Mideast Dispatch Archive: July 2003 Archives

Iraq 20: Tourism down in Baghdad (and up in Israel)

July 29, 2003

Iraq update 20: Tourism down in Baghdad (and up in Israel)

CONTENTS

1. "Post-war chaos stops Iraq cashing in on tourism" (Reuters, July 24, 2003)
2. "Cleaning Babylon" (Associated Press, July 28, 2003)
3. "Surge in Number of Tourists Visiting Israel" (MFA press release, July 29, 2003)

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach three articles, with summaries first:

1. "Post-war chaos stops Iraq cashing in on tourism" (By Andrew Gray, Baghdad, July 24, Reuters). "It was hardly the ideal holiday destination. But even Saddam Hussein's Iraq managed to attract some tourists - in these days of military occupation, violence and lawlessness, it has dwindled to almost nothing. Standing outside the former home of the Iraqi Tourist Board, reduced to a burned-out shell of a building by post-war looting, Basim Mohammad Hamza complains he and all of his fellow tour guides have been deprived of a livelihood for months... Hamza said the last group he guided came in February from Germany... Guides say they are being punished because some new ministry officials believe they spied on foreign visitors for Saddam's intelligence services -- a charge they deny. He remembers when major tour operators and hotel chains such as Meridian and Sheraton were doing business here in the 1970s. "We have five-star hotels," said Alawi, "Most of those hotels were full of foreign visitors."

Briton Geoff Hann plans to take visitors to Iraq for a two-week tour starting on September 7 -- providing Baghdad's airport, now a U.S. military base, is open again for civilian traffic. He already has six tourists signed up. Hann has been organising tours to Iraq since the 1970s. During Saddam's rule, his groups had government minders controlling their movements.

2. "Cleaning Babylon" (Associated Press, July 28, 2003). "Babylon, a 4,300-year-old town -- now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums -- knows political and military upheaval well. Dynasties have risen and have fallen here since the earliest days of settled human civilization. King Hammurabi wrote his famous code of laws here. Nebuchadnezzar sent his vast army from here to Jerusalem to put down an uprising and bring the Jews back as slaves. Some say Alexander the Great, who led his army out of Macedonia to conquer most of the known world, died here in 332 B.C. The American military is just the latest to pass through ... The Americans are cleaning up after mobs of looters who ransacked the city's two museums, but fortunately got away mainly with small display copies of ancient artifacts - more than 10,600 U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, aid workers and journalists have passed through ancient Babylon since April 26."

3. "Surge in Number of Tourists Visiting Israel" (July 29, 2003, MFA press release). "Tourism to Israel is on the rise. During this year's second quarter, the number of tourist entries into Israel rose by an annualized 38.9 percent and the number of hotel overnights by 21.1 percent.

The revival in tourism began in April, immediately following the end of the Iraq War. There were 89,700 visitors in June. The number of visitors jumped by 163 percent from the 34,100 visitors in March 2003. The number of hotel overnights jumped by 189 percent to 252,000 in June, compared with 87,100 in March."

El-Al recorded a sharp rise in its sales of tickets for Israel-bound flights. A 103-percent increase was registered on the number of passenger reservations for flights originating from Frankfurt; the rise was 85 percent for flights from London, 80 percent from Milan, 50 percent from Paris, 45 percent from New York and ten percent from Eastern Europe. Foreign aviation companies also reported similar growth: Swiss 40-50 percent and Lufthansa 30 percent.

Israeli Ministry of Tourism officials were hopeful that by the end of this year, 1.2 million tourists would visit Israel - an increase of 400,000 people compared to 2002.

The highest number of tourists to travel to Israel was recorded in 2000 when 2.7 people visited the country."

FULL ARTICLES

POST-WAR CHAOS STOPS IRAQ CASHING IN ON TOURISM

Post-war chaos stops Iraq cashing in on tourism
By Andrew Gray

BAGHDAD, July 24 (Reuters) - It was hardly the ideal holiday destination. But even Saddam Hussein's Iraq managed to attract some tourists.

They were only a small fraction of the potential visitors to a country which boasts the sites of ancient civilisations such as Babylon and Ur, the Shia Muslim holy cities of Najaf and Kerbala as well as beautiful deserts, lakes and mountains.

In the long term, Iraqis have high hopes for tourism. But in these days of military occupation, violence and lawlessness, it has dwindled to almost nothing, although a British travel firm is daring to organise a trip for later this year.

Standing outside the former home of the Iraqi Tourist Board, reduced to a burned-out shell of a building by post-war looting, Basim Mohammad Hamza complains he and all of his fellow tour guides have been deprived of a livelihood for months.

"We are 128 persons," he said. "That means 128 families with kids."

The guides took a percentage from entrance fees to historic sites paid by the tour groups they led. Hamza said the last group he guided came in February from Germany and Turkey.

"There are no groups now," he said. "How can we earn a living?"

The guides have not even received emergency payments for public sector employees who cannot work because of post-war disorder. They are not entitled to the money because they were not Ministry of Culture staff, officials say.

SPYING FOR SADDAM?

Guides say they are being punished because some ministry officials believe they spied on foreign visitors for Saddam's intelligence services -- a charge they deny.

But Raad Alawi, a director general in the Culture Ministry who dreams of a bright future for tourism from his small temporary office, insists they are not being paid simply because they were not regular employees.

"They are not registered," he said. "We have no names for them."

Alawi is a former manager of a big Baghdad hotel who believes tourism could one day generate even more money for Iraq than its oil industry.

He remembers when major tour operators and hotel chains such as Meridian and Sheraton were doing business here in the 1970s.

"We have five-star hotels," said Alawi, "Most of those hotels were full of foreign visitors."

But then came war with Iran in the 1980s, war over Kuwait in the early 1990s and a decade of international sanctions.

Hotels still display their five stars but their old televisions, threadbare rooms and dreary colour schemes are not what Westerners would expect of a high-class hotel these days.

The only tourists who came in substantial numbers in recent years were Shi'ite pilgrims from neighbouring Iran at the rate of up to 3,000 a week. But even they are not visiting as much as before because of post-war insecurity, Alawi said.

Undeterred, Briton Geoff Hann plans to take visitors to Iraq for a two-week tour starting on September 7 -- providing Baghdad's airport, now a U.S. military base, is open again for civilian traffic. He already has six tourists signed up.

NEW ERA, NEW PROBLEMS

Hann, who runs a company called Hinterland Travel, has been organising tours to Iraq since the 1970s. During Saddam's rule, his groups had government minders controlling their movements.

"Under the Saddam regime, things were fairy regulated and orderly. We didn't have the chaotic problems that exist today but we did have the security minders problem," he said.

"People weren't free to walk in the bazaars and the souks (markets) unless they had a minder with them," he said by phone from England, having recently returned from a reconnaissance trip to Iraq.

Hann is relying on Iraqi guards to protect his tourists and thinks they will be safe because they will clearly not be part of the U.S.-led military occupying force -- the target of the vast majority of violent attacks on foreigners.

"We're not wearing uniforms so we're not so vulnerable," he said.

Apart from the security problems, the other main worry for Hann is that some of Iraq's many archaeological sites are hard to visit because they are now also home to U.S. military bases.

U.S. forces have occupied an area that includes the site of ancient Babylon, where Saddam also built a palace for himself and a complex of VIP lodges.

Visits are only by appointment with the U.S. military, which provides tours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. U.S. troops, coils of barbed wire and big concrete barriers block the way of anyone arriving at the site unannounced.

"Right now it's a military compound," said a U.S. soldier at the entrance. "I don't know how long it's gonna stay that way."

CLEANING BABYLON

Cleaning Babylon
By Bassem Mroue
Associated Press Writer
July 28, 2003

BABYLON, Iraq (AP) -- This 4,300-year-old town -- now mainly an archaeological ruin and two important museums -- knows political and military upheaval well. Dynasties have risen and have fallen here since the earliest days of settled human civilization.

King Hammurabi wrote his famous code of laws here.

Nebuchadnezzar sent his vast army from here to Jerusalem to put down an uprising and bring the Jews back as slaves.

Some say Alexander the Great, who led his army out of Macedonia to conquer most of the known world, died here in 332 B.C.

The American military is just the latest to pass through the Euphrates River city. And now U.S. soldiers and civilian occupation officials struggle with mixed success to put the city -- with its deep resonance in so many important cultures -- back together yet again.

The newest of the conquerors who have swept through the fertile crescent for millennia have held the site of the Hanging Gardens -- one of the seven wonders of the ancient world -- for a mere 3 1/2 months.

The Americans are cleaning up after mobs of looters who ransacked the city's two museums, but fortunately got away mainly with small display copies of ancient artifacts. Museum managers, fearing looting as the U.S.-led coalition threatened war, had bricked up the museum windows.

The looters yanked air conditioners from walls and climbed through holes, carting off display copies of humankind's earliest handiwork. Most of the real artifacts were stored in vaults at the Iraq Museum in Baghdad, which also was looted. It is not known what portion of the stored Babylonian museum treasures were taken in looting of the Iraqi capital.

The holes also were too small for looters to escape with the large pieces in the city's two museums, named after Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar.

Nearly two weeks after Saddam Hussein's regime fell on April 9, U.S. Marines entered Babylon to find dozens of vendors had flooded into the streets as looters robbed the museums, souvenir shops, a restaurant and the police station. U.S. troops said they moved swiftly to stop the lawlessness.

"On my first day here, I caught many people," said U.S. Navy Chaplain Cmdr. Emilio Marrero, a project official of the site. A few looters were arrested, he added, and U.S. authorities "pushed everybody outside the gate so that we could preserve the city."

Babylon has since been closed to the public, but the Marines hope to reopen the site within two months, said Marrero, a New York City native. The Marines have created a major base at the city, calling it Camp Babylon.

Marrero said only three relics were displayed in the Nebuchadnezzar museum. They disappeared with the display copies. He said the Americans were trying to recover the pieces and had found some.

"So many things were looted. The whole antiquities department, the library -- full of historical books, and the city's ancient archive -- were stolen then burned. Why did they burn it?" asked Mariam Omran, director of Babylon's two museums, as she stood in one of Nebuchadnezzar Museum's four large rooms as workers painted the walls and fixed a miniature model of Babylon.

The Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by L. Paul Bremer, has spent $60,000 to repair the damage, an amount expected to double when the work is finished.

"The first phase of reconstruction was to ensure that the museum was protected so we installed an alarm system in the museum. We repainted it, repaired it, fixed the roof ... cleaned it up after the looters," Marrero said.

The souvenir shop, a small ticket office and the police station were repaired as well.

More than two decades of war, U.N. sanctions and international ostracism of the Saddam regime nearly killed tourism to Iraq's unparalleled archaeological sites. Since the regime fell the country has remained unsafe for tourists.

Still, more than 10,600 U.S. Marines, sailors, soldiers, aid workers and journalists have passed through ancient Babylon since April 26, Marrero said.

Those who visit the ruin in the years to come will be reading the name of Saddam, stamped into the bricks used in reconstructing Nebuchadnezzar's Southern Palace, the seat of the king's ancient empire.

When reconstruction began, the palace walls had crumbled to a fourth of their original height. On Saddam's orders the walls were reconstructed between 1982 and 1987.

Some of the mud bricks in the original wall carried the seal of Nebuchadnezzar. The bricks used in the Saddam reconstruction, not to be outdone by the likes of the ancient king, read: "The City of Babylon was reconstructed during the era of the victorious Saddam Hussein, President of the Republic, protector of the great Iraq, the modernizer of its renaissance and builder of its civilization."

The Marines are getting ready to leave the area soon and will hand security over to Polish troops, Marrero said. But until then U.S. troops are enjoying the site.

"I think its pretty cool. I mean I used to watch the Discovery Channel but never thought I'll actually be where they are. It's kind of cool. I enjoy it," Marine Lance Cpl. Rod Brooks of Chicago, said as he looked at the 2,600 year-old Lion of Babylon, symbol of Babylon's strength against invaders.

Iraq 19: The Associated Press now says Iraq forced out its Jews

SIX ELDERLY IRAQI JEWS ARRIVE IN ISRAEL

Six Elderly Iraqi Jews Arrive in Israel
By Ian Deitch
The Associated Press
July 29, 2003

JERUSALEM - Ezra Levy hesitated 51 years ago to come to Israel and missed his chance. This time around, the 82-year-old Iraqi Jew seized the moment and was reunited with his sister after five decades.

Levy is one of six elderly Iraqi Jews brought to Israel in a secretive weekend airlift.

On Monday, he visited Jerusalem's Western Wall, Judaism's holiest site, speaking Hebrew - a language he says he last used in 1926, when he studied the holy tongue in the first grade.

"I am a Jew," Levy said in halting Hebrew next to the ancient site, a retaining wall of the ancient Temple Mount, where the biblical Temples stood. "I feel very happy and privileged that I am at this place," he said.

The arrival of the six captured the imagination of Israelis and put a human face on the war in Iraq. In the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. Israelis were instructed to carry gas mask kits throughout the recent conflict.

Israeli newspapers carried large color pictures of the six reunited with relatives after decades apart. They included a 99-year-old woman and her 70-year-old daughter. A blind 90-year old Baghdad resident was also on the flight to Israel.

A front-page picture in the Haaretz daily showed Levy, his thin cheeks adorned with gray stubble, being kissed by his sister, Dina, and sister-in law - one on each cheek - after he arrived at Israel's airport.

His sister was one of about 120,000 Jews to flee Iraq after creation of the state of Israel set off a campaign of state-sponsored persecution of Jews in 1949, including public hangings.

Levy recalled that he thought about joining his sister then but thought too long. "By the time I made the decision," he told The Associated Press. "it was too late - we were prohibited from leaving." Asked what it was like under Saddam, Levy gave a derisive snort.

Days after the Saddam regime was toppled, an Israeli emissary was on his way to Baghdad to check into the condition of the Jews there.

Jeff Kaye, who made the trip for the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that deals with Jewish immigration to Israel, said he found 34 Jews, most of them elderly, in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra.

Only six were prepared to make the move to Israel. The others were hesitant to leave the only home they knew or wanted more time to decide. He supplied them with religious items unavailable in Iraq since the 1950s.

Besides the fact that the six were flown to Israel direct from Iraq, other details of the mission are being kept secret.

The Jewish Agency and HIAS, a U.S.-based aid group, organized the charter flight from Baghdad to Tel Aviv.

Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000 made their way to Israel between 1949 and 1952, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years.

Iraq 18: Deaths, threats, and allegations

July 28, 2003

FULL ARTICLES

TABLE OF CASUALTIES IN IRAQ

Table of casualties in Iraq
July 27, 2003

BAGHDAD, July 26 (Reuters) -

NOTE: The figures in brackets refer to casualties after May 1, when U.S. President George W. Bush declared hostilities over.

U.S. AND BRITISH TROOPS KILLED:

COMBAT/ATTACKS

United States 162 (48)

Britain 14 (6)

NON-COMBAT

United States 79 (57)

Britain 29 (4)

IRAQIS KILLED:

MILITARY 2,320

CIVILIANS Between 6,073 and 7,782+

- U.S. military estimates relating only to fighting in or near Baghdad. No other figures available.

+ - Figure compiled on Web site www.iraqbodycount.net, run by academics and peace activists, based on incidents reported by at least two media sources.

NOTE: NON-COMBAT is defined as accidents, U.S. or British fire killing or wounding their own troops, and other incidents unrelated to fighting.

IRAQ-MOST WANTED-GLANCE

Iraq-Most Wanted-Glance
July 23, 2003
By The Associated Press

The 55 most wanted Iraqis and their status, according to U.S. Central Command. Of the total, 34 are reported in U.S. custody:

--No. 1: Saddam Hussein, president.

--No. 2: Qusai Hussein, Saddam's son. Killed July 22.

--No. 3: Odai Hussein, Saddam's son. Killed July 22.

--No. 4: Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, presidential secretary, Saddam's cousin. Taken into custody June 17.

--No. 5: Ali Hassan al-Majid, presidential adviser, Revolutionary Command Council member. Also known as "Chemical Ali." Possibly killed.

--No. 6: Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, RCC vice chairman, longtime Saddam confidant.

--No. 7: Hani Abd al-Latif Tilfah al-Tikriti, director, Special Security Organization.

--No. 8: Aziz Saleh al-Numan, Baath Party Baghdad region command chairman. Taken into custody May 22.

--No. 9: Muhammad Hamza al-Zubaydi, retired RCC member, a leader of 1991 suppression of Shiite rebellion. Taken into custody April 20.

--No. 10: Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, secretary of the Republican Guard, Saddam's son-in-law. Surrendered May 17.

--No. 11: Barzan Abd al-Ghafur Sulayman Majid al-Tikriti, Special Republican Guard commander, Saddam's cousin.

--No. 12: Muzahim Sa'b Hassan al-Tikriti, who headed Iraq's air defenses under Saddam. Taken into custody April 23.

--No. 13 Ibrahim Ahmad Abd al Sattar Muhammad, armed forces chief of staff. Taken into custody May 15.

--No. 14: Sayf al-Din Fulayyih Hasan Taha al-Rawi, Republican Guard chief of staff.

--No. 15: Rafi Abd al-Latif Tilfah al-Tikriti, director of general security.

--No. 16: Tahir Jalil Haboush, chief of Iraqi intelligence service.

--No. 17: Hamid Raja Shalah al-Tikriti, air force commander. Central Command he's in coalition custody. No date was given for his apprehension.

--No. 18: Latif Nusayyif al-Jasim al-Dulaymi, Baath Party military bureau deputy chairman. Taken into custody June 9.

--No. 19: Abdel Tawab Mullah Huweish, deputy prime minister. Taken into custody May 2.

--No. 20: Taha Yassin Ramadan, vice president, RCC member.

--No. 21: Rukan Razuki Abd al-Ghafar Sulayman al-Majid al-Tikriti, head of tribal affairs office.

--No. 22: Jamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, deputy head of tribal affairs, Saddam's son-in-law. Taken into custody April 20.

--No. 23: Mizban Khadr Hadi, RCC member. Taken into custody July 8.

--No. 24: Taha Muhie-eldin Marouf, vice president, RCC member, only Kurd in Saddam's hierarchy. Taken into custody May 2.

--No. 25: Tariq Aziz, deputy prime minister. Taken into custody April 25.

--No. 26: Walid Hamid Tawfiq, governor of Basra. Surrendered April 29.

--No. 27: Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad, defense minister.

--No. 28: Hikmat Mizban Ibrahim al-Azzawi, deputy prime minister, finance minister. Taken into custody April 18.

--No. 29: Mahmoud Diab al-Ahmed, interior minister. Taken into custody July 8.

--No. 30: Ayad Futayyih Khalifa, Quds forces chief of staff. Taken into custody June 4.

--No. 31: Gen. Zuhayr Talib Abd al-Sattar al-Naqib, director of military intelligence. Taken into custody April 23.

--No. 32: Lt. Gen. Amir Hamudi Hasan al-Saadi, presidential scientific adviser. Surrendered April 12.

--No. 33: Amir Rashid Muhammad al-Ubaydi, presidential adviser, oil minister. Taken into custody April 28.

--No. 34: Gen. Hussam Mohammed Amin, head of monitoring directorate, chief liaison with U.N. weapons inspectors. Taken into custody April 27.

--No. 35: Muhammad Mahdi al-Salih, trade minister. Taken into custody April 23.

--No. 36: Sabawi Ibrahim Hasan, presidential adviser, Saddam's half brother.

--No. 37: Watban Ibrahim Hasan, presidential adviser, Saddam's half brother. Taken into custody April 13.

--No. 38: Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, presidential adviser, Saddam's half brother. Taken into custody April 16.

--No. 39: Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, reputedly scientist in biological weapons program, first woman elected to Baath Party's national command council. Taken into custody May 9.

--No. 40: Abdel Baqi Abdel Karim Abdallah al-Sadun, Baath Party regional command chairman.

--No. 41: Mohammed Zimam Abdul Razaq, Baath Party regional command chairman.

--No. 42: Samir Abd al-Aziz al-Najim, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody April 17.

--No. 43: Humam Abdul-Khaliq Abdul-Ghafoor, minister of higher education and scientific research. Taken into custody April 19.

--No. 44: Yahya Abdellah al-Aboudi, Baath Party regional command chairman.

--No. 45: Nayef Shedakh, Baath Party regional chairman, Najaf governorate, reported by Iraqi television to have been killed in battle for Najaf.

--No. 46: Sayf al-Din al-Mashadani, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 24.

--No. 47: Fadil Mahmud Gharib, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 15.

--No. 48: Muhsin Khadr al-Khafaji, Baath Party regional command chairman.

--No. 49: Rashid Taan Kazim, Baath Party regional chairman.

--No. 50: Ugla Abid Saqr, Baath Party regional chairman. Taken into custody May 20.

--No. 51: Ghazi Hammud, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 7.

--No. 52: Adilabdillah Mahdi al-Duri al-Tikriti, Baath Party regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 15.

--No. 53: Brig. Gen. Husayn al-Awadi, Baath Party Regional command chairman, senior officer in Iraqi military's chemical weapons corps. Taken into custody June 9.

--No. 54: Khamis Sirhan al-Muhammad, Baath Party Regional command chairman, militia commander.

--No. 55: Sad Abd al-Majid al-Faysal, Baath Party Regional command chairman. Taken into custody May 24.

IRAQI ISLAMIST GROUP TAPE THREATENS "HOLY WAR"

Iraqi Islamist group tape threatens "holy war"

DUBAI, July 28 (Reuters) - A hitherto unknown group of Iraqi Muslim militants warned in a video tape aired on an Arab television channel on Monday that they would fight a "holy war" against U.S. President George W. Bush and his administration.

"Bush, Rumsfeld and decision makers in the 'Black House' and in the Pentagon...we will shake the ground under your feet and we will send a fire upon you which only God can prevent," a masked man said on a tape aired on the Dubai-based Al Arabiya.

The man called his group the "Salafist Jihad Group."

"America -- you have declared war on God's soldiers...you will have no security or peace of mind as long as you are an infidel and fighting a war against Islam and Muslims," said the man, standing amid a group of similarly masked men holding weapons.

He pledged to avenge the arrest of religious figures and Islamist activists in prisons all over the world including Iraq, the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Morocco, Kenya, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan and India.

In recent weeks, many groups -- some saying they are Saddam loyalists and one claiming links to the militant al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden -- have claimed responsibility for attacks on U.S. occupying forces in Iraq.

U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Sunday accused the Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera channels of biased reporting from Iraq, adding that Washington was talking to unnamed governments to try to get more "balanced" coverage.

At least 49 U.S. soldiers have been killed since Bush declared the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1.

BLOODY U.S. RAID IN BAGHDAD LEAVES IRAQIS FURIOUS

Bloody U.S. raid in Baghdad leaves Iraqis furious
By Cynthia Johnston

BAGHDAD, July 28 (Reuters) - Caked pools of blood and a bullet hole in the window of Baghdad's al-Sa'ah restaurant are the only remaining signs of a U.S. raid that killed five Iraqi civilians as they unwittingly drove into a firestorm.

Furious residents of the upscale Mansur district accuse U.S. soldiers of firing indiscriminately at passing cars on Sunday as colleagues raided a villa in a vain search for Saddam Hussein.

"The cars came down the road. They didn't know the Americans were here. They were normal civilians and wanted to go home," one witness told Reuters on Monday as he stood in the courtyard of the Sa'ah restaurant.

"They (U.S. soldiers) opened fire right away."

A U.S. military spokesman said the raid was conducted by Task Force 20, a special team set up to hunt Saddam and his key aides, but gave no other details.

A soldier at a nearby hospital said the bodies of five people had been brought in from the scene of the raid, including a boy in his early teens.

On Monday morning not a soldier was in sight in Mansur, and four burned or bullet-riddled cars had been taken away.

"All these things are making people hate the Americans," said Muhammad, a Mansur resident.

"In the beginning, all the Iraqi people welcomed the Americans, but now the Americans have built a wall between themselves and the Iraqi people."

NO WARNING

Residents who witnessed the shooting said about 75 U.S. soldiers poured into the area in the early evening, blocking off the main street but failing to prevent innocent motorists straying into the fire zone from quiet side streets.

"They need to have barbed wire up so that people know there is an operation," one witness said. "This is a residential area. They need to take care of the civilians. There are kids here."

Another witness, who gave his name as Abbas, said he had turned away cars in a street near the restaurant. But smaller streets remained open. Witnesses said soldiers opened fire from atop a Humvee armoured vehicle at the first car that neared their position. Moments later they raked a second car with gunfire as well.

"It was indiscriminate firing," one witness said as others nodded in agreement and pointed out a bullet hole in the window of the restaurant.

Flying bullets also hit the gas tank of a parked car, setting it and another car ablaze. In minutes, the shooting was over and the soldiers withdrew.

"They just left," one resident said. "Then the Iraqi firemen came to put out the fires."

FIVE IRAQIS KILLED AS NET CLOSES ON SADDAM

Five Iraqis killed as net closes on Saddam
From Catherine Philp in Baghdad and Elaine Monaghan in Washington
London Times
July 28, 2003

AMERICAN military commanders in Iraq yesterday predicted the capture of Saddam Hussein "any day now" after a surge in tip-offs from informants hungry for a slice of the $25 million bounty on his head. The boast came after American soldiers narrowly missed catching Saddam's security chief, and possibly the former dictator himself, when they raided three houses near Tikrit, the former dictator's ancestral home, where he was said to be hiding.

Last night US soldiers from Task Force 20, a special unit hunting Saddam, raided a villa in central Baghdad, killing five Iraqis and wounding eight others.

The man appointed as Britain's new envoy to Iraq said that Saddam should be caught alive. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who leaves his role as United Nations Ambassador to take up the Baghdad posting in September, said that the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sons, in a battle last week was a "genuine success" for the US-led coalition in Iraq.

He told the BBC1 programme Breakfast with Frost: "We have now got to get the father. I would like to see him brought before a court, but that is in the hands of the military team looking for him. I would say it is quite important to do that."

An Iraqi policemen said that all the victims of the attack on the villa in Baghdad had been in cars driving through the area at the time. There was no sign of Saddam at the villa.

Its owner, Rabeeah Amin, a tribal chief, said: "I was told they had been tipped off that Saddam was hiding in my house, that he was my guest, but I know nothing about this."

Earlier, hundreds of troops, backed by Apache helicopters and Bradley fighting vehicles, stormed farmhouses outside Saddam's hometown of Tikrit shortly before dawn after receiving a tip. Iraqis told the military that the security chief they were seeking had been in one of the houses but had left before the raid.

"We missed him by 24 hours," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell, who led the operation, said. Nonetheless, commanders hailed the raid as evidence that troops were closing in on Saddam after the killing of his sons, Uday and Qusay, a week ago.

"They're running out of places to hide, and it's becoming difficult for them to move because we're everywhere," Colonel James C. Hickey, a brigade commander, said. "Any day now we're going to knock on their door, or kick in their door, and they know it."

Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Defence Secretary, said that it was only a matter of time before an informant provided the crucial tip-off about Saddam. "It takes time for them to trust us to give us the information," he told NBC television, "but they're giving us more and more. I think what happened last week with the deaths of those two miserable creatures (Saddam's sons) is encouraging more people to come forward."

The Americans would not name the security chief targeted in the raid yesterday, saying only that he was believed to have taken over after the arrest last month of Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, Saddam's cousin.

The Bush Administration says that it expects to pay $30 million to the man who revealed the whereabouts of Uday and Qusay. Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said: "We look forward to being able to pay the reward, just as we've said we would."

Paul Bremer, head of the coalition's civilian administration in Iraq, has promised informants not only cash but also protection.

Plea for bodies

Ezzedine Muhammad Hassan al-Majid, Saddam Hussein's second cousin, has asked the US military to release the bodies of Uday and Qusay Hussein for burial.

The request was made in a letter to Paul Bremner, the US administrator in Iraq, and aims at an orthodox Muslim burial at the Hussein family cemetary in Tikrit, Saddam's birthplace.

Mr al-Majid, whose wife and children were killed by forces loyal to Saddam said in his letter: "They are, despite what injuries they have put me and my family and the Iraqis through, nothing less than corpses."

The bodies of Uday and Qusay have been held at a makeshift mortuary at Baghdad international airport.

AMNESTY: IRAQIS COMPLAIN OF TORTURE BY U.S. FORCES

Amnesty: Iraqis Complain of Torture by U.S. Forces
July 23, 2003

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis detained by U.S. troops have complained of torture and degrading treatment, Amnesty International said Wednesday. There were also reports of troops shooting detainees, the London-based human rights watchdog said in a report based on interviews with former prisoners of the Americans across Iraq.

Amnesty staff heard complaints that included prolonged sleep deprivation and detainees being forced to stay in painful positions or wear hoods over their heads for long periods. "Such treatment would amount to 'torture and inhumane treatment' prohibited by the Fourth Geneva Convention and by international human rights law," Amnesty said. U.S. military officials were not immediately available to comment on the report.

Amnesty staff gathered testimony from former detainees around Iraq and from relatives of some still being held.

The organization made several requests to visit detention centers but were denied access by U.S. forces that have struggled to impose law and order since the invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein in April. "Detainees continue to report suffering extreme heat while housed in tents; insufficient water; inadequate washing facilities; open trenches for toilets; no change of clothes, even after two months' detention," Amnesty said.

Amnesty has said thousands are held in prisons run by U.S. troops. They include Abu Ghraib, one the most feared jails under Saddam, and Camp Cropper near Baghdad's airport.

The human rights group said it had received several reports of cases of detainees who have died in custody, "mostly as a result of shooting by members of the coalition forces." Amnesty said 22-year-old Alaa Jassem was killed when soldiers fired on detainees during a riot on June 13 at Abu Ghraib. Demonstrators threw bricks and poles at the soldiers. "According to eyewitnesses, Alaa Jassem was in a tent when he was shot. Seven other detainees were wounded," Amnesty said.

Other allegations reported by Amnesty included the case of Saadi al-Ubaydi on the morning of May 14, when two U.S. armed vehicles crashed through the stone wall surrounding his home. "Several soldiers forced their way in and beat him with their rifle butts. He ran out of the house to get away from them. Soldiers shot him a few meters away and he died immediately," the report said, citing witnesses in Ramadi.

Many Iraqis complain troops use heavy-handed tactics that humiliate householders when conducting weapons searches. "There continue to be many reports of members of the coalition forces engaging in house searches and damaging or destroying property without justification," Amnesty said. "There are also numerous reports of confiscation of property, including large sums of money, upon arrest."

PLEA FOR SADDAM'S SONS' BODIES

Plea for Saddam's sons' bodies
By Charles Clover
July 28 2003
Financial Times

Saddam Hussein's tribe has asked that the bodies of his sons, Uday and Qusay, be given to them for proper burial, Sheikh Mohammed Nida, a leader of the Albu Nasir tribe said yesterday.

Coalition officials were unavailable for comment on the matter, but Mr Nida said they had refused the request "for the time being". The sons were killed by US forces last week in a five-hour shoot-out in the city of Mosul.

The issue of their burial is a delicate one for the coalition: any funeral for the sons could be used to generate support for anti-coalition guerrillas in Iraq, but refusal would be seen as insensitive to Islamic traditions, which mandate a quick burial for the dead. The bodies are in cold storage in Baghdad airport. Charles Clover, Baghdad

UN: IRAQ AID GROUPS BEING TARGETED BY ATTACKERS

Iraq aid groups being targeted by attackers - U.N.

BAGHDAD, July 24 (Reuters) - Attacks against humanitarian groups working in Iraq, which have killed two aid workers this week, can no longer be considered isolated incidents, a United Nations spokesman said on Thursday.

"Certainly we can no longer call these isolated incidents, not at all," U.N. spokesman Salim Lone told a news conference. "It is not possible to believe that when there have been so many attacks.

"It clearly is very, very sad that those...whose only wish is to be of service to the Iraqi people are targeted and killed. It is particularly sad because our people are unarmed."

On Tuesday, a Sri Lankan technician for the International Committee of the Red Cross was killed and a driver was wounded when gunmen shot at their car south of Baghdad.

A day earlier, an Iraqi driver for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) died when his car veered into a bus after being raked by gunfire by a passing car. A foreign worker was wounded in that attack, also south of the capital.

A World Food Programme office in the northern city of Mosul was attacked with a grenade early this month, and an IOM office there has also been attacked.

U.S.-led troops have been struggling to restore order in Iraq since they overthrew Saddam Hussein in April, and 44 soldiers have been killed in attacks since U.S. President George W. Bush declared major combat operations over on May 1.

Lone said the United Nations was reviewing security for groups that work under its umbrella in Iraq after the attacks, but that "more measures are needed". He said staff had been warned to watch out for possible attackers shooting from the passenger side of cars.

"They are easy, soft targets, and it is so easy to pick on us. We will clearly have to review and are reviewing once again the security precautions we take," he said.

Iraq 17: 99-year-old Iraqi Jew reaches Israel at last

FULL ARTICLES

ELDERLY IRAQI JEWS TAKEN TO ISRAEL IN A SECRET AIRLIFT

Elderly Iraqi Jews taken to Israel in a secret airlift
By Carol Rosenberg
Miami Herald
July 28, 2003

Ezra Levy, 82, who until last week was a lifelong resident of Baghdad, didn't hesitate a second Sunday when he was asked what he liked best so far about his new life in the land of Israel.

"All the beautiful women I've seen," he replied with a partially toothless grin. "The beautiful women of Israel are different than those of Baghdad."

Levy arrived Friday, along with five other elderly Jews aboard a secret airlift from Iraq, a country where Jewish women are scarce these days.

He expects his son, Imad, 37, to follow soon from his service as the bachelor rabbi of Baghdad, tending to an aged community without a wife.

"I was very glad to come to Israel. I decided to leave everything behind, not to look back and look forward," Levy said in a burst of Arabic, then offered this in a more hesitant Hebrew, the language of his new country: "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930. But I'm beginning to understand."

MEDIA ATTENTION

Word of the evacuation leaked to the Israeli press, and then around the world over the weekend, with photos gracing Israeli newspapers Sunday. Officials had not planned to publicize it but acknowledged that it was sponsored by the Jewish Agency, which hopes to arrange future flights for the last several dozen elderly remnants of Iraq's once-flourishing Jewish community.

Jewish Agency envoy Shlomo Grafi, who traveled to Iraq on a U.S. passport, acknowledged that American troops cooperated with the effort, and dispatched armor to escort a minibus around Baghdad to collect those who chose to come. Friday's flight brought the first six, including a 99-year-old woman who was so feeble that Grafi had to carry her aboard a special Jordanian charter plane for the under-three-hour flight.

Not only was it the first direct Baghdad-Tel Aviv air link since 1951, it was also the first flight of the six Jews' lives, departing the former Saddam Hussein International Airport and arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport just ahead of the Jewish Sabbath.

Iraq broke ties with Israel in the early 1950s, but not before tens of thousands of Iraqi Jews teemed into the newborn Jewish state from the land where their ancestors were exiled 2,500 years ago by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. Almost all the rest fled in the 1960s and '70s, and when Saddam Hussein rose to power the last several hundred got special protection from his secular, Baath Party regime.

By the time U.S. forces invaded Iraq this year, they numbered about 35. They recently have been mostly homebound and fearful to even go to synagogue because of chaos in the Iraqi capital since the collapse of Hussein's government.

Just last week, amid reports that U.S. troops had killed Hussein's sons, Iraqis "were shooting all over the place," presumably in celebration, Levy said. "It was worrying."

Levy, for his part, said it was a tough decision to leave. But he said he did it to see his baby sister, Dalia, 60, who left at age 8 and has raised an Israeli family, and to see other relatives, including a nephew, Eli Levy, a Miami psychologist who expects to visit soon.

HARD CHOICE

Grafi said some of the Jews took some convincing to leave, and for all it was an emotional, uncertain choice. Levy, for example, only agreed to go after he went to a Baghdad cemetery, lay down on his wife's grave and wept in a final farewell. She died in 1991.

Levy is by far the fittest and most telegenic of the bunch. One elderly woman went straight to the hospital, after Grafi found her emaciated and in a near coma at her Baghdad home, without water or electricity.

Israeli officials said they will give them geriatric housing and other support to let them live their last days in dignity.

But Levy seemed already accommodating to his new life.

Saturday brought visits from cousins, nieces and nephews, native Israelis born after his brothers and sisters fled Baghdad in 1951. Sunday brought a battery of medical checks, including X-rays to inspect a pin that Iraqi surgeons put in a broken hip; a new immigrant's card; and 1,700 shekels in cash, or about $425, his first government pension.

Today, unless he is too tired, he plans to travel to Jerusalem, and visit Israel's parliament.

52-YEAR SEPARATION ENDS AS IRAQI JEWS ARRIVE IN ISRAEL

52-Year separation ends as Iraqi Jews arrive in Israel
By Greg Myre
New York Times
July 28, 2003

After more than a half century of separation enforced by Middle Eastern political strife, two Jewish sisters embraced today in a hotel lobby, tears forming in the corners of their eyes.

Salima Moshe Nissim, 79, a lifelong resident of Basra, Iraq, was one of six Iraqi Jews who agreed to leave their homeland on a charter flight on Friday that took them directly from Baghdad to Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv.

Her sister Marcel Madar, 83, who left Basra in 1951, during a period when the vast majority of Iraq's 130,000 Jews fled the country, was among several relatives waiting today at the Avia Hotel, just down the road from the airport. She was the only one Ms. Nissim had met before.

"I was all alone in Basra, and I was never happy because I could not see my family," Ms. Nissim said. Her last surviving relative in Iraq, her mother, died in 1967, and for years she knew of no other Jews living in the southern Iraqi city.

During Saddam Hussein's long rule, Iraq and Israel traded frequent recriminations and occasional airstrikes. But with the Americans in charge of Iraq for now, Israel is pushing to develop contacts and relations that have not existed since Israel's founding in 1948.

Two Jewish organizations, the Jewish Agency and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, organized the flight with the cooperation of the American military. The Jewish Agency is also working with the Americans to obtain Jewish archives that were seized by the Iraqi government.

Israel has raised the possibility of a peace deal with a future Iraqi government, and last week Israel's Finance Ministry ended a ban on commercial trade with Iraq.

But those projects are in the future, if they happen at all. For the sisters, today was all that mattered.

Ms. Nissim recalled that her two sisters and brother left Iraq in 1951, while she remained with her parents. Ms. Nissim married, but her husband died two years later.

After her parents died, she managed to support herself by giving English lessons, feeling tolerated but not particularly welcome.

After the fall of Mr. Hussein, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society sent representatives to Iraq and located 34 Jews, almost all of them old, in poor health and living in a single Baghdad neighborhood, near a synagogue that rarely opened.

Most decided to stay, at least for now. But six, all but one 70 or older, chose to leave.

The Jewish Agency organized the flight, while the American forces provided a military escort to the Baghdad airport, according to Michael Rosenberg, a Jewish Agency official.

The oldest member of the group, 99-year-old Naima Eliyahu Hallali, came with her 70-year-old daughter. Ms. Hallali was treated for exhaustion immediately upon her arrival.

All have relatives in Israel, but in most instances contact was severed decades ago.

During the 1950's, Ms. Nissim was able to send letters to family members in Israel via another relative in Iran. But that channel was closed around 1960.

As she sat down to a meal at the hotel, she was handed a cellphone, which was clearly alien to her. On the line was a nephew in Belgium. She inquired about every relative who sprang to mind, and in each case the response was the same.

"Everybody I ask about is dead," Ms. Nissim said.

Sitting quietly nearby was Sassoon Abdul, 90, a retired railroad worker and a lifelong bachelor, who had no relatives waiting for him.

"I think I have a nephew here, but I'm not sure," Mr. Abdul said. He speaks fluent English, learned long ago when Britain was running Iraq.

His life in Baghdad was difficult, and the war this year made it unbearable. "When the war came, there was no electricity and I couldn't rest," he said. "They asked me if I wanted to come, and I agreed."

By the time Mr. Hussein came to power three decades ago, the Jewish community in Iraq, as in most Arab countries, had dwindled to a small number, and Jews were mostly ignored.

The Iraqi government seized Jewish archives and stored them in the basement of an intelligence building, according to the Jewish Agency. The United States bombed the building this spring, smashing water pipes that flooded the basement and damaged the archives, which are currently in American possession.

Israel's limited dealings with the Arab world have suffered during the last three years of fighting with the Palestinians. But the last few months have produced renewed contacts.

Silvan Shalom, Israel's foreign minister, met today with his Moroccan counterpart in London, and recently held talks with the foreign minister of Qatar and the crown prince of Bahrain.

According to the Israeli news media, Friday's charter was believed to have been the first direct flight between the countries since an airlift in 1950-51 that brought thousands of Iraqi Jews to Israel.

Upon his arrival, Ezra Levy, 75, brushed off the Hebrew he had rarely used in decades and recited a poem he had learned as a boy.

"Do you bring me friendly greetings from my brothers there in Zion, brothers far yet near," he said on Israeli television. "O the happy! O the blessed! Do they guess what heavy sorrows I must suffer here?"

IRAQ ONCE HAD A COMMUNITY OF 130,000 JEWS

Israel-Iraqi immigrants
The Associated Press
July 28, 2003

Six of the estimated 34 Jews remaining in Iraq have arrived in Israel, including a 99-year-old woman, officials said.

The six were elderly and the effort to take them out of Iraq was considered a humanitarian mission, said Giora Rom, director general of the Jewish Agency, the organization responsible for bringing Jews to Israel.

Iraq once had a community of 130,000 Jews, but about 120,000 made their way to Israel between 1949 and 1952, with smaller numbers of Jews leaving the country in subsequent years.

Only 34 Jews were found in Iraq by a Jewish Agency envoy who visited the country after the U.S.-led defeat of Saddam Hussein's government, Rom said.

The other 28 Iraqi Jews did not want to come to Israel, said Rom speaking on Israel's Channel 2 TV. The agency supplied those who stayed with religious articles.

Among the six that arrived over the weekend was a 99-year-old woman and her 70-year-old daughter, another 70 year-old woman who was the last Jew in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, and a blind 90-year old Baghdad resident.

The names of the six were not released, and the Jewish Agency kept the mission a secret until they landed in Israel.

Rom said that one of the women spoke to her son in Israel for the first time in 35 years during a stopover in Amman, Jordan. Two of the women were taken by ambulance for medical checkups immediately after landing in Tel Aviv.

Channel 2 reported that the six had been flown from Iraq to Jordan with British aid and from there to Israel on a specially chartered plane.

SIX OF IRAQ'S 34 REMAINING JEWS IMMIGRATE TO ISRAEL

Six of Iraq's 34 remaining Jews immigrate to Israel
Reuters
July 25, 2003

Six of Iraq's 34 known remaining Jews immigrated to Israel on Friday, the first members of the tiny community in Baghdad to do so since the U.S.-led invasion, an Israeli immigration official said. "We have a lot of respect for these people who carried the Jewish burden and maintained their Judaism all these years," Giora Rom, director-general of the Jewish Agency for Israel, said about the newcomers, all of them elderly.

"I am happy to come here today," Ezra Levy, 82, said in Hebrew in an interview with Channel Two from inside the airport arrival hall. "I haven't spoken Hebrew since 1930."

The group, which arrived on a flight from Amman, included a 99-year-old woman. Some were met at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion airport by family members who immigrated from Iraq to Israel decades ago.

"We want them to be able to end their days with dignity," Rom said.

He gave no other details of their exodus from Iraq, where the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body that arranges immigration to the Jewish state, carried out a survey of the Jewish community last month.

It found there were no children among the Jews of Baghdad, half of whom are over the age of 70, and there had not been a Jewish wedding in the city since 1978.

The Jewish Agency said that while Jews in Iraq had faced some persecution and confiscation of property over the years, former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had made sure they were not harmed.

But since Saddam's fall, fears have grown among Baghdad's Jews that they could become targets for radicals gaining strength in Iraq.

One Muslim cleric issued a decree last month forbidding followers from selling land to Jews and promised death to any Jew who bought real estate.

Iraq's Jewish community traces its roots to the deportation of thousands of Jews from Jerusalem some 2,500 years ago, after the city was captured by Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

More than 129,000 Iraqi Jews immigrated to Israel after its establishment in 1948.

WHY ONLY 34 JEWS LEFT IN IRAQ?

(Reuters article from June 30, 2003, that makes no mention of the fact that the Jews were kicked out of Iraq or why there are only 34 left.)

By Daniel Trotta
Reuters
June 30, 2003

Under Saddam Hussein, they were a privileged group, protected and left to worship as they wished.

Since U.S. troops toppled Saddam in April and Iraq cascaded into lawlessness, they have taken refuge behind high walls and closed their house of prayer. One Muslim cleric has made death threats against them and they say they fear for their future.

They are the 34 Jews of Iraq.

"I speak the truth: Saddam Hussein was good to us," said Tawfik Safer, 80, outside the now locked doors of Baghdad's last synagogue.

"I think it was because we had nothing to do with politics," he said on Monday in the courtyard of the synagogue, a plain building but for Hebrew script at the entrance and anonymously surrounded by high walls.

Safer has seen a thriving community that traced its roots back to the Babylon of biblical times, whittled to below three dozen, most of them old and frail like himself. There is little prospect of new births.

Saddam fired Scud missiles at Israel in the 1991 Gulf War and gave money to families of Palestinian suicide bombers.

But the Jews of Baghdad, left behind by tens of thousands who departed for Israel over the past half-century, were afforded the direct telephone number of an Iraqi state security officer they could call if anyone bothered them.

"We did our fasting. We celebrated Passover. We read our religious books. Then the war came and the synagogue was closed because of the circumstances," Safer said.

There has been no trouble since Baghdad fell on April 9, said Mohammed Jasim, 30, caretaker of the building, which was put up in 1942 in what is now a largely Christian neighbourhood.

But around Iraq suspicion comes easily, of minorities all the more so. One notable Shi'ite cleric last week issued a decree, or fatwa, forbidding followers from selling land to Jews and promised death to any Jew who bought real estate.

DWINDLING NUMBERS

Whatever the ill intentions of others may bring, migration and the simple march of time may end Jewish history in Iraq.

The Jewish Agency for Israel, which arranges immigration, has sent an envoy to Baghdad to make first contact.

The envoy, who spent three days in Baghdad two weeks ago visiting some of the 34 people the Agency says have presented themselves as Jews, found there were no children among them – the last Jewish wedding in the city was in 1978.

Safer and two Iraqi Jews of the younger generation, Khalida and Nidal Saleh, sisters in their late 30s, said they had not heard from the agency but in any case they would not leave.

"I want to live here. We were born in Iraq," Khalida said.

Iraq's Jews trace their roots to the capture of Jerusalem nearly 2,600 years ago by King Nebuchadnezzar. He sent Jews to his capital Babylon, 100 km (60 miles) south of Baghdad, making it the cultural centre of the Jewish world for almost 1,000 years.

Before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, Iraq still had a vibrant Jewish community – some 280,000 people by Safer's recollection. Nearly half that number settled in the newly created Israel. Others went to Europe or America.

Safer walks in slow motion with two canes and greeted a reporter in pyjamas and sandals. When asked about the days before 1948, he opened his eyes wide and smiled.

"There were 75 synagogues in Baghdad alone!" he said.

Now he is concerned about the state of postwar Iraq.

Saudis to Host World Conference on Human Rights

July 24, 2003

FULL ARTICLES

KINGDOM TO HOST WORLD CONFERENCE ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Kingdom to Host World Conference on Human Rights
by M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan
Arab News Staff

www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=28245&d=2&m=7&y=2003

RIYADH, 2 July 2003 - Saudi Arabia will host an international conference on human rights on Oct. 14, the first conference of its kind to be organized with the help of the Saudi government.

The announcement comes against the background of steps in the Kingdom to set up two human rights commissions.

Saudi Red Crescent Society (SRCS) official Abdullah Al-Hazza, who is also the conference's secretary-general, said the event was being organized in cooperation with the Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs.

Al-Hazza said a number of international organizations would participate in the conference, whose theme is "human rights at the time of peace and war."

The conference will also shed light on the Islamic approach toward human rights.

The SRCS official said invitations had been sent to many local and international organizations. A number of universities, the Shoura Council, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), the King Faisal Foundation, the International Red Cross Society, the Muslim World League (MWL), the Italy-based International Institute for Human Rights and some UN organizations including UNESCO and UNICEF have been invited to attend.

The conference, the SRCS sources said, seeks to promote Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance and love. Islam is the first to acknowledge the rights of human being - a fact, which can be substantiated by historical evidence, they said.

TROUBLED KINGDOM

Troubled Kingdom
Saudis to host human-rights conference
U.N. invited to join event promoting Islam as religion of peace
WorldNetDaily.com
July 3, 2003

Despite its regard by Western nations as one of the world's most repressive regimes, Saudi Arabia is preparing to host its first international conference on human rights this fall, promoting Islam as a "religion of peace."

With a theme of "human rights at the time of peace and war," the conference will "shed light on the Islamic approach toward human rights," according to the Arab News, a government-approved daily.

Some United Nations organizations, including UNESCO and UNICEF, have been invited to the Oct. 14 event, the Saudi paper said. Others include the Muslim World League, International Red Cross Society, Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Italy-based International Institute for Human Rights.

Abdullah Al-Hazza, a Saudi Red Crescent Society official who also is the conference's secretary-general, said the event was being organized in cooperation with the Saudi Ministries of the Interior, Justice and Foreign Affairs.

Red Crescent officials told Arab News the conference seeks to promote Islam as the religion of peace, tolerance and love.

Islam is the first to acknowledge the rights of the human being - a fact, which can be substantiated by historical evidence, they said.

Nevertheless, the Western understanding of human rights is decidedly at odds.

In its most recent human-rights report, issued in March, the U.S. State Department said Saudi Arabia's Islamic government in 2002 "prohibited or restricted freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, religion and movement."

The State Department's annual report on religious freedom says bluntly, "freedom of religion does not exist in Saudi Arabia."

In its May report, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said "Saudi Arabia is a uniquely repressive case where the government forcefully and almost completely limits the public practice or expression of religion to one interpretation: a narrow and puritanical version of Islam based on the Wahhabi doctrine."

Consequently, the commission - an independent panel established by Congress - said, "those Saudis and foreign contract workers who do not adhere to the Saudi government's interpretation of Islam are subject to severe religious freedom violations."

Among the most serious abuses and forms of discrimination, according to the USCIRF, are:

• Virtually complete prohibitions on establishing non-Wahhabi places of worship, the public expression of non-Wahhabi religion, the wearing of non-prescribed religious dress and symbols, and the presence of identifiable clerics of any religion other than the government's interpretation of Islam;
• The harassment, detention, arrest, torture and subsequent deportation by government authorities of Christian foreign workers for worshipping in private - with many forced to go to great lengths to conceal private religious practice to avoid these abuses;
• The detention, imprisonment and, in some cases, torture of Shi'a clerics and religious scholars for their religious views, which differ from those of the government;
• The offensive and discriminatory language found in Saudi government-sponsored school textbooks, sermons in mosques and articles and commentary in the media about Jews, Christians and non-Wahhabi streams of Islam; and
• The interpretation and enforcement of religious law in Saudi Arabia, which affects every aspect of women's lives and results in serious violations of their human rights.

As WorldNetDaily reported, an American woman kidnapped by her Saudi father as a child sought refuge in the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah last month. She pleaded with U.S. officials to help her and her Saudi-born children, age 3 and 5, travel to America but was forced to leave the kingdom without them.

Saudi law dictates that no woman, American or not, can leave the country without permission of her husband or father.

The woman eventually fled the kingdom for the U.S., but left her children behind.

SAUDI LEADERS AGONIZE: WHERE DID WAHABISM GO WRONG?

Saudi leaders agonize: Where did Wahabism go wrong?
Special to WorldTribune.com
July 2, 2003

ABU DHABI - Saudi leaders are planning to revise the ruling Wahabi ideology said to have spawned Al Qaida and related insurgency movements.

On Tuesday, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz cited what he termed extremist ideas among young Saudis for the emergence of the Al Qaida network in the kingdom. Prince Nayef said these ideas have deviated from mainstream Islam and led to the attacks in Saudi Arabia, Middle East Newsline reported.

"Why are these things happenings?" Prince Nayef told the Shura Council on Tuesday. "What are the motives behind them? We need to ask: Did the source of this ideology come from this land or was it imported from outside?

Was it the result of fanatical ideas from people who have been brainwashed? Or is it a combination of factors, inside and out? But above all, how powerful is this ideology and how widespread is it?"

"They blame us for being Wahabis," Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz told military commanders on Tuesday. "Everybody knows who was Mohammed Bin Abdul Wahab. He was a worldly man who studied Islamic culture in India, Pakistan and Egypt."

Nayef said the kingdom must focus on the beliefs and behavior of young Saudis. He said a government priority is to return these youngsters to what he termed the straight path of the Muslim nation.

"We have witnessed the criminal acts of some of our youth, who are citizens of this country," Nayef said. "They have killed people, destroyed property and terrorized families. If a person does something wrong and is convinced it is right, then we have to look at the root causes."

Saudi leaders said Al Qaida and related insurgency groups have distorted Wahabi beliefs and focused only on jihad. They said this has hurt both the domestic and foreign interests of the kingdom.

Western diplomatic sources said the Saudi royal family have discussed the prospect of removing elements of Wahabi doctrine taught in mosques and schools around the kingdom. They said Saudi security and intelligence agencies have concluded that Wahabi teachings were exploited to launch insurgency operations against the kingdom.

So far, up to 1,000 Saudi clerics regarded as being linked to Al Qaida have been either dismissed or restricted in their activities, the sources said. They said Riyad has also drafted regulations that would restrict the references to jihad, or holy war, in radio and television broadcasts.

Saudi officials, who have not denied the report, said at least 124 people were arrested in the kingdom since the May 12 suicide strikes by Al Qaida in Riyad. The suicide bombings against Western compounds killed 35 people, eight of them Americans.

Many of those arrested, the officials said, were minors who had been recruited by Al Qaida. They said in many cases the parents were either uninformed or pressured into allowing their children to help carry weapons or relay messages within the Al Qaida network.

Nayef said the recent crackdown of Al Qaida suspects included many foreign nationals. He said many of the suspects were under age 25 and appeared to have been brainwashed.

Saudi Arabia has also bolstered its security and intelligence apparatus. King Fahd appointed Prince Faisal Ibn Abdullah Bin Mohammed Al Saud as deputy national intelligence chief. The Saudi Royal Court said in a statement that Al Saud will be responsible to Prince Nawaf, appointed chief of domestic intelligence in August 2001.

FBI WARNS OF AL QAEDA USING SAUDI PASSPORTS

FBI Warns of Al Qaeda Using Saudi Passports
From LA Times Wire Reports
July 3, 2003

The Al Qaeda terrorist network, whose operatives have used fraudulently obtained passports for international travel, has acquired stolen blank Saudi passports, the FBI said. The FBI said the unissued Saudi passports are authentic and have key security features that allow them to pass routine examination.

"Numerous Al Qaeda terrorists have also carried Saudi passports issued in the holy capital, another term for the city of Mecca," the FBI said. It said past bulletins have noted Al Qaeda's use of altered or fraudulent Colombian identification.

SAUDI CHARITY DENIES US CHARGES OF TERROR LINKS

Saudi Charity Denies U.S. Charges of Terror Links
By Dominic Evans
July 1, 2003

RIYADH (Reuters) - A top Saudi charity, accused by Washington of international terror links, has denied any militant connections but said it has shut down some overseas offices to focus on tackling domestic poverty.

Al-Haramain Foundation director Sheikh Aqil al-Aqil said his organization, which raises about 200 million riyals ($53 million) a year, promoted moderation and had distanced itself from violent groups when it was established 10 years ago.

"We set up this institution to preach Islam peacefully. It's very strange that we are described as terrorist," Aqil said in an interview late on Monday. "Maybe there was a mistake. We have absolutely no inclination to violence."

In March last year the State Department listed Al-Haramain's offices in Bosnia and Somalia as "terrorist organizations." A U.S. Treasury official told a congressional hearing in Washington last week Saudi Arabia had shut down 10 of the charity's offices overseas after the May 12 suicide bombings in Riyadh and that its board of directors was purged.

Saudi Arabia has come under increasing U.S. pressure to clamp down on any support or funding inside the kingdom for militant groups after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, carried out by mainly Saudi hijackers.

Al-Haramain, which has provided aid to Muslims around the world for a decade, has always mixed its relief work with a program to promote Saudi Arabia's austere Wahhabi Islam.

It says it has provided assistance and food to Muslims in East Africa, the Balkans, Chechnya and several Asian countries. It has also built 1,300 mosques, sponsored 3,000 preachers, and produced 20 million religious pamphlets.

Aqil said it had traditionally focused 70 percent of its spending abroad, but was switching attention to domestic needs in response to "the wish of the government" and poverty caused by rapid population growth in the oil producing kingdom.

He said it was shutting offices in Bosnia, Somalia, Pakistan, Tanzania, Kosovo, Indonesia, Kenya and Ethiopia, blaming the closure on the behavior of host governments.

"These countries cooperate with America," he said. "They always accused us, inspected us, raided us. It disturbed us."

An adviser to Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah said in Washington last month that Al-Haramain would shut all its offices outside the kingdom and that it would be illegal for any Saudi charity to have an office abroad.

But Aqil said Al-Haramain still had branches in Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania, Nigeria and Bangladesh. "All the offices that are working have a legal position," he said.

Saudi government measures since September 11, 2001, had stopped the institute from public fund-raising campaigns and had also made it tighten up its accounting practices.

But though U.S. pressure had affected some corporate donations, Aqil said public support for Al-Haramain had soared: "We are like heroes in the Islamic world because America is against us."

124 HELD IN SAUDI ANTI-TERROR CAMPAIGN

124 Held in Saudi Anti-Terror Campaign
July 2, 2003

Authorities launched the manhunt after fatal bombings in May and an alleged plot on Mecca.
From LA Times Staff and Wire Reports

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi police have arrested 124 people in the kingdom's recent crackdown on terrorism, and some of the suspects are linked to Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, the government said Tuesday.

Saudi authorities launched extensive manhunts after May 12 bombings that killed nearly three dozen people in Riyadh, the capital, and following a June 14 raid on a terrorist cell that was allegedly planning attacks in Mecca, Islam's holiest city.

The kingdom's interior minister, Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, said 124 people have been arrested. The detainees include people linked to Al Qaeda, individuals who have returned from Afghanistan, foreign nationals and at least five women, the official Saudi Press Agency quoted the prince as saying.

The minister also said security authorities have confiscated a wide range of weapons, including hundreds of explosive devices and machine guns.

Chief among those arrested is Ali Abdulrahman Said Alfagsy Ghamdi, the suspected mastermind of the Riyadh bombings. The interior minister denied reports that Ghamdi struck a deal with officials to surrender. "The noose was tightening around him. He had no alternative but to turn himself in," Nayif said.

In Washington, President Bush said Tuesday that Saudi Arabia is making strides against Al Qaeda, singling out the recent killing in the kingdom of a "major Al Qaeda operational planner and fund-raiser" known as Swift Sword.

A U.S. intelligence official said Swift Sword is Yousif Salih Fahad Ayeeri, an Al Qaeda financier. The official described him as a senior Al Qaeda figure in the kingdom, a "facilitator, fund-raiser and propagandist. He didn't conduct attacks but was a promoter of them."

WAHHABI STRAIN OF ISLAM FAULTED

Wahhabi Strain of Islam Faulted
Saudis' Funding Helps Foster Terror Groups, Experts Say

By John Mintz
Washington Post
June 27, 2003

In a rare congressional hearing on Saudi funding of extremism, two U.S. senators and a panel of terrorism experts said yesterday that top Saudi officials and institutions spend huge sums from the kingdom's oil wealth to promote an intolerant school of Islam embraced by al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

"The problem we are looking at today is the state-sponsored doctrine and funding of an extremist ideology that provides the recruiting grounds, support infrastructure and monetary lifeblood to today's international terrorists," said Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who chaired the hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee's terrorism panel.

Although administration officials have avoided suggesting that Saudi Arabia, an important U.S. ally, is the world's leading source of terrorist funding, Treasury Department general counsel David Aufhauser testified yesterday that "in many ways, [Saudi Arabia] is the epicenter" for the financing of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network and other terrorist movements.

"We are not at war with a faith, nor with any particular sect," Aufhauser said. But he added that Islam's "severe and uncompromising" Wahhabi movement "is a very important factor to be taken into account when discussing terrorist financing."

Aufhauser added that the Saudis' largely unmonitored spending to disseminate the Wahhabi viewpoint worldwide "is a combustible compound when mixed with religious teachings in thousands of madrasahs [Islamic schools] that condemn pluralism and mark nonbelievers as enemies . . . It needs to be dealt with."

Wahhabism was founded in the 18th century by the cleric Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who preached an austere brand of Islam that harkens to the prophet Mohammed. Historians say the modern Saudi state is led by an alliance of his followers, who handle the kingdom's religious affairs, and the royal Saud family.

Saudi Embassy officials did not respond to requests for comment yesterday evening. But in the past they and their defenders have said critics of Wahhabism exhibit an anti-Islamic bias and want to disrupt the U.S.-Saudi alliance. Saudi officials discourage the use of the term Wahhabism to describe their religious view, preferring the term Salafism.

Witnesses at the hearing did not provide many details about the Saudi religious establishment's spending practices around the world -- a problem confronted by Wahhabism's critics for years, in part because of the Saudis' traditional secrecy about their affairs.

Alex Alexiev, an expert on extremist movements and a fellow at the conservative Center for Security Policy, cited figures in Saudi government reports showing that between 1975 and 2002, the government had spent $70 billion on aid projects around the world. He said it was unclear whether this included the large sums in private donations doled out by Saudi-regulated foundations.

Saying the scale of some of these charities is immense, Alexiev quoted reports by one of the largest Saudi charities, al-Haramain, showing that each year it prints 13 million Islamic books, dispatches 3,000 proselytizers, and founds 1,100 mosques, schools and centers.

Aufhauser also mentioned al-Haramain, saying that after the recent synchronized bombings of several residential compounds in Saudi Arabia that killed 34 people, including eight Americans, Saudi officials closed 10 of the charity's offices around the world. Al-Haramain's board of directors was purged, he added, and "a significant number of prominent fundraisers" were arrested.

Saudi officials had dragged their feet for months in cracking down on al-Haramain, in part because of its influence in the highest circles of Saudi society, U.S. officials said privately. But yesterday Aufhauser said that since the May 12 suicide bombings there, Saudi officials have worked closely with the United States to clamp down on Islamic radicals.

Muslim convert Stephen Schwartz, author of "The Two Faces of Islam," a book that warns of the spread of Wahhabism, said the Saudis established and continue to finance hundreds of mosques and centers in this country, as well as some of the nation's leading Muslim activist organizations. They also control the training and appointment of many imams, he said.

"The Wahhabi presence in the United States is a foreboding one that has potentially harmful and far-reaching consequences for our nation's mosques, schools, prisons and even our military," where a number of chaplains are influenced by the movement, said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

“Saudi Arabia fingerprints all over 9/11”

FULL ARTICLES

CIA ERASES DETAILS OF SAUDI TIES TO AL QAIDA

CIA erases details of Saudi ties to Al Qaida
Middle East Newsline

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The U.S. intelligence community has eliminated from a congressional report significant details of the ties of the Saudi royal family to Al Qaida.

Congressional sources said the 800-page report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was delayed for months because of arguments with the Bush administration over details of Saudi involvement with Al Qaida. The sources said the administration did not want the report by the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks to reopen wounds with Riyad amid its new cooperation with the U.S.-led war against Al Qaida.

The report, which could be released over the next week, will discuss how the United States underestimated Saudi links to Al Qaida. The investigation by the 10-member commission reviewed the FBI failure to detect Saudi aid to two of the 19 Al Qaida hijackers in September 2001.

"There's little doubt that much of the funding of terrorist groups -- whether intentional or unintentional -- is coming from Saudi sources," John Lehman, a member of the independent commission, told a congressional hearing earlier this month.

The sources said the congressional study was completed in December 2002. The administration kept the report for six months and the commission said the White House withheld documents required for the investigation.

Last week, former Senate Select Intelligence Committee chairman Bob Graham quoted the report as saying that Al Qaida has trained between 70,000 and 120,000 terrorists. The report said many of those trained were sent around the world, including the United States.

"We have to assume that as those people were placed around the world, some were placed inside the United States," Graham, a Florida Democrat, said. "Some of them are in the United States today."

Graham, a Democratic presidential candidate, has criticized the Bush administration for delaying the release of the report. The senator said the Bush administration has approved inclusion of the Al Qaida training estimate in the final report.

"We allowed Al Qaida to regroup and regenerate," Graham said. "They've conducted a series of very sophisticated operations, thus far none of it in the United States, but seven Americans were killed in Saudi Arabia."

Over the weekend, the United States launched another effort to promote human rights in Saudi Arabia. Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Lorne Craner arrived in Saudi Arabia on Monday to discuss the human rights situation in the kingdom.

SEPTEMBER 11 PAIR 'HELPED BY SAUDI AGENT'

September 11 pair 'helped by Saudi agent'
By Toby Harnden in Washington
Daily Telegraph, U.K.
July 22, 2003

A Saudi citizen who provided help to two of the September 11 hijackers may have been an agent for the Riyadh government, a congressional report will highlight this week.

The explosive allegation in the report, which is understood to be highly critical of the FBI, is likely to reignite the controversy over Saudi Arabia's links with al-Qa'eda and has already led to accusations that the Bush administration is covering up for the House of Saud.

According to Newsweek magazine, the 900-page report will document extensive ties between Omar al-Bayoumi and the two hijackers after they arrived in San Diego in 2000.

Al-Bayoumi, who will be identified as a possible Saudi government agent, assisted Khalid al-Mindhar and Nawaf al-Hamzi, who were among the five al-Qa'eda operatives who hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 and flew it into the Pentagon.

Any evidence that Bayoumi was a Saudi agent would be explosive, transforming the September 11 investigation into an inquiry into possible state-sponsored terrorism.

The White House has resisted calls for the whole report to be published, insisting that a 28-page section dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments be kept secret.

"They are protecting a foreign government," said Senator Bob Graham, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination and oversaw the inquiry, conducted jointly by the Senate and House of Representative's intelligence committees.

Robert Mueller, who took over as FBI director just before September 11, has already been criticised because his agents did not investigate al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi even though they were living in the house of an FBI informant.

The report is also expected to criticise the Pentagon for failing to carry out air strikes against al-Qa'eda camps in Afghanistan before September 11 and the CIA for not telling the FBI about the presence of al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi at a meeting of terrorists in Malaysia.

It is the FBI, however, which is due to get the harshest verdict. The FBI's informant also had contact with Hani Hanjour, another hijacker, but the bureau did not discover he was in contact with al-Qa'eda operatives despite his regular conversations with his handler.

One congressional investigator described the report as "a scathing indictment of the FBI as an agency that doesn't have a clue about terrorism".

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers on September 11 were Saudis but President George W Bush has consistently sought to play down Saudi Arabia's links to terrorism.

Bayoumi was enrolled in a graduate business course at Aston University in Birmingham and was arrested in Britain after the September 11 attacks. He had left America two months before the attacks.

Records of telephone calls to diplomats at the Saudi embassy in Washington were found but he was released without charge after a week. He was charged with visa fraud in America but this was not an extraditable offence and he was thought to have returned to Saudi Arabia.

The FBI is already investigating "charity" payments sent by Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, to a family linked to Bayoumi.

She gave tens of thousands of dollars to relatives of Osama Bassnan, a Saudi citizen who was friendly with Bayoumi, in monthly instalments in 2000.

However, the White House said there was no evidence that the princess knew the eventual destination of her donation, which was said to have been given to the Bassnan family to help pay for medical treatment.

Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles in January 2000 and then went straight to a restaurant where he met al-Mindhar and al-Hamzi, whom he accompanied back to San Diego.

He later later arranged for the men to move into a flat next to his home, paid their rent for the first two months and threw a welcoming party for them.

Sources have said Baymoumi also helped them open a bank account and enlisted a friend to help them obtain social security cards and contact flight schools in Florida to arrange flying lessons.

THE SAUDIS - STRADDLING BOTH SIDES

Exclusive: The Saudis - Straddling Both Sides
Capture of Qaeda ringleader touted as proof of effectivity of Bush administration's efforts
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball
NEWSWEEK

July 7 issue - The capture last week of a Qaeda ringleader in Saudi Arabia is being touted by Bush administration officials as the strongest evidence yet that their effort to prod the Saudis to crack down on Osama bin Laden's network is working.

THE OPERATIVE, 30-YEAR-OLD Ali Abd al Rahman al Faqasi al Ghamdi, is described as an Afghan veteran and a key figure in the May 12 bombings in Riyadh that killed 34 people, including eight Americans - an attack that U.S. officials insist finally energized the Saudis to take the terror threat seriously. Al Ghamdi, who comes from the same Saudi tribe as two of the 9-11 hijackers, appears to have taken instructions for the attack from senior Qaeda leaders in Iran - possibly including military commander Saif Al-Adel and Saad bin Laden, one of Osama's sons. Even more importantly, NEWSWEEK has learned, U.S. investigators now believe al Ghamdi received help from bin Laden sympathizers within the Saudi National Guard - a development that could trigger an uproar inside Saudi Arabia since National Guard members were killed in the attacks.

To root out the bin Laden network, administration officials say, the Saudis have moved more aggressively to shut down charities linked to Qaeda financing and begun working with the CIA on new, highly sensitive covert operations. "The Saudis are doing some incredible stuff right now," says one top counter narcotics official. One possible example: last week's dramatic commando-style raid in Malawi that netted five terror suspects - including one, a Saudi national, who was the local director of the Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz Special Committee for Relief, a charitable foundation overseen by Saudi Arabia's longtime Defense minister. The five suspects -believed to have been instrumental in helping to finance Qaeda operations in Africa -were rounded up early on June 22 and surreptitiously flown out of Malawi on a CIA-charted aircraft two days later, despite an order from the High Court of Malawi barring their removal. The court is now demanding answers from Mala-wian officials who assisted the CIA in the roundup.

Still, some U.S. officials remain skeptical that the Saudis will continue the crackdown, and suspect the White House may be hyping it for political reasons. Administration officials are extremely nervous about the contents of an 800-page congressional report on the 9-11 attacks that documents apparent financial links between Saudi officials and some of the hijackers. Administration officials are battling with congressional leaders over declassifying the report, but some version is expected to be released in the next few weeks. "The Saudis are an extremely sensitive subject with [the White House]," said one U.S. investigator familiar with the negotiations over the report. Meanwhile, with a large coterie of Qaeda operatives still on the loose and actively plotting against Western diplomats, nearly half the 120-member U.S. mission to Saudi Arabia has been ordered home. The arrest of al Ghamdi was a "big deal," said one U.S. official in Riyadh, "but it's not the whole story."

OUR ENEMISE THE SAUDIS

Our Enemies the Saudis
By Michael Barone

U.S. News & World Report
June 3, 2002

Fifteen of the 19 September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the prisoners held at Guantánamo are Saudis. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi, and al Qaeda was supported by large contributions from Saudis, including members of the Saudi royal family. The Saudis' cooperation with our efforts to track down the financing of al Qaeda appears to be somewhere between minimal and zero. They got us to let members of the bin Laden family scamper out of the United States on a private jet shortly after September 11. They refuse to provide - as almost every other country has - manifests of plane passengers flying to the United States.

Such behavior is nothing new. The Saudis stymied the FBI investigation of the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. The Saudis refused a U.S. request in 1996 that they take custody of bin Laden; he went to Afghanistan instead. They refused in 1995 to hand over Imad Mughniyah, believed responsible for the bombing of a Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983. Far from aiding our efforts against terrorism, the Saudis have worked against them - to protect the terrorists in their own ranks. Also, the Saudis have praised suicide bombings and raised money for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Government-controlled Saudi media have frequently spread the vilest kinds of anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda.

Such has been the behavior of those the State Department has long referred to as "our friends the Saudis." It would be more accurate to call them our enemies the Saudis.

Freedoms? Zero for seven. The Saudis run a totalitarian society. Not one of the seven freedoms identified by President Bush in his State of the Union speech - the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice, religious tolerance - is honored by the Saudis. There is no free speech and no freedom of religion (during the Gulf War the Saudis did not allow President Bush to conduct a religious service on Saudi soil), and women are restricted and physically assaulted by religious police who prowl the streets (and, by some accounts, would not allow teenage girls to leave a burning school, lest they not be properly clad; 15 girls died).

But the Saudis are not content to run a totalitarian society at home; they are trying to export their totalitarian Wahhabi Islam around the world. Since the Gulf War, the Saudis have financed Wahhabi clerics and Wahhabi-run mosques and schools in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indonesia, Western Europe, and the United States. The results can be seen on the Edgware Road in London or Leesburg Pike in Northern Virginia: Journalists have no trouble finding young people spouting the most vituperative anti-U.S. and anti-Jewish propaganda and swearing that they would fight for Islam against the United States. The Saudis are waging war against us, financing the spread of the idea that our free society must be overthrown and totalitarian Wahhabi Islam must be imposed by force.

So why do some still call the Saudis our friends? Because they have the power to keep oil prices down? That leverage is being reduced by increased oil production by our friends Russia and Mexico. Because they are anti-Communist? Communism is no longer a threat. Because they are used to heeding the mellifluous advice of Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar? What has he done to stop al Qaeda or the propagation of totalitarian Wahhabi Islam? Because we depend on Saudi military bases? Despite Pentagon denials, it seems we are wisely dispersing our forces in the gulf.

It may not be prudent yet to speak the truth out loud, that the Saudis are our enemies. But they should know that it is increasingly apparent to the American people that they are effectively waging war against us. And they should know that we have the capacity to destroy their military, presumably in a matter of hours. The Saudis' eastern provinces, with their oil, could be given to their Shiite Muslim majority, now oppressed by the Sunni Muslim Saudi rulers. The holy cities of Mecca and Medina could be returned to the custody of the Hashemites (Jordan's King Abdullah's family), who unlike the Saudis are direct descendants of the prophet Mohammed. Let the Saudis have the sands of central Arabia and their bank accounts in Switzerland, hotel suites in London, and villas on the Riviera.

President Bush has said that we must have regime change in Iraq to be safe from terrorism. It is increasingly clear that we must have regime change in Saudi-ruled Arabia as well.

SAUDI ISLAMIC CHARITIES SAY MAURITANIA HAS SHUT THEM

Saudi Islamic Charities Say Mauritania Has Shut Them
Reuters
July 22, 2003

NOUAKCHOTT, July 21 Mauritania, which blamed Islamists for inciting a failed coup attempt last month, has ordered the closure of two Saudi Arabian Islamic charities, one of the organisations said on Monday. The attempted coup by renegade soldiers on June 8 followed the arrest of dozens of Islamists and activists of the pan-Arab Baath party sympathetic to Saddam Hussein amid signs of unrest after the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, whose country's economy could be revolutionised by oil reserves discovered offshore, accused Islamists of inciting support for the coup bid, the most serious challenge to his rule since his own coup in 1984.

A representative of the Saudi Preaching Centre said it and another Islamic charity, the Global Islamic Rescue Organisation, had been visited by government officials on Sunday who served them with official notices ordering them to close. Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

THE 9-11 REPORT: SLAMMING THE FBI

Exclusive - The 9-11 Report: Slamming the FBI
By Michael Isikoff
NEWSWEEK

July 28 issue (advance copy) - The FBI blew repeated chances to uncover the 9-11 plot because it failed to aggressively investigate evidence of Al Qaeda's presence in the United States, especially in the San Diego area, where two of the hijackers were living with one of the bureau's own informants, according to the congressional report set for release this week.

THE LONG-DELAYED 900-page report also contains potentially explosive new evidence suggesting that Omar al-Bayoumi, a key associate of two of the hijackers, may have been a Saudi-government agent, sources tell NEWSWEEK. The report documents extensive ties between al-Bayoumi and the hijackers. But the bureau never kept tabs on al-Bayoumi - despite receiving prior information he was a secret Saudi agent, the report says.

In January 2000, al-Bayoumi had a meeting at the Saudi Consulate in Los Angeles - and then went directly to a restaurant where he met future hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi, whom he took back with him to San Diego. (Al-Bayoumi later arranged for the men to get an apartment next to his and fronted them their first two months rent.) The report is sure to reignite questions about whether some Saudi officials were secretly monitoring the hijackers - or even facilitating their conduct.

Questions about the Saudi role arose repeatedly during last year's joint House-Senate intelligence-committees inquiry. But the Bush administration has refused to declassify many key passages of the committees' findings. A 28-page section of the report dealing with the Saudis and other foreign governments will be deleted. "They are protecting a foreign government," charged Sen. Bob Graham, who oversaw the inquiry.

The report criticizes the Pentagon for resisting military strikes against Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan prior to 9-11, and the CIA for failing to pass along crucial information about Almihdhar and Alhazmi at a terrorists' summit in Malaysia. But the FBI gets the toughest treatment. A few months after al-Bayoumi took them to San Diego, Almihdhar and Alhazmi moved into the house of a local professor who was a longtime FBI "asset." The prof also had earlier contact with another hijacker, Hani Hanjour. But even though the informant was in regular touch with his FBI handler, the bureau never pieced together that he was living with terrorists.

The bureau also failed to pursue other leads, including a local imam who dealt with several key 9-11 figures. The report, one congressional investigator said, "is a scathing indictment of the FBI as an agency that doesn't have a clue about terrorism." Furious bureau officials say the report misstates the evidence. They say the bureau checked out al-Bayoumi - now back in Saudi Arabia - and concluded he had not given the hijackers "material support." As for Almihdhar and Alhazmi, "there was nothing there that gave us any suspicion about these guys," said one FBI official.

Albeit reduced, the terror continues

July 23, 2003

[Note by Tom Gross]

Although there has been a reduction in terror attacks against Israelis since the "truce" was called, they are continuing at a rate that no other country would find acceptable.

Because the European and American media are virtually ignoring them, I am sending out articles from the Israeli, Indian, and Australian media concerning terror attacks in recent days. The latest attack was tonight on an Israeli cyclist who was stabbed as he rode home in Jerusalem; he was rushed to Hadassah University Hospital with the knife still lodged in his back. On Sunday night, a 64 year old Jerusalem man was stabbed in the city's upscale Yemin Moshe neighborhood. Last week a 24-year-old Israeli was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in an attack claimed by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a "military" wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. At least two suicide bombers were caught today en route to perpetrate attacks. An Israeli soldier, Oleg Shaichat, remains missing, thought to have been kidnapped in the manner that an Israeli taxi driver was kidnapped last week. Hezbollah has shelled northern Israel, injuring two civilians, one seriously.

I attach 9 stories with summaries first:

1. "PA report: 26 terror acts against Israelis since hudna" (Ha'aretz, July 22, 2003). "There were 26 separate terror incidents since the Palestinian factions announced their unilateral cease-fire, a Palestinian security forces report says. The report cites mortar fire, anti-tank rocket fire, shots fired at IDF patrols and the suicide attack at Kfar Yavetz and the stabbing in Jaffa." (This article was written before the latest stabbings.) "Seven Palestinians have been killed since the hudna took effect, nearly all while attempting to conduct attacks on Israeli targets."

2. "Arafat is said to fund truce foes" (By Charles A. Radin and Sa'Id Ghazali, Boston Globe, July 23, 2003.) This is a remarkable article from the front page of today's Boston Globe. At last, a senior correspondent at a major newspaper has acknowledged that it is Yasser Arafat who is orchestrating much of the terror against Israel. Radin and Ghazali write: "JENIN, West Bank - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his followers are supplying financial and political support to armed groups that reject the current cease-fire ... The groups include units of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades organization, a military affiliate of Arafat's Fatah movement that is listed as a terrorist group by the US State Department. In recent days, the Brigades led attacks on pro-Abbas leaders in major West Bank cities and hounded from office the governor of Jenin. ... 'They won - they have forced me to resign,'' a bruised and battered Governor Haider Irsheid said in his home as he recovered from his abduction and public beating last Saturday at the hands of armed militants in Jenin. ''I am exhausted,'' the 49-year-old Jenin native and former diplomat said. ''They beat me all over my body.'' Irsheid said Arafat knows of and supports the continuing payments to the militant groups despite their rejection of the cease-fire... Abdel Fattah al Hamayel, who is a Fatah leader and a Palestinian Authority minister without portfolio, confirmed that Fatah is providing money to the Brigades, Irsheid said ... Fatah had given $10,000 to Brigades members from the Jenin camp on July 12."

"Fatah-affiliated militias also are sending waves of shock and fear through Nablus, where, during an attempt to abduct an alleged collaborator last week, they shot dead a 36-year-old woman carrying her 3-month-old baby along a street. Two cars belonging to Nablus Governor Mahmoud al Aloul and one belonging to another Palestinian official who criticized the activities of armed gangs in the city were torched."

3. "Israeli cyclist stabbed near Arab refugee camp in capital" (July 24, 2003, The Jerusalem Post). "A 40 year old Israeli resident of Jerusalem riding home on bicycle Wednesday night was stabbed and moderately wounded by four Arab assailants near the city's northern Shuafat refugee camp, police said. It was the second major stabbing in the capital in the last three days. As a manhunt for the attackers got underway, the victim was rushed by Magen David Adom paramedics to Hadassah University Hospital at Ein Kerem with the knife still lodged in his back... On Sunday night, a 64 year old Jerusalem man was stabbed and moderately wounded in the city's upscale Yemin Moshe neighborhood when out for a walk with a friend... The latest attacks come about a week after a 24-year-old Israeli was stabbed to death by a Palestinian assailant in Jaffa, a late-night attack that was claimed by the El Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement."

4. "Two would-be suicide bombers held; IDF soldier still missing" (Ha'aretz, July 23, 2003). "Military sources said the men, Azam Yusuf and Ibrahim Darsheikh, were members of Islamic Jihad and were planning to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel."

5. "Hezbollah shells northern Israel, two injured" (July 22, 2003, The Times of India / AP). "Hezbollah guerillas in southern Lebanon fired salvoes of anti-aircraft shells into northern Israel, injuring two people, one seriously in the Israeli town of Shlomi."

6. "Abbas won't crack down on militants" (23 July 2003, The Age (Australia). "Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said he will not crack down on Palestinian militant groups, despite being urged by the US and Israel to do so... Disarming militant groups responsible for attacks on Israelis is a condition of the US-backed road map to Middle East peace, which envisions an end to violence and creating an independent Palestinian state by 2005."

7. "Palestinian attacks on Israelis are 'crimes against humanity': rights group" (Agence France-Presse, July 21, 2003.) Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians amount to "crimes against humanity" which Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) has not done enough to stop, a French-based rights group, Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World), charged Monday. Statistics produced in the report showed that the proportion of civilian victims was "at least equal to 70 percent" and that most were elderly, young or children. "Unfortunately, this report speaks for the Zionist extreme-right," charged Mohammed al-Hindi, an official of the hardline Islamic Jihad. (TG adds: Please note that AFP's own tally of Israeli and Palestinian dead in this story is extremely misleading, substantially reducing the number of Israeli victims and substantially increasing Palestinian victims by including Palestinians not killed by Israel.)

8. "Hamas building 1,000 Kassam rockets" (The Jerusalem Post, July 21, 2003). "Hamas is utilizing the cease-fire to build more than 1,000 Kassam rockets... This has sparked a fear among IDF officers that should hostilities resume, "the opening of the next phase in the conflict will be much more violent," according to a Gaza brigade commander. Much of the raw material necessary to build the rockets is smuggled in myriad tunnels from Egypt. The Egyptians also are not doing enough to stop the smuggling, he said. "It is not as though they are unaware of the vast amounts of weapons and ammunition being smuggled through."

9. "Report: New PA textbooks full of anti-Israel propaganda" (The Jerusalem Post, July 22, 2003). "'O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and jihad and sacrifice are necessary,' reads a recently introduced Palestinian Authority eighth grade textbook... The name "Israel" does not appear on a single map; the entire land is called 'Palestine.' ... Jihad and martyrdom are exalted, as they are in previous textbooks."

FULL ARTICLES

PA REPORT: 26 TERROR ACTS AGAINST ISRAELIS SINCE HUDNA

PA report: 26 terror acts against Israelis since hudna
Ha'aretz
By Arnon Regular
July 22, 2003

There were 26 separate terror incidents since the Palestinian factions announced their unilateral cease-fire, a Palestinian security forces report says. The report cites mortar fire, anti-tank rocket fire, shots fired at IDF patrols and the suicide attack at Kfar Yavetz and the stabbing in Jaffa.

According to the report, during the three weeks of hudna, there have been an average of 1.3 incidents of violence per day compared to an average of 13 a day during June and an average 18 a day during the entire intifada. The report says there were 3.5 suicide bombings a month during the entire intifada, and in June there were four.

During June, there were 31 Israelis killed and 179 wounded, while the overall monthly average for the entire intifada was 24 Israelis killed a month and some 150 wounded. So far, during the cease-fire, which began in early July, there have been three Israelis (including a foreign worker) killed and five wounded.

The 26 incidents include seven cases of rocket and mortar fire in Gaza, including some conducted by Hamas cells. Six were conducted against Israeli military targets in Gaza and the West Bank, where five were by Fatah. The rest of the incidents included shooting at settlements and attacks on civilians. The Palestinians also counted seven cases of land mines against IDF patrols, with four discovered before they went off. Almost all were planted by Fatah-affiliated cells.

According to the Palestinian data, 2,678 Palestinians were killed during the intifada, with 62 killed during June. Seven Palestinians have been killed since the hudna took effect, nearly all while attempting to conduct attacks on Israeli targets.

A Palestinian security source said yesterday that, while the data shows a dramatic drop in the number of violent incidents, as well as an equally dramatic decline in the number of terror alerts reaching Israel, the Palestinians documenting the situation on the ground from the Palestinian perspective see no change in the situation. Checkpoints remain in place, as does the internal closure preventing freedom of movement between Palestinian towns, villages and cities.

ARAFAT IS SAID TO FUND TRUCE FOES

Arafat is said to fund truce foes
By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff, and Sa'Id Ghazali, Globe Correspondent, Boston Globe
July 23, 2003

JENIN, West Bank - Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and his followers are supplying financial and political support to armed groups that reject the current cease-fire and the leadership of Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, according to the Palestinian Authority and local officials.

The groups include units of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades organization, a military affiliate of Arafat's Fatah movement that is listed as a terrorist group by the US State Department. In recent days, the Brigades led attacks on pro-Abbas leaders in major West Bank cities and hounded from office the governor of Jenin. Control of this chaotic and lawless city, from which numerous terror attacks have been launched against Israel, is essential if the Palestinian Authority is to meet its commitments under the US-backed ''road map'' toward Mideast peace.

''They won - they have forced me to resign,'' a bruised and battered Governor Haider Irsheid said in his home as he recovered from his abduction and public beating last Saturday at the hands of armed militants in Jenin. He said he would continue functioning as governor until he leaves on a two-month vacation today, then will insist that Arafat accept his resignation. ''I am exhausted,'' the 49-year-old Jenin native and former diplomat said. ''They beat me all over my body.''

Irsheid said Arafat knows of and supports the continuing payments to the militant groups despite their rejection of the cease-fire. The governor said Fatah is making the payments in numerous places in the West Bank, even as internal Palestinian reforms and US pressure have begun to choke off previous sources of funding for the paramilitary groups.

Abdel Fattah al Hamayel, who is a Fatah leader and a Palestinian Authority minister without portfolio, confirmed that Fatah is providing money to the Brigades.

Defiance of the Abbas government by paramilitary groups that are loyal to Arafat and are affiliated with his Fatah movement is the latest in a growing number of signs that the road map initiative is in danger of breaking down. The road map, embraced by President Bush, Abbas, and Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, at their summit conference last month in Jordan, sets out steps that the Palestinians and Israelis must take to move toward a permanent peace.

Israel began, but has not continued, to fulfill its commitment to dismantle settlement outposts erected after March 2001, and the Palestinian Authority has made no effort to confront and dismantle terrorist groups, although both issues were supposed to be dealt with early in the process.

Israel has withdrawn from Palestinian-populated territory in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem, and Palestinian incitement against Jews and Israelis has declined, as have attacks by both sides. But as Abbas and Sharon head toward Washington for consultations with Bush over the next week, talks between the sides have bogged down over Palestinian demands that Israel release prisoners and stop building its new security fence - neither of which is a major topic of the road map.

Failure of the Abbas government to control principal Palestinian cities could soon make all the talks, and the road map itself, irrelevant. With the support of Arafat, Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades members are in control of the streets on Jenin, the fourth-largest Palestinian city, and the Brigades and other Fatah splinter groups have initiated a wave of car-torchings, extortions, and abductions, in Nablus, the third-largest city.

Irsheid, the Jenin governor, was abducted from his home last Saturday afternoon, publicly beaten, marched barefoot through the Jenin refugee camp, and thrown into a cave, where he was beaten again. On orders from Arafat, he was released four hours later. He had cuts and bruises on his face, arms, and legs, and his feet were badly cut from the sharp stones of the camp roads.

Irsheid said he spoke with the Palestinian leader two days before the abduction and told him ''it was 100 percent wrong'' that Fatah had given $10,000 to Brigades members from the Jenin camp on July 12. Irsheid said Arafat ''told me that `they are our children. We have to control them.' I advised him not to do this, that it was dangerous... The only way to control them is through the rule of law.''

Hamayel, who made the payment from Fatah funds, said the Brigades members ''are employees and they are Fatah. They are also human beings. They need to pay rent for their homes and telephones.'' He said the groups ''are committed to the cease-fire. They told us in writing that their commitment to the cease-fire is absolute.''

When told that Zakariah al Zubaidi, the head of the Brigades in the Jenin camp, told Globe reporters that they did not accept the cease-fire and mounted attacks as recently as Sunday, Hamayel said, ''That's not true.''

Irsheid said he recognized the leaders of the Brigades in the camp and in Jenin city among the people who abducted and beat him. ''I was kidnapped; I don't know why,'' he said. ''I don't think it was encouraged by [Arafat].'' But Irsheid said the attackers told him one reason for the assault was that he tried to discourage Arafat from giving them financial support.

Irsheid said he has had tense relations with militant groups in Jenin for the past two years ''because I stopped them from attacking people and doing injustices,'' which he said included extorting money from the public. Both he and Zubaidi said the Brigades and the Palestinian Authority administrator were at odds over the cease-fire that most militants -- but not the Brigades in Jenin and Nablus -- are observing.

Irsheid said the Authority's declaration of an end to armed attacks on Israelis set a policy that had to be obeyed. But Zubaidi said the governor's contacts with the Israelis over enforcing the cease-fire and negotiating Israeli withdrawal from Jenin made him a collaborator with the enemy.

Ata Abu Irmaileh, the head of Fatah in the Jenin camp, said he believes ''Arafat is against the cease-fire with the Israeli aggressors, [but] Arafat is under siege and he is under pressures. His position is always with the martyrs.''

Fatah-affiliated militias also are sending waves of shock and fear through Nablus, where, during an attempt to abduct an alleged collaborator last week, they shot dead a 36-year-old woman carrying her 3-month-old baby along a street. Two cars belonging to Nablus Governor Mahmoud al Aloul and one belonging to another Palestinian official who criticized the activities of armed gangs in the city were torched.

''These people are like bats in the night, spreading chaos and destruction in our society,'' said Talal Dweikat, chief of Palestinian intelligence in the city. ''Many criminals are using the slogans of homeland as a cover for their criminal attacks.''

Dr. Randa Abu Rabe'e, a prominent Nablus physician, said residents are outraged at the use of weapons on the streets. ''It has become easy to say that somebody is a collaborator and then use it as a justification for kidnapping and shooting. Nobody knows who these people are.''

ISRAELI CYCLIST STABBED NEAR ARAB REFUGEE CAMP IN CAPITAL

Israeli cyclist stabbed near Arab refugee camp in capital
By Etgar Lefkovits
The Jerusalem Post
July 24, 2003

A 40 year old Israeli resident of Jerusalem riding home on bicycle Wednesday night was stabbed and moderately wounded by four Arab assailants near the city's northern Shuafat refugee camp, police said.

It was the second major stabbing in the capital in the last three days.

The Israeli victim, David Shilo, told police that he was making his way home to the northern Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev on his bicycle shortly after 9 p.m. when four Arab teens assaulted him near the entrance to the city's Shuafat refugee camp, which lies adjacent to the French Hill intersection.

The four 15 year old suspects approached Shilo, asked him if he wanted to sell his bike, then threw him off the bike, and stabbed him in the back with a kitchen knife before fleeing.

As a manhunt for the attackers got underway, the victim was rushed by Magen David Adom paramedics to Hadassah University Hospital at Ein Kerem with the knife still lodged in his back.

During subsequent police searches, several Arab teens matching the assailants' general description were arrested, and were being questioned by police at press time. It was not immediately clear whether they were involved in the attack, were eyewitnesses, or were simply innocent passers-by.

Earlier Wednesday, in a major security sweep in the area, Jerusalem border police had rounded up over 200 Palestinians who were residing illegally in the sprawling refugee camp, which lies along the city's porous northern border with the West Bank.

It was not immediately clear if there was any connection between the two events.

On Sunday night, a 64 year old Jerusalem man was stabbed and moderately wounded in the city's upscale Yemin Moshe neighborhood when out for a walk with a friend.

Coincidentally, the victim in that similar night-time attack, which police said was probably terror-related, was from Pisgat Ze'ev as well. The assailant in that stabbing has not been apprehended to date.

The latest attacks come about a week after a 24-year-old Israeli was stabbed to death by a Palestinian assailant in Jaffa, a late-night attack that was claimed by the El Aksa Martyrs Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's mainstream Fatah movement.

In recent weeks, Israeli security officials have voiced concern over the renewal and increase of such 'low-level attacks,' after last month's declaration of a three-month cease-fire by the major Palestinian terror organizations.

Before the two attacks this week, the last stabbing in Jerusalem occurred last month when two Israeli friendswere found brutally stabbed to death in a forest southwest of Jerusalem, in what police suspect was also a Palestinian terrorist attack.

The assailants in that attack have not been apprehended to date.

Before that, in February 2002, a 25-year-old university student was stabbed to death in Jerusalem's 'Peace Forest' by a gang of Jerusalem Arab teens.

TWO WOULD-BE SUICIDE BOMBERS HELD; IDF SOLDIER STILL MISSING

Two would-be suicide bombers held; IDF soldier still missing
By Ha'aretz Service
July 23, 2003

The IDF said Wednesday that police arrested two Palestinians overnight in the village of Rai, southwest of Jenin.

Military sources said the men, Azam Yusuf and Ibrahim Darsheikh, were members of Islamic Jihad and were planning to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel.

Jerusalem police arrested some 200 Palestinians from Hebron and Nablus for being in the

refugee camp of Shuafat, in the northern part of the capital, without valid permits.

Also, police are requesting the public's help in finding missing IDF soldier Oleg Shaichat, who was last seen Monday at the Ami-Ad junction in the Galilee.

Shaichat is described as 1.78 meters in height and having a large build, with short blonde hair and blue eyes. He has eyeglasses and was wearing an army uniform. He also has a scar behind his left ear. Anyone with any information of his whereabouts is asked to contact the police.

Superintendent Rafi Ben-David, police commander in Upper Nazareth, told Army Radio that all possibilities were under investigation.

"All directions of the investigation are open, but the unexplained disappearance of a soldier increases the level of suspicion," Ben-David said. "No problem was found in the family that could have indicated any signs of distress (with the soldier)," he added.

Security officials have repeatedly said they have intelligence warnings of Palestinian militants' intentions to kidnap Israeli soldiers.

HEZBOLLAH SHELLS NORTHERN ISRAEL

Hezbollah shells northern Israel
London Times
May 22, 2003

Hezbollah guerillas in southern Lebanon have fired salvoes of anti-aircraft shells into northern Israel, injuring two people. The Israeli army said one person was seriously injured and another lightly hurt when shells hit the town of Shlomi. The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah routinely responds to Israeli air force flights over Lebanon with anti-aircraft fire.

HEZBOLLAH SHELLS NORTHERN ISRAEL, TWO INJURED

Hezbollah shells northern Israel, two injured
Times of India / AP
July 22, 2003

JERUSALEM: Hezbollah guerillas in southern Lebanon fired salvoes of anti-aircraft shells into northern Israel, injuring two people, the Israeli army said Tuesday.

The army said one person was seriously injured and another lightly hurt when shells hit the Israeli town of Shlomi. Military sources also said a fire had broken out in the town, but did not specify its extent.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah routinely responds to Israeli air force flights over Lebanon with anti-aircraft fire.

A Hezbollah statement issued in Beirut said the group's air defense unit fired three times in the space of an hour Tuesday morning at Israeli ``enemy planes that violated Lebanese sovereignty.''

The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the claim its planes were in the area.

Hezbollah and Israel fought a bloody guerrilla war for 18 years in southern Lebanon before Israel's withdrawal in 2000. Since then, Hezbollah has frequently fired across the border, especially in the area of Sheba Farms, an Israeli border outpost that Lebanon continues to claim.

ABBAS WON'T CRACK DOWN ON MILITANTS

Abbas won't crack down on militants
The Age (Australia)
July 23, 2003

Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas said he will not crack down on Palestinian militant groups, despite being urged by the US and Israel to do so.

After meeting in Cairo with Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, Abbas was asked by reporters if he will dismantle armed groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, steps Israel is demanding before withdrawing its forces from more Palestinian towns.

"Cracking down on Hamas, Jihad and the Palestinian organisations is not an option at all," Abbas said before leaving Egypt to travel to Jordan for talks with King Abdullah II.

"We are applying the law which we accepted under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority, and that is what we will do."

The Palestinian Authority says a crackdown could trigger civil war, while militants warn such a move could nullify a shaky three-month truce in attacks on Israelis.

Disarming militant groups responsible for attacks on Israelis is a condition of the US-backed road map to Middle East peace, which envisions an end to violence and creating an independent Palestinian state by 2005.

Under the road map, Israel withdrew from parts of Gaza and the West Bank town of Bethlehem, but refuses to hand over more land unless the Palestinians disarm militant groups. Abbas has preferred to negotiate with militant groups - not forcibly crackdown on them - in a bid to end attacks.

In an apparent move to satisfy Israel, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Sunday issued a decree outlawing "incitement that encourages the use of violence that harms relations with foreign countries."

Abbas and Palestinian security chief Mohamed Dahlan held talks in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher and Egypt's intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, on the road map and Abbas' upcoming visit to Washington.

Abbas is expected to meet US President George W Bush on Friday. Israeli PrimeMinister Ariel Sharon is scheduled to meet the American leader next Tuesday.

A Palestinian official said Mubarak pledged to work to force Israel to lift its confinement of Arafat to his Ramallah compound, where he has been holed up for more than a year. Israel has rejected a Palestinian appeal to allow Arafat freedom of movement, saying he can leave his compound, but he might not be allowed to return.

Initially, Abbas had said he would not travel to Washington before an end to Arafat's confinement.

But he said he and Arafat had agreed that Abbas should travel to America to "serve the (Palestinian) cause and our internal situation. Our goal and concern is that he (Arafat) would be free and travel wherever he wants."

Abbas said he would press Bush and other US officials to make Israel comply with its road map requirements, including dismantling Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and ending restrictions on movement.

The Palestinians have also been pressing Israel to release more of the estimated 7,700 Palestinians in Israeli jails. Israel has agreed to free several hundred, but has so far resisted Palestinian demands for a mass release.

PALESTINIAN ATTACKS ON ISRAELIS ARE "CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY": RIGHTS GROUP

Palestinian attacks on Israelis are "crimes against humanity": rights group
Agence France-Presse
July 21, 2003

PARIS, July 21 (AFP) - Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians amount to "crimes against humanity" which Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority (PA) has not done enough to stop, a French-based rights group charged Monday.

"Armed Palestinian groups clearly premeditate and organize serious violations of international humanitarian law," Medecins du Monde (Doctors of the World) said in a report.

The study found that the violence against Israelis - in particular suicide bombings -- "by their 'systematic or generalised' character, in a stated intention to kill civilians and to sow terror in the Israeli population, constitute crimes against humanity in the terms of the statute of the International Criminal Court."

The research covered almost two years of the Palestinian uprising from September 29, 2000 to August 12, 2002.

Statistics produced in the report showed that the proportion of civilian victims was "at least equal to 70 percent" and that most were elderly, young or children.

The research was based upon interviews with survivors, victims' families, workers in non-governmental organisations, police officers, soldiers and officials from the Israeli foreign and health ministries.

"All of Israeli society is affected, either symbolically, with Holocaust survivors becoming victims in their daily life, where safety imperatives modify behaviour, or on an economic level."

But a top Arafat aide dismissed the report.

"We refuse the findings of this report. Only the (Israeli) occupation is a war crime," Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

"What is needed is for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands to end and for a Palestinian state to be created. The occupation is the source of every problem here," he said.

"The Palestinian people have endured the occupation for decades and have the right to achieve freedom, independence and justice," he added.

A senior leader of the radical Islamic group Hamas, which has carried out the bulk of suicide bombings over the past 34 months, said the report was biased.

"We condemn this report and believe it is clearly siding with the Israeli occcupation and violence, especially as it does not differentiate between the butcher and the victim," said Abdelaziz al-Rantissi.

"Unfortunately, this report speaks for the Zionist extreme-right," charged Mohammed al-Hindi, an official of the hardline Islamic Jihad.

"We used to always try avoiding civilians but the Israeli enemy did not respect that and targeted civilians," he said, adding Israel was responsible "for bloodshed on both sides."

According to an AFP tally, a total of 3,382 people have been killed since the start of the intifada conflict, including 2,549 Palestinians and 772 Israelis.

Israeli human rights watchdog B'Tselem said 515 of the Israeli victims were civilians, and included Jewish settlers living on Palestinian land.

The Medecins du Monde report was a follow-up to a study conducted last year with the International Federation for Human Rights which accused the Israeli army of "war crimes" in the way it repressed the Palestinian civilian population.

In its latest report, the group accused the PA of "letting a climate of impunity develop" around Palestinian attacks on Israelis, and of maintaining "an ambiguity as to the moral support for people who organise and commit these crimes."

Nevertheless, it noted that senior Palestinian officials and respected intellectuals have admonished the actions against civilians, and it called on the international community to support them.

"Currently, there is a very good window of opportunity - there is a truce (declared by armed Palestinian groups) and ... the Palestinian prime minister, Mahmud Abbas, has denounced terrorism and violence," the group's honorary president Jacky Mamou told AFP.

HAMAS BUILDING 1,000 KASSAM ROCKETS

Hamas building 1,000 Kassam rockets
By Matthew Gutman and Margot Dudkevitch
The Jerusalem Post
July 21, 2003

Hamas is utilizing the cease-fire to build more than 1,000 Kassam rockets in an effort to change the balance of power following the three-month cessation in hostilities, a senior IDF officer told reporters in the Gaza Strip on Monday.

This has sparked a fear among IDF officers that should hostilities resume, "the opening of the next phase in the conflict will be much more violent," according to a Gaza brigade commander.

Much of the raw material necessary to build the rockets is smuggled in myriad tunnels underneath Rafah. From there, the source said, the weapons or bomb components are driven to Khan Yunis or Gaza City.

It is in those cities, said the senior officer, that Hamas is working on a new version of the Kassam that could reach "15 kilometers or up to 20 km," putting cities such as Ashkelon and Netivot within range.

Some of the more lucrative tunnels whose "engineers" earn a handsome profit from material smuggled under the Egyptian-Gaza border are believed to be 80 meters underground.

"Unfortunately," he said, "their digging of tunnels is much faster than our ability to stop it."

Dozens of kilograms of explosives, hundreds of weapons, antitank rockets, missiles, and thousands of bullets reach terrorist organizations operating in the Rafah area, which are taking advantage of the situation to replenish their stocks and rearm, he said.

"The Palestinian Authority is doing nothing to stop the smuggling of huge amounts of arms, weapons, and ammunition. We estimate that there are eight to 10 tunnels currently functioning," he said.

In accordance with the understandings reached with the PA, the IDF halted initiated operations in the Rafah area that focused on demolishing and destroying the tunnels.

"We destroyed or sealed more than 25 tunnels in the past year. It is unfortunate that all our achievements appear to have gone down the drain. The PA, which meant to deal with the situation, is doing nothing, and the situation is being taken advantage of by all the terrorist organizations who are receiving the weapons and arms," he said.

The IDF had almost brought to a halt the smuggling of weapons, he said. "Even the Palestinians admitted that when we operated in the area, the stream of weapons and ammunition stopped," he said.

The Egyptians also are not doing enough to stop the smuggling, he said. "It is not as though they are unaware of the vast amounts of weapons and ammunition being smuggled through."

While the IDF has taken the PA security forces to task for failing to disarm the terrorist groups, it does commend the PA for a concerted effort in reducing the level of incitement and for clamping down on terror attacks. Nonetheless, the IDF says that it has recorded 85 attacks in the Gaza Strip alone since the declaration of the cease-fire 20 days ago.

While the PA has managed to reduce the number of attacks, it has "not gotten to the root of the problem" i.e. disarming of the terrorists the senior officer said.

Especially frustrating for the army, he added, is that the IDF feeds the PA intelligence tips from time to time hoping that it will act on them. "That they dealt with [inciting] graffiti and are getting traffic cops back on the streets is nice, but the main problem for us is not traffic but weapons smuggling," he said.

Negotiation has so far served as the chief PA method for preventing attacks, he said. Sometimes "they arrest a militant under the most comfortable conditions possible and release him" within hours. The longest a militant has been held, he said, is four days.

Nevertheless, the perception within IDF ranks that the PA has all the necessary tools to disarm and arrest Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Aksa Martyrs Brigades terrorists is also giving way.

When asked whether the balance of weapons in the Gaza Strip is tilted toward the rejectionist groups or the PA, a brigade commander in Gaza hesitated for a moment, and then noted that the rejectionists probably have the upper hand.

"There have been so many arms smuggled in that we can tell by the sheer number that we capture that there must be much more that we don't," he said.

Security sources have for months been publicly saying that the PA boasts a force of 20,000 armed security personnel in Gaza alone. "They are armed, have enough jeeps, cars, enough ammunition, and enough courts to arrest those men and take them to court," said one officer.

But in private, the IDF gives figures much closer to those that PA security chiefs give about 12,000, sometimes less. Many of these men are not nearly as motivated as their rejectionist counterparts.

When further pressed, the commander, who works intimately with his PA counterparts, admitted that in an all-out battle the rejectionist groups could defeat the PA.

"The PA is aware of this," he said, "and so the challenge is to disarm the militant groups peacefully. The PA believes that it can only solve the problem by including Hamas in government."

Standing at what was once considered the most notorious checkpoint in the Gaza Strip, the commander proudly motioned toward the unceasing flow of traffic at Katif junction. "It is a great example of how to implement separation," he said.

"Gaza is a particularly good place to observe separation at work. It has a clearly demarcated and operational security fence. This allows all efforts to be made by both sides to prevent terrorists from leaving the Strip."

Nonetheless, the IDF maintains that the road continues to serve as a funnel for weapons, bombs, and even new recruits from the south of the Strip to the north.

Settlers travel on a bridge that bypasses the road, reducing to almost zero the settler-Palestinian friction, one of the IDF's main goals, according to the senior officer.

REPORT: NEW PA TEXTBOOKS FULL OF ANTI-ISRAEL PROPAGANDA

Report: New PA textbooks full of anti-Israel propaganda
By Shira Schoenberg
The Jerusalem Post
July 22, 2003

"O brother, the oppressors have exceeded all bounds and jihad and sacrifice are necessary," reads a line about the Israeli War of Independence, in the "reading and texts" section of one recently introduced Palestinian Authority eighth grade textbook.

Since 2000, the PA has replaced half of the Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks that were previously used in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to a report released Monday by the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (CMIP) on 35 third- and eighth grade PA textbooks, however, the new texts are much like the old.

"With regard to the key elements, the core of the conflict between Jews and Arabs, Palestinians and Israelis, there is no change [between these and the Egyptian and Jordanian textbooks]," said CMIP Vice-Chairman Dr. Yohanan Manor. The textbooks do not live up to criteria recommended by UNESCO, including requirements such as recognition of others' achievements, honest presentation of political disputes, and avoidance of wording likely to create prejudice.

Previous CMIP studies examined textbooks published by the PA in 2002 and 2001 for grades 1, 2, 6, 7, and 11. The texts in the current study were introduced into the curriculum in November 2002 and February 2003 and "there has been no substantial improvement," said Manor. He added that there are a few elements that may herald the beginning of change.

The study shows that there is no recognition in the textbooks of the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state. One of the two mentions of Zionism is in a reading in an eight grade text: "The fire of Zionist crime has mowed the Palestinian land." The name "Israel" does not appear on a single map; the entire land is called "Palestine."

This set of textbooks also shows an increase in blame placed on Israel. Previously, Israel was faulted for problems in human rights, the economy, and the environment, but not necessarily domestic Palestinian problems. In this study, an eighth grade civic education textbook asks, "Some of the problems of [Palestinian] family violence emanate from the practices of the [Israeli] occupation and its destructive impact on our society. How?"

In concordance with the refusal to recognize Israel, there is not a single mention in any textbook of the content of the Oslo Accords. The solution to the current conflict is generally described as the "liberation of Palestine" and the return of all refugees to their former homes.

"About one in four mentions of the liberation refers to post-'67 borders," explained Manor, "The other three fourths refer to the situation since the inception of Israel in 1948." Jihad and martyrdom are exalted, as they are in previous textbooks.

Although the textbooks do, for the first time, recognize Judaism as a "heavenly," or monotheistic, religion, there is no recognition of the Jews as a people with any historical, cultural, or religious links to Israel or its holy places. Jews in the present conflict are stereotyped as "oppressors" and "slaughterers."

There are a few positive changes, of which Manor said, "It is difficult to assess the significance."

The new textbooks have broader conceptions of tolerance and pluralism than previous books, although it is unclear whether Jews are included in these notions. A grammar lesson in an eighth grade linguistic sciences text contains a unique statement about the value of life: "It is nice for a man to die for his homeland but it is nicer for him to live for his homeland." There are also a few statements against the use of terrorism against civilians, although these are counterbalanced by adulation of terrorist groups.

Manor, who plans to meet with PA education officials in September, hopes that the study will lead to changes within Palestinian society, as well as discussion in the European Union and other powers. "People need to realize that education is an important element to ensure that the road map will succeed," he said.

Update: Many media still misreporting Road Map conditions

July 22, 2003

FULL ARTICLES

SHARON, ABBAS MEET ON PRISONERS BEFORE BUSH TALKS

Sharon, Abbas Meet on Prisoners Before Bush Talks
By Dan Williams
July 21, 2003

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel agreed to free hundreds more Palestinian prisoners Sunday, disappointing Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas's hopes for a full amnesty but keeping a U.S.-backed peace "road map" in motion.

Abbas met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at his Jerusalem residence and was promised that several hundred prisoners would be released, Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr told reporters, adding: "This is positive progress."

An Israeli government source confirmed the number of candidates for release but said the list would be finalized after Sharon and Abbas hold separate meetings with President Bush in Washington later this month.

The road map aims to end a 33-month-old Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with the promise of statehood by 2005. Abbas has said the release of all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners is vital to boosting grassroots support for the plan. Sharon commended Abbas for coaxing a three-month truce from Palestinian militants in late June. "The prime minister told his counterpart that Israel cannot ignore the fact that recently terrorism and incitement have diminished significantly," Sharon's office said.

But hours later, the army said an Islamic Jihad militant blew himself up accidentally while laying a mine for an Israeli patrol east of the West Bank city of Jenin. Islamic Jihad denied this, saying troops shot the man dead as he fled arrest.

In another incident which jarred the June 29 cease-fire, an assailant thought to be Palestinian knifed and seriously wounded an Israeli pedestrian in Jerusalem, police said.

ISRAEL PUSHES FOR PALESTINIAN CRACKDOWN

Israel reoccupied much of the West Bank after suicide bombings last year. This month forces withdrew from the city of Bethlehem as well as areas of Gaza as mandated by the road map. The security handovers there have been largely successful.

Sharon's office said he told Abbas further pullbacks were contingent on the Palestinians dismantling militant groups, another requirement of the plan. But although Abbas has vowed to punish anyone who violates the truce, he has avoided a crackdown for fear of civil war.

Militants in turn say a resumption of attacks could hinge on the prisoner issue. "If they (Israel) release some of the prisoners, it's not satisfactory," said Ismail Abu-Shanab, a leader of the Islamic group Hamas.

With the list of prisoners for release not yet final, Israeli officials said earlier Sharon might relax criteria to enable members of Hamas and kindred group Islamic Jihad who were not involved in anti-Israeli attacks to go free.

Israel has ruled out releasing Palestinians "with blood on their hands" -- involved in attacks on Israelis. Some government sources said these add up to around half of the 6,000 prisoners, suggesting more releases could be in store. Sunday's meeting was Sharon's fourth with Abbas since the Palestinian prime minister assumed the post in April as part of sweeping reforms demanded by the United States. The move sidelined Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom Israel accuses of fomenting violence. He denies it.

During their meeting, Abbas asked Sharon to lift restrictions on Arafat as well as easing travel conditions for Palestinians in general. Sharon's office said Israel would weigh removing some checkpoints, but made no mention of Arafat.

(Additional reporting by Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and Wael al-Ahmad in Jenin)

PALESTINIANS-SECURITY CHIEF

Palestinians-Security Chief
By Lara Sukhtian
Associated Press Writer
July 21, 2003

JERUSALEM (AP) -- The release of Palestinians in Israeli jails is the main priority of talks with Israel on a U.S.-backed peace plan, the Palestinian security chief said Sunday.

However, there appeared to be little progress on that front Sunday when Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas met in Jerusalem.

The Palestinians want Israel to release many more jailed Palestinians than the several hundred it offered to free two weeks ago. Israel has resisted demands for a mass release of its estimated 7,700 Palestinian prisoners.

The release of prisoners is not spelled out as an Israeli obligation in the so-called "road map" peace plan, but Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan said the releases are "at the top of our agenda."

"It is the issue that is of great importance to everyone now," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview before Sunday's summit.

Sharon's office said afterward that he had pledged to consider Palestinian requests for additional prisoner releases.

Dahlan said many of the jailed Palestinians pose no security risk.

"The Israelis right now can release 3,000 Palestinian prisoners without any serious security issues," he said.

Israel has hinted it might be willing to release some members of Islamic groups in a prisoner exchange but only if they have not been involved in attacks on Israelis.

On another issue, Dahlan said Israeli operations in pursuit of militants have crippled Palestinian security forces, making it difficult for them to directly confront the militants.

"We are in the process of rebuilding the Palestinian Authority and rebuilding its security apparatus that the occupation destroyed in the last two-and-a-half years," he said.

Israel is pushing the Palestinians to disarm militant groups responsible for suicide bombings and shootings that have killed hundreds of Israelis since the latest violence began in September 2000.

The Palestinian Authority has resisted cracking down on militant groups for fear of sparking a civil war. But Palestinian officials have repeatedly said they would work to confiscate illegal weapons.

On Saturday, Dahlan's office said the government had started "a large-scale campaign" to bring law and order to the Gaza Strip. The statement gave no specifics. On Sunday, Yasser Arafat's office reissued a 1998 decree outlawing any group that advocates change by force.

The main militant groups declared a temporary cease-fire June 29, but progress has stalled on the peace plan, which calls for an immediate end to violence and the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005.

Dahlan said that if there are concrete achievements for Palestinians, it would be "in the interest of everyone" to keep the truce alive.

MIDEAST PARTIES NOW LOOK TO U.S.

Mideast Parties Now Look to U.S.
Sharon-Abbas Meeting Stalls Over 'Road Map'
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
July 21, 2003

JERUSALEM, July 20 -- After a series of tentative opening steps in a new Middle East peace process, Israelis and Palestinians are refusing to make the bold leaps necessary to keep the process going and are looking to the Bush administration to referee their disputes in meetings in Washington this month, officials from both sides said.

The peace plan, known as the road map, has stalled over several key issues that have thwarted other recent efforts to resolve the 34-month-long Palestinian uprising -- notably Israel's demand for guaranteed security and the dismantling of Palestinian militant groups; and Palestinian demands for Israeli troop pullbacks in the West Bank, a freeze on the expansion of Jewish settlements and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

No significant progress was made on any of the issues during a meeting today between the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen. A Palestinian source who attended the two-hour meeting said it was "a difficult one that included shouting on both sides."

While Palestinian security forces have arrested a few militants and confiscated a few weapons since President Bush officially launched the road map at a summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Aqaba, Jordan, on June 4, they have yet to stage a concerted crackdown on radical groups such as Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, and Islamic Jihad, as both Israel and the United States are demanding. Instead, they are relying on a tenuous three-month cease-fire by Palestinian militant groups to keep the peace. And while Israel has released some Palestinian prisoners and pulled back troops from the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem, the first major prisoner release announced two weeks ago still has not occurred and most of the West Bank remains under tight Israeli control. While Israel has dismantled eight settlement outposts since June 4, 11 new ones have gone up.

"There is a lot of concern that this is very fragile and could come apart at any time, with the next bombing," said a Western diplomat who asked not to be identified.

"The Palestinians haven't done anything to disarm and dismantle groups like Hamas, and there's a danger that if the inertia continues and something bad were to happen, the whole thing could collapse. And what's Israel done? They've released a few prisoners, and as for settlements -- there's been no movement on that," the diplomat said.

Those will be some of the main issues when Abbas visits Washington on July 25 and Sharon arrives for talks four days later, Israeli and Palestinian officials said. Both leaders hope that the Bush administration -- and the president himself -- will use the visits to force concessions from the other side.

"We want the Americans to be in a position of doing some muscle flexing on Abu Mazen and say, 'It's time for you to cash in a few of your chips,' " a senior Israeli official said. "That's why we think Washington called in both sides, because they understand time is very valuable, and the Palestinians can't keep stringing it out and playing for more time. Before you know it, the three months of cease-fire will be behind us, Hamas will be fresh, the Palestinians won't have lifted a finger, and in two seconds the whole thing is going to go up in flames again."

But according to a senior Palestinian official, "there's a link between the lack of Palestinian freedom and the lack of Israeli security, and we are trying to demonstrate that the U.S. has to pressure both sides, that it's a give-and-take process."

"Israeli land confiscations are up," the official said. A wall that Israel is building around the West Bank "is still going up, there's talk of settlement expansion, the number of outposts is going up, not down -- there's been no action on the part of Israel to show they are going to end the occupation, and that's why the road map is off-track," he added.

Meanwhile, more than six weeks after the launch of the road map, the United States still has not sent a monitoring team to the region to supervise either Israeli or Palestinian compliance -- a central element of the peace plan. But a special envoy for Bush, John Wolf, has been meeting regularly with both sides, and "the political pressure can be felt, I assure you," a senior Israeli military said.

In their meeting today, Palestinians said, Sharon and Abbas agreed that Israeli and Palestinian officials would jointly decide which of the estimated 5,800 to 8,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released. Palestinians, saying that only 330 had been convicted of violent crimes, are demanding that almost all of the remainder be released. Israel claims that many have ties to Palestinian terrorist groups and will not be freed, although it recently softened its position and said that some members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad might be released. So far, Israel has released about 135 prisoners. None of the 350 identified for release two weeks ago has been set free, Israeli and Palestinian officials said.

Palestinian officials say that the unilateral, three-month cease-fire that Palestinian military groups declared June 29 , at the urging of Abbas's government, is one of the most significant anti-violence measures of the entire uprising. Officials are negotiating with the groups to extend the cease-fire indefinitely, a proposal the militants have so far rejected. And Israeli officials have given the Palestinians high marks for reducing the level of anti-Israeli invective in the streets and the Palestinian media.

In the meantime, regular Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem -- the only places they control -- are enforcing a law prohibiting the public display of weapons by anyone unaffiliated with a legitimate police force. In Bethlehem, police said they confiscated one rocket launcher and three bombs. In Gaza, precise figures were not available, but Palestinian security forces there have had a number of clashes with militants and have arrested several and confiscated their weapons. But Israeli officials claim that some of the militants were subsequently released and say the Palestinians have not destroyed any of the factories where militants make their rockets.

One of the most hotly disputed issues is how long the Palestinians should be given to take significant steps to crack down on militant groups, given that their security forces were decimated by Israeli attacks. Senior Israeli officials initially said they would give the Palestinians a three-week "grace period" to reconstitute their forces and start taking tough actions against terrorism, a deadline that has now expired.

"Six months would be a very, very optimistic figure, rather than the three weeks Israel was expecting," said an aide to Palestinian Security Minister Mohammed Dahlan.

"We think they should take measures right now," a senior Israeli military official responded. "And as soon as we see that they are beginning to take action, we'll be more than happy to reward them and pull out of most of the Palestinian cities. We're almost eager to do it, but we must see certain actions on the ground. But, in a way, they are scared to confront even low-level militants."

"NO BREAKTHROUGH ON PALESTINIAN PRISONERS"

No breakthrough on Palestinian prisoners at Abbas-Sharon meeting
The Jordan Times
July 21, 2003

www.jordantimes.com/Mon/news/news2.htm

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (AFP) - Heated talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas Sunday ended without a commitment from Israel to release more Palestinian prisoners in a meeting dominated by the continued siege of Yasser Arafat.

Instead the two sides agreed to form a joint committee which would consider the numbers of Palestinian prisoners who should be released from Israeli jails, Palestinian Information Minister Nabil Amr said.

"The most positive thing that we agreed about was that the number of prisoners which must be released will be discussed in a joint commitee," the minister told reporters after briefing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the talks which Amr also attended.

It is understood that Palestinian Prisoners Minister Hisham Abdul Razeq and Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's Shin Bet intelligence agency, will sit on the committee.

"It was a useful meeting and I hope that we will see good results in the coming period," Amr said.

However, another source close to Abbas said that the talks had been stormy, dominated by the plight of the veteran Palestinian leader Arafat who has been effectively confined to his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah by Israeli forces for the last 19 months.

"It was a difficult meeting. At many points they screamed at each other," he said.

"The main topic was the siege on Arafat. Abu Mazen (Abbas' nom-de-guerre) and his team told Sharon and the Israelis that any talk about moving ahead the situation on the ground without lifting the siege would be useless."

Israel had agreed to "study seriously" an end to the siege of Arafat, he added.

The same source said the two sides had clashed on the prisoners issue.

"The Israelis were talking about lists and categories and the Palestinians refused that and said any discussion on prisoner releases should be (among) the two sides," he said.

Israel has so far refused to countenance the release of more than 350 of the estimated 6,000 Palestinians in its jails.

There had been expectations that Sharon would seek to bolster Abbas' position by allowing the release of a small number of activists from the Islamic Jihad and Hamas which are currently observing a truce, which comes with a raft of conditions including the release of all detainees.

The two sides also discussed Palestinian demands for further Israeli troop withdrawals from the West Bank after pullbacks in the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem in recent weeks as well as a removal of army checkpoints.

"We discussed about the checkpoints and cities and we declared that we are ready to control any city which Israel withdraws from," said Amr.

Palestinian Security Chief Mohammad Dahlan and Israeli Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz are expected to discuss the withdrawals after Dahlan's return from a trip to Washington with Abbas who is to meet US President George W. Bush on Friday.

Mofaz told a weekly Cabinet meeting ahead of the Abbas-Sharon talks that there had been a downturn in violence since a security agreement between the two sides three weeks ago which led to the pullback of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and Bethlehem.

That agreement was followed shortly afterwards by the truce announcement.

"He (Mofaz) pointed out that on the ground, the downward trend in the number of attacks and warnings is continuing. Incitement in the Palestinian media has similarly declined," said a Cabinet communique.

"Following Israeli measures to ease restrictions, there has been a significant improvement in the atmosphere on the Palestinian street in the areas in which responsibility has been transferred to the Palestinians."

The Abbas-Sharon meeting marked the first phase in a flurry of activity which will take the two leaders to Washington in the coming days.

Before arriving in the US on Wednesday, Abbas will also hold talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and His Majesty King Abdullah in Jordan about the US-backed "roadmap" for peace.

Abbas is spearheading Palestinian negotiations after Israel and the US refused to deal with Arafat who has been accused by Sharon of trying to undermine his prime minister and the peace process.

The veteran leader issued a decree Sunday banning any incitement to violence, one of the demands of the roadmap.

ABBAS: FREE ALL PRISONERS FOR PEACE TO PREVAIL

Abbas: Free all prisoners for peace to prevail
The Times of Oman

www.timesofoman.com/newsdetails.asp?newsid=36754

CAIRO (AFP) - A three-week-old Palestinian truce is holding but Israel must free all Palestinian prisoners from its jails if it wants "peace to prevail", Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmud Abbas said here yesterday.

"What's important for us is the truce that we agreed with Palestinian factions and that everybody respects it," Abbas said after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in preparation for his first visit to the White House later in the week.

At the end of June, Egypt helped broker a three-month Palestinian truce, which in turn has led to an Israeli withdrawal from some of the Palestinian territory it had reoccupied since violence erupted almost three years ago.

"An atmosphere of security and stability prevails in our territories," Abbas said at a joint press conference with Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher.

When reporters asked about Israel's refusal to release more prisoners, withdraw more troops and scrap settlements, Abbas replied: "If we don't have any progress on those issues, achieving stability will be difficult."

He added: "That's why if the Israeli government wants peace to prevail, it has to tackle all those issues, and to respect the roadmap which involves all those issues - whether prisoners, settlements, withdrawals..."

He was referring to the US-backed international roadmap for peace which outlines steps both sides must take toward creating by 2005 a Palestinian state that lives peacefully alongside Israel.

Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen, refused to budge on the release of prisoners.

"We want the release of all the prisoners no matter what their affiliations are or their geographic regions," Abbas said.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon pledged yesterday to remove "illegal" settler outposts in the West Bank to meet a demand made in a US-backed peace plan that also calls for a freeze on all settlement activity.

In a statement to the Israeli parliament, which met during summer recess to discuss pressing issues, Sharon acknowledged intense international pressure to dismantle the sparsely inhabited hilltop outposts.

"Leaders around the world, including our best friends, have protested their existence to me and to ministers," said Sharon. "I have said before, to the cabinet and at (the June 4 peace summit in) Aqaba, that illegal outposts will be dismantled." - AFP

'HUNDREDS TO BE FREED BY ISRAEL'

'Hundreds to Be Freed by Israel'
Nazir Majally -- Asharq Al-Awsat

www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=29137&d=21&m=7&y=2003

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 21 July 2003 - Israel agreed to free hundreds more Palestinian prisoners yesterday, disappointing Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas' hopes for a full amnesty but keeping a US-backed peace road map in motion.

An Israeli government source confirmed the number of candidates for release but said the list would be finalized after Sharon and Abbas hold separate meetings with US President George W. Bush in Washington later this month. The reformist Palestinian premier is also under pressure to satisfy militant groups from whom he coaxed a three-month truce on June 29. His efforts were not lost on ex-general Sharon.

"The prime minister told his counterpart that Israel cannot ignore the fact that recently (Palestinian) terrorism and incitement have diminished significantly," Sharon's office said.

But it added that Sharon had insisted Abbas dismantle militant groups before further Israeli withdrawals from reoccupied West Bank cities. Israel quit the West Bank city of Bethlehem and areas of Gaza this month.

"If they (Israel) release some of the prisoners, it's not satisfactory," said Ismail Abu-Shanab, a leader of Hamas.

Israel has ruled out releasing Palestinians "with blood on their hands" - involved in attacks on Israelis. Some government sources said these add up to around half of the 6,000 prisoners, suggesting more releases could be in store.

Yesterday's meeting was Sharon's fourth with Abbas since the Palestinian prime minister assumed the post in April as part of sweeping reforms demanded by the United States. The move sidelined Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, whom Israel accuses of fomenting violence. He denies it.

Arafat also issued a decree yesterday banning any incitement to violence, one of the demands of the road map.

- With input from Agencies

Palestinian TV last night: “Mohammed Ordered Muslims to Kill Jews”

July 14, 2003

FULL ARTICLES

TV CURBS ANTI-ISRAEL RHETORIC

TV curbs anti-Israel rhetoric
BBC News
July 9, 2003

By Peter Feuilherade
Media analyst

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3053565.stm

BBC Monitoring has observed that the official Palestinian television channel has cut back substantially on anti-Israel rhetoric since the ceasefire declared by Palestinian militant groups on 29 June.

On Tuesday, the Palestinian Information Ministry announced it had issued specific instructions to all media outlets in the West Bank and Gaza to ensure their compliance with a presidential decree banning "incitement".

Palestinian and Israeli officials agreed to set up two committees "to reach an understanding of the concept and forms of incitement," according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

"Such programmes are now almost extinct. Instead of incitement and hate passages, the channel broadcasts quiet songs as well as songs in praise of [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat," says Israel Radio's Arab affairs correspondent.

Palestine TV had toned down its programming during several previous ceasefires, but this time, it has also aired a new music video aimed at showing Palestinian aspirations for peace with the Israelis.

Media analysts with experience of Palestine TV's output say that while the channel continues to broadcast some music videos containing what some would class as inflammatory material, the effort to tone down its broadcasts - and to be seen to be doing so - is evident.

For instance, a phone-in talk show presenter cut off several callers last week after they attempted to express support for suicide attacks or call for the return of lands the Palestinians say were confiscated after Israel became an independent state in 1948.

Palestine TV subsequently broadcast a talk show on incitement which included an unprecedented music video dedicated to Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The footage gave prominence to scenes of doves, flowers being scattered and Christian, Muslim and Jewish children and adults joining in dance sequences.

In an indication that Palestinian officials are attempting to tighten state control over private media, the Information Ministry set a one month deadline on 2 July for media organisations to obtain licences to continue operating.

Citing a 1995 law, the Palestinian director-general of Printing and Publications Hani al-Masri said a licence for broadcasters, the press and polling organisations was vital in order to "prevent anarchy and lack of discipline".

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.

PA ACADEMIC ON PA TV: MOHAMMAD ORDERED MUSLIMS TO KILL JEWS

PA Academic on PA TV:
Mohammed Ordered Muslims to Kill Jews
By Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin
July 14, 2003

The premise and basis for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is that the conflict is not an irreconcilable religious war, but one over borders. However, Palestinian religious and academic leaders publicly teach that the Israel-Palestinian conflict is part of Islam's irreconcilable religious war against the Jews. To justify this view, Palestinians repeatedly cite Islamic sources to demand as religious doctrine, that Jews be hated, even demanding the killing of Jews as the will of Allah.

Tens of times in recent years Palestinian religious leaders have taught publicly that a particular Hadith (Islamic traditions attributed to Mohammed) expressing Allah's will that obedient Muslims must kill Jews, is a current obligation of Islam. This Hadith, which demands the murder of Jews in order to bring Redemption, was cited again yesterday on Palestinian TV by a Palestinian academic, Dr Hassan Khader, founder of the Al Quds Encyclopedia, during a lecture focusing on what he describes as the war of the Jews against Palestinian trees.

His words quoting the Hadith:

"Mohammed said in his Hadith: "The Hour [Day of Resurrection] will not arrive until you fight the Jews, [until a Jew will hide behind a rock or tree] and the rock and the tree will say: 'Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!'"

[PA TV July 13, 2003]

The continued expression of this PA world-view is most ominous, for by depicting Redemption as dependent on Muslim's murder of Jews, the murder of Jews is being presented as mandatory religious obligation.

To view the broadcast, and a previous use of the same source by a religious leader, click on www.pmw.org.il

CHILDREN ARE INDOCTRINATED FOR TERRORISM "WITH ARAFAT'S BLESSING"

Children Are Indocrinated For Terrorism "With Arafat's Blessing"
Sunday Telegraph
By Tom Gross in Jerusalem
August 30, 1998

CHILDREN as young as seven are being trained as the next generation of international terrorists with the approval of Yasser Arafat. They are undergoing intensive indoctrination in Gaza to hate Israel, Jews and the West.

A series of summer camps and television programmes for Palestinian children, which have been running throughout the summer, reached their climax last week with a closing ceremony where thousands chanted slogans calling for holy war and for the elimination of Israel. Children as young as seven paraded with automatic weapons.

Viewers were outraged after scenes from the camps, and Children's Club, a popular Palestinian programme with the same message, were shown on Israeli television. The pictures from Children's Club are almost surreal. Set in a primary school classroom, posters of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck adorn one wall, pictures of Mr Arafat, president of the Palestinian Authority, another.

While their teachers applaud, festively-dressed children stand before the camera, microphone in hand, and one by one they announce their intention to become suicide bombers. A Palestinian girl of about eight declares: "And when I shall wander into the entrance of Jerusalem, I will turn into a suicide warrior."

In another scene, a boy of about the same age says: "We will throw them into the sea. The day is near when we will settle our account with stones and bullets." The class sings about "liberating" towns not only on the West Bank but within Israel proper, such as Beersheva, Haifa and Acre.

The summer camps had an even more violent and militaristic character. At one, boys and girls stood in lines of three singing the Palestinian national anthem while behind them a huge mural showed Jerusalem's Temple Mount covered with blood and strewn with skulls, and Arab horses parading over them.

Other camp activities included training in the use of firearms and jumping through rings of fire while yelling "jihad" (holy war). Posters prepared in the camp art classes show maps of Israel completely shaded out with Palestinian national colours, and reading: "We will return."

What alarms and angers Israelis is that both the programmes and camps have been organised not by groups that openly oppose peace with Israel, but by the Palestinian Authority, which committed itself in the Oslo agreement to "foster mutual understanding and tolerance" with Israel and to "abstain from incitement and hostile propaganda".

The Israeli government believes that Mr Arafat is personally responsible for the incitement. David Bar-Illan, spokesman for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said: "Anyone who thinks this hatred is taking place without the approval of Arafat is mistaken. He has reserved for himself the education portfolio in the Palestinian cabinet and is in direct control of school textbooks and summer camps. There can be little hope for reconciliation if people, especially the youth, are subject to constant indoctrination portraying their neighbours in such vile ways."

Mr Bar-Illan said that the Israeli government is particularly angry that the textbooks on this year's Palestinian school curriculum include almost verbatim clauses from the Palestinians' Covenant. One book reads: "The division of Palestine in 1947 and the creation of the state of Israel are annulled" and "without blood not one centimetre will be free".

The Palestinians claim that they have already renounced the clauses in their Covenant calling for Israel's destruction, a claim which was accepted by the previous Israeli government of Shimon Peres but is disputed by Mr Netanyahu's government. Mr Netanyahu has said that he is not willing to cede any more territory on the West Bank to Mr Arafat until the Palestinians unambiguously renounce the clauses in their Covenant calling for the destruction of Israel.

PA ARRESTS TERRORISTS - THEN STAGES THE "ESCAPE"

PA arrests terrorists - then stages the "escape"
by Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin, Archives Bulletin
July 6, 2003

Satisfaction is being expressed in Israel and the United States with the arrest of a small number of terrorists by the Palestinian Authority [PA] police. However, it should be remembered that in the past the PA would arrest terrorists under US pressure, only to subsequently free them under distinctly orchestrated "escapes", when US and world opinion was focused on other issues. During one such "escape" the PA police literally took the terrorists out of jail and brought them to the university to "register for courses", where they were released.

The following is the description from the Palestinian daily of one of these "escapes", of 3 Islamic Jihad terrorists, in 1999:

"Governor of Nablus, Brigadier General Mahmud Alaalul, a member of the revolutionary committee of Fatah... disclosed the details of the escape of 3 Islamic Jihad prisoners - Iyad Hardan, Ahmed Mihdawi and Asaad Daqa from the Jinid [PA] prison, explaining that the prisoners escaped by taking advantage of the leniencies offered to them by the Palestinian Authority for humanitarian reasons.

Last Saturday, the prison officials allowed the 4 prisoners to go to the Al-Kuds Open University to register for studies. The 4 were accompanied by a single policeman and once there, the 4 entered the university while the policeman waited for them outside. After a few hours, only one of the 4 prisoners returned, the others did not. It was clear that the other 3 had escaped.

Alaalul notes the high level of trust between the prison management and the prisoners as the reason that the prison sent only one policeman, and that their escape was unexpected."

[Al Quds: October 6, 1999]

200 PALESTINIAN TERRORIST PRISONERS STUDY IN ISRAELI UNIVERSITIES

200 Palestinian Terrorist Prisoners Study in Israeli Universities
by Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Media Watch
Multi-media Bulletin
June 29, 2003

The Palestinians via their media portray Israeli prisons as torture chambers for Palestinian prisoners.

[Click on PMW website to see Palestinian video with actors depicting "Israeli torture of Palestinians".]

Yet in a recent interview on PA TV, Ahmad Jabara, the terrorist who served 27 years in Israeli prisons for murdering 14 in a Jerusalem bombing in 1975, and was released last month as a good will gesture, unwittingly presented a picture of the unique beneficence of Israeli prisons.

The host asks Ahmad Jabara to describe the hardship and torture in the Israeli jail, so that "the viewers can feel, even just a little, the suffering and wretchedness of the prisoners." Jabara responds with two contradictory statements. First he charges that the Israeli prisons are as bad as Nazi camps. However, in his depiction of the nature of this "Nazi like" evil the worst example he could site was: "at any given moment the Israelis could burst into our rooms and check us." Later on in the interview, he went even further in depicting the excellent conditions of Israeli prisons, when mentioning that Palestinian prisoners can even get a university education from Israeli universities!

The following is from the discussion on PA TV:

The host: "Describe the conditions of the prisoners so that the viewers can feel, even just a little, their suffering and wretchedness."

Ahmad Jabara: "I would like to tell the leadership of our Arab and Islamic nations that we are living in camps where there is no less suffering than in the Nazi camps in Germany. In fact, at any given moment the Israelis could burst into our rooms and check us...

And, thank God, as Palestinian prisoners, more than 200 of us have been accepted into the Hebrew University and the Ben Gurion University, and our brother Hisham Abed Al-Razak [PA Minister for Prisoners] is paying the tuition fees ...Even in the prisons we are studying, and we are looking forward to the future and live in hope..."

PA TV June 23, 2003

“Palestinians confirm: There was no Jenin massacre”

FULL ARTICLES

PALESTINIANS CONFIRM NO MASSACRE IN JENIN - STUDY

Palestinians confirm no massacre in Jenin - study
By Joel Leyden
The Jerusalem Post
July 14, 2003

Palestinian sources are now saying that their death toll in the 2002 IDF incursion into Jenin, was 52, at least 34 of whom were armed, contradicting earlier Palestinian claims that thousands had died, a study to be released next month says.

The study indicates for the first time that Palestinian terror organizations saw themselves as "armed combatants" and not as civilians who died in a deadly massacre. The study's significance is that it uses Palestinian sources to rebut the original Palestinian claims.

"The study directly contradicts the baseless charges made by PA leaders, including Saeb Erekat, that Israel had massacred 500 Palestinians in Jenin," said Dore Gold, director of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which sponsored the study. "That blatant lie made its way from the screens of CNN to the UN Security Council."

The battle, which was a part of Israel's Operation Defensive Shield against terrorism, took place from April 4-11, 2002. In the days after the event, Palestinian sources said hundreds, if not thousands, had been killed in the attack. Media worldwide initially reported the IDF's activities as a massacre. A total of 23 IDF soldiers died in the incident.

Within days of the event, soldiers who fought in the warrens of the camp rejected Palestinian claims the IDF buried some 500 Palestinian men, women, and children in mass graves, or that the army had executed some 50 Palestinians after they had been arrested.

In the months afterward, virtually all organizations investigating the massacre claims rejected the initial Palestinian assertions.

Israel was effectively cleared of the massacre charges in an August report by the United Nations. The report blasted armed Palestinians for operating inside civilian refugee camps and termed their methods "breaches of international law that have been and continue to be condemned by the United Nations."

Human Rights Watch said in January the IDF did not commit a massacre in Jenin during "Defensive Shield." The organization's official report echoed an initial assessment by a Human Rights Watch researcher as early as May 2002 rejecting massacre claims.

The new study, conducted by Jonathan D. HaLevi for the center used a wide and comprehensive variety of Palestinian written testimony and material recently published in Palestinian newspapers, books and web sites. It was , provided exclusively to the Jerusalem Post in advance of its wider release.

The 35-page study says Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas prepared themselves with automatic weapons, grenades, anti-tank missiles and explosives, and perceived the confrontation with IDF troops as nothing less than a "military to military battle."

The study rebuts claims at the time by Palestinian Authorities that IDF forces were attacking civilians, and that the only Palestinians who died in the battle were unarmed Palestinian men, women and children.

Among other details, the study also reveals that Fatah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad established a joint military operations room in preparation for the battle. In addition the research indicates the three groups had created a joint bomb-making facility in Jenin that produced more than two tons of explosives.

The JCPA paper states civilians were intentionally used as human shields, and that both women and children were deployed by the three groups to divert IDF troops into ambushes and booby-trapped areas.

The Jenin Refugee Camp was prepared as a "reinforced fortress," where nearly 200 Palestinian terrorists had gathered for the battle, the research says.

"The myth of a massacre at Jenin was the 'crown jewel' of a sophisticated effort to delegitimatize the State of Israel," Gold said.

JENINGRAD - WHAT THE BRITISH MEDIA SAID

Jeningrad - What the British media said.
By Tom Gross
The National Review
May 13, 2002

www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-gross051302.asp

- Israel's actions in Jenin were "every bit as repellent" as Osama bin Laden's attack on New York on September 11, wrote Britain's Guardian in its lead editorial of April 17.

- "We are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide," said a leading columnist for the Evening Standard, London's main evening newspaper, on April 15.

- "Rarely in more than a decade of war reporting from Bosnia, Chechnya, Sierra Leone, Kosovo, have I seen such deliberate destruction, such disrespect for human life," reported Janine di Giovanni, the London Times's correspondent in Jenin, on April 16.

NOW that even the Palestinian Authority has admitted that there was no massacre in Jenin last month - and some Palestinian accounts speak instead of a "great victory against the Jews" in door-to-door fighting that left 23 Israelis dead - it is worth taking another look at how the international media covered the fighting there. The death count is still not completely agreed. The Palestinian Authority now claims that 56 Palestinians died in Jenin, the majority of whom were combatants according to the head of Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization in the town. Palestinian hospital sources in Jenin put the total number of dead at 52. Last week's Human Rights Watch report also said 52 Palestinians died. Israel says 46 Palestinians died, all but three of whom were combatants. Palestinian medical sources have confirmed that at least one of these civilians died after Israel withdrew from Jenin on April 12, as a result of a booby-trapped bomb that Palestinian fighters had planted accidentally going off.

Yet one month ago, the media's favorite Palestinian spokespersons, such as Saeb Erekat - a practiced liar if ever there was one - spoke first of 3,000 Palestinian dead, then of 500. Without bothering to check, the international media just lapped his figures up.

The British media was particularly emotive in its reporting. They devoted page upon page, day after day, to tales of mass murders, common graves, summary executions, and war crimes. Israel was invariably compared to the Nazis, to al Qaeda, and to the Taliban. One report even compared the thousands of supposedly missing Palestinians to the "disappeared" of Argentina. The possibility that Yasser Arafat's claim that the Palestinians had suffered "Jeningrad" might be - to put it mildly - somewhat exaggerated seems not to have been considered. (800 thousand Russians died during the 900-day siege of Leningrad; 1.3 million died in Stalingrad.)

Collectively, this misreporting was an assault on the truth on a par with the New York Times's Walter Duranty's infamous cover-up of the man-made famine inflicted by Stalin on millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s.

There were malicious and slanderous reports against Israel in the American media too - with Arafat's propagandists given hundreds of hours on television to air their incredible tales of Israeli atrocities - but at least some American journalists attempted to be fair. On April 16, Newsday's reporter in Jenin, Edward Gargan, wrote: "There is little evidence to suggest that Israeli troops conducted a massacre of the dimensions alleged by Palestinian officials." Molly Moore of the Washington Post reported: "No evidence has yet surfaced to support allegations by Palestinian groups and aid organizations of large-scale massacres or executions."

Compare this with some of the things which appeared in the British media on the very same day, April 16: Under the headline "Amid the ruins, the grisly evidence of a war crime," the Jerusalem correspondent for the London Independent, Phil Reeves, began his dispatch from Jenin: "A monstrous war crime that Israel has tried to cover up for a fortnight has finally been exposed." He continued: "The sweet and ghastly reek of rotting human bodies is everywhere, evidence that it is a human tomb. The people say there are hundreds of corpses, entombed beneath the dust."

Reeves spoke of "killing fields," an image more usually associated with Pol Pot's Cambodia. Forgetting to tell his readers that Arafat's representatives, like those of the other totalitarian regimes that surround Israel, have a habit of lying a lot, he quoted Palestinians who spoke of "mass murder" and "executions." Reeves didn't bother to quote any Israeli source whatsoever in his story. In another report Reeves didn't even feel the need to quote Palestinian sources at all when he wrote about Israeli "atrocities committed in the Jenin refugee camp, where its army has killed and injured hundreds of Palestinians."

LEFT AND RIGHT UNITE AGAINST ISRAEL

But it wasn't only journalists of the left who indulged in Israel baiting. The right-wing Daily Telegraph - which some in the U.K. have dubbed the "Daily Tel-Aviv-ograph" because its editorials are frequently sympathetic to Israel - was hardly any less misleading in its news coverage, running headlines such as "Hundreds of victims 'were buried by bulldozer in mass grave.'"

In a story on April 15 entitled "Horror stories from the siege of Jenin," the paper's correspondent, David Blair, took at face value what he called "detailed accounts" by Palestinians that "Israeli troops had executed nine men." Blair quotes one woman telling him that Palestinians were "stripped to their underwear, they were searched, bound hand and foot, placed against a wall and killed with single shots to the head."

On the next day, April 16, Blair quoted a "family friend" of one supposedly executed man: "Israeli soldiers had stripped him to his underwear, pushed him against a wall and shot him." He also informed Telegraph readers that "two thirds of the camp had been destroyed." (In fact, as the satellite photos show, the destruction took place in one small area of the camp.)

The "quality" British press spoke with almost wall-to-wall unanimity. The Evening Standard's Sam Kiley conjured up witnesses to speak of Israel's "staggering brutality and callous murder." The Times's Janine di Giovanni, suggested that Israel's mission to destroy suicide bomb-making factories in Jenin (a town from which at the Palestinians own admission 28 suicide bombers had already set out) was an excuse by Ariel Sharon to attack children with chickenpox. The Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg wrote, "The scale [of destruction] is almost beyond imagination."

In case British readers didn't get the message from their "news reporters," the editorial writers spelled it out loud and clear. On April 17, the Guardian's lead editorial compared the Israeli incursion in Jenin with the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11. "Jenin," wrote the Guardian was "every bit as repellent in its particulars, no less distressing, and every bit as man-made."

"Jenin camp looks like the scene of a crime... Jenin already has that aura of infamy that attaches to a crime of especial notoriety," continued this once liberal paper, which used to pride itself on its honesty - and one of whose former editors coined the phrase "comment is free, facts are sacred."

Whereas the Guardian's editorial writers compared the Jewish state to al Qaeda, Evening Standard commentators merely compared the Israeli government to the Taliban. Writing on April 15, A. N. Wilson, one of the Evening Standard's leading columnists accused Israel of "the poisoning of water supplies" (a libel dangerously reminiscent of ancient anti-Semitic myths) and wrote "we are talking here of massacre, and a cover-up, of genocide."

He also attempted to pit Christians against Jews by accusing Israel of "the willful burning of several church buildings," and making the perhaps even more incredible assertion that "Many young Muslims in Palestine are the children of Anglican Christians, educated at St George's Jerusalem, who felt that their parents' mild faith was not enough to fight the oppressor."

Then, before casually switching to write about how much money Catherine Zeta-Jones is paying her nanny, Wilson wrote: "Last week, we saw the Israeli troops destroy monuments in Nablus of ancient importance: the scene where Jesus spoke to a Samaritan woman at the well. It is the equivalent of the Taliban destroying Buddhist sculpture." (Perhaps Wilson had forgotten that the only monument destroyed in Nablus since Arafat launched his war against Israel in September 2000, was the ancient Jewish site of Joseph's tomb, torn down by a Palestinian mob while Arafat's security forces looked on.)

Other commentators threw in the Holocaust, turning it against Israel. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a leading columnist for the Independent wrote (April 15): "I would suggest that Ariel Sharon should be tried for crimes against humanity ... and be damned for so debasing the profoundly important legacy of the Holocaust, which was meant to stop forever nations turning themselves into ethnic killing machines."

Many of the hostile comments were leveled at the U.S. "Why, for God's sake, can't Mr Powell do the decent thing and demand an explanation for the extraordinary, sinister events that have taken place in Jenin? Does he really have to debase himself in this way? Does he think that meeting Arafat, or refusing to do so, takes precedence over the enormous slaughter that has overwhelmed the Palestinians?" wrote Robert Fisk in the Independent.

STAINING THE STAR OF DAVID WITH BLOOD

In the wake of the media attacks, came the politicians. Speaking in the House of Commons on April 16, Gerald Kaufman, a veteran Labor member of parliament and a former shadow foreign secretary, announced that Ariel Sharon was a "war criminal" who led a "repulsive government." To nods of approval from his fellow parliamentarians, Kaufman, who is Jewish, said the "methods of barbarism against the Palestinians" supposedly employed by the Israeli army were "staining the Star of David with blood."

Speaking on behalf of the opposition Conservative party, John Gummer, a former cabinet minister, also lashed out at Israel. He said he was basing his admonition on "the evidence before us." Was Gummer perhaps referring to the twisted news reports he may have watched from the BBC's correspondent Orla Guerin? Or maybe his evidence stemmed from the account given by Ann Clwyd, a Labour MP, who on return from a fleeting fact-finding mission to Jenin, told parliament she had a "croaky voice" and this was all the fault of dust caused by Israeli tanks.

Clwyd had joined a succession of VIP visitors parading through Jenin - members of the European parliament, U.S. church leaders, Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan, Bianca Jagger, ex-wife of pop-music legend Mick Jagger. Clwyd's voice wasn't sufficiently croaky, though, to prevent her from calling on all European states to withdraw their ambassadors from Israel.

Not to be outdone by politicians, Britain's esteemed academics went further. Tom Paulin, who lectures in 19th- and 20th-century literature at Oxford University, opined that the U.S.-born Jews who live on the west bank of the river Jordan should be "shot dead."

"They are Nazis, racists," he said, adding (though one might have thought this was unnecessary after his previous comment) "I feel nothing but hatred for them." (Paulin is also one of BBC television's regular commentators on the arts. The BBC says they will continue to invite him even after these remarks; Oxford University has taken no action against him.)

ONLY ONE WITNESS?

On closer examination, the "facts" on which many of the media reports were based -"facts" that no doubt played a role in inspiring such hateful remarks as Paulin's -reveal an even greater scandal. The British media appear to have based much of its evidence of "genocide" on a single individual: "Kamal Anis, a labourer" (Times), "Kamal Anis, 28" (Daily Telegraph), "A quiet, sad-looking young man called Kamal Anis" (Independent), and referred to the same supposed victim - "the burned remains of a man, Bashar" (Evening Standard), "Bashir died in agony" (Times), "A man named only as Bashar once lived there" (Daily Telegraph).

Independent: "Kamal Anis saw the Israeli soldiers pile 30 bodies beneath a half-wrecked house. When the pile was complete, they bulldozed the building, bringing its ruins down on the corpses. Then they flattened the area with a tank."

Times: "Kamal Anis says the Israelis levelled the place; he saw them pile bodies into a mass grave, dump earth on top, then ran over it to flatten it."

Evidently, as can be seen from the following reports, British journalists hadn't been speaking to the same Palestinian witnesses as American journalists.

Los Angeles Times: Palestinians in Jenin "painted a picture of a vicious house-to-house battle in which Israeli soldiers faced Palestinian gunmen intermixed with the camp's civilian population."

Boston Globe: Following extensive interviews with "civilians and fighters" in Jenin "none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed." On the other hand, referring to the deaths of Israeli soldiers in Jenin, Abdel Rahman Sa'adi, an "Islamic Jihad grenade-thrower," told the Globe "This was a massacre of the Jews, not of us."

Some in the American press also mentioned the video filmed by the Israeli army (and shown on Israeli television) of Palestinians moving corpses of people who had previously died of natural causes, rather than in the course of the Jenin fighting, into graveyards around the camp to fabricate "evidence" in advance of the now-cancelled U.N. fact-finding mission.

But if Europeans readers don't trust American journalists, perhaps they are ready to believe the testimony given in the Arab press. Take, for example, the extensive interview with a Palestinian bomb-maker, Omar, in the leading Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram.

"We had more than 50 houses booby-trapped around the [Jenin] camp," Omar said. "We chose old and empty buildings and the houses of men who were wanted by Israel because we knew the soldiers would search for them ... We cut off lengths of mains water pipes and packed them with explosives and nails. Then we placed them about four meters apart throughout the houses - in cupboards, under sinks, in sofas... the women went out to tell the soldiers that we had run out of bullets and were leaving. The women alerted the fighters as the soldiers reached the booby-trapped area."

Perhaps what is most shocking, though, is that the British press had closed their ears to the Israelis themselves - a society with one of the most vigorous and self-critical democracies in the world. In the words of Kenneth Preiss, a professor at Ben Gurion University: "Please inform the reporters trying to figure out if the Israeli army is trying to 'hide a massacre' of Palestinians, that Israel's citizen army includes journalists, members of parliament, professors, doctors, human rights activists, members of every political party, and every other kind of person, all within sight and cell phone distance of home and editorial offices. Were the slightest infringements to have taken place, there would be demonstrations outside the prime minister's office in no time."

ONLY AN INTELLECTUAL COULD BE SO STUPID

George Orwell once remarked to a Communist fellow-traveler with whom he was having a dispute: "You must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could say something so stupid." This observation has relevance in regard to the Middle East, too.

So far only the nonintellectual tabloids have grasped the essential difference between right and wrong, the difference between a deliberate intent to kill civilians, such as that ordered by Chairman Arafat over the past four decades, and the unintentional deaths of civilians in the course of legitimate battle.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the mass-market papers have corrected the lies of their supposedly superior broadsheets. On April 17, the New York Post carried an editorial entitled "The massacre that wasn't." In London, the most popular British daily paper, the Sun, published a lengthy editorial (April 15) pointing out that: "Israelis are scared to death. They have never truly trusted Britain - and with some of the people we employ in the Foreign Office why the hell should they?" Countries throughout Europe are still "in denial about murdering their entire Jewish population," the Sun added, and it was time to dispel the conspiracy theory that Jews "run the world."

The headline of the Sun's editorial was "The Jewish faith is not an evil religion." One might think such a headline was unnecessary in twenty-first century Britain, but apparently it is not.

One would hope that some honest reflection about their reporting by those European and American journalists who are genuinely motivated by a desire to help Palestinians (as opposed to those whose primary motive is demonizing Jews), will enable them to realize that propagating the falsehoods of Arafat's propagandists does nothing to further the legitimate aspirations of ordinary Palestinians, any more than parroting the lies of Stalin helped ordinary Russians.

(Tom Gross is former Middle East reporter for the London Sunday Telegraph and New York Daily News)

“Hamas will now set the agenda”

July 11, 2003

[Note by Tom Gross]

For space reasons, I have divided today's dispatch on Hamas into two separate emails. I suggest you read the other email (Hamas dot com) first.

I attach four further articles concerning Hamas, with summaries first. If you have time, you may wish to read in full the article by Robert Fulford from the Canadian newspaper the National Post.

(Please note that because of ever increasing spam guards that are being put in place by many email providers, including yahoo and hotmail, you should check that some of my emails are not being directed to "bulk" and other "spam" settings in your inboxes, and adjust your settings accordingly.)

(As a reminder: I do not necessarily agree with the content or tone of every article I send out.)

1. "Hamas Held Liable in Suit" (By The Associated Press, Providence, R.I., July 3). "A federal judge ruled today that the Palestinian militant group Hamas must pay more than $116 million for the deaths of two Jewish settlers near the West Bank in 1996. The lawsuit was filed in 2000 by the estate of Yaron Ungar, an American citizen, and his Israeli wife, Efrat, who were killed as they drove home from a wedding. Four Hamas members have already been convicted in an Israeli court; one remains at large. It was unclear whether Hamas would honor the ruling."

2. "Hamas will now set the agenda," by Robert Fulford, National Post (Canada), July 3, 2003. The most recent moves on the chessboard of Middle East politics have had the surprising effect of increasing the potency of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. At least for the moment, those religious-terrorists-on-the-run have reinvented themselves as statesmen possessing something that looks a lot like power. While Hamas has always been viciously hostile to Israel, this week it holds Israel's fragile peace in its hands.

By joining with lesser terrorists in a dubious and ill-defined truce, Hamas has put itself in a position to play a pivotal role in the politics of the near future. Without giving away anything serious, it has begun the long march from lunatic fringe to power broker. Any day now, some damn fool will call it "moderate," unless it decides not to be.

Its leaders are likely astonished that this first step was so simple. They merely signed on to a hudna, an Arabic word for truce or ceasefire that Israelis claim can be translated as "I need to pause for breath." ... The International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism sees this latest development as just about the nicest thing that ever happened to Hamas.

It has agreed to stop sending suicide bombers to murder Israeli civilians, but only if Israel reciprocates appropriately. Israel must refrain from assassinating Hamas leaders, close down some settlements in the occupied territories, and release some Palestinian criminals from jail. How many settlements must be dismantled, and how fast? How many prisoners must be set free?

That's for Hamas to say. It will judge Israel's performance and act accordingly. If it decides the Sharon government hasn't kept its part of the bargain, Hamas can reopen hostilities, without advance notice, by fitting up a few teenagers with suicide belts and sending them to Jaffa Street. And who imagines that Hamas will be satisfied for long? It has always been rejectionist. It doesn't want a better Israel, or a smaller Israel. It wants no Israel at all.

Hamas will now set the agenda -- not the United States, not Israel, and certainly not the Palestinian Authority (PA), the relatively secular force which Hamas has outflanked and outkilled.

There's a certain naivete in the way its prospects are discussed. James Bennet, writing in The New York Times on Tuesday, said: "Hamas leaders are gambling that the ceasefire will fail." That's hardly a gamble. They can make it fail whenever they choose, and their decision will be determined by their long-term goal. Like their sponsors in Iran, they plan eventually to bring all of the Middle East, including the sliver now called Israel, under the umbrella of an Islamist government.

3. "Let Not Hamas Set Any Middle East Agenda," (By Grant Swank. American Daily, July 3, 2003). "It's unthinkable that Hamas should set any agenda. Hamas is to follow others' agenda, chiefly the one that says "Extinguish thyself, Hamas." When Hamas leaders decides what to do with the roadmap to peace as well as order Israelis and the United States as to when what is going to occur in the process deliberations, that is simply one more evidence of the overgrown hubris which is wedged into the Palestinian mindset ... They have taught their young how to hate. They have taught both genders how to blow themselves up. They have learned their Koran well by heeding to the letter every line of "kill the infidels." Called "terrorists" and "militants," they are more precisely labeled "murderers-at-large". They exist to murder. Their particular targets are Jews, but others will do if they support Jews... A top Palestinian Authority and Fatah leader stated that a three-month reprieve to attacks against Jews was set in place by the PA and companion militant conclaves. In that, Hamas hubris sought to order the Middle East agenda. Three months reprieve? What happened to a three hundred years reprieve future-tense?"

4. "Hamas and the Triple Standard" (by Edwin Black, author of "IBM and the Holocaust"). "When it comes to Israel's fight against Hamas, a triple standard seems at work. Israel is now completely at war with Palestinian terror groups, no less than America is at war with Al Qaeda worldwide and Saddam loyalists in Iraq. Hence, Israel must escalate its rules of engagement, mimicking those recently established by American forces in our own war against terror waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such, Israel should preemptively and unrelentingly eliminate Hamas and company where they stand as soon as they are identified or self-identify. For precedent, we need only look to recent tactics employed by our own military and coalition forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere. On June 9, American forces in Iraq launched Operation Peninsula Strike, which chased down and killed a group of Saddam loyalist ambushers, first reported as 27 but then adjusted downward to just seven. The day before, Americans located and utterly destroyed a loyalist training camp, killing 70, and detaining about 400 other suspects. Even as I type, these successes are being repeated in a new sweep across the width of Iraq, locking down towns as U.S. troops go door-to-door hunting for Saddam loyalists and arm caches. And of course everyone remembers the first shot of the Iraq War - a precision "decapitation strike" in the heart of a residential neighborhood. "Decapitation" is military lingo for pre-emptive assassination of top leadership... Israel is fighting a similar war for survival but right down the street...

Yet there seems to be a triple standard at play. America can assassinate and decapitate, send in gunships and missiles, surround and lock down whole towns, and round up and detain suspects by the hundreds in its war on terror creating one standard. Hamas, in the minds of some, is engaged in mere "rogue resistance," and its bus bombs and murder squads should be overlooked as incidental to polite roadmap discourse - thus creating a second standard. At the same time, Israel is expected to exhibit restraint and not fight back as vigorously and preemptively as America does - creating a third standard. Such restraint is as absurd as it is self-destructive."

FULL ARTICLES

HAMAS HELD LIABLE IN SUIT

Hamas Held Liable in Suit
By The Associated Press

PROVIDENCE, R.I., July 3 - A federal judge ruled today that the Palestinian militant group Hamas must pay more than $116 million for the deaths of two Jewish settlers near the West Bank in 1996.

The lawsuit was filed in 2000 by David Strachman, a Providence lawyer designated by an Israeli court to manage the estate of the settlers, Yaron Ungar, an American citizen, and his Israeli wife, Efrat, who were killed as they drove home from a wedding.

Four Hamas members have already been convicted in an Israeli court; one remains at large.

Hamas never responded to the lawsuit, allowing Magistrate Judge David Martin to issue the default judgment. It was unclear whether Hamas would honor the ruling, or whether the group could pay.

The case was filed under the Antiterrorism Act of 1991 that allows American victims of overseas terrorism to seek monetary damages in American courts.

HAMAS WILL NOW SET THE AGENDA

Hamas will now set the agenda
Robert Fulford
National Post (Canada)
July 03, 2003

JERUSALEM - The most recent moves on the chessboard of Middle East politics have had the surprising effect of increasing the potency of Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement. At least for the moment, those religious-terrorists-on-the-run have reinvented themselves as statesmen possessing something that looks a lot like power. While Hamas has always been viciously hostile to Israel, this week it holds Israel's fragile peace in its hands.

As Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas pose side by side for the cameras, Hamas hovers unseen in the background, confident that it made this event possible and can easily bring it crashing to an end. By joining with lesser terrorists in a dubious and ill-defined truce, Hamas has put itself in a position to play a pivotal role in the politics of the near future. Without giving away anything serious, it has begun the long march from lunatic fringe to power broker. Any day now, some damn fool will call it "moderate," unless it decides not to be.

Its leaders are likely astonished that this first step was so simple. They merely signed on to a hudna, an Arabic word for truce or ceasefire that Israelis claim can be translated as "I need to pause for breath." Israelis ar e accustomed to sudden changes in their prospects but they understandably fear yet another hideously failed "peace process," so they have received the latest news with the skepticism it deserves. They enthusiastically welcome any pause in the killing, and realize that any road to peace is worth considering. But at the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya the other day, Jonathan Fighel, a retired Israeli colonel and now a resident scholar, explained why he sees this latest development as just about the nicest thing that ever happened to Hamas.

That's for Hamas to say. It will judge Israel's performance and act accordingly. If it decides the Sharon government hasn't kept its part of the bargain, Hamas can reopen hostilities, without advance notice, by fitting up a few teenagers with suicide belts and sending them to Jaffa Street. And who imagines that Hamas will be satisfied for long? It has always been, as Israelis say, rejectionist. It doesn't want a better Israel, or a smaller Israel. It wants no Israel at all.

But Hamas will now set the agenda -- not the United States, not Israel, and certainly not the Palestinian Authority (PA), the relatively secular force which Hamas has outflanked and outkilled. Money will continue to flow to Hamas, which now has time to prepare for future battles and the freedom to decide when they will take place. It's already better organized and better disciplined than any other outfit in the region, governments aside. As Fighel says, "Hamas is the star of this new era," the era that opened last Sunday. That's the role it has yearned for since it was founded in the 1980s.

Abbas, it's generally agreed, has enough firepower to close down Hamas and thus eliminate his and the PA's chief rival for power. He's apparently rejected that course, not out of affection but because he realizes that killing fellow Muslims (even radical Islamists) would be an unseemly beginning to his career as prime minister. It could even start a civil war.

While the Palestinian Authority worries about the intentions of Hamas, it must also deal with the devious and erratic Yasser Arafat, its chairman. Abbas and his nervous colleagues treat Arafat gently, like a crazy uncle who has to be invited to every family party but might at any time erupt in anger and drive everyone else away. He's a catastrophe waiting to happen, but who will dare to ignore or denigrate the only larger-than-life Palestinian of the past 50 years? He stands alone as the founder of the Palestinian nation, such as it is, and he can make trouble for anyone who fails to pay homage to him. He can sabotage any agreement that seems likely to reduce his own stature. He also, of course, knows just what his fellow PA leaders think of him. While Abbas feels threatened by Hamas, Arafat feels threatened by Abbas.

If we believe the opinion polls, Palestinians think Arafat shouldn't run things but shouldn't be mistreated either. They don't admire him, they just love him. And while they don't much like Abbas (his approval rating remains stuck in the single digits), they think he should be in charge of the government anyway, at least until they find someone better. If Arafat's popularity has declined since the mid-1990s, Abbas hasn't yet climbed out of the ranks of functionaries. He has the words but not the music. He lacks a myth.

For a year the Israelis have kept Arafat trapped in his West Bank bunker in Ramallah, which now looks like an Israeli building that's just been bombed by one of Arafat's agents (before he became a moderate, of course). Abbas and his colleagues fear that onfinement makes Arafat feel insecure, not to say antsy, and may encourage him in behaviour that would be irresponsible even by his standards. Abbas might prefer that Sharon drop the chairman down a deep well, but instead he asked this week that Arafat be allowed to travel freely. As it turned out, Sharon's new-found amiability didn't go that far. He said Arafat could have a one-way ticket to the Gaza Strip, no more.

As the American-managed peace-planning unfolds on television and in the newspapers, it stirs in many Israelis an uncomfortably familiar feeling. They've seen this movie before and didn't like it the first time. In the 1990s their leaders, beginning with Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, waltzed them toward something that promised to be peace but turned out to be a new and more acute stage of the war. That was just the other day, and impossible to forget.

In the 1990s, as now, the Americans and the Israelis thought they had found a way to manage and satisfy the Palestinians. When the first Gulf War ended, Rabin decided not to let the Palestine Liberation Organization die (as it seemed likely to do) but instead encouraged Arafat and his friends to set up the new PA, with funding from peace-loving nations everywhere. The PA would be, Rabin said, Israel's "peace partner." Arafat could be relied upon to control the Palestinians.

The other day Yosi Klein Halevi, who produces for The New Republic some of the best writing on Israel, said: "Rabin was my favourite leader in 1992, but he did it wrong." Klein Halevi recently saw a bumper sticker that said, "It was all your fault, Rabin." He didn't really disagree. That would have been heresy a few years ago. After Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995, he was treated like a saint; Bill Clinton's eulogy made it appear that Rabin and his colleagues were only inches away from a resolution of the Arab-Israeli struggle. Now, of course, we know that Arafat was in the process of making fools of everybody (including his own advisers). As the Oslo story ended, Israel was surrounded by well-funded terrorists in Gaza, the West Bank, and on the Lebanon border. A bad situation had been made much worse.

Israelis who questioned the Oslo peace process in those days were considered out of touch, rigidly conservative, and unnecessarily pessimistic. But anyone questioning the current plan is considered, at worst, cautious. Israel has seen so many brave and beautiful hopes crushed by violence that its citizens hesitate to hope. Big-city Israelis are no longer hiding in their apartments (as they were in the dreadful bomb-a-week spring of 2002, when only video stores and takeout restaurants did good business). Today the streets are once more full of life and excitement, the recent Harry Potter movie brought out unthinkably huge crowds, and teenagers appear to be doing what teenagers do everywhere, hanging out. Less than three weeks after the horrendous June 11 bus bombing on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, there were plenty of customers for the kosher sushi at Sakura, just 300 metres away. Only foreigners are absent, tourists being notoriously easy to discourage.

Even so, the possibility of violence remains everyone's minute-to-minute obsession. As one Israeli told me the other day, "We have lost the assumptions that guide normal life." Even funerals have guards, and wedding invitations often carry a line, "Security will be provided." Each citizen tries in a different way to construct a framework of security. People inquire whether a store has guards before going shopping. Everyone knows someone who has been directly touched by the violence. Children suffer from acute anxiety, and so do their parents. No one moves without a cellphone, because no one believes the truce will hold and it's necessary, when a bomb goes off, for relatives and friends to exchange instant reassurance.

And yet optimism breaks through. Even the Israelis are surprised by the hope they discover in themselves, though often they can't explain it. Klein Halevi can even say that the last year has been, all in all, pretty good, considering. "We went from one terrorist attack a week, or two, to one every few weeks. The army has done a marvellous job. The war in Iraq has been good for the Middle East. It has signalled that the old rules don't apply anymore."

He's come to understand that the conflict persists partly because Jews and Arabs reinforce each other's strongest fears. The Arabs' great trauma was colonialism and the Jews' great trauma was the Holocaust. So Jews charging through the territories come across as colonialists, and Arabs cannot keep themselves from speaking the language of genocide. "We are colonialists to them," Klein Halevi says, "and they are Nazis to us."

Even the Israelis are sometimes mystified by their refusal to give up. They retreat into automatic responses when asked about it. At Tel Aviv University, Dov Elbaum, a teacher of Jewish philosophy, was asked if he was optimistic. "Of course," he said, "I have to be optimistic. I live here." I've heard variations on that sentence half a dozen times. Sami Michael, an Iraq-born novelist, said: "People ask us, you must be frightened all the time, yet you sit there in your restaurant in Haifa enjoying life. How do you do it? I don't know how we do it. We just do it."

Israelis tend to speak bluntly, their tone sometimes coloured by the resentment of a people tired of being misunderstood. But sometimes the words soar. David Horovitz, the editor of The Jerusalem Report, after describing his worries about the welfare of his children, said: "As a responsible parent I should live elsewhere. As a rooted Jew I should be here." For now he remains in Israel, living with his family on the front lines, conscious that he's part of the struggle that now dominates world politics, a struggle Hamas will likely promote for a long time to come. "The great divide," Horovitz says, is "between people who appreciate the divine gift of life and those who belong to the death cult." Over on the other side of that great divide, Hamas waits, and ponders its next move.

LET NOT HAMAS SET ANY MIDDLE EAST AGENDA

Let Not Hamas Set Any Middle East Agenda
By Grant Swank on
The American Daily
July 3, 2003

It's unthinkable that Hamas should set any agenda. Hamas is to follow others' agenda, chiefly the one that says "Extinguish thyself, Hamas."

When Hamas leader decides what to do with the roadmap to peace as well as order Israelis and the United States as to when what is going to occur in the process deliberations, that is simply one more evidence of the overgrown hubris which is wedged into the Palestinian mindset and has been there since May 14, 1948.

Palestinians give their hand away so easily that a dimwit can figure out that terrorists are terrorists still - words or no words. They are those who despise peace and admire war. They are bloodthirsty clots who have gathered as one dynamic force in the eastern edge of the Mediterranean.

They have taught their young how to hate. They have taught both genders how to blow themselves up. They have learned their Koran well by heeding to the letter every line of "kill the infidels." Called "terrorists" and "militants," they are more precisely labeled "murderers-at-large". They exist to murder. Their particular targets are Jews, but others will do if they support Jews.

In a mind-world that is already clothed in blood red, why should murderers change? So they ask for a three-month reprieve by which to talk things over, decide on this and that, and refer to it as a "truce." Every breather they have got in their clutches has turned into time frames by which to ammunition up all the more for the next round of killing Jews and their supporters.

When United States President George W. Bush states bluntly that Hamas simply follows the predictable ways of terrorists, he speaks the obvious truth. Their ways are predictable. Murderers are not creative. It is easier to shoot a bullet than plan a peace.

According to JERUSALEM NEWS WIRE, a top Palestinian Authority and Fatah leader stated that a three-month reprieve to attacks against Jews was set in place by the PA and companion militant conclaves. In that, Hamas hubris sought to order the Middle East agenda. Three months reprieve? What happened to a three hundred years reprieve future-tense?

Mr. Bush reacted with realistic skepticism: "I'll believe it when I see it."

No wonder Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon keeps to his position of safety-for-my-people first. Lives are at stake. The survival of Israel as a state is at stake. The 75-year-old leader eats, sleeps and breathes the protection of his citizenry. Therefore, he knows that to hand over to militants any time frame for their manipulation is to provide them with their diplomatic sham.

A temporary cease-fire - three months - is absolutely not workable. Only a total wipe away of the terrorist threat is tolerable. And that with absolute assurances from Arafat and Abbas as well as all terrorist leaders coming to the fore to put their cards on the world table.

As US House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Wednesday evening, "Murderers who take three-month vacations are murderers still."

DeLay urged the world to regard the Middle East Hamas as a part of the whole, that is, an integral murdering segment of the worldwide murdering corps known as "global terrorists." The bottom line to all of them is that they despise the peace and delight in killing.

Until the peace world can corral the killing agents, their words can hold no trust.

HAMAS AND THE TRIPLE STANDARD

Hamas and the Triple Standard
by Edwin Black

When it comes to Israel's fight against Hamas, a triple standard seems at work.

Israel is now completely at war with Palestinian terror groups, no less than America is at war with Al Qaeda worldwide and Saddam loyalists in Iraq. Hence, Israel must escalate its rules of engagement, mimicking those recently established by American forces in our own war against terror waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such, Israel should preemptively and unrelentingly eliminate Hamas and company where they stand as soon as they are identified or self-identify.

By "eliminate," I mean kill. By "as soon as they self-identify," I mean as soon as parading militants don the green-masked and explosive-bedecked uniform of a suicide bomber, or publicly proclaim themselves as waiting for orders to do so, whether the militant is beating his chest in a rally or cradling a megaphone in a press conference. By "where they stand," I mean wherever they are located - in a car, in a training camp or in a public protest procession. Israel must hit Hamas members while they marched in uniform in the West Bank and Gaza before they change clothes into Chasidic garb and Israeli pop attire and then board buses in Jerusalem.

For precedent, we need only look to recent tactics employed by our own military and coalition forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere.

On June 9, American forces in Iraq launched Operation Peninsula Strike, which chased down and killed a group of Saddam loyalist ambushers, first reported as 27 but then adjusted downward to just seven. The day before, Americans located and utterly destroyed a loyalist training camp, killing 70, and detaining about 400 other suspects. Even as I type, these successes are being repeated in a new sweep across the width of Iraq, locking down towns as U.S. troops go door-to-door hunting for Saddam loyalists and arm caches. And of course everyone remembers the first shot of the Iraq War - a precision "decapitation strike" in the heart of a residential neighborhood. "Decapitation" is military lingo for pre-emptive assassination of top leadership.

Speaking of aerial assassination and assault, last November, a joint CIA Predator tracked an Al Qaeda cell in a private car speeding across the Yemeni desert. A Hellfire missile incinerated the car and its six occupants. In Afghanistan, American bombers, Predators and gunships incessantly bombed suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda wherever they were discovered, in a cave, in a hut, on a mountaintop, at a wedding. America has done all this on the other side of the world.

Israel is fighting a similar war for survival but right down the street.

Naturally, the issue of collateral damage and innocent civilians arises. Therefore, Israel should do as America did before launching its war against Iraq. Remember? America issued instructions and leaflets to Iraqi civilians not to stand near any member of Saddam's military or its infrastructure. Israel should do the same: issue warnings that the Palestinian populace avoiding standing near anyone self-identifying or identified as Hamas or a terrorist. That said, Israel should deploy long-range snipers, helicopter gunships, assassination and decapitation and all the other tactics regretfully needed in a war against terror that has been embedded within a civilian setting.

And then, Israel should continue to eliminate Hamas terrorists where they stand until the forces of peace within the Palestinian community can rise to the occasion.

Edwin Black is the author of "IBM and the Holocaust" (Crown 2001). His next book, "War Against the Weak" (Four Walls Eight Windows) will be published in September.

Hamas Dot Com

FULL ARTICLES

HAMAS DOT COM

Hamas Dot Com
By Amit Cohen
Maariv
July 2, 2003

Approximately two weeks ago, a few hours after the attack on the number 14 bus in Jerusalem in which 17 people were killed and dozens were wounded a question appeared in one of the Hamas forums: "Is brother Ahmed30 who used to write in this forum the one who carried out the operation in Jerusalem?" one of the participants wished to find out. A short while afterwards the answer came back negative. Ahmed30 was the nickname in the forum of a terrorist of the Islamic Jihad organization, Ahmed Fakia, who infiltrated the Otniel settlement last December an Har Hebron and killed four students. Ten days before the murder in Otniel he wrote in the forum about "the heroes of Al Kassam who teach he enemy an unforgettable lesson, for the sake of Allah's victory."

As always in events like these the activity at the Hamas internet site increased after the attack in Jerusalem. At times like these Palestinian surfers and their supporters from around the globe reveal the depth of their hatred for Israel and its citizens. The participants begin to count the number of "children of monkeys and pigs" who were killed, hope that the number of victims will rise more and more, and celebrate the success. "Today I'm buying," rejoiced one of the forum members after last week's atack. His forum colleague sent a message to the Jews: "We will produce bombs from under the ground, drop Kassam rockets upon you from the heavens, flee from our country or you'll be buried in black sacks."

But the internet sites function is not only to celebrate the murder of civilians or to send threatening notices. They have become an efficient way to send information between organization operatives, to recruit additional operatives, and to send warnings about Israeli operations.

In the past the transmission of information about the construction of bombs was much more difficult. Take, for instance, the work of "The Engineer" of the Hamas, Yehia Ayash. In 1995, after a string of very harsh bombings that the area of Samaria was not safe for him. The Israeli security forces viewed him as Public Enemy No. 1 in Judea and Samaria. Ayash managed to flee to Gaza, attached himself to mohamed Daf, commander of the Al Kassam Brigades and continued his operations from Beit Lehia, until he was assassinated by Israel with the help of a booby trapped cellphone.

While he was in Gaza Ayash became a central figure in Hamas, to whom many operatives came in order to learn how to construct bombs. One of them was Abed l Natzar Isa, from Nablus, who came to receive his "continuing education" in terror from Ayash. Isa learned how to improvise explosives and in particular how to deal with "Om El Abad".

"Om El Abad", the mother of Abad, is the Hamas nickname for the improvised explosive TATP- triacetone triperoxide. Ayash, who knew how to make "Om El Abad" into a particularly deadly explosive, passed the information on to Isa. After several weeks Isa returned to Nablus and managed to organize four suicide bombings, in Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan and Jerusalem, until he was arrested. Isa taught the technique to Mochi Al Din Sharif who, after the death of Ayash became "The Engineer no. 2".

The complicated logistics which Ayash and Isa used eight years ago are no longer relevant. Today there is practically no need to send operatives to other cities in order to endanger themselves with unnecessary discovery. Hamas operatives who wish to know how to construct bombs, how to make explosives, or rockets, don't need to leave the house. Al they need is a computer and a connection to the internet. This is not a new discovery- they have been doing this for a long time already.

"My dear brothers in Jihad," wrote a surfer recently who identified himself as Abu Jendal, "I have a kilo of acetone peroxide. I want to know how to make a bomb from it in order to blow up an army jeep, I await your quick response."

About an hour later the answer came: "My dear brother Abu Jendal", answered a Hamas supporter who called himself Abu Hadafa,"I understand that you have 1,000 grams of Om El Abad. Well done! There are several ways to change it into a bomb." Abu Hadafa goes on to explain in detail how to change the homemade explosive into a deadly roadside bomb, and even attaches a file which teaches how to make detonators for the bomb.

However, this exchange was not between members of the military division of the Hamas. Abu Jendal and Abu Hadafa are two anonymous Palestinians who, it seems, never met one another. The exchange was not encoded or concealed, but was published completely openly in the internet site of the Az Al din Al Kassam Brigades, the military faction of the Hamas.

Thus, Om El Abad, which was once the practically unique expertise of Yehia Ayash is now freely available to everyone on the internet.

The communications revolution has not skipped the terror organizations. On their way to carry out murder they have gotten on the information superhighway. Something like 60,000 Palestinians are hooked up to the internet, and hundreds of thousands of others in the Islamic world express their interest through it in the intifada and events in the territories. Because of this each one of the Palestinian organizations has at least one internet site of its own. They use the sites to distribute information quickly and reliably. The Al Aksa Brigades, for instance, note that only announcements which appear on their internet site are authentic. All others, they say, are forgeries.

The more interesting materials are available in the interactive section of the sites. In just about every site there is an "internet forum" in which surfers can express themselves and communicate with their colleagues. The forum is generally divided into a variety of subjects, in different interest areas, like news are Islamic subject matter. After a short registration to the forum, without any need to supply identifying information, everyone can write whatever he feels like writing. It is possible at attach pictures or documents in order that the other participants can see them.

In the news section, for instance, information flows in practically real-time, about every IDF operation which takes place in the territories. "We are calling upon everyone to be cautious, Apache helicopters are flying over Gaza," it was posted last Wednesday, a few seconds before two Hamas operatives from the militant section were killed by airforce helicopters. The taking of responsibility for attacks and the publication of the names of terrorists also quickly finds its way quickly to the news sections of the sites.

In the "Kassami" forum, the section containing most of the information, one can read the column called, "The Security and Jihad Column", Here all those searching for ways to carry out attacks, and those who are excited by the prospect of giving instruction how to, can write to one another. In this section you can read, sometimes with accompanying diagrams and pictures, how to make hand grenades or motors for Kassam rockets, how to prepare poisons and how to kidnap soldiers. A large portion of the messages have to do with the manufacture of improvised explosives with safety tips and methods for making bombs.

Occasionally there are notices on security issues, such as how to identify "birds", or agents of the GSS, in jail, whose job it is to try to get terrorists to talk, and to admit their guilt. In a detailed document written by a Hamas prisoner and smuggled out of prison, appears a long list of signs which should arouse suspicion that someone is a "bird".

The military forums also serve the function of sharing ideas about possible attacks to try. "We are now in a war to the end with the Jews and the blasphemers," writes a man calling himself "Hanai", "so why shouldn't we exploit the lack of security measures associated with ambulances and fire trucks? We can fill them with explosives and detonate them by a restaurant, pub or cafe?"

There is no end to the evil creativity which appears in these forums. One of the participants suggests putting poison in explosives belts, instead of nails and other pieces of shrapnel, or in addition to them. The idea is to always seek ways to increase the number of victims in every attack. Some of the participants pray for the hijacking of an airplane and its crashing into prominent Israeli sites, along the lines of September 11 in New York and Washington. Others openly hope that the Hamas will succeed in toppling an Israeli building by means of a car bomb.

There were incidents in the past where ideas for attacks that appeared ludicrous at first became reality. For several months intensive discussions took place on the Hamas site about how to use remote control planes for attacks. Supporters of he organization across the world, including in the territories, have used the forums in order to pass on information about electronic circuits, models of planes, and technical sugestions. This did not remain a virtual program. Last February, 6 Hamas members were killed all of them active in the Al Kassam brigades, after they tried to build a "plane bomb" to end into an Israeli settlement or army base.

From within this pool of hatred Hamas operatives have recruited more and more partners for their terror activities. The border-crossing access of the internet makes it possible for Hamas members to receive aid from places that it would be difficult to reach physically because of the closures and blockades of the IDF. "I am called SM and I am one of the Arabs of '48," was a message that appeared on one of the sections of the forum, "I am a chemist but I know nothing about explosives. If you connect me to one of the brothers who is familiar with this subject I am sure that we can improve the quality of these explosives significantly. We have the basic materials but I need help with what to do from here."

The methods of recruitment and volunteering through the internet work. Last year three people were arrested in East Jerusalem who had been recruited by a man named "Abu Al Az" who runs the internet forum for Hamas. The three established a militant cell for Hamas and planned attacks, including the poisoning of customers at the Cafe Rimon restaurant in Jerusalem. One of the arrestees, Abu Nassar, received instructions about locating an engineer to help with a rocket project for Hamas. Before he was arrested Nassar managed to locate an Egyptian engineer and to put him in touch with Al Az.

The forums are not used only by the Palestinians. On the internet there are dozens of Islamic sites, most of them in support of Osama bin Laden and the Al Qaeda organization. These sites and the forums form an especially strong link between Muslims from all over the world. The ability to get updates about hat is happening in Gaza in real-time, in Afghanistan or in Chechnya, gives the Islamic movement a feeling of participation in a worldwide virtual jihad.

The connection between the Palestinian sites and the other Islamic sites does not consist of mutual support only, it is also used to transmit practical information for the execution of attacks. The supporters of Chechens for example pass diagrams and pictures of bombs tot he Palestinians, as well as illustration pertaining to the construction of Kalachnikov rifles and mortars. Instructions about the establishment of terror cells are freely exchanged, with comments, suggestions and ideas for improvement.

Whoever wants to can read large portions of Al Qaeda's handbooks for the organization of an underground and execution of attacks. The book, which contains thousands of pages and includes diagrams and drawings is nicknamed "The Encyclopedia of Jihad" and its distribution through the internet is evidence of how the global infrastructure of the internet is exploited to distribute dark and dangerous ideas.

'This is a global phenomenon that serves the Islamic terror organizations, and especially Al Qaeda," says Dr. Shaul Shai, a research fellow at the Institute for Policies Against Terror at the Inter-disciplinary Institute in Herzliya, "There is also a paradox built-in. Radical Islam, from Al Qaeda to Hamas, sees the West and its values as the principal enemy. But these entities know how to exploit the Western technology and, no less important, the globalist point of view and free exchange of information, and to make them into a central point of operation."

HAMAS EXPECTS SHORT-LIVED ISRAELI TRUCE

Hamas expects short-lived Israeli truce
Washington Times

GAZA CITY, Gaza, July 3 (UPI) -- A leading Palestinian militant in Hamas predicts a short-lived lull in violence with Israel, UPI learned Thursday.

Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, who escaped an Israeli attempt to assassinate him last month, said Israel violated the truce by killing Palestinians.

"They have committed a crime in Jenin and Tulkarm," he claimed. "The truce should be global. There are no regions falling under the truce and others outside it," al-Rantissi told United Press International by telephone.

He projected a short life for the truce noting, "I don't believe that Israel will honor its commitments this time and I don't expect the truce to hold for long."

Hamas and the other Palestinian militant group, Islamic Jihad, which have claimed responsibility for the majority of suicide attacks against Israeli targets, agreed last week to observe a three-month truce with Israel to give the so-called "road map" to peace a chance.

GULF ALLIES REFECT U.S. CALL TO STOP FUNDING HAMAS

Gulf allies reject U.S. call to stop funding Hamas
World Tribune
July 3, 2003

ABU DHABI - The major U.S. allies in the Gulf have quietly refused a request by the United States to drop their financial support for Hamas.

The U.S. message was relayed by Assistant Secretary of State William Burns. Over the last month, Burns has traveled through GCC countries and urged them to halt funding for Hamas, said to receive about $100 million a year, Middle East Newsline reported.

Gulf diplomatic sources said the Bush administration failed to win commitments from several Gulf Cooperation Council states to end financial support for Hamas.

So far, the sources said, at least three countries have rejected the U.S. request to end funding for Hamas. They identified the states as Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

"The policy of GCC countries is to say that there is no official support for Hamas," a diplomatic source said. "That has come to mean that the GCC will not block financing to the movement."

"We want to work as hard as we can in the United States government to support those efforts across the whole range of areas: law enforcement cooperation, intelligence sharing, drying up the financing of terrorist groups, whether it's groups that have carried out acts in Saudi Arabia or any place else in the region or around the world," Burns told a news conference in Kuwait on June 25. "And I think what we've seen is a renewed effort and a stepped-up effort on the part of the United States and Saudi Arabia to cooperate on those issues, and again we work with lots of other partners in the region as well."

Hamas politburo chief Khaled Masha'al has frequently visited the three GCC states. The Gulf Arab governments have given Masha'al an official welcome.

"This [funding to Hamas] is under our control and according to our interests," Kuwaiti Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Al Jarallah said. "We distinguish between relations [with Hamas] and support. They are different."

Al Jarallah said Kuwait supports and recognizes the Palestinian Authority and its new prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas. He said the sheikdom does not officially recognize Hamas.

The sources said Qatar and Saudi Arabia have relayed similar responses to the United States. All three GCC countries are said to serve as major contributors to as well as safe havens for Hamas leaders.

"Kuwait can't be part of the U.S. plan to dismantle Hamas," a Kuwaiti diplomat said. "It's not in our interest."

Prisoner releases are not a part of the road map

July 10, 2003

FULL ARTICLES

“HOW HAVE THESE TERROR GROUPS CONVINCED THE MEDIA THAT THEIR OUTRAGEOUS DEMANDS ARE INTEGRAL TO THE ROAD MAP?”

Hijacked by the Hudna
HonestReporting
July 7, 2003

HonestReporting is bewildered by recent media reports that are factually incorrect in describing the road map's most basic points. The background:

A key component of the road map is the uprooting of terror groups. The PA, however, rather than directly confront Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah, cut a deal with them on the side – a hudna, or tactical ceasefire.

The hudna between the PA and terror groups sets an outrageous (and under-reported) condition for suspending Palestinian terror: Israel's "release of all prisoners and detainees, Palestinian and Arab... without condition or restriction."

Remarkably, Israel has been willing to release scores of prisoners as a goodwill gesture, and on Sunday the Israeli cabinet approved the release of an additional 300.

The PA's reaction: PA minister Abdel Razek said the PA will stop implementing the road map peace plan and will halt all negotiations with Israel if Israel doesn't release all of the Palestinian prisoners. And Radi Jarai, deputy PA minister, said "there is a hudna that has been announced and Israel has to fulfill its obligations in accordance with this agreement."

Look what's happened: The road map, accepted by both the PA and Israel to international fanfare, has been taken hostage by the hudna, an internal Palestinian deal that Israel never agreed to.

The world media, in surreal fashion, have accepted this shift, allowing Hamas to set the terms for road map progress:

– The New York Times reported this week: "The release of Palestinian prisoners is just one of many demands placed on both sides under the Mideast peace plan, known as the road map."

Actually, the road map says absolutely nothing about release of Palestinian prisoners. Only the hudna – which Israel never agreed to – demands a prisoner release.

[The Times removed this line in a later edition, but the original edition is still in wide circulation – for example, on Yahoo News]

– Los Angeles Times: "Along with prisoner releases, the next important element in moving ahead with the 'road map' is the Palestinian demand that Israel withdraw from more of the West Bank."

Again, prisoner releases are not a part of the road map. And according to the road map, the PA's obligation to uproot terror is clearly "the next important element."

– BBC: "Israeli officials say members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad are not included among those to be freed, a decision which could jeopardise the truce and threaten the entire peace process."

Note the BBC's logic: Israel's refusal to immediately release over 6,000 prisoners (many of whom are convicted murders) jeopardizes the "truce." The BBC would have us believe that Israel, therefore, is the guilty party for the possible failure of the road map.

Stage One of the road map demands that the PA "arrest, disrupt, and restrain" terror groups, eliminating their influence. How have those same terror groups not only wrestled control of the PA's negotiations, but convinced the media that their outrageous demands are actually integral to the roadmap?!

Associated Press twists the truth a complete 180 degrees, presenting the basic tenets of the road map as some kind of Israeli-American subplot:

"Beyond policing the truce, Israel and the United States want the Palestinians to disarm and dismantle extremist groups... "

Israel and the United States? The road map is authored by the Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia. Abu Mazen and the PA agreed and committed to these terms. No, it is not just "Israel and the United States [who] want the Palestinians to disarm and dismantle extremist groups."

WHERE EXACTLY IS KFAR YAVETZ?

Near the West Bank
HonestReporting
July 10, 2003

On Monday, an Islamic Jihad homicide bomber killed a 65-year-old Israeli woman by detonating himself in the kitchen of her home in Moshav Kfar Yavetz.

The Associated Press report of the attack contained a curious definition of Kfar Yavetz's location: Headlined "West Bank House Hit by Apparent Bomb," the report then shifts the location to "an Israeli village near the West Bank."

Where exactly is Kfar Yavetz? As illustrated on this map, the village is a mile and a half from the Green Line, on the Israeli side:

Is this "near the West Bank"? Yes, but it's also right near Kfar Saba and Netanya. The fact is, approximately 60% of the Israeli populace lives "near the West Bank" -within just 11 miles of the Green Line.

The New York Times article on the attack illustrates this precisely: "A powerful explosion tore apart an Israeli home near the West Bank," the Times reports, adding "[t]he blast occurred in the village of Kfar Yavetz, in central Israel." Note the Times refers to Kfar Yavetz as both "near the West Bank" and "in central Israel"! ABC even headlined their report "Two dead in blast outside Tel Aviv."

By calling Kfar Yavetz only "near the West Bank," the Associated Press situates the event within the region they have already deemed controversial, lessening the brutality of the terror attack against an Israeli citizen in her own home. Having accepted the terrorists' twisted claim that the murder of West Bank Israelis is somehow "more justified," the media now expand that supposed justification by referring to central Israeli towns as "near the West Bank." Apparently, even the AP's headline writer was misled by the article's terminology, which led him to draft the erroneous headline "West Bank House Hit by Apparent Bomb."

***

Never was this problem clearer than on June 17, when ABC's Peter Jennings reported the murder of 7-year old Noam Leibowitz on World News Tonight: "In the Middle East tonight, a young Israeli girl was killed after someone fired on the car she and her family were in near the border between Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories."

Catch Jennings' thinly-veiled justification for Noam's murder: Since it occurred "near" the "Palestinian territories" that are "occupied," the ABC viewer can almost understand why "someone" would lash out in frustration.

The close proximity of Palestinian terror hubs to Israeli cites lies at the heart of Israeli security concerns. One could jog from the West Bank to the Mediterranean Sea in little over an hour. Benjamin Netanyahu communicates this point to foreign diplomats by taking them on a helicopter ride from Tel Aviv, flying east toward the West Bank. After a few short minutes, Netanyahu turns to his guest and says: "I'll let you know when we've crossed into the West Bank...We already did."

By referring to Israeli towns victimized by terror as merely "near the West Bank," Associated Press and ABC News not only fail to acknowledge this fundamental Israeli security issue, but also propose a justification for cold-blooded terrorist murder.

WOULD A WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL EVER EQUATE A MILITANT ENVIRONMENTALIST WITH OSAMA BIN LADEN?

Militant journalism
HonestReporting
July 3, 2003

HonestReporting has on numerous occasions critiqued the media's widespread use of the term "militant" to describe Palestinian terrorists. A Wednesday Washington Post editorial provides an ideal illustration of the precise problem with the term.

The Post editorial repeatedly calls Palestinian terrorist organizations "militant groups," and then – sandwiched among those references – refers to "militant Jewish settlers." The editorial claims these two groups constitute "the extremists on both sides."

As noted by James Taranto's weblog, the term "militant" has two separate dictionary definitions:

1) engaged in warfare or combat
2) aggressively active (as in a cause)

A Hamas leader may be (generously) granted the first definition, and some Jewish settlers fit the second definition. But by calling both groups "militants" in the same editorial breath, the Post entirely eliminates this distinction, and implies equivalence between mass civilian murderers and dwellers on a disputed land.

Would a Washington Post editorial ever equate a militant environmentalist with Osama bin Laden?

News from Europe and Australia

July 09, 2003

“AN OUTRAGEOUS USE OF LOBBYING MUSCLE”

[Note by Tom Gross]

I attach 10 articles from Europe (and one from Australia), with summaries first for those who don't have time to read the articles in full.

1. "Jewish bid to stop film" (By Gosia Kaszubska, Sunday Mail, Australia, July 4, 2003).

"A Jewish group's bid to stop the screening of a film by Holocaust-denying historian David Irving was an outrageous use of lobbying muscle, free speech advocates said yesterday. The Jewish Community Council of Victoria wants to stop a Melbourne film festival from screening Irving's The Search for Truth in History and organizing a live telephone hook-up with the British historian. The council has also sought an interim injunction on the Melbourne Underground Film Festival showing a documentary about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, claiming both the films and the phone hook-up would vilify Jewish people and incite hatred against them. Free Speech Victoria president Terry Lane said the legal bid was a pointless demonstration of the Jewish community's lobbying power, since Irving's ideas were widely available on the Internet. "This is another outrageous attempt by one small section of the community to determine what the whole community will see, hear and read," Lane, a broadcaster with ABC Radio National, said."

2. "Jordanian terror suspect says group planned to attack Berlin's Jewish Museum, Duesseldorf disco" (The Associated Press, Germany, July 4, 2003).

Berlin's Jewish Museum was chosen as a target for a planned attack last year by a radical Palestinian network, along with a Jewish-owned discotheque or bar in the western city of Duesseldorf, a Jordanian terror suspect testified at his trial Friday. Shadi Abdellah, 26, told the Duesseldorf state court that the buildings were targeted. "We hadn't yet decided whether we would do it with a car bomb or some other way," he added. According to the Al Tawhid group aims to topple the Jordanian government and "fight the Jews." Abdellah was arrested after he ordered a crate of hand grenades from a fellow cell member... Abdellah said he also took part in a course on how to produce poisons and use them in drinks and food. He added that he attended seminars on planning and carrying out terror attacks – passing "with 100 percent success." The Jewish Museum, an eye-catching zinc-clad building designed by American architect Daniel Libeskind, was opened in early September 2001 and has become one of the capital's top tourist attractions.

3. "Sharon might be arrested in Norway" (Al Jazeera.net/Hanne Dankertsen Nettavisen, July 3, 2003).

The Norwegian radical left-wing party RV is accusing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of committing war crimes and wants the PM to be arrested when he comes to Norway to meet the Norwegian Prime Minister on 16 July. The political party has sent a formal request for Sharon to be arrested to the Director of Public Prosecutions. "When he enters Norwegian ground, he can be arrested and presented to a court. If one finds that a prosecution would have to be delayed until he steps down as Prime Minister, at least his visit to Norway would open up an opportunity for the police to interview him in the interest of a future prosecution," said Dahle.

4. "World lawmakers resolve to combat anti-Semitism" (The Associated Press, July 6, 2003).

“WON’T THESE UNSEEMLY NAZI COMPARISONS EVER END?”

5. "France to probe Netanya bombing which killed French citizen" (Ha'aretz, June 28, 2003).

A French judge is to launch an investigation into the March 2002 suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in Netanya, which killed 30 people, among them French citizen Myriam Lehmann Zaoui, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Germany. The judge will determine whether people tied to the bombing can be prosecuted and charged with murder. The suit was filed by Lehman's relatives.

6. "French Publisher faces prison for publishing material denying Holocaust" (The Associated Press, Lyon, June. 25, 2003).

An appeals court upheld the six-month prison sentence of an editor who published works that called into question the scope of the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II. Plantin has regularly published works by Holocaust revisionists or neo-Nazi authors, including an article entitled "is Anne Frank's Diary authentic?" by Robert Faurisson. The lawyer for publisher Jean Plantin said he will appeal the decision to a higher court.

7. "France restores Nazi collaborator's pension" (Israel National News, July 2003).

8. "Wiesenthal Centre protests a French municipality's refusal to Rename High School that honors a Nazi collaborator" (Paris, July 8 2003).

The Florent Schmitt high-school in the Paris suburb of Saint Cloud immortalizes a name whose past seems most inappropriately associated with any educational institution. Florent Schmitt was an acolyte of Adolf Hitler and a racist long before his collaboration under Vichy. As early as 1933, Schmitt shouted "Vive Hitler" and antisemitic insults during a concert of Jewish composer, Kurt Weill.

9. "Berlusconi Nazi insult hits Germans" (Reuters, Berlin, July 8, 2003).

Germans got an unwanted reminder of their nightmare past this month with Silvio Berlusconi's Nazi slur and as they tried to put the episode behind them as fast as possible they wondered – Why does everyone hate us? "Won't these unseemly Nazi comparisons ever end?" wrote columnist Rolf Kleine in Bild, Germany's top-selling newspaper.

10. "Irish snub Sharon for Arafat" (The Jerusalem Post, June 25, 2003).

Forced to choose between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen has opted for Arafat. Cowen met in Ramallah with Arafat, PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath, but not with Sharon. "This is no small crisis, and unfortunately reflects Europe's position," one senior Israeli Foreign Ministry official said. The official said that Cowen's move is more representative of European sentiment than the recent visit of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who met Sharon and refused to meet Arafat.

[All summaries above by Tom Gross]

FULL ARTICLES

JEWISH BID TO STOP FILM

Jewish bid to stop film
By Gosia Kaszubska
The Sunday Mail (Australia)
July 4, 2003

A Jewish group's bid to stop the screening of a film by Holocaust-denying historian David Irving was an outrageous use of lobbying muscle, free speech advocates said yesterday.

The Jewish Community Council of Victoria wants to stop a Melbourne film festival from screening Irving's The Search for Truth in History and organising a live telephone hook-up with the British historian. The council has also sought an interim injunction on the Melbourne Underground Film Festival showing a documentary about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, claiming both the films and the phone hook-up would vilify Jewish people and incite hatred against them.

It is believed to be the first time Victoria's racial and religious vilification laws have been used to attempt to ban the screening of a film.

Free Speech Victoria president Terry Lane said the legal bid was a pointless demonstration of the Jewish community's lobbying power, since Irving's ideas were widely available on the internet. "This is another outrageous attempt by one small section of the community to determine what the whole community will see, hear and read," Lane, a broadcaster with ABC Radio National, said yesterday.

Irving, whose theories denying the Holocaust happened have for years outraged Jewish communities and historians, was earlier this year refused entry into Australia for the third time. His film, which is scheduled to be screened next week, is Irving's response to his first ban from visiting Australia, in 1993.

Lane slammed the racial vilification laws as a great threat to free speech and said despite opposing Irving's views, his group had to defend "the rights of the ratbags".

Jewish Community Council of Victoria president Michael Lipshutz said while he had not seen either film, an interim injunction would give the Equal Opportunity Commission time to investigate his complaint that they would incite hatred against Jewish people. "This is not about power, or Jewish power. We all have rights under the law, and the Victorian parliament has proscribed certain actions as illegal," he said.

The second film, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: A Palestinian Perspective, claims the Holocaust was being used to justify US support for Israel.

"If they are saying that Jews are milking the Holocaust to preserve Israel, that's anti-Semitic," Mr Lipshutz said. Melbourne Underground Film Festival director Richard Wolstencroft said it was vital to air views that many in the community might disagree with, as a fundamental part of free debate. "The last thing we wanted to do is inspire racial hatred – we're totally about transcending those sorts of things," he said.

Festival representatives failed to appear at yesterday's Victorian Civil and Administrative Appeal Tribunal hearing but Mr Wolstencroft said organisers had no time, and little money, to mount a defence.

A ruling on the application for an interim injunction is expected today.

JORDANIAN TERROR SUSPECT SAYS GROUP PLANNED TO ATTACK BERLIN’S JEWISH MUSEUM

Jordanian terror suspect says group planned to attack Berlin's Jewish Museum, Duesseldorf disco
By Andreas Rehnolt
The Associated Press
July 4, 2003

Berlin's Jewish Museum was chosen as a target for a planned attack last year by a radical Palestinian network, along with a Jewish-owned discotheque or bar in the western city of Duesseldorf, a Jordanian terror suspect testified at his trial Friday. Shadi Abdellah, 26, told the Duesseldorf state court that the buildings were reconnoitred before his April 2002 arrest, but no decision was made on when to carry out attacks. "We hadn't yet decided whether we would do it with a car bomb or some other way," he added.

The defendant was among nine people detained simultaneously by German authorities on suspicion of plotting attacks on targets in two German cities for the Al Tawhid group which, according to Abdellah, aims to topple the Jordanian government and "fight the Jews." Prosecutors hadn't identified the targets.

Abdellah was arrested after he allegedly ordered a pistol with a silencer and a crate of hand grenades from a fellow cell member. He could face 10 years in prison if convicted on charges of membership in a terrorist organization and faking passports.

The suspect admitted Friday that the group ordered grenades and a pistol, but added that "we were living in Germany and it's not so easy to get hold of weapons here." Al Tawhid's alleged leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, urged the German cell from his home in Afghanistan to obtain an explosive he referred to as a "black pill," but the group decided that was too risky, Abdellah said.

Suicide attacks were considered as an option, he added. While Abdellah was reluctant to become a suicide bomber himself, he said the German cell's alleged leader, Mohammed Abu Dhess, was prepared to do so.

Abdellah, who was giving a fourth day of testimony Friday, has said he agreed to work in Germany for Zarqawi in early 2001 after they got to know each other in Afghanistan.

During his stay there, Abdellah has acknowledged also serving briefly as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has described al-Zarqawi as an associate of the al-Qaida leader.

Abdellah said Thursday that al-Zarqawi asked him to go to Jordan and attack the country's army, but he offered instead to go to Germany to collect donations for the group. Al-Zarqawi agreed but insisted that he first attend a weeklong explosives course "in case we need you," he said.

On Friday, Abdellah said he also took part in a course on how to produce poisons and use them in drinks and food. He added that he attended seminars on planning and carrying out terror attacks – passing "with 100 percent success."

Prosecutors say that, during a September 2001 meeting in Tehran, al-Zarqawi instructed Abu Dhess – a longtime Jordanian acquaintance of Abdellah – to carry out attacks on Jewish or Israeli institutions in Germany.

Abdellah said the German cell came under heavy pressure from al-Zarqawi to push ahead with the attacks, and the defendant said he reported to another alleged cell member that targets had been found.

The Jewish Museum, an eye-catching zinc-clad building designed by American architect Daniel Libeskind, was opened in early September 2001 and has become one of the capital's top tourist attractions.

Abdellah said he happened on the building as a possible target "by chance" on a walk through the capital.

The German Al Tawhid cell was based in the region around Duesseldorf, and Abdellah lived in the nearby town of Krefeld.

Four more suspected cell members, including Abu Dhess, remain in custody in Germany. Abdellah's trial continues next Tuesday.

SHARON MIGHT BE ARRESTED IN NORWAY

Sharon might be arrested in Norway
Al Jazeera.net
July 3, 2003

The Norwegian radical left-wing party RV is accusing Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for committing war crimes and wants the PM to be arrested when he comes to Norway to meet the Norwegian Prime Minister in two weeks.

RV thinks Sharon is guilty of a range of war crimes through his history as Israel's leader and that as such, he should be arrested when he comes to Norway on 16 July. The political party has sent a formal request for Sharon to be arrested to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Torstein Dahle (right), leader of RV, is pointing out a number of incidents in Sharon's time as General when he was leading attacks on Palestinian civilians.

These are two of the points in the request for the arrest:

In October 1953 Sharon was leading the force Unit 101 in to the village of Qibya and blew up 45 houses. 69 people were killed, amongst them women and children.

Through the work of an Israeli investigation lead by Yitzhak Kahan, it has been proved that Sharon was responsible for the 1982 massacres in the refugee camps Sabra and Shatila. A Lebanese force that was allowed access to the camps by Israeli forces that Sharon was controlling, murdered more than 800 people. Ariel Sharon was forced to step down from his position as Minister of Defence as a result of the Israeli report in connection with this incident.

The Geneva Convention Dahle is also pointing out the Geneva Convention that Israel has agreed on.

The convention says "The occupying power is not to deport or transfer parts of their own population to the area of occupation".

RV thinks Israel is doing this by building Jewish homes by the West Bank.

On these grounds, Dahle thinks Sharon should be arrested when entering Norway on 16 July.

When he enters Norwegian ground, he can be arrested and presented to a court. If one finds that a prosecution would have to be delayed until he steps down as Prime Minister, at least his visit to Norway would open up an opportunity for the police to interview him in the interest of a future prosecution», said Dahle.

WORLD LAWMAKERS RESOLVE TO COMBAT ANTI-SEMITISM

World lawmakers resolve to combat anti-Semitism
The Associated Press
July 6, 2003

Lawmakers from around Europe resolved Sunday to lobby their home legislatures to take action against rising anti-Semitism and hate crimes.

Meeting in Rotterdam, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe adopted a resolution urging governments to enact laws forbidding hate crimes, educate youth against racism and anti-Semitism, and train police to recognize and respond to hate crimes.

The resolution, introduced by U.S. Congressman Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, said disaffection with Israeli government policies toward the Palestinians was being used as a cover for anti-Semitism. "Anti-Semitism can't be allowed to camouflage, cloak or conceal its ugliness as mere policy differences with the State of Israel," Smith told 300 delegates.

The OSCE is the world's largest regional security organization with 55 member nations from Europe, as well as the United States, Canada, Russia, and a number of central Asian countries.

In a telephone interview, Smith said his proposal builds on ideas vetted in a conference on anti-Semitism held in Berlin last month. Smith said recent studies show that hate crimes "tend to be committed by first and second generation Arab immigrants. It's important that you don't stereotype, but there's enough to make it a serious problem."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, which tracks anti-Semitism, says attacks against Jews in Europe have reached the highest level since World War II. Since 2001, the center has documented 1,300 anti-Semitic acts in France, including the stabbing of a rabbi in Paris early this year, and the brutal beating of two Jewish boys in March.

Increases also have been recorded in other European countries. A study by the Anti-Defamation League showed that 21 percent of people in five European countries had strongly anti-Jewish views.

Smith said there hasn't been a "appreciable" corresponding rise in hate crimes in Europe committed against Muslims as a result of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, but he hoped governments will begin keeping better track of hate crimes data.

"Reporting is passive," he said. "It needs to be active, because that can lead to mitigation efforts: once you have empirical proof, it makes it easier to mobilize governments."

FRANCE TO PROBE NETANYA BOMBING WHICH KILLED FRENCH CITIZEN

France to probe Netanya bombing which killed French citizen
Ha'aretz
June 28, 2003

A French judge is to launch an investigation into the March 2002 suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in Netanya, which killed 30 people, among them French citizen Myriam Lehmann Zaoui, Israel Radio reported Saturday.

The judge will determine whether people tied to the bombing can be prosecuted and charged with murder. The suit was filed by Lehman's relatives.

Lehmann, 77, a Holocaust survivor, was born in Germany. She fled to France during World War II. She immigrated to Israel in 1987. Her husband a grandson were lightly injured on the attack.

FRENCH PUBLISHER FACES PRISON FOR PUBLISHING MATERIAL DENYING HOLOCAUST

French Publisher faces prison for publishing material denying Holocaust
The Associated Press
June. 25, 2003

An appeals court on Wednesday upheld the six-month prison sentence of an editor who published works that called into question the scope of the Nazi extermination of Jews during World War II.

The lawyer for publisher Jean Plantin said he will appeal the decision to a higher court.

A lower court found Plantin guilty in June 2000 and issued him a six-month suspended sentence for publishing materials challenging some aspects of the Holocaust, including the use of gas chambers to kill vast numbers of Jews during the war. The court also ordered Plantin to stop his activities.

But prosecutors say Plantin continued to publish similar works, thus violating a condition of his suspended sentence. A court in January revoked the suspension, a ruling that was upheld on appeal Wednesday.

Plantin has regularly published works by Holocaust revisionists or neo-Nazi authors, including an article entitled "is Anne Frank's Diary authentic?" by Robert Faurisson.

FRANCE RESTORES NAZI COLLABORATOR’S PENSION

France restores Nazi collaborator's pension
By Michael Freund
Israel National News
July 2003

France's top administrative authority has ordered the country's Finance Ministry to reinstate the pension of Maurice Papon, a World War Two-era Nazi collaborator convicted of signing deportation orders which sent 1,560 French Jews to the death camps.

Papon, 92, was released from prison last year on the grounds of ill health and his advanced age after serving just three years of his ten-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity. He was convicted in 1998 for his actions as prefect of France's Gironde region under the collaborationist Vichy regime in the early 1940's.

The French government last year suspended Papon's civil service pension retroactively to October 1999, but the new ruling by France's Council of State effectively overturns the previous decision. As a result, Papon will now be entitled to receive four years' worth of back-payments for the period in which his pension was not paid.

The Council of State justified its decision by asserting that there was no legal basis to deny a civil servant his or her rights under law, even if he had been convicted of serious crimes.

After the ruling was made public, France's Justice Ministry issued a statement saying that under French law, family members of Papon's victims could demand compensation out of any pension funds paid to him.

"The ruling of the Council of State... should not be a new ordeal for the victims and their families. (Justice Minister) Dominique Perben assures them of his support," the statement said.

WIESENTHAL CENTRE PROTESTS

Wiesenthal Centre protests a French municipality's refusal to rename high school that honours a Nazi collaborator

Paris, July 8, 2003

The Florent Schmitt high-school in the Paris suburb of Saint Cloud immortalizes a name whose past seems most inappropriately associated with any educational institution.

The school was given this name in 1968 to honour "an eminent French musicologist," decorated with the Legion d'Honneur in 1952, a national prize laureate in 1957, and even celebrated as the face on a dedicated postal stamp in 1992.

In a letter to French National Education Minister, Luc Ferry, the Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Liaison, Dr. Shimon Samuels, protested stated that "what was once local rumour has now been confirmed by an enquiry of the historian Denis Tallon in the National Archives: Florent Schmitt was an acolyte of Adolf Hitler and a racist long before his collaboration under Vichy. In 1933, Schmitt shouted "Vive Hitler" and antisemitic insults during a concert of Jewish composer, Kurt Weill. From 1935, he was a member of the France-Germany Committee. In 1941, he was invited by the Nazis to Vienna to mark the 150th anniversary of Mozart's death. Finally, under Vichy, he was the Honorary Co-President of the musical ensemble named 'Collaboration'."

Samuels asked: "Is this then a name to adorn a high-school and a nearby street? We are impressed that, in June 2002, nine hundred of the 1,400 pupils petitioned to rename their school 'Alexandre Dumas'."

The letter pointed out that, "now, one year later, the municipality has rejected the proposal while the mayor and the regional council refuse to state a position."

The Centre advised the Minister that "his recently announced school campaign against racism and intolerance is impugned as long as Florent Schmitt remains an icon on the name-plate of a high-school," urging him "to heed the student body and rename the school forthwith while, also, publicly condemning and ordering an official enquiry into the procedure whereby a Nazi collaborator escaped punishment and achieved glory in post-War France."

BERLUSCONI NAZI INSULT HITS GERMANS

Berlusconi Nazi insult hits Germans
By Erik Kirschbaum
Reuters
July 8, 2003

Germans got an unwanted reminder of their nightmare past this month with Silvio Berlusconi's Nazi slur and as they tried to put the episode behind them as fast as possible they wondered – Why does everyone hate us?

The Italian Prime Minister compared a little-known German politician to a Nazi prison guard during a heated debate at the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week, triggering a furore that cast a shadow over Berlusconi and German-Italian relations.

Berlusconi's insult, telling Martin Schulz he would be a perfect candidate for a Nazi character in a film, drew rebukes across Europe. But in Germany the outburst caused more shock and sorrow than anger or indignation.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder first demanded an apology and then after a hastily arranged telephone call said he gladly accepted Berlusconi's regrets.

Sensing Germans have no stomach for Nazi stories or reminders of their grandfathers' crimes, Schroeder welcomed what he labelled an apology as a chance to close the chapter.

Berlusconi later insisted he had not apologised, saying he had only expressed his sadness for being badly interpreted.

"I did not make an apology," Berlusconi said. He defended himself, saying he had in mind a clumsy German soldier named "Schultz" in the 1960s U.S. television series "Hogan's Heroes."

Schroeder had no further comment. "The wider political dimensions were cleared up and the chancellor considers the case closed," said Schroeder's spokesman Bela Anda on Friday.

But Schulz, the little-known member of the European Parliament who angered Berlusconi, said on Sunday the Italian leader had only confirmed the worst fears of his detractors with the outburst.

"Berlusconi is cooking up a new version of events every day but it doesn't change his nature of the insult," said Schulz, 47. "He should apologise to the European Parliament as fast as possible and make it clear that his lapse won't happen again."

WILL NAZI COMPARISONS EVER END?

For 63 million Germans born after World War Two – some 75 percent of the population – Berlusconi's astonishing insult tore open old wounds.

"Won't these unseemly Nazi comparisons ever end?" wrote columnist Rolf Kleine in Bild, Germany's top-selling newspaper.

"Whether outside Germany or from within, it's always tempting when there are no other arguments to bash Germans with the Nazi battering ram. The darkest chapter in our history is often used as a killer argument. Just stop it now!"

Six decades after the war Germans are sensitive about their Nazi past and Nazi references are often political dynamite.

Schroeder dropped his justice minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin last year after she stirred a row with the United States by comparing President George W. Bush's policies towards Iraq to those of Adolf Hitler.

"Nazi analogies are total nonsense," said Dietmar Herz, political science professor at Erfurt University. "They have nothing to do with Germany today. Abroad, they're being artificially kept alive by the press in countries like England."

When overseas Germans are often bewildered to still be confronted by the past – called Krauts or greeted by the stiff-armed Hitler salute. But they are still unable to completely shrug off the burden of guilt from that era – and would rather not be reminded of it.

"Germans are always having to fight old cliches abroad," said Herz.

Student Anna Mueller-Busch said Berlusconi was out of line.

"Berlusconi's remarks only perpetuate the image abroad of Germans as Nazis," said Mueller-Busch, 27. "The Germans he attacked had nothing to do with the Nazis."

Gerhard Haendeler, a Wuppertal tax adviser, said Berlusconi had insulted generations of Germans born after the war.

"Italy isn't short on fascists itself," said Haendeler, 53. "Our generation had nothing to do with what went on back then. It's especially ironic given the amount of power he wields."

A Berlin student named Beatrice, 20, said she was tired of always having to defend her country when she was abroad.

"People abroad think of Germany as Nazis and beer. You always have to deal with it and always have to defend yourself. I was on an school exchange programme in Israel, and because I was German, the subject was always raised."

While Germans may be admired for their powerful economy, they just aren't liked in many places, opinion polls in foreign countries consistently show.

In spite of huge efforts to improve their standing and put behind them the image of dangerous belligerents whose armies trampled across Europe in the 20th century, Germans regularly encounter resentment abroad.

A recent survey of 1,000 British young people between the age of 16 and 24 by the Goethe Institute showed a majority had negative views of Germans.

"We shouldn't forget the Nazi past," said student Ines Daniels, 26. "But we have to move on and draw a line somewhere."

(Additional reporting by Claire Soares in Rome and Dave Graham in Berlin)

IRISH SNUB SHARON FOR ARAFAT

Irish snub Sharon for Arafat
By Herb Keinon
The Jerusalem Post
June 25, 2003

Forced to choose between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen has opted for Arafat.

Cowen is slated to arrive Wednesday night and meet Thursday in Ramallah with Arafat, PA Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, and PA Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath.

Israeli diplomatic officials said that when it was made clear to the Irish that if Cowen meets Arafat, he will be unable to meet any Israeli officials, the Irish decided to forgo the meetings in Israel.

"This is no small crisis, and unfortunately reflects Europe's position," one senior Foreign Ministry official said.

The official said that Cowen's move is more representative of European sentiment than the recent visit of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who met Sharon and refused to meet Arafat. He, in turn, was snubbed by Abbas.

Although Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and the foreign ministers of Denmark and Norway all recently postponed visits because they did not want to find themselves in a similar dilemma, Cowen is the first diplomat to have decided to bypass Israeli officials to pay what Philip Grant, an official at the Irish Embassy in Tel Aviv, called a "courtesy call" to Arafat.

Grant, referring to the Spanish precedent, said his government is trying to arrange another trip to Israel for Cowen for bilateral talks.

In May, Spanish Foreign Minister Ana Palacio made two different trips here in five days to get around the government's policy of snubbing officials who meet Arafat. That policy was adopted on May 18 after a spate of four terrorist attacks in 12 hours.

One diplomatic official said, however, it is not at all clear whether Israel will agree to this type of "solution" in the future. It is not a question of not meeting Arafat and Sharon on the same trip, the official said, it is rather that Israel is convinced these meetings build up Arafat, make things more difficult for Abbas, and as a result impede process on the road map. At the same time, he said, Israel does not want to find itself in a position in which foreign diplomats won't visit, as these visits are an important vehicle for dialogue.

The US agrees with Israel about not meeting Arafat, and not only do its officials not do so, but Washington has also turned to the Europeans with formal requests not to meet Arafat. These requests, according to Israeli diplomatic officials, have been "tossed into the garbage."

Palacio's visit was in the works before the government adopted its policy of snubbing those who meet Arafat, which is why Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom agreed to meet with her just a few days after she met with Arafat.

But that, diplomatic officials explained, was meant to be the exception to the rule, not the new rule.

Ireland is scheduled to take over the rotating presidency of the EU from Italy in January. In addition to going to the PA, Cowen will also visit Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

Report on Washington Post “Bias”

July 08, 2003

“MILITANTS? NO, IM SORRY. THESE ARE TERRORISTS.”

Groups accuse Washington Post of bias against and in favor of Israel
By Jeff Johnson
Congressional Bureau Chief
CNSNews.com

http://www.crosswalk.com/news/1208454.html

A pro-Israel media watchdog group Monday called for a "seven-day subscription and advertising suspension" boycott against the Washington Post, accusing the newspaper of slanting its coverage in favor of Arab terrorists. A Palestinian group that also monitors media coverage of the Middle East conflict agrees that the Post is biased, but in favor of Israel rather than Arabs who desire the creation of a Palestinian state.

"For some reason, if it's al Qaeda, Hamas or Hezbollah attacking America, they're 'terrorists,' but if they're attacking Israel or Jews, they're 'militants,'" said Peter Hebert, a member of the board of EyeOnThePost.org. "That's a real problem; words do have meanings."

A Nexis database search of recent Post articles seems to support Hebert's claim. For instance, in a July 4 article, John Ward Anderson chose not to identify Palestinian civilians who used military weapons to attack Israeli civilians as terrorists.

"Palestinian militants fired rockets at a small Jewish settlement in the central Gaza Strip late Wednesday, and Israeli troops responded today by temporarily closing the strip's recently reopened main road..." Anderson wrote.

But that same day, Post writer John Mintz reported on the possibility of military tribunals for accused members of al Qaeda.

"President Bush designated six suspected al Qaeda terrorists as eligible for trial before military tribunals yesterday...," Mintz reported.

Hebert claims the bias against Israel at the Post and in other establishment media outlets in the U.S. is not limited to terminology. He points to a July 29 article by Post writer Molly Moore entitled "Israel's Lethal Weapon of Choice: As Assassinations of Militants Increase, Citizens' Uneasiness Grows."

"It's in the headline," he said, the frustration evident in his voice. "Militants? No, I'm sorry. These are terrorists."

Moore's article noted the fact that 33-year-old Abdel Rahman Hamad "was shot dead by a sniper as he sat on his roof reading the Koran" and that 27-year-old Mohammad Abayat "was killed when he picked up the receiver of a pay phone that blew up outside a hospital where he was visiting his sick mother."

The story identifies the two men as "suspected Palestinian militants" but makes no mention of evidence linking them to specific terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians or their ties to known terrorist organizations.

The report also recalled: "The toll of civilian bystanders and others killed who were not intended targets of the [Israeli assassination] missions increased 2 1/2 times during the same period." No mention was made of the number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinians in suicide bombings and other types of terrorist attacks.

"There's a sympathetic portrayal of Palestinian terrorists who become targets of Israeli assassinations," Hebert argued, noting that the U.S. has been pursuing a nearly identical policy of targeting members of Saddam Hussein's former regime in Iraq. "We're not going after 'militants,' we're going after 'terrorists.'"

Hebert accused Moore and Anderson of being "the most notoriously biased writers at the Post."

"Israel is being cast in a negative light because Israel is trying to do the two things any government on earth is supposed to do," Hebert argued, "protect its borders from external threat and ensure law and order within."

PALESTINIAN GROUP ALSO SAYS POST ENGAGES IN ‘FAULTY’ REPORTING

Ahmed Bouzid, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Palestine Media Watch (PMW), told CNSNews.com that he does not believe the Washington Post is "biased, as such," but said the newspaper's reporting is often "lacking."

"For instance, you have coverage that presents the news out of Israel and the 'occupied territories' with a certain slant, even if the slant is not intentional, we think that the reporting is flawed," Bouzid said. "Not 'biased' in the sense that somebody is trying to present a certain picture, but flawed."

In its own analysis of the Post's coverage, PMW criticized the publication for the use of the terms "retaliate" and "retaliation" to refer to Israeli actions against Palestinians.

"Framing the violence from the Israelis as 'retaliation' or 'reaction' is a way of saying or conveying the message that the Israelis are only defending themselves, which is a way of framing the coverage that pushes one picture versus another," Bouzid complained.

The same type of bias is evident, he claimed, in the Post's use of the words "vigilante" versus "terrorist."

"When Palestinians engage in what is clearly terrorism, they call it 'terrorism,' which is accurate," Bouzid admitted. "But when some [Israeli] settler engages in terrorism, in other words, terrorizes a Palestinian civilian, it's not called 'terrorism,' it's called a 'vigilante act.'"

The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, considered by most news organizations to be the final authority on matters of journalistic linguistics, makes no mention of appropriate uses of the words "terror, terrorism or terrorist." Nor does it address the use of the terms "militant" or "vigilante."

The AP does define the phrase "Middle East" as applying to "southwest Asia west of Pakistan and Afghanistan (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Yemen, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Yemen), northeastern Africa (Egypt and Sudan) and the island of Cyprus." No mention is made of "Palestine."

POST OMBUDSMAN, MEDIA CRITIC ACKNOWLEDGE SOME VALIDITY TO COMPLAINTS

Telephone calls to Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler were not returned Monday afternoon, but Getler criticized Moore's July 4, 2003, story on Israel's attempts to stop suicide attacks against its citizens through preemptive assassinations of the terrorist leaders who plan those attacks.

"[I]t is indeed hard to understand why this lengthy article did not state clearly, and with whatever precision was available, that many hundreds of Israelis (821, according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry) have been killed in suicide bombings and other violent attacks since September 2000 and that almost 5,000 have been injured or maimed," Getler wrote in a July 6 column.

"This is clearly part of the anguish and anger that fuel this brutal and seemingly endless conflict, and it needs to be explained, just as the Palestinian side is explained, in more than passing terms in an article of this length and interest," Getler wrote.

Getler has also taken the staff of the newspaper he represents to task in the past for their coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"Critics who see an anti-Israeli bias claim that the Post frequently fails to point out that organizations such as Hamas or Islamic Jihad, which carry out terror attacks, do not want an end just to the occupation but to Israel as well," Getler wrote in a June 9, 2002, response on the paper's editorial page. "That, in my view, is a fair criticism."

One day later, Post "Media Notes" writer Howard Kurtz commented on a decision to change the identification of a supporter of a Palestinian terrorist attending that terrorist's funeral.

"In April [2002], the [predecessor to EyeOnThePost.org] notes, the Post picked up a quote from the Associated Press - 'Sharon 'should expect all doors of hell to break loose, vowed one masked militant' – but changed the attribution to 'one of the mourners,'" Kurtz acknowledged.

"Phil Bennett, assistant managing editor for foreign news, says such criticism has prompted the paper to be more careful about language, such as not describing killings as 'retaliation' so the Post doesn't seem to 'implicitly justify attacks,'" Kurtz said.

WATCHDOG GROUPS CLAIM INTEREST IS ACCURATE REPORTING, NOT HURTING THE POST

Neither Bouzid nor Hebert seems interested in hurting the Washington Post financially. Both appear interested only in gaining what they believe is unbiased coverage of one of the most significant civilian and military conflicts of the 20th and 21st centuries.

"The point is not whether you are anti-Israel or anti-Palestine," Bouzid said. "The point is, are you doing your job correctly?"

Hebert is adamant that his group does not want readers to cancel their subscriptions to the paper.

"That is not our goal... a change in behavior is fine," he said.

"Use the word 'terrorist' when the word 'terrorist' is appropriate. If the word 'militant' is appropriate, okay, that's fine," Hebert concluded. "If Israeli soldiers do something inappropriate, then report it, tell the truth. But don't cast Israel in a negative light for engaging in self-defense."

UNESCO designates Tel Aviv as World Heritage Site, and other stories

FULL ARTICLES

STREET CHILDREN TO TRAIN IN ISRAEL

Street children to train in Israel
By Amos Kareithi
The East African Standard
July 4 2003

The Government will soon send a number of street children to Israel for vocational training.

Local Government Minister Karisa Maitha said plans are underway to identify a number of street children to pioneer the project.

The minister said that he expected the chosen individuals to learn how Israelites have been able to transform barren desert land into lucrative orchards.

He said the street children would specifically visit Israel's Kibbutz or community land schemes where arid land has been transformed into arable land.

Maitha said that this was one of the many programmes his ministry had in store for the street children under rehabilitation.

He at the same time disclosed that an additional 1,600 street children would be sent to the National Youth Service training college at Gilgil in August this year.

Maitha said that well wishers had donated Sh10 million towards the rehabilitation of street families.

He further added that the Local Government Ministry had been able to source an additional Sh40 million from the Government.

He, however, complained that there was a clamour by street children and other jobless people to flock to Nairobi in the hope of being recruited into the NYS.

"You do not have to come to Nairobi. Soon all the councils in the country will have similar rehabilitation programmes which will give vocational training to reformed street people" he said.

He said that Government was willing to fund well formulated rehabilitating projects by councils.

Maitha was responding to pleas by Central Provincial Commissioner, Peter Raburu, who decried the presence of increased numbers of street children in all major urban centres in the region.

Raburu asked the minister whether it was possible to replicate the rehabilitation programme in Nairobi to other parts of the country to end the menace.

UNESCO DESIGNATES TEL AVIV AS WORLD HERITAGE SITE

UNESCO Designates Tel Aviv as World Heritage Site
Information department, Israel Foreign Ministry – Jerusalem
Jerusalem, July 6, 2003

Unprecedented U.N. recognition for city's "White City" architecture
(Communicated by the Ministry of Tourism Spokesman)

UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has designated the "White City architecture" of Tel Aviv as one of 24 new World Heritage Sites. UNESCO now recognizes 754 world sites it describes as being of "outstanding universal value."

Tel Aviv is one of the few UNESCO recognitions of a 20th century phenomenon as a world heritage site. "What makes the designation of Tel Aviv so unprecedented," says Minster of Tourism, Benny Elon, is that almost every other UNESCO World Heritage Site is either a natural wonder, or hundreds or thousands of years old. Designating Tel Aviv is one of the few UNESCO recognitions of a twentieth century phenomenon – and it makes us very proud."

Tel Aviv, founded as a garden suburb of the ancient Mediterranean port of Jaffa in 1909, quickly bloomed into the commercial, entertainment and cultural capital of the Land of Israel. Today, while Jerusalem is Israel's capital and has the largest population of any single municipality in Israel, Tel Aviv remains Israel's "New York," heart of Israel's largest urban conglomeration that is home to almost 3 million Israelis.

And it is Tel Aviv's uniqueness as home to more Bauhaus or International Style architecture than any city in the world, that has earned it UNESCO's seal of approval. During the 1920's and 1930's, as German-Jewish architects at the heart of the Bauhaus movement left Germany for what was then Palestine, Tel Aviv – literally overnight – adopted their style as a route to defining the character of the new "Jewish" city burgeoning on the Mediterranean. By the mid-1930's it was the only city on earth being built entirely in the International Style – its simple concrete curves, boxy shapes, small windows set in large walls, glass-brick towers and sweeping terraces all washed with white. Viewed from the air, Tel Aviv appeared as a vision of startling white, hence the appellation, "White City."

"The creation of the city of Tel Aviv is one of the greatest symbols and successes of the Zionist Movement," Elon observed, "so for UNESCO – a body affiliated with the organization that once passed an odious resolution equating Zionism with racisim (the resolution was subsequently overturned) – to recognize the specialness of Tel Aviv, is particularly sweet."

THE “WHITE CITY” TODAY

Almost every Bauhaus or International Style building in Tel Aviv is an architectural landmark – a delight for visitors, if sometimes a nightmare for owners. Sixty, 70 and 80 years after they were built, many are in disrepair, but the Tel Aviv-Jaffa municipality gives generous subsidies to owners performing restorations. Hundreds of "White City" buildings have been restored in recent years, and many are apartment buildings, offices, private houses, restaurants and hotels. One of the loveliest "White City" restorations is that of the former Esther movie-theater in Dizengoff Circle, reborn as the "boutique" Cinema Hotel, that retains the sweeping staircases, tall windows and curving balconies of its former identity, plus dozens of architectural and design details that recall its heritage.

There are four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Israel: the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem; Masada; the Old City of Akko – and Tel Aviv's "White City."

***

For additional information see
www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0njq0

The Jerusalem Post writes: "Last week UNESCO declared Tel Aviv an international heritage city – an honor by an organization, which has, like other UN bodies, been an often unfriendly place for Israel. UNESCO didn't honor Tel Aviv as the first Zionist urban creation, but as an unparalleled outdoor Bauhaus museum – an influential school of design founded by Walter Gropius in Germany, after World War I. After the Nazis shut down the school in 1933, many Jewish Bauhaus adherents, especially architects, found safe haven from persecution in Tel Aviv. They turned their creative energies to developing and building it to their Bauhaus specifications, fashioning what became, for a while, the fabled spanking white city on the Mediterranean. Much of old Tel Aviv was conceived in the Bauhaus image, making it a treasure trove to connoisseurs of that style of modern architecture. We can only hope that this recognition will give impetus to efforts to lovingly preserve a heritage which, alas, is in sad disrepair. Tel Aviv's new status can mean income and jobs. The potential for cultural tourism is great. A well-restored and maintained old Tel Aviv could attract visitors from abroad and contribute to the overall economy."

JERUSALEM MAYOR’S PRIZE FIGHT WITH MILLER

Jerusalem mayor's prize fight with Miller
Ultra-Orthodox leader insults Crucible dramatist at literary award ceremony
By Conal Urquhart
The Observer (U.K.)
July 6, 2003

It was supposed to be a fitting tribute to one of the world's greatest living dramatists by Israel's literary elite, but the award ceremony last week for the Jerusalem Literary Prize descended into an unseemly row between Arthur Miller and Jerusalem's newly elected ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor.

Miller, himself Jewish, is perhaps best know for the play The Crucible, which pits a humane and liberal hero against religious fundamentalists in seventeenth-century New England.

The chairman of the prize committee, Avishay Braverman, said Miller, 86, was selected for 'his efforts on behalf of the common good, for standing alongside the small, grey individual and placing him in the centre of society'.

Miller, however, did not embrace the prize with open arms. Initially he had considered declining it but decided instead to accept and give a speech criticising the policies of the Israeli government. To make matters worse, Miller did not make a personal appearance at the ceremony, telling the organisers that he had previous commitments, and sent a video-recorded acceptance speech instead.

Previous winners of the prize, awarded to Jewish and non-Jewish writers for the past 21 years, include Don DeLillo and Susan Sontag, who was also very critical of Israeli policies when she accepted the prize. A larger-than-life Miller, magnified on a video screen in a dark suit and red tie, thanked the audience for the award before launching into a critique of current Israeli policies. He concluded that Israel needed to rediscover its Jewish principles if it were 'to restore its immortal light to the world'.

Uri Lopolianksi, the mayor of Jerusalem, apparently looked angry as he took out his prepared reply, although some guests said it was clear that the mayor's staff had seen the video earlier in order to write a response to it – which one guest described as 'nationalistic garbage'.

Lopolianksi said Miller was a 'universal dramatist' who had reached his peak more than 50 years ago. He condemned the tendency of intellectuals to 'always criticise the actions of the state of Israel and sometimes even impose colonial criteria on the issues'. He further attacked Miller for sitting on a 'literary Olympus tens of thousands of kilometres from here to voice criticism'.

He went on: 'It is hard to deal with the pure truth. And the simple truth is the people of Israel have not yet completed the war for its existence. Our enemies continue their war and we have to defend ourselves.'

Miller had invited the mayor's wrath by describing the policy of settling the West Bank and Gaza as self-defeating and suggested that Israel wanted to turn the clock back to when it was acceptable for nations 'to expand beyond their natural borders'.

He said that he and others hoped Israel would become 'a peaceful, progressive society like any other', but it had become the very opposite: 'An armed and rather desperate society at odds with its neighbours but also the world.'

Guests said that, while Miller's comments were no surprise to anyone who knew anything about the playwright whose other work includes A View From the Bridge and Death of a Salesman, the mayor's attack was inappropriate.

Michael Handelzalts, the literary editor of the Israeli daily Haaretz, said: 'Lopolianksi was pretty emotional. He reacted like a typical angry Israeli would under the circumstances. He went on at great length, not understanding the situation and that most of the audience, who were from abroad, did not understand him speaking Hebrew.'

Lopolianski is Jerusalem's first ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor. His most important contribution to Israeli life was the foundation of the Yad Sarah charity, which supports the disabled. One guest told The Observer: 'He may be very efficient as a mayor, but he is very provincial and narrow-minded because of his upbringing. For an ultra-Orthodox Jew he is very liberal, but it is still a very limited liberalism. I suspect he had not heard of Miller until he had to read his name as the winner of the prize. He may have heard of Marilyn Monroe [Miller's second wife], but I suspect that he has not seen or read any of his work.'

Aaron Applefeld, an Israeli writer on the prize jury: 'It was the jury that awarded the prize and not the mayor, who I don't suspect is a very literary man. It was a pity the event was so political, it would have been better to speak about the plays.'

$2.6B PROPOSAL TO DIVERT WATER INTO DISAPPEARING DEAD SEA

$2.6b proposal to divert water into disappearing Dead Sea
Jordan Times/AFP
June 23, 2003

The Dead Sea could disappear in 50 years. Over the past three years, it has decreased by 3m. Now, it is one-third less than what it used to be in the 1960s due to the diversion of the Jordan River water for irrigation, experts said.

Jordanian Water Minister Hazem Nasser cautioned: 'The Dead Sea basin is facing an environmental decline and if it continues like this, it will hit a catastrophe.'

Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians are hoping that world leaders now gathered on the shores of the Dead Sea for the World Economic Forum will back efforts to help save the lowest body of water on Earth.

At the meeting, their officials will submit a proposal for a project to channel water through a canal from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea.

Mr Nasser warned that saving the mineral-rich Dead Sea, a gold mine for potash extractors and a magnet for tourists who go to bathe in its salty waters, was a large-scale project that would not happen overnight.

'It needs a lot of studies and preparation and huge financial resources,' he said.

The project, which Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians hope to fund through the World Bank and the private sector, is estimated to cost US$1.5 billion (S$2.6 billion).

Meanwhile, experts warn that time is running out.

Jordanian geology professor Elias Salameh said: 'The Dead Sea is now 415m below sea level.

'It is still decreasing because the riparian countries are using more of the fresh water and the water resources which usually feed it,' he said.

He added that the Dead Sea would dry out and shrink to a very small pool consisting of 'very, very salty brine' unless water was brought into it from the Red Sea or the Mediterranean.

He also noted that the Dead Sea was hostage to the industrial and tourism sectors that had mushroomed along its shores, both in Jordan and Israel.

Potash factories and other industries have contributed to the drop in the body of water and are 'causing too much damage to the coastal areas in the form of sink holes', he said.

Water which is feeding the Dead Sea is also diverted for agriculture by Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians.

Prof Salameh warned that if the world waited much longer, it would be too late.

'Building a canal will take seven to 10 years, and by that time, the level of the Dead Sea will have dropped by an additional 8m, which is catastrophic,' he said.

RAM BECOMES FIRST ISRAELI TO MAKE IT TO A WIMBLEDON FINAL

Ram becomes first Israeli to make it to a Wimbledon final
Ha'aretz
July 6, 2003

Andy Ram became the first Israeli to make it to a Wimbledon final, in mixed doubles, after a weekend that saw him first suffer the disappointment of losing his men's doubles semifinals.

On Friday, immediately after his men's doubles semifinals loss with partner Yoni Erlich, Ram was back on court, this time with Anastassia Rodionova of Russia, to defeat Scott Humphries of the United States and Elena Bovina of Russia 7-6, 3-6, 6-3 in the quarter finals.

Yesterday, the pair waltzed past Jordan Kerr of Australia and Milagros Sequera of Venezuela 6-3, 6-2 to secure their historic Wimbledon finals berth.

Ram and Rodionova broke serve twice in the first set for an easy win, and in the second set they responded immediately to a break of serve by their opponents in the third game with two breaks in a row.

They don't yet know who they will face in the finals, but could find themselves up against Ram's men's doubles semifinal nemesis Todd Woodbridge of Australia, together with Svetlena Kuznetsova of Russia. Woodbridge and Kuznetsova, however, will face a grueling task, as they have to beat Leos Friedl of the Czech Republic and Liezel Huber of South Africa in the quarterfinals before a semifinal standoff against Leander Paes of India and the veteran Martina Navratilova.

Either way, Ram and his Russian partner will have the advantage, as all games from the quarter finals through to the finals are scheduled to take place today, unless there are last-minute changes.

Woodbridge retains doubles crown

After storming through the qualifying rounds to the men's doubles semifinal, Ram and Erlich went down in four sets on Friday to last year's champions Woodbridge and Jonas Bjorkman.

Ram and Erlich were outclassed by the more experienced pair, losing 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1. Woodbridge and Bjorkman went on to retain their crown yesterday with a 3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 win over the top-seeded Mahesh Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi. The win made it a record-equaling eighth men's doubles title for Woodbridge.

Rutgers University to hold sessions on how to pressure Israel

[Follow on Note – July 9, 2003]

The story circulated on this email list yesterday morning on Rutgers is now getting wide coverage

-- Tom Gross

RUTGERS GETS “F” FOR PUTTING ANTI-SEMITISM 101 ON THE SCHEDULE

Rutgers gets 'F' for putting Anti-Semitism 101 on the schedule
By Andrea Peyser
The New York Post
July 9, 2003

It will be big. And ugly. And in New Jersey.

The nation's third college – and the first on the East Coast – to harbor a national anti-Israel hate-fest, featuring tips for destroying the Jewish state and speeches from notable anti-Semites, will not be Columbia or NYU.

A student group at Rutgers University, no slouch in the destroy-Israel department, has snagged the third annual National Student Conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, to be held Oct. 10-12.

The event, which organizers expect to draw at least 500 Israel foes from the world over, is to include classes designed to teach kids how to pressure their universities to stop investing in companies that do business with Israel. Expect workshops in nonviolent resistance. Or so we hope.

Organizer Charlotte Kates told me peaceful resistance is the fest's guiding principle. Yet she noted that she, as well as the sponsoring organization, the New Jersey Solidarity Movement – an offshoot of International Solidarity – supports Palestinian homicide bombers.

"Palestinian resistance in all its forms has been a very powerful tool of justice," said Kates, 23, a Rutgers law student. "All forms, from armed struggle to mass protest."

And does Israel have a right to exist?

"Israel is an apartheid, colonial settler state. I do not believe apartheid, colonial settler states have a right to exist."

At the two previous conferences, at Berkeley, Calif., and the University of Michigan, pro-Palestinian rhetoric "crossed into virulent anti-Semitism," said Shai Goldstein, director of the New Jersey Anti-Defamation League chapter.

The university said the show will go on, despite 230 letters of protest. As a state school, Rutgers bestows public funding to Solidarity, said a spokeswoman.

Passover Bomb claims further victim, and other updates

July 03, 2003

FULL ARTICLES

ROMANIAN AMBASSADOR MEETS CHAIRMAN OF YAD VASHEM

Romanian ambassador meets chairman of Yad Vashem
June 29, 2003

Romanian Ambassador to Chairman of Yad Vashem in a meeting today:

"PM of Romania has promised to investigate who is guilty in releasing false information relating to the Holocaust in Romania; the new Romanian Minister of Education will visit Yad Vashem"

The Chairman of Yad Vashem calls for the Romanian government to join the 15-member International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research

(June 29, 2003, Jerusalem) The Romanian Ambassador to Israel, HE Dr. Valeria Mariana Stoica and Deputy Secretary of State of the Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, Ion Antonescu met today with Chairman of the Yad Vashem Directorate, Avner Shalev.

During the meeting, the ambassador reported that she spoke with the Romanian Prime Minister 3 days ago following his personal declaration of the historical facts relating to the murder of Romanian Jews during the Shoah. He emphasized that he would investigate to discover the source of the false information that was released two weeks ago, that claimed that the Holocaust did not occur within the borders of Romania, the release of which – according to the ambassador – was human error.

Shalev asked the ambassador and the deputy secretary to increase Romania's cooperation in research, studies and education of the Holocaust in Romania, for example to take part in seminars for Holocaust education for educators from around the world held at Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies. The ambassador told Shalev that a new Minister of Education has been appointed in the framework of Romania's preparations for acceptance to the European Union. The ambassador promised that the new Minster would visit Yad Vashem and would discuss cooperation for Holocaust education for Romanian educators, students and adults.

In addition, Shalev called for Romania to join the International Task Force for Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, currently comprised of 15 members including Poland, Hungary and Austria.

The ambassador presented Shalev with a replica specially created for Yad Vashem of a bronze statue in Romania that memorializes victims of the Shoah. Also during their visit, the ambassador and deputy secretary conducted a wreath-laying ceremony in the Hall of Remembrance with the participation of a delegation from Romania.

OXFORD INVESTIGATES SCIENTIST WHO DENIED ISRAELI APPLICATION

Oxford investigates scientist who denied Israeli application
By Diana Jean Schemo
The New York Times
July 2, 2003

A geneticist at Oxford University, Andrew Wilkie, is under investigation for possible violations of the university's antidiscrimination rules after he rejected an Israeli student's application to work in his laboratory, citing disagreement with Israeli policies toward Palestinians.

In a brief message rejecting the application from Amit Duvshani, Dr. Wilkie wrote last week, "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 they (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 U.K. scientist with these views, but I'm sure you will find another suitable lab if you look around."

Mr. Duvshani, who is completing his master's degree in molecular biology at the University of Tel Aviv, said he was shocked by the reply of the British geneticist, who holds an endowed chair at Oxford. The e-mail from Dr. Wilkie, which made its way to scientists around the world toward the end of last week, brought a deluge of letters to both Dr. Wilkie and his university, prompting an apology from Dr. Wilkie.

In a note posted on Oxford's Web site, Dr. Wilkie apologized for "the wholly inappropriate expression of my personal opinions." He said he accepted the university's rules against discrimination and, in a private note to Mr. Duvshani, offered to reconsider his application.

In a prepared statement, university officials wrote, "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."

The incident illustrates the growing reach of a boycott of Israeli scholars and academics that began last year after a linguist at the University of Manchester's Institute of Science and Technology, Mona Baker, fired two Israeli linguists from an obscure translation journal. In that instance, an investigation concluded that Professor Baker had not broken any university rules, since she privately owned the journals.

Two months ago, Britain's Association of University Teachers debated a motion to cut "any academic links they may have with official Israeli institutions." The resolution was one of 59 selected and enraged Jewish groups and many academics, The Sunday Telegraph of London reported. The motion ultimately failed.

In a telephone interview from his home in Tel Aviv, Mr. Duvshani, 26, said he had sent applications to scientists in Germany, Sweden and Great Britain. Aside from Dr. Wilkie, one Swedish scientist expressed interest. The others did not respond.

Mr. Duvshani said in a telephone interview that he was surprised that Dr. Wilkie commented not on his qualifications but only on his military service, compulsory in Israel. In responding to Dr. Wilkie's offer to reconsider, Mr. Duvshani said he was no longer interested in working with him. "I really don't know if someone with such racist views can change, but I do hope you will reconsider and not judge all six million of us Israelis the same way," Mr. Duvshani wrote.

Andrew Marks, a professor at Columbia University who heads an organization opposing the boycott of Israeli academics, has volunteered to help Mr. Duvshani find an American laboratory to work with.

ERLICH AND RAM ADVANCE TO SEMIFINAL OF WIMBLEDON

Erlich and Ram advance to historic semifinal appearance
Ha'aretz
July 2, 2003

Yoni Erlich and Andy Ram advanced to the semifinal of the men's doubles at the All England Lawn Tennis Championships at Wimbledon yesterday beating the second-seeded pair Mark Knowles of the Bahamas and Canadian Daniel Nestor in straight sets 7-6 7-6 7-6.

The semifinals appearance is the best ever achievement by Israeli tennis players at Wimbledon. Erlich and Ram are the first Israelis ever to reach this stage of the Wimbledon tournament.

The ebullient duo said they still could not believe their good fortune. "This really is a tremendous achievement," said Andy Ram. "It really hasn't sunk in yet," added Jonathan Erlich.

The duo only decided to team up at the last moment and played through the qualifying tournament, knocking out the sixth and the second seeds on the way to their historic semifinal achievements.

"We went onto the court knowing we had the ability to beat anybody and we proved it today. We have been playing at our best, we both have the right game for doubles," Ram said.

"We both have good serves and volleys and we kept it all together today, it simply didn't fall apart for us," Erlich added.

All the games in the match went to serve and all three sets in the two hour and 27 minute match were decided by tie breaks. The Israeli pair served 20 aces compared to seven served by their opponents.

Erlich and Ram have now assured themselves a total of $46,000 each in prize money.

The duo will now face one of the most formidable doubles pairs in the world – Australian Tod Woodbridge, who is regarded as one of the best doubles players in the world, and Swede Jonas Bjorkman, ranked fourth in the tournament.

However despite the fearsome task awaiting them, Erlich and Ram say they are ready.

"We will go on court and, sure at the beginning, our legs will tremble a little, but this has been the case in all the matches, now we will go out there feeling we have a chance, we can beat anybody if we play as we we have been during this tournament," Ram said. "There is no reason why we should not win, but if it doesn't happen, we will go on and try again at another tournament," Erlich added.

The match on Court 13, well out of the way of the main show courts, saw only a small crowd in the roughly 3,000 seat arena. Only a handful of those were Israelis, but their cheers could be heard during the match and when they won, the group of supporters erupted in celebrations after having witnessed a rare major success in Israeli tennis in recent years.

Shahar Peer also had a successful day at Wimbledon yesterday advancing to the last 16 of the women's tournament with a 7-5 6-1 6-3 win over Vojislova Lukic of Yugoslavia. However, in the men's singles, third-seeded Israeli Dudi Sela was knocked out by German Mischa Zverev in straight sets, 6-4 6-4.