his international political education that was ever in the White House."

"The advisor's 'intelligence' and the 'courage' of General Colin Powell raised this black woman and this black man to the highest posts held by a black American man and woman in any American administration at any time. Officer Powell fought Vietnamese Communists while Ms. Autodidact, Rice, prepared herself for ideological war with Soviet Russia or [its other name] global Communism."

"Now, Secretary Powell and Advisor Rice [are together] putting the [policy of the] 'Velvet Glove' on the 'Iron Fist' in a war on the 'terrorist' global fundamentalist movements and against the repressive regimes across the world."

"But unlike Powell 'The Moderate,' who works in the extremist American administration, Rice makes known far and wide her ideas, which belong to the ideology of the American Christian conservative 'New Right.' She is the daughter of a black minister who, when she was a child, filled her head with stories about the Holy Land."

"In an extraordinary interview with the [Israeli daily] Yediot Aharonot in early May 2003, a few days before the White House officially released the road map, [Rice] spoke of the strong spiritual impression from her first visit to Israel in August 2000 - 'I felt that I had returned home... There is a deep connection between me and Israel'..."

"Ms. Rice will visit Israel for the second time next week, and Palestine for the first time, in order to salvage the road map and to save the 'brave' and 'moderate' black man from [his] failure to salvage the plan."

"Yesterday in Jericho, Mr. Powell used a phrase of great significance attesting to the way in which the 'heavy hammer' of Ms. Rice would work to remove the obstacles to the [implementation of the] road map. Mr. Powell presented an order of [moves] that is the reverse of that of the Palestinians, which is: a Hudna [truce] agreement among the factions, [then] a cease fire, [then] a gradual Israeli withdrawal and [then] gradual deployment of Palestinian Authority security [forces] in the northern Gaza Strip and in the city of Bethlehem. Powell suggested a [different] order of actions: a deployment of Palestinian forces in the northern Gaza strip and Bethlehem, [then] a partial Israeli withdrawal, then a ceasefire, and, finally, the Hudna for the problem between the PA and the factions."

"How does Ms. Rice think to pave the difficult way to the road map and to realize 'the vision of two states living peacefully next to each other?' As we know, the road map speaks of a Palestinian state with temporary borders, and a Palestinian state with final borders. Sharon demands a 'suspension' for an unlimited time between the two stages – a demand that arouses deep fears among the Palestinians."

"The flaw of the Oslo agreement lies in the absence of a prior agreement on the permanent status, while the flaw of the road map is the absence of mutual understanding regarding the political-sovereign map of the State of Palestine – that is, its international borders, its territory, and the congruence of [these criteria] with the 1967 borders."

"In her article in the Global Review Point magazine, Rice explained the following formula: The more the content of the Palestinian state with temporary borders meets the American conditions, including [the establishment] of a democratic state - the closer the Palestinian state's shape will be to the 1967 lines..."

"This means that the American decision regarding the establishment of a 'small' and 'contiguous' Palestinian state is final. If [the state] is 'peace-loving, democratic, honest, and fights terror,' then we can look optimistically towards 2005..."

"Beware of this 'Black Spinster' – [I do] not say 'Black Widow' out of respect for her femininity, her wisdom, and her determination, which transform her into a 'Woman of Steel.'"(1)

Endnote:
(1) Al-Ayyam (Palestinian Authority), June 22, 2003.

FULL ARTICLES

HARRY POTTER 101 TAUGHT AT BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY

Harry Potter 101 taught at Bar-Ilan University
By Shira Schoenberg
The Jerusalem Post
June 22, 2003

Students studying literature don't have to take the train from platform 9 3/4 to Hogwarts to read the Harry Potter books in school next semester. It will do just as well to take the bus to Bar-Ilan University, which has added Potter 101 to its curriculum of classics.

Prof. Danielle Gorovitch, 37, a comparative literature lecturer specializing in 12th century Celtic and Anglo-Saxon folklore and tradition, will teach a course for the second time on the classical influence on the modern hero, focusing on J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. She does not see discussions of Weasley and Malfoy as incongruous with her medieval field.

"Throughout the Rowling hysteria, I've seen how nothing's changed [since the 12th century]. People are still fascinated with the same things the marvelous, magic, heroes who perform marvelous deeds through their own maturity and friendship."

While skeptics may raise their eyebrows at the idea, Gorovitch insists that the classical mythological influences on Rowling are obvious. "The goblet of fire story in book four, for example, is directly influenced by the story of the holy grail. But in the original myth, the hero Galahad died after he got the grail. Rowling couldn't make Harry die, so instead she killed Cedric Diggory."

When Gorovitch's class discussed the basilisk that Harry fights in book two, Gorovitch brought in copies of a medieval Christian chronicle that describes all animals "in existence" at the time, including the basilisk. Just as in Harry Potter, "the medieval basilisk was afraid of chickens. So people would walk around with cocks under their arms to keep it away," explained Gorovitch. The chronicle also give its readers the same warning that the centaur in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone gives Harry: It is a monstrous thing to slay a unicorn.

Rowling, who has a classical education, makes it easy for fellow Latinists to work out whodunit in the third book by just translating the characters' names (see Remus Lupin and Sirius Black).

Gorovitch has started reading the fifth book and has found allusions to 20th century events, including the two world wars and the war in Vietnam. She has also noticed the influence of children's writer Michael Ende.

"Rowling really combines classical influences with modern situations. She puts this world and the 'other world' together," said Gorovitch.

She's not yet far enough in the book, though, to be certain about the classical elements of book five.

So what qualifies Gorovitch as a leading "Potter-ologist"? For one, she has spent years studying medieval folklore, legends and myths, particularly those of King Arthur's court, which she says much of Harry Potter is based on. She wrote her MA dissertation at Bar-Ilan on Morgan Lasalle, a sorceress and half-sister of King Arthur who dedicated her life to killing him. Her PhD focused on Mary of France, a poetess and troubadour who lived in Henry II's castle and wrote short stories on Arthur's round table. She has also read myriads of books on magic, classics, and children's books.

Gorovitch has not actually met Rowling, and admits that she's not quite ready for that. "I need to think of a really smart question for her, and I haven't done that yet," she laughs. "She's my age, we both have small children. Maybe we'd just talk about baby-sitting."

While some may scoff at the idea of Harry Potter being taught alongside King Arthur, Gorovitch insists that the 21st century fantasy series is itself a timeless classic and attributes its appeal to a few characteristics. "Harry Potter is what anthropologist Joseph Campbell calls a universal hero. Anyone can identify with him. He's a child who finds out he has spiritual abilities, which most of us wish we could have, and he has the strength within himself to change his fate. Finally, it's a series, so we have enough time to grow and develop with him."

Fifty years from now, people will still be reading about muggles and wizards, predicts Gorovitch. "The genre of the marvelous is ever-attractive to children and adults. We live in a world of uncertainty; we need a little magic ourselves. Harry Potter makes you think, can I do this? Can I join the sports team I'm dreaming of? Can I overcome a force that is trying to prevent me from doing what I want?"

Judging by the response of her students, Gorovitch is not the only one who gets exuberant over Potteresque talk of elves and poltergeists. Morag Belinki, one of Gorovitch's students in last year's course, said, "Potter until now has been seen as a kid's book, and I'm happy to see that now it's in its proper place." She explained that from Gorovitch's class, "I've learned literature, psychology, history of England, of Ireland, the Celtic tradition."

Belinki and fellow student Snir Rosenfeld both agreed this was the best class they had taken at Bar-Ilan. Rosenfeld said, "Before I took the class, I was anti-Tolkien, now I absolutely love him. When she said there was a class on Harry Potter, I thought 'This is a break, it's not literature.' But she's connected us to it in a totally new way. If I could take the class again, I would."

Gorovitch is only in her second year at Bar-Ilan, teaching this course as well as a course on folklore studies, which examines hagiographies of saints from the 5th to 15th centuries. She is thrilled with how her Potter course turned out last year, and is excited to be teaching it again. "Over 30 students learned about the 12th century and the 14th century church, and they didn't know they were learning. They just thought they were having fun."

 

JERUSALEM GAY PRIDE PARADE HAS ROOM FOR EVERYONE

Jerusalem gay pride parade has room for everyone
By Jenny Chazan
The Jerusalem Post
June 22, 2003

The capital's Kikar Safra was a sea of rainbow-striped flags, umbrellas, hats, scarves, and popsicles on Friday afternoon, where thousands of colorfully clad supporters of the second annual Love Without Borders Jerusalem Gay Pride Parade gathered to kick off the march.

After postponing the event for one week following the suicide bombing of a No. 14 bus, that took the life of American immigrant and gay-rights advocate Alan Beer and 16 others, Jerusalem's gay community finally had its day in the sun.

"This is the best pride event," said 24-year-old Yovar Rabinovich, a lesbian from Ramat Hasharon. "Pride in Tel Aviv is so mainstream and commercial. You can only be gay, young, and beautiful. Here, it's still open. You can be all sorts of different things. There's room for everyone weird and wonderful."

Among the weird and wonderful crowd were one young woman in tzitzit (and pretty much nothing else), a teenaged boy in a hot pink tutu with matching water wings, and one angel-winged, bare-chested, rainbow-painted lady.

But not all participants were feeling so festive. Like last year's inaugural event, many marchers used the parade as a platform from which to voice left-wing political opinions. Sandwich boards and banners depicted slogans including "Dykes and fags fighting all oppressions," "No pride in the occupation," and "Free condoms, free Palestine."

"I think there is a connection between all people who are oppressed," said Oakland, California-based political organizer Dara Silverman, who is visiting Israel on a Palestinian solidarity mission.

"The oppression of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people and the oppression of Palestinians and Mizrahi Jews here in Israel are connected. Any struggle to be free is never going to happen if there are other people who are oppressed."

Also in attendance were members of political parties Meretz and Shinui, which both call for the full recognition of gay and lesbian couples.

"I made a special effort to come from Tel Aviv to be here, because this parade is more significant," said Jonathan Danilowitz, who hopes to represent Shinui on the Tel Aviv City Council.

"The parade in Jerusalem is much more special. Jerusalem is the most special city in the world. It's unique. I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"We are in one of the most religious cities in the world," noted a member of Young Meretz, which includes former Tel Aviv council member Edan Michal among the list of gay party members. "The fact that we're doing this is really great, because it builds an expression of our democracy and an expression of freedom."

"It is interesting," concurred New Jersey-based tourist Brian Shalinsky. "Most of us in America think it's more conservative here. We don't expect to see this in a place like Israel and especially Jerusalem," he said.
Haifa held its first gay pride parade also on Friday.

The fact that the march began at city hall is significant, especially in light of Mayor Uri Lupolianski's most recent comments about the event to Ma'ariv, wherein he called the gay pride parade an abomination.

Lupolianski, who had initially backed the gay community and was even quoted as saying that "Everyone has his March of the Living," seemed to have finally cracked under the pressure of the city's haredi community.

"They are desecrating our holy city with their perversions," said haredi protester Baruch Ben-Yosef, who stood among some two dozen demonstrators who showed up to cast dispersions on the parade across the street from Kikar Safra. "Even worse, is that the mayor is supposedly religious and he allows this to go on."

"This obscenity is as dangerous as the terrorism. In fact, we believe that it brings terrorism," said Shifra Hoffman, head of the Victims of Arab Terror International Organization. She held a banner that read, "Don't pollute our Holy Land. Your sick abominations should be treated, not flaunted."

"We are not racist. But the Torah, by which we claim this land, says that this is an abomination," she said. "These people deserve treatment if they want, but they have no right to flaunt their sickness and to say that this is the way to go."

While protesters chanted, "No gays, no terrorist attacks," the procession continued along Jaffa Road to Shlomo Hamelech and then to Agron, before concluding at Independence Park, where Interior Minister Avraham Poraz (Shinui) shared the stage with a handful of Jerusalem's drag queens, including soldier Talula Bonet, Lady Di, and Diva D.

The parade reached the park secure in the hands of the Jerusalem police, which has yet to arrest any of the outlawed Kach movement suspects who tore down and burned dozens of rainbow flags three days before the event.

"If there isn't a penalty for vandalism and incitement, then there is no incentive for people not to do those things," said 29-year-old Danny Labin, originally from Los Angeles. "If we don't look at history, it's tempting to say what's a little burning of a flag? But I think we've seen from the history of our own people that the burning of books can lead to the burning of bodies. We can't just overlook things like that, because they are full of the hatred that can spiral into something with much graver consequences."

Despite all the odds, parade organizers were happy with how the event turned out. "At the end of the day, the city did not pull back on a single commitment that it had made in terms of demonstrating support," said Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Jerusalem Open House LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer and Questioning) Community Center. "I think it was a wonderful day. I was moved, almost like the first time I kissed a guy."

 

GAY PRIDE – AND ISRAEL'S

Gay pride – and Israel's
By Bret Stephens
The Jerusalem Post
June 19, 2003

Today, June 20, gay and lesbian Israelis will parade through Jerusalem's streets, from City Hall to Independence Park. The march was supposed to have taken place last week; it was postponed after one of its organizers, 47-year-old American immigrant Alan Beer, was murdered by a Hamas suicide bomber aboard Bus 14A.

For those of us who devote a good amount of thought and breath defending Israel from various calumnies – particularly those coming from the hard Left – the fact that this march is taking place at all is excellent news. So Israel is a theocratic state? Show me an equivalent march taking place in Iran or Saudi Arabia. So the Israeli army is an instrument of Fascist oppression? Maybe, but gays and lesbians serve in the IDF's ranks without formal discrimination – more than can be said for the US armed services.

Why, then, should those most opposed to this march be the same people, more or less, who are most ardently "pro-Israel"?

"This is a disgusting parade which has no place in a Jewish state," said Itamar Ben-Gvir, a spokesman for the outlawed ultranationalist Kach movement who also confessed to taking down 30 rainbow-striped flags in downtown Jerusalem. "The gay and lesbian community is a marginal, fringe group, and they must not be given a public stage," added MK Nissim Ze'ev of the haredi Shas party.

I know at least a few people who'd argue that it is Ze'ev and Ben-Gvir, not Beer, who represent a "fringe." But put that argument aside. The question is, when we boast that Israel is "the only democracy in the Middle East" (Turkey honorably excepted), what are we really saying? Exactly how does it distinguish us from our neighbors and enemies? And what obligations does it impose upon Israelis, gay and straight?

One way to get at these questions is to point to what we're not. For starters, we're not a country that treats homosexuals the way the Palestinian Authority does.

A few months ago, watching the news in the run-up to the Iraq war, I spotted a couple of demonstrators marching to a "Queers for Palestine" banner. Note the preposition. While most of the antiwar marchers were merely against war (even if this meant keeping Saddam Hussein in power), these two were for Palestine. I spent the remainder of the evening trying to think of the nearest equivalent. Blacks for the Old South? Jews for the Ayatollah? "Recovered" homosexuals?

In fact, "recovered" is what Palestinian gays must be if they are to survive in "Palestine." As Yossi Klein Halevi wrote last August in The New Republic, Islamic law prescribes five separate forms of death for homosexuals. To these, the Palestinian Authority adds several of its own. In the West Bank city of Tulkarm, Halevi reports, a young Palestinian homosexual he calls Tayseer "was forced to stand in sewage up to his neck, his head covered by a sack filled with feces, and then he was thrown into a dark cell infested with insects and other creatures he could feel but not see... During one interrogation, police stripped him and forced him to sit on a Coke bottle. Throughout the entire ordeal he was taunted by interrogators, jailers, and fellow prisoners for being a homosexual."

Tayseer's story is one of hundreds. Halevi also tells the story of one Palestinian homosexual who was put in a pit in Nablus and starved to death over Ramadan; of another whose PA interrogators "cut him with glass and poured toilet cleaner into his wounds"; of a third who lives in fear of his life from his brothers.

"It's now impossible to be an open gay in the PA," says Shaul Ganon of Aguda-Association of Gay Men, Lesbians, Bisexuals and Transgender in Israel.

All this is of a piece with the broader treatment of homosexuals throughout the Muslim world. The Taliban used to put homosexuals to death by collapsing a wall on them. In Malaysia, the maximum penalty for sodomy is 20 years in prison and "mandatory whipping." In Egypt, an increasingly severe crackdown on homosexuals is now entering its third year. In April, Brazil put forward a gay-rights resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission; Muslim countries successfully filibustered it.

And so on. Of course, everybody knows this, though nobody talks about it much. And of course, everybody knows that Israel is a comparatively receptive place for gays and lesbians, though nobody talks about it much, either. Along with South Africa, France, Ireland, Canada and Spain, Israel has been in the forefront of granting legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation. So when we say, "We are the only democracy in the Middle East," we are not simply making a statement about our political structure, but about social and cultural attitudes. We are a typical Western state. Nothing demonstrates it better than today's march.

"Typical," however, is also problematic. Typical Western states also mass produce and widely disseminate pornography, ingest gigantic quantities of narcotics and generally suffer every plague of affluence. The gay-rights movement, some argue, belongs in this category.

I don't buy this for a second. But I appreciate why the argument is made. "Gay-Pride Parade Sets Mainstream Acceptance Of Gays Back 50 Years," went a headline a few years back in The Onion, a satirical newspaper. "'I'd always thought gays were regular people, just like you and me, and that the stereotype of homosexuals as hedonistic, sex-craved deviants was just a destructive myth'" the paper "quoted" Hannah Jarrett, a fictional 41-year-old mother of four. "'Boy, oh, boy, was I wrong.'"

The Onion gets it exactly. For decades, the basic problem with the gay-rights movement has been that it tended to make opposite demands. It rightly insisted on mainstream acceptance and equal protection of the laws. Insanely, it then proceeded aggressively to flaunt its every difference. The aim, it seemed, was not to join a mainstream in the manner of the black civil rights movement or feminism, but to overthrow the very concept of "mainstream."

The result was to confirm every lurid prejudice about gay life. Sexually promiscuous? Emotionally unstable? Morally suspect? Politically radical? The icons of gay life in the 1970s and 1980s, from Michel Foucault to the Village People to Calvin Klein, all giddily seemed to answer yes.

My guess is that the way in which the gay-rights movement pursued its agenda set it back by at least a decade. That both the IDF and the British military allow openly gay service members ought to have been enough to show that the US armed forces could have done the same – but the gay community bears its share of the blame for making its case such a difficult one to make. Ditto for gay marriage, which only this week was legalized in Canada: This was something that ought to have happened ages ago, if only more of the gay community had been demanding it back then, and if (male) gay relationships did not have a reputation for being so fickle.

Now this is changing. As Andrew Sullivan writes, among gays "a need to rebel has quietly ceded to a desire to belong. To be gay and to be bourgeois no longer seems such an absurd proposition. Certainly since AIDS, to be gay and to be responsible has become a necessity."

Sullivan is right – indeed, has to be right. Those who opposed the gay-rights revolution cannot realistically expect that today's homosexuals will simply be pushed back into the closet. And to preserve existing legal barriers against gays would only perpetuate a gay subculture that is both neurotic and alienating. The only decent conservative alternative is to insist that gay men and women join the social and cultural mainstream – and enact the policies required for them to do so.

Which brings me back to Beer. Cleveland-born, a software engineer, "Al" was also an observant Jew who came to Israel five years ago because "it gave him the opportunity to pray as he wanted and live the [Jewish] life he wanted," according to Ze'ev Pertrucci, a former roommate. Interviewed by The Jerusalem Post in 1999, Beer said his homosexuality had presented no obstacles to joining an Orthodox synagogue.

"My understanding of being Orthodox is that there is a long list of mitzvot to keep, which is what I do," he said. "It doesn't bother my being religious."

Testifying in the Knesset the same year, Beer told a parliamentary committee he was "proud of my many identities": Gay, Orthodox, Jerusalemite, Zionist. "People can be both free and holy," he said. Friends recall his "American swagger," his Hawaiian shirts, his passion for cinema, his "infectious laugh," his willingness to volunteer, easygoingness.

Beer was murdered after returning from a shiva call for a friend up north. Had he not been on that bus, he would have marched Friday for gay pride. Would any of us not want him back? And would any of us, really, not have wanted him there?

FULL ARTICLES

MEIN KAMPF SEQUEL TO BE PUBLISHED IN ENGLISH

Mein Kampf sequel to be published in English
By Michael Smith
The Daily Telegraph
June 22, 2003

The sequel to Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf is to be published in English later this year.

The book, which has no title and will be published simply as Hitler's Second Book, was dictated during 1928 but never published. Instead, it was kept in the safe of the Nazi publishing house, where it was found by American troops in 1945.

At the time, it was not recognised for what it was and taken back to America. There, it was stored along with many other German documents in an old torpedo factory at Alexandria in Virginia.

The manuscript was rediscovered there in the summer of 1958 by Gerhard Weinberg, now emeritus professor of 20th century history at the University of North Carolina.

Prof Weinberg, himself a Jew who lost members of his family in the Holocaust, was then a 30-year-old assistant professor at Kentucky University who had heard suggestions of the existence of a sequel to Mein Kampf.

"There had been a couple of references to it," he said. "One by Hitler's secretary to a French intelligence officer."

He was looking through the documents in the old torpedo factory when he found a typescript marked "draft of Mein Kampf" which was the sequel.

A German version was published in 1961 and Prof Weinberg planned to bring out an English version around that time. But an inaccurate and poorly translated bootlegged version was rushed into print by a rival publisher.

This pirate edition was criticised for its unreliability and soon went out of print but its appearance killed off the plans for a proper, fully annotated translation. Then, two years ago, an editor from Enigma Books, a small American publisher, met Prof Weinberg about another book. After learning of the sequel, he agreed to publish it.

Prof Weinberg said: "It seems to me remarkable that one of the most central figures of the 20th century wrote all of two books and one hasn't been published in a reliable English-language edition."

The book, which deals with Hitler's vision of Nazi foreign policy, makes it clear that he was not simply content, as some have argued, to reoccupy German lands lost after the First World War.

He envisaged the German people becoming involved a series of wars for Lebensraum, culminating in an epic battle against America.

A complete chapter on "Germany and England" makes clear his admiration for the British and his hope that they might prove to be an ally.

 

MALAYSIAN OFFICIALS HAND OUT COPIES OF 'INTERNATIONAL JEW'

Malaysian officials hand out copies of 'International Jew'
Jerusalem Post/Reuters
June 22, 2003

Officials of Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad's party gave out translated copies of US industrialist Henry Ford's anti-Semitic book The International Jew to delegates at the annual United Malays National Organization (UMNO) conference in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday.

Tens of thousands of Muslim Malays attended the last day of the three-day conference to see Mahathir deliver his final speech as party president before stepping down in October.

According to media reports, delegates were handed free copies of an abridged version of Ford's book, translated into Bahasa Malay and published in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Ford's book, first published in Ford's own newspaper, The Dearborn Independent in the 1920s, was inspired by and contained sections from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

The Protocols purports to be the secret transcription of a Zionist Congress that met in Switzerland in 1897, as taken down by a Czarist spy and first published in St. Petersburg in 1903.

At the meeting, Jewish leaders allegedly discussed their plans to establish Jewish "sovereignty over the entire world." The Protocols includes their boasts of being "invincible" and plans to establish a "Super-Government Administration" that will "subdue all the nations." In fact, the Protocols is a fabrication created by the Russian Czarist secret police, the Okhrana, in about 1898-99. Henry Ford endorsed the book, and his own variation on it, and saw to its propagation in media outlets owned by his Ford Motor Company.

In his book, Ford wrote that the Jews were "a people that has no civilization to point to, no aspiring religion, no universal speech, and no great achievement in any realm."

Ford paid for the first German translation of his work, which soon became a favorite of Adolf Hitler's.

The Malaysian prime minister has frequently used Jews as a scapegoat for political and economic setbacks, including his country's 1997 financial meltdown. "We do not want to say that this is a plot by the Jews, but in reality it is a Jew who triggered the currency plunge, and coincidentally [George] Soros is a Jew," Mohamad said at the time.

"It is also a coincidence that Malaysians are mostly Muslim. Indeed, the Jews are not happy to see Muslims progress. If it were Palestine, the Jews would rob Palestinians. Thus this is what they are doing to our country."

In a 1970 book outlining his view of the problems facing the Malay people, The Malay Dilemma, Mohamad wrote: "the Jews are not merel