* “Lets just get one thing out of the way. There is no justification for suicide bombing in Israel either... There is no justification for terrorism anywhere” – Tony Blair, addressing leading international media yesterday, in an implicit criticism of some journalists present and also of members of his own political party, including London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
* On the cover of the new edition of the British satirical magazine, Private Eye, there is a photo of Blair saying to Livingstone: “We must track down the evil mastermind behind the bombers,” to which Livingstone replies: “Yes, and invite them round for tea.”
* Leading (London) Evening Standard columnist today again blames Israel for Britain’s “shoot to kill policy”
-- This dispatch further explores the themes of international terrorism.
CONTENTS
1. Egyptian state TV: Israel to blame for Sharm El Sheikh bombings
2. Ukrainian political party: “London attacks were part of Zionist plan”
3. Ariel Sharon responds to Ken Livingstone
4. London Evening Standard columnist blames Israel
5. Killer of Van Gogh jailed for life
6. Israel criticizes Pope for failing to condemn terror attacks
7. “Egyptian film mocks peace with Israel” (AFP, July 25, 2005)
8. “Appeasing Terrorism Encourages More Attacks” (By Amir Taheri, Asharq Alawsat, July 22, 2005)
9. “Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq” (New York Times, July 22, 2005)
EGYPTIAN TV BLAMES ISRAEL FOR SHARM EL SHEIKH BOMBINGS
Egyptian State television has repeatedly aired an interview blaming the deadly terrorist attack at Sharm el-Sheikh last weekend on Israel. Retired army general Fuad Allam, a commentator on Egyptian state television, said “I’m almost certain that Israel was also behind this attack because they want to undermine our government and deal a severe blow to our economy. The only ones who benefit from these attacks are the Israelis and the Americans.” These comments were re-aired several times on government-controlled Egyptian TV. Egypt is supposedly a moderate pro-American country.
AND SO DOES ISLAM ONLINE
Islam online, the website created by Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, who is described by London Mayor Ken Livingstone as a “leading progressive Muslim,” also questioned whether Sharm el-Sheikh bombs were caused by “Mossad hands”. They quote Hussein Rashid, the deputy chairman of the Egyptian Misr Al-Fatat party who wrote on the party’s web site: “It is as clear as day that Mossad is behind the Sharm blasts to terrify innocent people, wage war on the Arabs and spark confusion and sedition.”
AND SO DOES AL JAZEERA
On Al-Jazeera a “security expert,” Majdi Birnawi said: “I believe that Mossad or some other [Israeli] security organization carried out this attack.”
AND NEWSPAPER FEARS ISRAELI HELP MORE THAN BOMBERS
The London-based Palestinian-owned daily al-Quds al-Arabi said Israel’s offer to help Egypt fight terror was an even bigger blow than the terror attacks themselves. The newspaper said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s offer to send forensic experts to Sharm el-Sheikh was a “curse.”
(Dispatches on this list earlier this year have detailed other similar conspiracy theories in the Arab world, such as “Mossad agents running ops inside the U.S”, “Israel killed Rafik Hariri” and “Arafat killed by Israeli high tech laser attack”. I also attach below an article from Agence France Presse on a new Egyptian film which shows the Egyptians uneasiness over peace with Israel agreed in 1979.)
UKRAINIAN POLITICAL PARTY: “LONDON ATTACKS WERE ZIONIST PLAN”
The newspaper of the Ukrainian Conservative Party, has published a statement saying the July 7 terror attacks in London “showed the presence in world politics of clandestine Zionist organizations,” which, “using common fears, wish to achieve their main goal, world domination.” The Ukrainian Conservative Party is a new party that will take part in its first Ukrainian elections next spring.
ARIEL SHARON RESPONDS TO KEN LIVINGSTONE
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has called London Mayor Ken Livingstone “ignorant” after Livingstone said during in an interview discussing the London bombings on Sky News TV last week that Likud and Hamas are “two sides of the same coin”. Livingstone, who seems to attack Israel at every opportunity and earlier this year said a Jewish reporter working at the (London) Evening Standard should be a “concentration camp guard,” also said that Israeli actions “border on crimes against humanity.” Sharon told Israel radio in response that “Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization, which has murdered and wounded thousands of Israelis. The comparison drawn by the mayor of London was grave and inappropriate. It indicates ignorance and a basic misunderstanding of reality.”
CALLS FOR LIVINGSTONE TO GO
During the 1980’s, Livingstone was described by The Sun newspaper as “the most odious man in Britain,” but he remains a hero to many British leftists and to many British Muslims.
An increasing number of British Jews, by contrast, are writing to Tony Redmond, the UK Local Government Ombudsman (enquiries@lgo.org.uk) demanding Livingstone be forced to resign for having brought the London Assembly and the mayor’s office into disrepute. Others have called for Livingstone to be prosecuted under race hate legislation for remarks he made last week about British Jews.
On July 20, in an interview on BBC Radio 4’s influential “Today” programme, and also at a press conference the day before, Livingstone made a series of remarks about the causes of terrorism in London. He said Israel had been “indiscriminately slaughtering men, women and children for decades” and, referring to the British suicide bombers in Tel Aviv in 2003, he said it “was wrong to brand a British Muslim boy a terrorist if he got involved in Palestinian violence against Israel”.
Livingstone went on to suggest that “Jewish boys in Britain” had contributed to this “slaughter” of Palestinians. These remarks have been interpreted by many as inciting British Muslims (a key electoral base for Livingstone) to participate in anti-Semitic attacks.
Last year, Livingstone publicly embraced Yusuf Qaradawi, who is also known for his anti-Semitic remarks and support for suicide bombing in Israel. At the time, homosexual groups were more vocal than the somewhat timid British Jewish leadership in attacking Livingstone. Qaradawi has advocated the death of homosexuals as well as Jews.
BLAIR ON ISRAEL TERROR
British prime minister Tony Blair gave his monthly press conference Tuesday. A particularly high number of leading journalists from around the globe attended, including ones from Al-Jazeera, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
Pointedly addressing some of the journalists in the room, Blair went out of his way to say: “Lets just get one thing out of the way as well. There is no justification for suicide bombing in Israel either... There is no justification for terrorism anywhere. Period.”
Blair also said, “People mustn’t accept the idea that America is evil or Israel should not exist, as then it is a smaller step to extremism and terrorism.”
He answered another question by saying, “Suicide bombing is wrong in Israel, London, New York – anywhere. There is another way to make progress in the Middle East – stop the terrorism and get into negotiations.” “I’ve got every support for the mayor of London, but I disagree with him on this issue,” said the British prime minister.
UK FOREIGN SECRETARY STRAW ALSO CRITICIZES LONDON MAYOR
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw also criticized Livingstone. Both are members of Blair’s ruling Labour Party. Straw said: “There can be no excuses for terrorism, none whatever. Terrorism is indiscriminate in its victims and in its political aims. It is against democracy and it is against life and on the issue of terrorism there is no case for relativism whatsoever... Mr. Livingstone’s remarks were as wrong as they were unacceptable. There is no and there can be no moral equivalence between a democratic party [the Likud] and its supporters, operating in a democracy that is Israel, and a terrorist organisation whose policy is the slaughter of innocent civilians. It was quite wrong for him to suggest this comparison.”
LONDON EVENING STANDARD COLUMNIST BLAMES ISRAEL
Today in the London Evening Standard, senior commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown writes under the headline “With this shoot-to-kill policy I’m terrified for my son’s life,” “Isn’t it comforting for Muslims to know that the shoot-to-kill trick was learned from Israeli marksmen.” She ends the piece by saying: “The policy must be withdrawn immediately ... London is not Gaza.”
I have already dealt with these libels in a dispatch earlier this week. Israel routinely disarms suicide bombers without harming them.
A subscriber to this email list says: It is interesting that she uses the word “trick” (rather than “tactic” or some other non-emotive word) implying craftiness or subterfuge. And why bring Israel into this issue at all? British police shot an innocent Brazilian.
Here is a letter from Inna Tysoe (of Sacramento, California) published today in The Guardian, making a similar point as my Jerusalem Post article (which incidentally has now been reprinted in a number of news outlets in Canada, the US and elsewhere):
Christopher Hack writes that “the special force[s] involved in the Stockwell killing received Israeli training” (Letters, July 25). Yet as the London police were shooting a man they had chased into the tube, Israeli police were arresting a bona fide suicide bomber. It seems that at least some of the lessons the London police picked up in Israel did not stay with them.
“HE WAS SO CALM AS HE KILLED HIM, IT LOOKED LIKE HE WAS OUT WALKING HIS DOG.”
[This is an update to dispatches on this subject last year.]
Mohammed Bouyeri, 27, was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for the murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. The court ruled it was a “terrorist” attack since it had caused “great fear and insecurity” in the Netherlands.
Bouyeri ambushed the filmmaker on an Amsterdam street last November, shot him repeatedly, stabbed him and slit his throat before thrusting his manifesto into his chest on the point of a knife. Some witnesses at the trial said he was so calm “it looked like he was out walking his dog.”
Bouyeri admitted to the killing and vowed to repeat the act if given the chance. He offered no defense during the trial, saying he only acknowledged Islamic law. Bouyeri said Van Gogh, who was a great-nephew of the famed 19th Century Dutch painter Vincent, had “insulted Islam.”
Bouyeri is the son of Moroccan immigrants but was raised and educated in the Netherlands. Before the murder, Bouyeri was said to have attended private prayer sessions with Syrian spiritual leader, Redouan al-Issar, who is now back in Damascus.
ISRAEL CRITICIZES POPE FOR FAILING TO CONDEMN TERROR ATTACKS
The Israeli Foreign Ministry yesterday summoned the Vatican envoy to Israel to express “Israel’s outrage that Pope Benedict XVI failed to condemn terror against Israelis.”
On Sunday the pontiff prayed for God to stop the terrorism this month in many countries, including Egypt, Britain, Turkey and Iraq, during his noontime blessing delivered from his Alpine retreat in Italy’s northwestern Valle d’Aosta region, where he is vacationing.
Benedict did not mention or condemn several terror attacks leading to the deaths of Israeli civilians this month, including the suicide attack at the Netanya shopping mall in which five Israelis (four of them female, including two 16-year-old girls), and the mortar attacks on the kibbutz in southern Israel that killed a young woman sitting on her porch shortly before she was to be married.
“The pope deliberately failed to condemn the terrible terror attacks that occurred in Israel last week,” an Israeli Foreign Ministry statement said.
“WHEN DENIAL CAN KILL”
Irshad Manji writes in the new issue of Time magazine: “While our spokesmen assure us that Islam is an innocent bystander in today’s terrorism, those who commit terrorist acts often tell us otherwise. For too long, we Muslims have been sticking fingers in our ears and chanting ‘Islam means peace’ to drown out the negative noise from our holy book. Far better to own up to it.”
“APPEASING TERRORISM ENCOURAGES MORE ATTACKS”
The final two articles below both deal with the obsession of many in the western media with claiming the Iraq war has brought terrorism to London. The highly regarded Iranian-born writer Amir Taheri, who has been a columnist at Asharq Alawsat since 1987, argues that “those who look for excuses for terrorism do so only to justify a policy of appeasement.”
The final article below is a rare example of the New York Times publishing a piece not blaming “lack of progress on the Israeli-Palestinian road map for worldwide terrorism.” Olivier Roy writes in the Times: “From the beginning, Al Qaeda’s fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.”
I attach three articles, with summaries first for those who don’t have time to read them in full.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
EGYPTIAN FILM MOCKS PEACE WITH ISRAEL
“Egyptian film mocks peace with Israel” (By AFP, Ynetnews, July 25, 2005)
A quarter century after the Camp David Accord, a film released this week in Cairo shows that Egyptians’ uneasiness over peace with Israel dies hard... The plot centers around an Egyptian businessman and womanizer who returns home after getting rich in the Gulf to find, to his horror, that Israel has opened an embassy in his building.
Popular slapstick comedian Adel Imam is petrified when he discovers the Star of David-adorned flag floating above the balcony nearest to his flat overlooking the Nile, not unlike the actual building that houses the Israeli embassy in Cairo’s Giza neighborhood -- a stone’s throw from the University of Cairo, which is a stronghold of anti-Israeli sentiment…
But Imam displays good old common sense and draws much laughter from the audience by poking fun at leftist rhetoric and at the so-called martyr manufacturers...
Director Sharif Arafeh insists he didn’t want the movie to give a particular answer to the Middle East conflict, but he steps out during the reception and television footage of a dead Palestinian child he got to know in the Gulf catches his eye, and the film ends with the hero leading a large protest against Israel’s repressive policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Imam, described as the “Arab Charlie Chaplin” by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for which he works as a goodwill ambassador, diplomatically chose not to comment on whether the 1979 peace deal between Israel and Egypt should translate into warmer ties.
By contrast, the Egyptian public and most critics seem to have understood the movie’s not-so-hidden message: Israelis should stay home and if there’s peace, then it should be cold...
APPEASING TERRORISM ENCOURAGES MORE ATTACKS
“Appeasing Terrorism Encourages More Attacks” (By Amir Taheri, Asharq Alawsat, July 22, 2005)
... One theory is that Britain’s participation in the liberation of Iraq helped Al Qaeda transform a bunch of ordinary Muslim youths into suicide-killers. This latter group’s analysis has now received a seal of respectability from a London think-tank on foreign affairs known as Chatham House.
... The reason why Chatham House prefers to focus on the British role in Iraq rather than in Afghanistan has nothing to do with reality. It has to do with what is politically fashionable and what is not.
In circles for which Chatham House caters it is fashionable to pretend that Afghanistan didn’t happen. It is hard to defend the Taliban with their obsession with burqaa and beard and their bombing of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Saddam Hussein, however, was supposed to be a secular and Socialist ruler who could claim some kinship with the “useful idiots” in the West. More importantly, from Chatham House’s point of view, the “international community”, meaning Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan, swallowed the liberation of Afghanistan but made loud noises against the liberation of Iraq.
Can Chatham House guarantee that if Britain withdrew from Iraq the Al Qaeda would not demand a similar withdrawal from Afghanistan?
And after withdrawal from Afghanistan, would Al Qaeda and its emulants sit back and savour their victory or would they ask for more retreats by Britain until they win the power to set its foreign policy agenda?
What the terrorists describe as the “Madrid ghazva” gave Al Qaeda its first major political victory in Europe because they managed to change a government that was especially hostile to them. The Madrid ghazva“, in part, inspired, the “London ghazva” which, if it produces another political victory for terrorism, would surely inspire many other attacks.
Those who look for excuses for terrorism do so only to justify a policy of appeasement.
Experience, however, shows that the appeaser becomes a more attractive target for the terrorists. The appeased terrorist concludes that, having won a battle, he should press for victory in his war against a weakened adversary. Appeasing terrorists was tried by President Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s, and made France the most-targeted Western country for a decade…
WHY DO THEY HATE US? NOT BECAUSE OF IRAQ
“Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq” (By Olivier Roy, The New York Times, July 22, 2005)
... Are the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Middle Eastern conflicts?
... First, let’s consider the chronology. The Americans went to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, not before. Mohamed Atta and the other pilots were not driven by Iraq or Afghanistan. Were they then driven by the plight of the Palestinians? It seems unlikely. After all, the attack was plotted well before the second intifada began in September 2000, at a time of relative optimism in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations...
From the beginning, Al Qaeda’s fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.
Second, if the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine are at the core of the radicalization, why are there virtually no Afghans, Iraqis or Palestinians among the terrorists? Rather, the bombers are mostly from the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Egypt and Pakistan - or they are Western-born converts to Islam. Why would a Pakistani or a Spaniard be more angry than an Afghan about American troops in Afghanistan? It is precisely because they do not care about Afghanistan as such, but see the United States involvement there as part of a global phenomenon of cultural domination.
What was true for the first generation of Al Qaeda is also relevant for the present generation: even if these young men are from Middle Eastern or South Asian families, they are for the most part Westernized Muslims living or even born in Europe who turn to radical Islam. Moreover, converts are to be found in almost every Qaeda cell: they did not turn fundamentalist because of Iraq, but because they felt excluded from Western society (this is especially true of the many converts from the Caribbean islands, both in Britain and France). “Born again” or converts, they are rebels looking for a cause. They find it in the dream of a virtual, universal ummah, the same way the ultraleftists of the 1970’s (the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Italian Red Brigades) cast their terrorist actions in the name of the “world proletariat” and “Revolution” without really caring about what would happen after...
... The Western-based Islamic terrorists are not the militant vanguard of the Muslim community; they are a lost generation, unmoored from traditional societies and cultures, frustrated by a Western society that does not meet their expectations. And their vision of a global ummah is both a mirror of and a form of revenge against the globalization that has made them what they are.
(Olivier Roy, a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, is the author of “Globalized Islam.”)
EGYPTIAN FILM MOCKS PEACE WITH ISRAEL
Egyptian film mocks peace with Israel
‘Arab Charlie Chaplin’ shows 25 years of peace has done little to alter Egyptian attitudes towards Israel
By AFP
Ynetnews
July 25, 2005
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3117849,00.html
A quarter century after the Camp David Accord, a film released this week in Cairo shows that Egyptians’ uneasiness over peace with Israel dies hard.
Sharif Arafeh’s “An Embassy in the Building” seeks to humorously depict the average Egyptian man’s rejection of normalization.
The plot centers around an Egyptian businessman and womanizer who returns home after getting rich in the Gulf to find, to his horror, that Israel has opened an embassy in his building.
Popular slapstick comedian Adel Imam is petrified when he discovers the Star of David-adorned flag floating above the balcony nearest to his flat overlooking the Nile, not unlike the actual building that houses the Israeli embassy in Cairo’s Giza neighborhood -- a stone’s throw from the University of Cairo, which is a stronghold of anti-Israeli sentiment.
But Imam is in for another surprise when he bumps into the Israeli ambassador, played by Lofti Labib, in the lift.
“An actor must play every role, even that of the nasty guy,” Labib told AFP.
From then on, Iman’s life turns into a living hell, as the prodigal son becomes an intruder in his own home.
He can no longer take his conquests home without being subjected to body searches and questioning.
The dazed and confused hero is preyed upon by Marxist intellectuals who overwhelm him with slogans and Islamist radicals who suggest he might want to have a go at being a suicide bomber.
But Imam displays good old common sense and draws much laughter from the audience by poking fun at leftist rhetoric and at the so-called martyr manufacturers.
He rebels and becomes the street’s living idol after he asks the judiciary to evict the embassy from his building.
One night, Imam takes home a gorgeous young woman who turns out to be an Israeli spy. Mossad agents barge into his bedroom and snap pictures.
Bamboozled, again, and now the victim of blackmail, he agrees to host a party for the Israeli ambassador.
Director Arafeh insists he didn’t want the movie to give a particular answer to the Middle East conflict, but he steps out during the reception and television footage of a dead Palestinian child he got to know in the Gulf catches his eye, and the film ends with the hero leading a large protest against Israel’s repressive policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Imam, described as the “Arab Charlie Chaplin” by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for which he works as a goodwill ambassador, diplomatically chose not to comment on whether the 1979 peace deal between Israel and Egypt should translate into warmer ties.
By contrast, the Egyptian public and most critics seem to have understood the movie’s not-so-hidden message: Israelis should stay home and if there’s peace, then it should be cold.
Refuting local press reports, Israel’s ambassador to Egypt said he did not intervene with local authorities to try and stop the movie from being broadcast.
“We see this as a form of artistic expression and thus see no reason to comment on it,” Yacov Setti, the embassy’s press adviser, told AFP.
Asked by AFP whether he would be ready to meet the Israeli ambassador, Labib answered with a flat no.
“I will wait until there is a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.”
APPEASING TERRORISM ENCOURAGES MORE ATTACKS
Appeasing Terrorism Encourages More Attacks
By Amir Taheri
Asharq Alawsat
July 22, 2005
aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=912
Why did terrorists bomb London on July 7th, killing at least 56 people?
The question is at the centre of a debate in Britain the outcome of which could define future British, and perhaps Western policy, in countering terrorism.
One theory is that Britain’s participation in the liberation of Iraq helped Al Qaeda transform a bunch of ordinary Muslim youths into suicide-killers.
This latter group’s analysis has now received a seal of respectability from a London think-tank on foreign affairs known as Chatham House.
That analysis, however, is strange for several reasons.
To start with it is not clear how Chatham House or anyone else could know to what extent the suicide-killers may or may not have been motivated by Britain’s role in Iraq. The two claims of responsibility for the terrorist operation cite a variety of reasons, making it clear that the attack on Britain was part of a broader campaign against the “infidel” West.
Then there is another problem. How could Islamist suicide-bombers be concerned only about Britain’s participation in the war in Iraq and not about its similar role in Afghanistan?
If the suicide-killers were Al Qaeda Islamists then they should be angrier about the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan which they regarded as the only genuinely “Islamic” government anywhere in the world, rather than the toppling of Saddam Hussein whom they saw as an atheist and a purely tactical ally. Also it was Afghanistan, not Iraq that had welcome Osama bin Laden and presented his gang with operational bases.
The reason why Chatham House prefers to focus on the British role in Iraq rather than in Afghanistan has nothing to do with reality. It has to do with what is politically fashionable and what is not.
In circles for which Chatham House caters it is fashionable to pretend that Afghanistan didn’t happen. It is hard to defend the Taliban with their obsession with burqaa and beard and their bombing of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. Saddam Hussein, however, was supposed to be a secular and Socialist ruler who could claim some kinship with the “useful idiots” in the West. More importantly, from Chatham House’s point of view, the “international community”, meaning Jacques Chirac and Kofi Annan, swallowed the liberation of Afghanistan but made loud noises against the liberation of Iraq.
Can Chatham House guarantee that if Britain withdrew from Iraq the Al Qaeda would not demand a similar withdrawal from Afghanistan?
And after withdrawal from Afghanistan, would Al Qaeda and its emulants sit back and savour their victory or would they ask for more retreats by Britain until they win the power to set its foreign policy agenda?
What the terrorists describe as the “Madrid ghazva” gave Al Qaeda its first major political victory in Europe because they managed to change a government that was especially hostile to them. The “Madrid ghazva”, in part, inspired, the “London ghazva” which, if it produces another political victory for terrorism, would surely inspire many other attacks.
Those who look for excuses for terrorism do so only to justify a policy of appeasement.
Experience, however, shows that the appeaser becomes a more attractive target for the terrorists. The appeased terrorist concludes that, having won a battle, he should press for victory in his war against a weakened adversary.
Appeasing terrorists was tried by President Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s, and made France the most-targeted Western country for a decade.
Mitterrand launched his appeasement weeks after becoming president in 1981. He released all the 31 convicted terrorists in French prisons and lifted the ban on pro-terrorist publications and illegal radio stations. He also abolished the State Security Court, set up to deal with terrorism, describing it as a Nazi-style outfit. He let the Basque terrorists of ETA use French territory as a base against Spain and allowed various Palestinian groups and The Irish Republican Army (IRA) to operate in Paris.
Mitterrand feted Yasser Arafat, then regarded as the godfather of terror, and traveled to Cyprus to court Libya’s dictator Muammar Kaddafi, the principal paymaster of international terror at the time. Mitterrand’s appeasement included the Khomeinist regime in Tehran and led to an exchange of ambassadors and high level contacts.
The French leader emphasised the ideological propinquity of his Socialist party with “other radical movements”, meaning terrorist groups that were also “striving for justice.” At one point Mitterrand even talked of the “common roots” of the French Revolution and the Khomeinist take-over in Iran.
In 1984 Mitterrand’s policy led him into vetoing an American plan for joint G-7 action against international terrorism. In a meeting with the then Vice President George W H Bush, who headed a special anti-terrorism unit created by President Ronald Reagan, Mitterrand argued that the only way to deal with the threat was to“ address the grievances” which were “often caused by Western policies.”
Not surprisingly terrorist of all denominations began to see France as a safe haven.
Abu Nidal and Carlos visited Paris for business and pleasure. Imad Mughniyeh, a Lebanese terrorist on the American “most wanted list” dropped in for shopping holidays. Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini sent his nephew, one Massoud Hendizadeh, to set up a terror headquarters in Paris. The Islamic Embassy in the French capital became the centre of operations for Europe. Later, when French police issued an arrest warrant for Vahid Gorji, the man who headed the Iranian terror headquarters in Paris, Mitterrand arranged for him to be put on the first flight to Tehran to escape prosecution.
Payback for Mitterrand’s policy started with the assassination of General Rene Audron, a senior member of the French Defence Ministry in 1985. A few months later Paris was hit by a series of bomb attacks, including on two major department stores in which 35 people were injured on Christmas eve.
In February 1986 a major shopping arcade and a hotel in Champs Elysees were bombed. The wave of attacks continued with the bombing of the Forum des Halles and the attempted blowing up of the Eiffel Tower.
By March 1986 France was the victim of a full-scale terror campaign, including a suicide operation in which two Arab terrorists were killed in the Champs Elysees. Attacks on the Paris metro, the Orly Airport, and shopping centres created a climate of fear. Dozens of other plots, including an attempt to derail a high-speed train, were nipped in the bud by the police.
Throughout the Mitterrand appeasement a total of 93 people were killed and more than 800 wounded in terrorist attacks in France. To these must be added 17 Iranian dissidents who were killed by hit-squads from Tehran.
But this was not all. Fifty-three French paratroopers were killed in a suicide attack in Beirut in 1983. Also in Beirut a pro-Syrian group assassinated France’s ambassador while a Khomeinist gang held the French ambassador in Tehran hostage for several days. A total of 37 French citizens were held as hostages in the Middle East, and two murdered in cold blood, by the same terror groups that Mitterrand had tried to appease.
France is not alone to have tried appeasement and failed. Algeria, Egypt, Germany, Saudi Arabia and, more recently Spain, have had similar experiences. The British should know that any appeasement of terrorists could put them in an even greater danger.
WHY DO THEY HATE US? NOT BECAUSE OF IRAQ
Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq
By Olivier Roy
The New York Times
July 22, 2005
www.nytimes.com/2005/07/22/opinion/22roy.html?
While yesterday’s explosions on London’s subway and bus lines were thankfully far less serious than those of two weeks ago, they will lead many to raise a troubling question: has Britain (and Spain as well) been “punished” by Al Qaeda for participating in the American-led military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan? While this is a reasonable line of thinking, it presupposes the answer to a broader and more pertinent question: Are the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Middle Eastern conflicts?
If the answer is yes, the solution is simple to formulate, although not to achieve: leave Afghanistan and Iraq, solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. But if the answer is no, as I suspect it is, we should look deeper into the radicalization of young, Westernized Muslims.
Conflicts in the Middle East have a tremendous impact on Muslim public opinion worldwide. In justifying its terrorist attacks by referring to Iraq, Al Qaeda is looking for popularity or at least legitimacy among Muslims. But many of the terrorist group’s statements, actions and non-actions indicate that this is largely propaganda, and that Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are hardly the motivating factors behind its global jihad.
First, let’s consider the chronology. The Americans went to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, not before. Mohamed Atta and the other pilots were not driven by Iraq or Afghanistan. Were they then driven by the plight of the Palestinians? It seems unlikely. After all, the attack was plotted well before the second intifada began in September 2000, at a time of relative optimism in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Another motivating factor, we are told, was the presence of “infidel” troops in Islam’s holy lands. Yes, Osama Bin Laden was reported to be upset when the Saudi royal family allowed Western troops into the kingdom before the Persian Gulf war. But Mr. bin Laden was by that time a veteran fighter committed to global jihad.
He and the other members of the first generation of Al Qaeda left the Middle East to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Except for the smallish Egyptian faction led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Mr. bin Laden’s chief deputy, these militants were not involved in Middle Eastern politics. Abdullah Azzam, Mr. bin Laden’s mentor, gave up supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization long before his death in 1989 because he felt that to fight for a localized political cause was to forsake the real jihad, which he felt should be international and religious in character.
From the beginning, Al Qaeda’s fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.
Second, if the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine are at the core of the radicalization, why are there virtually no Afghans, Iraqis or Palestinians among the terrorists? Rather, the bombers are mostly from the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Egypt and Pakistan - or they are Western-born converts to Islam. Why would a Pakistani or a Spaniard be more angry than an Afghan about American troops in Afghanistan? It is precisely because they do not care about Afghanistan as such, but see the United States involvement there as part of a global phenomenon of cultural domination.
What was true for the first generation of Al Qaeda is also relevant for the present generation: even if these young men are from Middle Eastern or South Asian families, they are for the most part Westernized Muslims living or even born in Europe who turn to radical Islam. Moreover, converts are to be found in almost every Qaeda cell: they did not turn fundamentalist because of Iraq, but because they felt excluded from Western society (this is especially true of the many converts from the Caribbean islands, both in Britain and France). “Born again” or converts, they are rebels looking for a cause. They find it in the dream of a virtual, universal ummah, the same way the ultraleftists of the 1970’s (the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Italian Red Brigades) cast their terrorist actions in the name of the “world proletariat” and “Revolution” without really caring about what would happen after.
It is also interesting to note that none of the Islamic terrorists captured so far had been active in any legitimate antiwar movements or even in organized political support for the people they claim to be fighting for. They don’t distribute leaflets or collect money for hospitals and schools. They do not have a rational strategy to push for the interests of the Iraqi or Palestinian people.
Even their calls for the withdrawal of the European troops from Iraq ring false. After all, the Spanish police have foiled terrorist attempts in Madrid even since the government withdrew its forces. Western-based radicals strike where they are living, not where they are instructed to or where it will have the greatest political effect on behalf of their nominal causes.
The Western-based Islamic terrorists are not the militant vanguard of the Muslim community; they are a lost generation, unmoored from traditional societies and cultures, frustrated by a Western society that does not meet their expectations. And their vision of a global ummah is both a mirror of and a form of revenge against the globalization that has made them what they are.
(Olivier Roy, a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, is the author of “Globalized Islam.”)
* Hizb Ut-Tahrir’s leaflet says: “Kill them [the Jews] wherever you find them.”
* Dilpazier Aslam chooses to leave The Guardian rather than renounce Hizb Ut-Tahrir
[This is an update to the dispatch of July 18, 2005, titled Guardian staff journalist exposed as member of extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir.]
CONTENTS
1. “Dilpazier Aslam leaves Guardian” (The Guardian media section, July 22, 2005)
2. “Background: the Guardian and Dilpazier Aslam” (The Guardian, July 22, 2005)
3. “Aslam targeted by bloggers” (The Guardian media section, July 22, 2005)
4. “‘Guardian’ trainee may sue over sacking” (The Independent, July 24, 2005)
5. “We rock the boat” (By Dilpazier Aslam, The Guardian, July 13, 2005)
Hizb Ut-Tahrir is thought to have links with another British-based, al-Qaeda-linked group, Al-Muhajiroun and its leader Omar Bakri Mohammed, known as the “Tottenham Ayatollah” for the area of north London where he resides. Both groups declare their long-term aim is to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate. Mohammed has lived in Britain for 20 years and claims to have given religious instruction to the two Britons who went to Israel and murdered Israelis in a suicide attack at the Mike’s Place bar in Tel Aviv in 2003.
Last week Omar Bakri Mohammed, who has received many welfare and other benefits from the British tax-payer over the years, told the New York Times that the British government and the British people deserved the “blame” for the July 7 attacks in London.
THE GUARDIAN BLAMES BLOGGERS
Instead of admitting that they made a gross error of judgment in hiring Dilpazier Aslam, The Guardian has now attempted to shift the blame onto bloggers and rival newspapers for “personal attacks” on Aslam. They specifically target “rightwing bloggers from the US” and especially Scott Burgess (who “spends his time indoors”) and whose weblog, The Daily Ablution, broke this story. In an interesting twist to the story, the Guardian celebrates the fact that Aslam beat Burgess to the journalistic traineeship at the Guardian.
Scott Burgess is from New Orleans, but now lives in London. The Guardian assertion’s that “raving right-wing Americans” were essentially the only people who criticized its employment of an unrepentant Aslam, is untrue. A number of British commentators from right, center and left, also did so.
The Guardian also vents its fury at The Sun newspaper and what it calls its “attack-dog columnist,” Richard Littlejohn, who wrote: “A Guardian journalist has been unmasked as an Islamist extremist”. Richard Littlejohn is a long-time subscriber to this email list, and an influential columnist of sensible opinion.
BURGESS RESPONDS
The departure of Aslam from The Guardian is the first media scalp by British bloggers. In the US, it is widely recognized that Dan Rather’s departure from CBS was caused by various prominent weblogs. On his website, Scott Burgess has responded to many of the accusations in the Guardian article “Aslam targeted by bloggers” (attached below). Perhaps his strongest point is that, “given the choice between a Guardian job and membership in an organisation that calls for followers to ‘kill [Jews] wherever you find them,’ the 27 year-old Mr. Aslam chose the latter.” To read his full critical assessment of the Guardian’s recent actions, his blog can be found at dailyablution.blogs.com.
As I pointed out in a previous dispatch on Aslam, it is unlikely that The Guardian would have acted with such a defensive tone if one of their reporters was a member of the far right British National Party (which, while anti-Semitic in many ways, has not gone so far as to advocate the killing of Jews on its website.).
I attach five articles, with summaries.
-- Tom Gross
[This is the full article]
media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1534495,00.html
Trainee journalist Dilpazier Aslam had his contract with the Guardian terminated today. The move followed an internal inquiry into Aslam’s membership of the political organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir. A statement said: “The Guardian now believes continuing membership of the organisation to be incompatible with his continued employment by the company.”
“Mr Aslam was asked to resign his membership but has chosen not to. The Guardian respects his right to make that decision but has regretfully concluded that it had no option but to terminate Mr Aslam’s contract with the company.”
The inquiry followed a piece written by Aslam for the Guardian’s comment pages entitled “We rock the boat”. The statement added: “The Guardian accepts that it should have explicitly mentioned Mr Aslam’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir at the end of his comment piece.” A correction will appear in the paper’s Corrections and Clarifications column.
Aslam said: “I am shocked by the manner in which this whole affair has been handled. My treatment throws up issues which will be of grave concern to all journalists. I am currently taking legal advice.”
BACKGROUND: THE GUARDIAN AND DILPAZIER ASLAM
“Background: the Guardian and Dilpazier Aslam” (The Guardian, July 22, 2005)
... Dilpazier Aslam is a 27-year-old British Muslim from Yorkshire. After university he studied journalism at Sheffield University with the help of a bursary from the Sheffield Star.
... On his 15-page application form he did not mention that he was a member of the Islamist political party, Hizb ut-Tahrir, despite being invited to describe any participation in public affairs or political campaigning.
... Subsequent to joining the Guardian, Aslam made no secret of his membership of this political party, drawing it to the attention of several colleagues and some senior editors.
On July 12 - the day it was announced that the July 7 London bombs had been placed by young British Muslims from west Yorkshire - Aslam was asked to write a piece for the comment page.
His 560-word article, “We rock the boat: today’s Muslims aren’t prepared to ignore injustice”, was published the following day. In editing the piece the Guardian did not make it clear - as it should have done - that the author was, in addition to being a Guardian trainee, a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Comment editor was not aware of this fact.
... On Monday July 18 Aslam was advised that the Guardian considered that Hizb ut-Tahrir had promoted violence and anti-semitic material on its website and that membership of the organisation was not compatible with being a Guardian trainee.
The following day Aslam told the editor, Alan Rusbridger, that he was not willing to leave Hizb ut-Tahrir and that, while he personally repudiated anti-semitism, he did not consider the website material to be promoting violence or to be anti-semitic.
The matter was subsequently treated under the paper’s grievance and disciplinary procedure. Aslam was invited to a meeting with GNL’s chief executive, Carolyn McCall, at which he repeated his refusal to leave the organisation or repudiate its material.
Having considered all the circumstances Ms McCall took the view that Aslam could not remain a member of the Guardian’s trainee scheme.
The paper will carry a clarification making it clear that Aslam’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir should have been mentioned in the context of his July 13 article.
THE GUARDIAN BLAMES THE BLOGGERS
“Aslam targeted by bloggers” (By a staff reporter, Media Guardian, July 22, 2005)
Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings.
The story is a demonstration of the way the ‘blogosphere’ can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed...
... Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.
He pitched into Mr Aslam, who as it happened, beat him to the traineeship on the Guardian. Googling the 27-year-old Muslim’s name, Mr Burgess picked up some articles the journalist had openly written in the past for Hizb ut-Tahrir websites and denounced him on his blogspot, The Daily Ablution, saying: “He is on record supporting a world-dominant Islamic state.”
... In the Independent on Sunday, Shiv Malik, also briefly a Guardian intern, accused the hapless Aslam of mounting “a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media”.
And in the tabloid Sun, their attack-dog columnist, Richard Littlejohn, took the opportunity to claim: “A Guardian journalist has been unmasked as an Islamist extremist”.
Many bloggers repeated Malik’s untrue assertion - made in the Independent on Sunday - that the Guardian was “refusing to sack” Aslam.
The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores - as well as raise legitimate concerns about journalism and transparency - when something awful happens in the streets of London.
‘GUARDIAN’ TRAINEE MAY SUE OVER SACKING
“‘Guardian’ trainee may sue over sacking” (By Andrew Johnson, The Independent, July 24, 2005)
news.independent.co.uk/media/article301242.ece
[For reasons of space, there is a summary only of this article on this dispatch – TG]
A trainee journalist at The Guardian newspaper is considering legal action after being sacked for refusing to give up membership of a radical Muslim organisation…
... The Guardian says that its comment editor was unaware of his membership. However, colleagues say he made no secret of it in the newsroom.
“There was a failure of understanding about what this organisation was,” a Guardian source said. “It just shows the media’s lack of understanding of Muslim life. It was much more Guardian cock-up than conspiracy.”
WE ROCK THE BOAT
“We rock the boat” (By Dilpazier Aslam, The Guardian, July 13, 2005)
... It is not the done thing to make such comparisons, but Muslims on the street do. Some 2,749 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. To discover the cost of “liberating” Iraqis you need to multiply that figure by eight, and still you will fall short of the estimated minimum of 22,787 civilian Iraqi casualties to date. But it’s not cool to say this, now that London’s skyline has also has plumed grey.
Shocked would also be to suggest that the bombings happened through no responsibility of our own. OK, the streets of London were filled with anti-war marchers, so why punish the average Londoner? But the argument that this was an essentially US-led war does not pass muster. In the Muslim world, the pond that divides Britain and America is a shallow one. And the same cry - why punish us? - is often heard from Iraqi mothers as the “collateral damage” increases daily.
... Perhaps now is the time to be honest with each other and to stop labelling the enemy with simplistic terms such as “young”, “underprivileged”, “undereducated” and perhaps even “fringe”. The don’t-rock-the-boat attitude of elders doesn’t mean the agitation wanes; it means it builds till it can be contained no more.
Different countries and organisations take varying views of the Hizb ut-Tahrir. It is banned in Russia, Germany and Holland. In this country the National Union of Students has barred Hizb ut-Tahrir from its unions, claiming the group is “responsible for supporting terrorism and publishing material that incites racial hatred”.
The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) is reported by the Home Office to hold the view that “although not a serious threat at present ...it would be naive to think that if we leave them alone, they will go away. They are an organised minority group who are determined to make themselves and their albeit unrepresentative voices heard.”
Subsequent to joining the Guardian, Aslam made no secret of his membership of this political party, drawing it to the attention of several colleagues and some senior editors.
On July 12 - the day it was announced that the July 7 London bombs had been placed by young British muslims from west Yorkshire - Aslam was asked to write a piece for the comment page.
His 560-word article, “We rock the boat: today’s Muslims aren’t prepared to ignore injustice”, was published the following day. In editing the piece the Guardian did not make it clear - as it should have done - that the author was, in addition to being a Guardian trainee, a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Comment editor was not aware of this fact.
After the article was published a number of people drew attention to a document Hizb ut-Tahrir posted in March 2002, on its British website, Khalifah.com, of which the Guardian was previously unaware.
It quotes a passage from the Koran [“kill them wherever you find them...”] followed by material arguing: “the Jews are a people of slander...a treacherous people... they fabricate lies and twist words from their right places.”
The effect of this juxtaposition appeared to be the incitement of violence against Jews.
The piece remained on the website until recently and is still available on other Islamist websites.
Before joining the Guardian, Aslam wrote three pieces for Khalifah.com, and was once billed as its “middle eastern correspondent”.
In October 2002, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s spokesman in Denmark, Fadi Abdelatif, was found guilty of distributing racist propaganda after handing out this document in a square in Copenhagen.
Abdelatif was given a 60-day suspended sentence. According to a BBC Newsnight report “the court rejected Abdelatif’s argument that he was merely quoting from the Koran, and the leaflet was an act of free speech.
“The court also did not accept that the leaflet was, as he argued, aimed solely at the Israeli state and not Jews generally. In particular, the court found that in ‘linking the quotes from the Koran to the subsequent description of Jews as a people characterised negatively...is an evident statement of a threat against Jews.’”
On Monday July 18 Aslam was advised that the Guardian considered that Hizb ut-Tahrir had promoted violence and anti-semitic material on its website and that membership of the organisation was not compatible with being a Guardian trainee.
The following day Aslam told the editor, Alan Rusbridger, that he was not willing to leave Hizb ut-Tahrir and that, while he personally repudiated anti-semitism, he did not consider the website material to be promoting violence or to be anti-semitic.
The matter was subsequently treated under the paper’s grievance and disciplinary procedure. Aslam was invited to a meeting with GNL’s chief executive, Carolyn McCall, at which he repeated his refusal to leave the organisation or repudiate its material.
Having considered all the circumstances Ms McCall took the view that Aslam could not remain a member of the Guardian’s trainee scheme.
The paper will carry a clarification making it clear that Aslam’s membership of Hizb ut-Tahrir should have been mentioned in the context of his July 13 article.
THE GUARDIAN BLAMES THE BLOGGERS
Aslam targeted by bloggers
By a staff reporter
Media Guardian
July 22, 2005
media.guardian.co.uk/site/story/0,14173,1534497,00.html
Rightwing bloggers from the US, where the Guardian has a large online following, were behind the targeting last week of a trainee Guardian journalist who wrote a comment piece which they did not care for about the London bombings.
The story is a demonstration of the way the ‘blogosphere’ can be used to mount obsessively personalised attacks at high speed.
Within hours, Dilpazier Aslam was being accused on the internet of “violence” and belonging to a “terrorist organisation” - both completely untrue charges.
One blogger appealed for “some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me”. Another accused Aslam of being guilty of “accessory before the fact to murder.”
These ravings were posted alongside more legitimate questions as to whether a newspaper should employ a reporter who belongs to a controversial political group linked to the promotion of anti-semitic views.
Aslam’s comment piece was about the attitudes of angry young Muslims in the north of England and headlined “We rock the boat: today’s Muslims aren’t prepared to ignore injustice”.
It did not mention that the author was a member of the radical but non-violent Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, proscribed in Germany and Holland as anti-semitic.
Scott Burgess, a blogger from New Orleans who recently moved to London, spends his time indoors posting repeated attacks on the Guardian for its stance on the environment, its columnists such as Polly Toynbee, and its recent intervention in the US presidential election campaign.
He pitched into Mr Aslam, who as it happened, beat him to the traineeship on the Guardian. Googling the 27-year-old Muslim’s name, Mr Burgess picked up some articles the journalist had openly written in the past for Hizb ut-Tahrir websites and denounced him on his blogspot, The Daily Ablution, saying: “He is on record supporting a world-dominant Islamic state.”
Another blogger, Laban Tall, wrote enthusiastically that Burgess’ coup “has resounded across the blogging universe like a shockwave from a supernova”.
He said: “I bet the Guardian wish they’d given him the job now, not Mr Aslam. Scott applied for the job in June 2004. Mr Aslam got it. They say revenge is a dish best eaten cold.”
Mr Burgess fished out a website article written by Mr Aslam before September 11 for Hizb ut-Tahrir. He quoted one line: “Establishment of Khilafah [the worldwide Islamic caliphate] is our only solution, to fight fire with fire, the state of Israel versus the Khilafah state.”
A fellow blogger, Dsquared, promptly accused him of using quotes out of context. “It is more than four years old, written when the author was a teenager, before 9/11 and during a really nasty episode early in the intifada. How many people posting on this blog would like to have their teenage scribblings used as an assessment of their politics as an adult?
“The way you’ve used these excerpts is a bit spintastic and if this is the worst you can dig up, I don’t think the Guardian can be blamed for not rumbling him.”
But meanwhile, New Jersey undergraduate Joe Malchow [aka Joe’s Dartblog] was writing on his own blog: “Guardian employs known member of terrorist organisation.”
Fantasies like this zoomed round the world and soon seeped into the paper’s mainstream rivals.
Perhaps the most extreme blog was posted by “dreadpundit”, a right-wing New Yorker using the name “Bluto”. He wrote: “Okay, Dilpazier, I’ve decided to bow to your ‘logic’ - sauce for the goose and all that. That’s why I’m issuing a secular fatwah and asking for some loyal Briton to saw off your head and ship it to me (use Fed-Ex, please, so I can get a morning delivery, and do remember the dry ice, also, a videotape of the “execution”).”
In the Independent on Sunday, Shiv Malik, also briefly a Guardian intern, accused the hapless Aslam of mounting “a sting by Hizb ut-Tahrir to infiltrate the mainstream media”.
And in the tabloid Sun, their attack-dog columnist, Richard Littlejohn, took the opportunity to claim: “A Guardian journalist has been unmasked as an Islamist extremist”.
Many bloggers repeated Malik’s untrue assertion - made in the Independent on Sunday - that the Guardian was “refusing to sack” Aslam.
The episode was a striking illustration of the way that blogs and bloggers can heat up the temperature and seek to settle scores - as well as raise legitimate concerns about journalism and transparency - when something awful happens in the streets of London.
WE ROCK THE BOAT
We rock the boat
Today’s Muslims aren’t prepared to ignore injustice
Comment
By Dilpazier Aslam
The Guardian
July 13, 2005
www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1527323,00.html
If I’m asked about 7/7, I – a Yorkshire lad, born and bred – will respond first by giving an out-clause to being labelled a terrorist lover. I think what happened in London was a sad day and not the way to express your political anger.
Then there’s the “but”. If, as police announced yesterday, four men (at least three from Yorkshire) blew themselves up in the name of Islam, then please let us do ourselves a favour and not act shocked.
Shocked would be to imply that we were unaware of the imminent danger, when in fact Sir John Stevens, the then Metropolitan police commissioner, warned us last year that an attack was inevitable.
Shocked would be to suggest we didn’t appreciate that when Falluja was flattened, the people under it were dead but not forgotten - long after we had moved on to reading more interesting headlines about the Olympics. It is not the done thing to make such comparisons, but Muslims on the street do. Some 2,749 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. To discover the cost of “liberating” Iraqis you need to multiply that figure by eight, and still you will fall short of the estimated minimum of 22,787 civilian Iraqi casualties to date. But it’s not cool to say this, now that London’s skyline has also has plumed grey.
Shocked would also be to suggest that the bombings happened through no responsibility of our own. OK, the streets of London were filled with anti-war marchers, so why punish the average Londoner? But the argument that this was an essentially US-led war does not pass muster. In the Muslim world, the pond that divides Britain and America is a shallow one. And the same cry - why punish us? - is often heard from Iraqi mothers as the “collateral damage” increases daily.
Shocked would be to say that we don’t understand how, in the green hills of Yorkshire, a group of men given all the liberties they could have wished for could do this.
The Muslim community is no monolithic whole. Yet there are some common features. Second- and third-generation Muslims are without the don’t-rock-the-boat attitude that restricted our forefathers. We’re much sassier with our opinions, not caring if the boat rocks or not.
Which is why the young get angry with that breed of Muslim “community leader” who remains silent while anger is seething on the streets.
Earlier this year I attended a mosque in Leeds for Friday prayers. It was in the month of Ramadan, when Islamic fervour is at its most impassioned, yet in the sermon, to a crowd of hundreds - many of whom were from Iraq - Falluja was not referred to once; not even in the cupped-hands prayers after the sermon was over.
I prayed my Eid prayer in a mosque in Sheffield and, though most there were sickened and angry about events in Iraq, the imam chose not to mention Falluja either. We “youngsters” - some now in our 40s - had seen it before. This was deliberate silence, in case the boat rocked.
Perhaps now is the time to be honest with each other and to stop labelling the enemy with simplistic terms such as “young”, “underprivileged”, “undereducated” and perhaps even “fringe”. The don’t-rock-the-boat attitude of elders doesn’t mean the agitation wanes; it means it builds till it can be contained no more.
[Note by Tom Gross]
I attach an article by myself from today’s Jerusalem Post. It was commissioned as a follow-up to the note from Friday evening’s dispatch, London bomber traveled to Israel; Britain begins to “wake up” to terror reality.
I attach a short extract from the piece, followed by the article.
By Friday evening, 12 hours had passed since the shooting of the man, but the BBC still hadn’t interviewed a grieving family, no one had called for British universities be boycotted, Chelsea and Arsenal soccer clubs hadn’t been ordered to play their matches in Cyprus, and The Guardian hadn’t yet called British policy against its Pakistani population “genocide.”
As for London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who is in overall control of transport in the city, including the train where the man was shot, and who strongly defended the shoot-to-kill policy as a legitimate way to prevent suicide bombings, he was not yet facing war crimes charges – as Livingstone himself has demanded Israeli political leaders should be.
LIVING WITH TERROR IN LONDON AND ISRAEL
From London to Jerusalem
By Tom Gross
The Jerusalem Post
July 25, 2005
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1122171719427
Last Friday, as British police frantically searched for four presumed suicide bombers on the run, the people of London had a glimpse of what the people of Israel live with daily. The explosive devices of all four men had failed to go off properly on London’s transport system the day before and the men had subsequently escaped.
During the course of Friday, there were roadblocks and house searches throughout London. Closed circuit TV footage of the four was released to the public in the afternoon, and by evening two suspects had been taken into custody. The people of London expressed the fear of “living with terror 24/7,” the world expressed their sympathy and there was much supportive and understanding coverage of Britain’s plight by international media and politicians.
Palestinian terrorists have carried out over 25,000 attacks on Israelis since September 2000, resulting in thousands of deaths and injuries. Israeli security forces have thwarted thousands of attacks, and Israelis have grown used to living with manhunts of the kind seen in London on Friday, yet they are barely reported on abroad.
The head of the Shin Bet confirmed last week that Israel presently receives some 60 intelligence warnings of potential Palestinian terror attacks every day, and this month alone several Israeli women and teenage girls have been killed in various attacks.
A BARRAGE OF BULLETS
Such was the nervousness in London on Friday, that at 10 in the morning a dark-complexioned man was shot dead on a train at Stockwell Tube (subway) station in south London. Witnesses on the train immediately said that it was clear the man had been unarmed, and in the words of one, was “literally executed.” He was already lying on the ground motionless, having tripped, when British police pumped five bullets into his head at close range. On Saturday evening the police confirmed what had been fairly apparent from the time of the shooting – that they had mistakenly targeted an innocent man. (It turned out he was a Brazilian Catholic.)
Israel has taken enormous care in its “targeted killings” of “ticking bombs,” almost never killing anyone in a case of mistaken identity.
Contrary to the absolute lies told in the British media in recent days, the Israel Defense Forces have not instituted a shoot-to-kill policy, or trained the British to carry out one. For example, on Friday, at the very time British police were shooting the man in the Tube, the IDF caught and disarmed a terrorist from Fatah already inside Israel en route to carrying out a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. Israeli forces didn’t injure the terrorist at all in apprehending him, and disarming him of the five-kilogram explosives belt, packed with nails and metal shards, that he was wearing.
And yet for taking the bare minimum steps necessary to save the lives of its citizens in recent years, Israel has been mercilessly berated by virtually the entire world.
Had Israeli police shot dead an innocent foreigner on one of its buses or trains, confirming the kill with a barrage of bullets at close range, in a mistaken effort to thwart a bombing, the UN would probably have been sitting in emergency session by late afternoon to unanimously denounce the Jewish state.
MAYOR LIVINGSTONE TO THE HAGUE?
By evening, 12 hours had passed since the shooting, but the BBC still hadn’t interviewed a grieving family, no one had called for British universities to be boycotted, Chelsea and Arsenal soccer clubs hadn’t been ordered to play their matches in Cyprus, and the Guardian hadn’t yet called British policy against its Pakistani population “genocide.”
As for London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who is in overall control of transport in the city, including the train where the man was shot, and who strongly defended the shoot-to-kill policy as a legitimate way to prevent suicide bombings, he was not yet facing war crimes charges – as Livingstone himself has demanded Israeli political leaders should be.
Instead on Friday, Polly Toynbee, the leading commentator for The Guardian, wrote that the terrorists were “deranged,” “savage” and “demented” “killers” who “murder in the name of God.” This is a far cry from the habitual manner in which The Guardian and others describe the suicide killers of Israelis “fighters” and “activists.”
LONDON AND TEL AVIV BOMBERS KNEW EACH OTHER
One of the London terrorists responsible for the bombings on July 7, Mohammed Sidique Khan, traveled to Israel in February 2003. He stayed in Israel for just one day, and we can surmise that he wasn’t there to volunteer on a kibbutz or visit Yad Vashem.
Two months later, on April 30, 2003, two other Britons of Pakistani origin were involved in the suicide attack on Mike’s Place, a popular bar in Tel Aviv, killing or injuring 58 people. Hamas later released a video of the two British citizens explaining their motivation for the attack, which included calling on God to punish Tony Blair and George W Bush. It has now been revealed that back in England Mohammed Sidique Khan had been friends with one of the Mike’s Place bombers.
Khan’s visit to Israel was the main international headline in the Washington Post last Tuesday. Yet most British papers have completely ignored it. The Independent and The Daily Telegraph didn’t mention it at all; the Scotsman, the Times and Sun newspapers only very briefly.
There seems to be little interest in Britain in the murder of Israelis by British citizens. Many British journalists evidently have difficulty in admitting that people murdered on buses in Israel are as much victims as those on London buses.
CONTINUING TO EMBRACE HAMAS
Another British citizen, Richard Reid, who became known as the “shoe-bomber,” also visited Israel and the Gaza strip for 10 days in July 2001. Reid was arrested in December 2001 after he tried to light a fuse extending from his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami.
If people in Britain and the US want to stop terrorists, they need to recognize the inspiration and quite possibly the training that Hamas, the masters of the suicide attack, have given to would-be British and other terrorists, such as Reid. Instead, British officials continue to embrace Hamas, and hold talks with them.
Another of the problems Britons will have to overcome if they want to successfully deal with suicide bombers is to stop listening to the lies propagated by large sections of their media. For example, the cover story of this week’s New Statesman, the favored publication of many in Britain’s ruling Labour party, says “there were no suicide bombers in Palestine until Ariel Sharon, an accredited war criminal, sponsored by Bush and Blair, came to power.” You begin to wonder whose side some in Britain’s media are on.
(Tom Gross is a former Jerusalem correspondent for the Sunday Telegraph)
Much of this dispatch was prepared on Tuesday and Wednesday, prior to yesterday’s attempted terror attacks in London and today’s incidents in the British capital. However, I have today added several elements to the introductory note, below.
CONTENTS
1. “Suspected London Bomber Traveled to Israel” (Washington Post, July 19, 2005)
2. “Iran ayatollah says Blair government could have bombed London” (Iran Focus, July 15, 2005)
3. “Mossad: Netanyahu was warned of London bombs” (Al Jazeera, July 19, 2005)
4. “He wasn’t a terrorist” (The News of the World, July 17, 2005)
LIVING WITH TERROR IN LONDON AND ISRAEL
Today, the people of London got a glimpse of what the people of Israel live with daily. Palestinian terrorists have carried out over 25,000 attacks on Israelis since September 2000, resulting in thousands of deaths and injures. The Israeli army and the Shin Bet have thwarted thousands of attacks. Israelis have grown used to living with manhunts of the kind seen in London today, yet they are barely reported on abroad.
The head of the Shin Bet today confirmed that Israel presently receives some 60 intelligence warnings of potential Palestinian terror attacks every day.
Unlike the brown-skinned man who was shot dead this morning at Stockwell Tube (subway) station in south London, whom witnesses say was unarmed and literally executed – he was already lying on the ground motionless when British police pumped five bullets into his head at close range – Israel has taken enormous care in its “targeted killings” of “ticking bombs,” almost never killing anyone in a case of mistaken identity.
MAYOR LIVINGSTONE TO THE HAGUE?
And yet for taking the bare minimum steps necessary to save the lives of its citizens in recent years, Israel has been mercilessly berated by virtually the entire world.
Had Israeli police shot dead that man this morning in London, the UN would probably now be sitting in emergency session to denounce Israel unanimously.
Although over 12 hours have passed since the shooting of this man, the BBC has still not interviewed a grieving family, no one is calling for British universities be boycotted, Chelsea and Arsenal soccer clubs are not being forced to play their matches in Cyprus, The Guardian hasn’t yet called it “genocide,” and London Mayor Ken Livingstone (who is in overall control of transport in the city, including the train where the man was shot) is not facing war crimes charges (as Livingstone himself has demanded of Israeli political leaders.)
Instead we have the leading commentator for The Guardian, Polly Toynbee, writing today (in the space of her opening paragraph alone) that the terrorists are “deranged,” “savage” and “demented” “killers” who “murder in the name of God.” This is a far cry from the way The Guardian and other Europe media call the suicide killers of Israelis “fighters” and “activists.”
ONE OF THE 7/7 LONDON TERRORITS VISITED ISRAEL
One of the London terrorists, Mohammed Sidique Khan, traveled to Israel in February 2003. He stayed in Israel for just one day, and we can surmise that he wasn’t there to volunteer on a kibbutz or visit Yad Vashem. Two months later, on April 30, 2003, two other Britons of Pakistani origin were involved in the suicide terror attack on Mike’s Place, a popular bar in Tel Aviv, killing or injuring 58 people. Hamas later released a video of the two British citizens explaining their motivation for the attack, which included calling on God to punish Tony Blair and George W Bush.
AND YET THE UK PRESS BARELY SEEMS TO CARE
The visit of Mohammed Sidique Khan to Israel was the main international headline in the Washington Post on Tuesday. Yet most British newspapers have completely ignored the fact that Khan went to Israel. The Independent and The Daily Telegraph didn’t mention it at all. The Scotsman, the (London) Times and Sun newspapers only mentioned it very briefly. (It is no surprise that the New York Times’s report on the bombers also made no mention of Mohammed Sidique Khan’s visit to Israel.)
It is no coincidence that many in the British ruling elite have taken little interest in the murder of Israelis by British citizens. They are so contemptuous of Israel that they don’t want to face the possibility that people murdered going to work and school on buses in Israel are as much victims as those on London buses.
RICHARD REID ALSO VISITED ISRAEL
Another British citizen, Richard Reid, who became known as the “shoe-bomber,” also visited Israel and the Gaza strip for 10 days in July 2001. Reid was arrested in December 2001 after he tried to light a fuse extending from his shoe on a flight from Paris to Miami
If people in Britain and the US want to stop terrorists, they need to recognize the inspiration and quite possibly the training that Hamas, master of the suicide attack, have given to would be British and other terrorists, such as Reid. Instead, British officials continue to embrace Hamas, and hold talks with them
AL JAZEERA CONTINUE TO PUSH NETANYAHU STORY
The main story on Al Jazeera on Tuesday was another rehash of the myth that Binyamin Netanyahu received a warning six minutes before the London bombs. As I wrote in the dispatch on July 7, only two hours after the London bombs, the Associated Press has shown extreme irresponsibility in prominently releasing this fake story. Its continued use by Al Jazeera is further evidence of this.
THE GUARDIAN AND HIZB UT-TAHRIR
In the recent dispatch Guardian staff journalist exposed as member of extremist Hizb ut-Tahrir (July 18, 2005), I reported that Guardian journalist Dilpazier Aslam is a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an extremist Muslim organization. Two days later, the Financial Times reported that the British government will now outlaw Hizb ut-Tahrir. The party has already been banned in countries like Germany, under Germany’s laws outlawing parties that promote anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial. The Guardian continues to stand by Dilpazier Aslam and it would appear they have no problem about having an Islamist supremacist on their staff.
KEN LIVINGSTONE AND SHEIK YOUSEF QARDAWI
In the same dispatch I also included an article on Ken Livingstone. It has since been reported that Sheik Qardawi will not visit Britain, perhaps due to the criticism in many newspapers of Qardawi’s anti-Semitism and his repeated calls for the murder of Israelis. However, Livingstone has continued to defend Qardawi and also justify suicide bombs against Israelis.
On Tuesday, Livingstone called Qardawi a “leading progressive Muslim” and Livingstone then compared the Israeli government with Hamas. “I don’t make any distinction,” the mayor of London said.
While being called a “great mayor” in recent days by the BBC, Livingstone is regarded by many decent Britons as a dangerous anti-Semite who has done much to encourage Islamic fundamentalism and anti-Semitism among London’s 800,000 Muslims.
CHERIE BLAIR AND KEN LIVINSTONE: TERROR SYMPATHIZERS?
The Washington Post today reported yesterday that “Britain Will Act to Bar Terrorist Sympathizers” some people in Britain are asking whether this will include the wife of the Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Mayor of London. In June 2002, Prime Minister Blair’s wife Cherie Booth-Blair said Palestinians felt they had “no hope” but to blow themselves up.
SIR BERNARD CRICK
Sir Bernard Crick, of Birkbeck College, University of London, and one of the most distinguished professors in Britain, has become one of the first Britons (other than Livingstone) to blame Israeli policies for the London terror attacks. Crick told BBC Radio Four, “It’s not easily refuted that these kinds of protests... have been going on since the failure of Israel to follow the UN resolutions after the 1967 war. ”
CAMBRIDGE FILM FESTIVAL REMOVES SUICIDE BOMBER FILM
In the dispatch, Humane portrayal of Palestinian suicide bombers at Berlin Film Festival (February 15, 2005), I discussed the film “Paradise Now,” which portrays Palestinian suicide bombers as complex and conflicted people. The 25th Cambridge Film Festival, taking place at the present time in the English university town, has announced they will not be showing this film as they had planned due to “recent tragic events”. This is another small example of the way people in Britain are not glamorizing Palestinian suicide bombers as much as they used to before the July 7 London suicide bombs.
PALESTINIAN NATIONAL COUNCIL MEMBER ON THE LONDON BOMBINGS
In an Al Jazeera television interview on July 12, Palestinian National Council member Mamoun Al-Tamimi blamed Britain and the US for the July 7 terror attacks. “They (the London bombers) love death like that man loves life. Who made them love death? Britain and the U.S. with their actions. And, and the American and British peoples will pay the price if they don’t put an end to these governments.”
HE WASN’T A TERRORIST
Attached (below) is an interview with the uncle of one of the July 7 suicide bombers, Shehzad Tanweer, who says that his nephew was not a terrorist. These comments contradict what he had previously said on television and in newspapers.
I attach four articles, with summaries.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
SUSPECTED LONDON BOMBER TRAVELED TO ISRAEL
“Suspected London Bomber Traveled to Israel” (By Craig Whitlock and Kamran Khan, Washington Post, July 19, 2005)
One of the suspected London transit bombers visited Israel for one day in the spring of 2003, Israeli authorities have reported as part of an international effort to re-create the travels of the four men investigators believe set off the July 7 explosions.
Mohammed Sidique Khan arrived in Tel Aviv and left the next day, senior Israeli intelligence officials have told Israeli reporters. Investigators say they have found no evidence that his trip was related to the subsequent April 30, 2003, suicide attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub by two British men of Pakistani origin...
The purpose of Khan’s trip to Israel is one of the many unknowns in the investigation.
Several weeks after his visit, a British-born man of Pakistani descent, Assif Muhammad Hanif, blew himself up at Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv nightspot, killing three other people. Two weeks later, the body of another British citizen, Omar Khan Sharif, who investigators say fled the bar after a bomb he was carrying failed to detonate, was found in the sea off Tel Aviv.
Some Israelis wondered whether the timing meant that Khan’s visit was somehow related to those attacks... Terrorism experts have long worried that terrorists with European Union passports would find it easier to cross borders to carry out attacks...
IRAN AYATOLLAH: BRITISH GOVERNMENT COULD HAVE BOMBED LONDON
“Iran ayatollah says Blair government could have bombed London” (Iran Focus, July 15, 2005)
... Addressing worshippers at the site of Tehran University, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the powerful Guardian Council, the unelected constitutional watchdog, said, “At times they blame this [London bombings] as the work of Al’ Qaeda. Al’ Qaeda means [United States President George W.] Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair who were the mothers of Al’ Qaeda and brought to life this illegitimate child”.
“There exists the possibility that the British government carried out this work, like the possibility [of American involvement] in the September 11 affair, since they themselves stand to benefit the most”, Jannati said.
Jannati is a close confidant of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s newly-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is widely seen as Jannati’s protege...
“The British government stood to gain the most from the London bombings, so that they could tell their people not to protest against their war on terrorism”, the senior ayatollah said...
AL JAZEERA CONTINUE TO PUSH FAKE NETANYAHU STORY
(* For space reasons, I include a summary of this article only – TG)
“Mossad: Netanyahu was warned of London bombs” (Al Jazeera, July 19, 2005)
www.aljazeera.com/me.asp?service_ID=9369
Controversy continues over the recent Associated Press story which detailed the remarks of a “senior Israeli official” who said that Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in London for an economic conference, was warned by Scotland Yard “minutes” in advance of the bombings...
It should be noted that the first story detailing Netanyahu’s “advance” warning was never retracted. [Tom Gross adds: This is true, and I have repeatedly criticized the AP for not retracting their phony story.]
Further confirmation of the Mossad having prior knowledge of the bombings was made by an Israeli news site which cites the spy agency’s chief Meir Dagan, in an interview with the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag:
“The Mossad office in London received advance notice about the attacks, but only six minutes before the first blast. As a result, it was impossible to take any action to prevent the blasts.” [Tom Gross adds: This quote is false.]
“HE WASN’T A TERRORIST”
(* For space reasons, I include a summary of this article only – TG)
“He wasn’t a terrorist” (By Mahzer Mahmood, The News of the World, July 17,2005)
www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/story_pages/news/news2.shtml
THE uncle of suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer last night told the News of the World the 22-year-old’s murderous act did not make him a terrorist.
In a searingly frank and shocking exclusive interview, Bashir Ahmed claimed Tanweer was a “desperate” young man “driven” to commit the atrocity by the West’s treatment of Muslims.
And he BLAMED Tony Blair and George Bush for the July 7 bombings, warning: “There will be more.”
“These (suicide bombers) are desperate people,” said Ahmed. “They can see that their brothers are not getting their rights, so they take extreme action.”
The businessman was pictured on TV worldwide last week talking with dignity of his family’s shock at the news that Tanweer had detonated the Aldgate Tube bomb, killing himself and six others.
But face to face with our Investigations Editor Mazher Mahmood—a Muslim himself—he revealed the deepest feelings he hid from the cameras.
Ahmed—who was attacked and punched in the street by a skinhead on Friday—has lived for 44 years in Britain, a country he loves.
... Ahmed PRAISED Tanweer—who came to his unsuspecting uncle’s kebab shop in Leeds to say goodbye the night before the bombings—as a caring person “regardless of race or colour”. He said his nephew was “looking for justice for human beings”.
“I would not say that he (Tanweer) was a terrorist,” said Ahmed.
“He was driven to this. He was desperate. He was driven to that by desperation because he couldn’t find justice anywhere. This lad has made a name for himself in the world. Muslims call it a sacrifice, the Europeans call him a terrorist.”
Cigar-smoking dad-of-four Ahmed describes the 55 lives taken by his nephew and his murderous pals as “a few” ...
SUSPECTED LONDON BOMBER TRAVELED TO ISRAEL
Suspected London Bomber Traveled to Israel
By Craig Whitlock and Kamran Khan
The Washington Post
July 19, 2005
One of the suspected London transit bombers visited Israel for one day in the spring of 2003, Israeli authorities have reported as part of an international effort to re-create the travels of the four men investigators believe set off the July 7 explosions.
Mohammed Sidique Khan arrived in Tel Aviv and left the next day, senior Israeli intelligence officials have told Israeli reporters. Investigators say they have found no evidence that his trip was related to the subsequent April 30, 2003, suicide attack on a Tel Aviv nightclub by two British men of Pakistani origin.
New details emerged Monday about trips that three of the four London bombing suspects made to Pakistan. Khan and Shehzad Tanweer arrived in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, on Nov. 16 last year on the same Turkish Airlines flight, then flew home together Feb. 7, Pakistani investigators said after reviewing immigration records.
A third suspect, Hasib Hussain, flew into Karachi on July 15, 2004, on a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight from Riyadh, records show. Pakistani officials said they did not know how long Hussain stayed, but his family in Leeds has told British investigators he was gone for about four months.
With details like these, investigators are trying to retrace the precise movements of the three men, each a British native of Pakistani descent. From Karachi, the men traveled elsewhere in the country. “The main destination in Pakistan for all three suicide bombers was Lahore,” a major city near the Indian border, said a senior official with Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency in Karachi, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
A senior intelligence official in Lahore said Khan and Tanweer stayed at separate addresses near the city, despite arriving and leaving together.
Tanweer’s family has said he left Leeds to attend a religious school, or madrassa , so he could study Arabic and the Koran. They said he intended to stay for nine months but came back early. Pakistani intelligence officials said they have uncovered evidence that all three bombers met with Islamic militants, but have not given details.
Tanweer made a separate visit to Pakistan earlier in 2004 and met with Osama Nazir, who was later arrested and charged with participating in a 2002 grenade attack on a church in Islamabad, the Associated Press reported last week, citing unidentified Pakistani intelligence officials. Five people, including two Americans, died in the explosion. Pakistani officials did not say Monday whether they had found immigration records confirming the trip.
The investigation into the subway and bus bombings in London, which killed at least 55 people including the presumed bombers, has become increasingly focused on connections to Pakistan. Security officials in London have said they are searching for a Pakistani man who entered Britain at an English Channel port two weeks before the attacks and slipped out of the country the day before the bombings. That man, whom officials have not identified, was on Britain’s terrorism watch list but was allowed to enter the country.
Although the three bombers arrived in Karachi aboard flights that originated in Istanbul and Riyadh, Pakistani officials said that it appeared those were merely transit points on trips that began in London and that the men did not appear to have broken their journeys in those cities.
Investigators said they were trying to figure out who paid for the tickets and sponsored the trips. Hussain was an unemployed 17-year-old when he traveled to Pakistan. Tanweer worked part time in his father’s fish-and-chips restaurant in Leeds, and Khan was a teacher’s assistant at an elementary school.
The purpose of Khan’s trip to Israel is one of the many unknowns in the investigation.
Several weeks after his visit, a British-born man of Pakistani descent, Assif Muhammad Hanif, blew himself up at Mike’s Place, a Tel Aviv nightspot, killing three other people. Two weeks later, the body of another British citizen, Omar Khan Sharif, who investigators say fled the bar after a bomb he was carrying failed to detonate, was found in the sea off Tel Aviv.
Some Israelis wondered whether the timing meant that Khan’s visit was somehow related to those attacks. However, Israeli investigators have said they have turned up no such evidence.
Terrorism experts have long worried that terrorists with European Union passports would find it easier to cross borders to carry out attacks.
Pakistani officials said they were cooperating closely with British and U.S. investigators on the London bombing probe. They have tried to deflect suspicions that the plot originated in Pakistan.
“Yes, you can say that the London bombers had some connections in Pakistan,” Aftab Khan Sherpao, Pakistan’s interior minister, said Monday. “But the investigations so far here and in Britain have shown that citizens from various nations could have been involved in the attack.”
In a television interview, Pakistan’s U.N. ambassador, Munir Akram, gave a sharper assessment, saying Britain had only itself to blame for the bombings.
“It would be a grave mistake to point fingers at Pakistan or anybody outside your country,” Akram told the BBC. “It is important not to pin blame on somebody else when the problem lies internally. Your policies in the Middle East, your policies in the Islamic world -- that is the problem with your society and that is where the problem lies as far as this incident is concerned.”
Akram’s comments echoed the conclusions of a briefing paper released Monday by one of Britain’s most prominent foreign policy research groups. The report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs said Britain’s strong support for the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism, has been “a high-risk policy” that has left Britain more vulnerable to attacks at home.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw dismissed such criticism, saying that “the time for excuses for terrorism is over.”
At a gathering of European foreign ministers in Brussels, Straw said, “The terrorists have struck across the world, in countries allied with the United States, backing the war in Iraq, and in countries which had nothing whatever to do with the war in Iraq.”
Britain’s three major political parties reached agreement to speed action on anti-terrorism legislation that Prime Minister Tony Blair is preparing, the BBC reported. It is to come before Parliament in October.
Khan reported from Karachi. Correspondent Scott Wilson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
IRAN AYATOLLAH SAYS BRITISH GOVERNMENT COULD HAVE BOMBED LONDON
Iran ayatollah says Blair government could have bombed London
Iran Focus
July 15, 2005
www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2853
One of Iran’s most powerful clerics hinted during the Friday prayers sermon in Tehran today that last week’s London bombings could have been the work of the United Kingdom government.
Addressing worshippers at the site of Tehran University, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, who heads the powerful Guardian Council, the unelected constitutional watchdog, said, “At times they blame this [London bombings] as the work of Al’Qaeda. Al’Qaeda means [United States President George W.] Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair who were the mothers of Al’Qaeda and brought to life this illegitimate child”.
“There exists the possibility that the British government carried out this work, like the possibility [of American involvement] in the September 11 affair, since they themselves stand to benefit the most”, Jannati said.
Jannati is a close confidant of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran’s newly-elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is widely seen as Jannati’s protege.
The July 7 multiple bombings in London’s underground railways and a city bus left at least 54 people dead and close to 1,000 people injured.
“The British government stood to gain the most from the London bombings, so that they could tell their people not to protest against their war on terrorism”, the senior ayatollah said.
Jannati’s comments echoed a similar speech at last week’s Friday prayers’ sermon by Ayatollah Mohammad Emami-Kashani, who blamed the bombings on the West.
The Organisation of al-Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe, an al-Qaeda offshoot, claimed responsibility for the attacks, but Emami-Kashani said that the West, in particular the United States and Israel, carried the responsibility. “You who speak of al-Qaeda’s Islamic and terrorist nature, have you forgotten who are the mother and father of al-Qaeda”, the senior cleric questioned, in an address to the United Kingdom and the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. “Al-Qaeda’s father is in the White House and its mother is despotic Israel”.
CONTENTS
1. “Terrorist at journalists’ party” (Ynetnews, July 15, 2005)
2. “The curse of the language corrupters” (By Michelle Malkin, July 16, 2005)
3. “BBC language that Labour loves to hear” (Daily Telegraph, July 13, 2005)
[Note by Tom Gross]
TERRORIST IN REUTERS PARTY VIDEO
It has been revealed that Zakaria Zubeidi, the head of Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, made a guest appearance in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters in Israel and the Palestinian Authority for a colleague who was leaving. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has claimed responsibility for over 300 terror attacks since it was set up by Yasser Arafat (in part using European Union aid money) in 2000. Those attacks have resulted in hundreds of Israeli men, women and children being killed or maimed. Zubeidi has small black marks on his face after a bomb he was preparing blew up in his face three years ago. He is wanted by Israel on multiple murder charges.
Also present at the party, which took place in March, were journalists from the BBC, ITN, the Independent newspaper of London, and some French journalists.
Reuters spokeswoman Susan Allsopp said in a statement issued to Ynet, the internet site of Israel’s most popular newspaper Yediot Ahronoth, that the film “was shown at a private farewell party.”
(For more on the way Reuters reporters work in the Middle East, see
www.nationalreview.com/issue/gross200407120846.asp )
WHY NOT CALL “RAPISTS” “UNPLANNED LOVERS”?
Following my article “The BBC discovers ‘terrorism,’ briefly”, and often citing the examples in it, many journalists have now written about the BBC and the language they used in describing the London attacks.
For example, in the article attached below, Michelle Malkin, a nationally syndicated columnist in the US, looks at the use of language by the BBC and also by American politicians and media. What next, she asks? Why not call “burglars” “takers,” and “rapists” “unplanned lovers”?
INTERNAL MEMO AT BBC: “STOP CALLING THEM TERRORISTS”
The third article below, from the Daily Telegraph, says that a memo was sent to senior editors at the BBC only hours after the London bombs ordering them to stop using the word “terrorist” as the BBC was worried about offending its World Service audience. An argument broke out between some senior journalists and news executives which suggest that the London attacks brought home to the BBC what terrorism really means. I also know from sources at the BBC that my article has been discussed in private by senior BBC news execs.
I attach three articles, with summaries first.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
TERRORIST AT JOURNALISTS’ PARTY
“Terrorist at journalists’ party” (By Yaakov Lappin, Ynetnews, Yediot Ahronoth, July 15, 2005)
... Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made a “guest appearance” in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters news agency in Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a “going away” gift for a colleague, Ynetnews has learned.
Zubeidi, who heads Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, has been named by security officials as a key figure in organizing terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
Zubeidi’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have claimed responsibility for more than 300 terror acts in the last five years...
The party included guests from the BBC, ITN, the Independent newspaper, and French journalists...
THE CURSE OF THE LANGUAGE CORRUPTERS
“The curse of the language corrupters” (By Michelle Malkin, July 16, 2005)
Across the pond, the British Broadcasting Corp. is taking well-deserved lumps for whitewashing the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. Editors have reportedly expunged the word “terrorist” from the BBC Web site and substituted the sanitized “bomber” to describe the killers.
Next: “Burglars” will be “takers.” “Child molesters” will be “ticklers,” “Rapists” will be “unplanned lovers.”
High-minded BBC guidelines admonish employees against using words like “terrorist” that “carry emotional or value judgments.” Yet, employing a reporter, Barbara Plett, who told viewers she bawled her eyes out when an ailing Yasser Arafat was whisked off to France last November, is model objectivity.
But bashing the terror-coddling BBC is too easy. Let us turn to our own language corrupters.
Nearly four years after the September 11 attacks, the White House and the press still use the empty phrase “War on Terror” to describe the global battle against radical Islamist throat-slitters, suicide bombers and hijackers who incinerate children on their way to Disneyland. And in the wake of the London terrorist attacks, we Americans continue to bow to an unwritten editorial policy of invoking sanitized phrases and bloodless bluster as a substitute for concrete action.
... It’s precisely these kinds of national security profiling and targeted immigration enforcement measures that obstructionists characterize as an “anti-Muslim backlash,” which is why no one will talk about them despite all the “heightened alert” posturing.
In London, “terrorists” are “bombers.” In the U.S., citizen watchdogs are “vigilantes.”
The Ministry of Truth would be pleased.
BBC LANGUAGE THAT LABOUR LOVES TO HEAR
“BBC language that Labour loves to hear” (By Tom Leonard, London Daily Telegraph, July 13, 2005)
When is a terrorist not a terrorist? When he is on the BBC, of course. Where -according to the corporation’s editorial guidelines - “the word ‘terrorist’ itself can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding” ...
Within hours of the explosions, a memo was sent to senior editors on the main BBC news programmes from Helen Boaden, head of news. While she was aware “we are dancing on the head of a pin”, the BBC was very worried about offending its World Service audience, she said.
BBC output was not to describe the killers of more than 50 in London as “terrorists” although - nonsensically - they could refer to the bombings as “terror attacks”.
And while the guidelines generously concede that non-BBC should be allowed to use the “t” word, BBC online was not even content with that and excised it from its report of Tony Blair’s statement to the Commons.
A row has now broken out with a handful of the corporation’s most senior journalists and news executives, fighting what one described yesterday as a “disgusting and appalling” edict.
He was particularly angry, he added, because most World Service listeners don’t even pay a penny for the BBC...
Few people at the top of the BBC think that not calling terrorists “terrorists” is remotely absurd. And that, say their critics, is the nub of the problem: corporation bosses are so sure they are “doing good” and that their assumptions are shared by all that they believe they are apolitical...
TERRORIST AT JOURNALISTS’ PARTY
Terrorist at journalists’ party
Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made “guest appearance” in video prepared by Reuters staff as “going away” gift for colleague, Ynetnews has learned
By Yaakov Lappin
Ynetnews
July 15, 2005
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3113222,00.html
Close buddies? Top terrorist Zakaria Zubeidi made a “guest appearance” in a video prepared by the staff of Reuters news agency in Israel and the Palestinian Authority as a “going away” gift for a colleague, Ynetnews has learned.
Zubeidi, who heads Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin, has been named by security officials as a key figure in organizing terror attacks on Israeli civilians.
Zubeidi’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades have claimed responsibility for more than 300 terror acts in the last five years.
A Reuters spokeswoman confirmed the video’s existence, but said the London-based news organization is “not associated with any group or faction in any conflict.”
The screening, which occurred in a Jerusalem restaurant last March, involved the showing of a video during a private party.
“The video’s theme was what Israel would be like in 10 years,” said an Israeli government official who attended the party and viewed the video.
“All of a sudden, at the end, there is Zakaria Zubeidi, playing the head of Reuters. Zubeidi was sitting in Reuters’ Jenin office, saying he was Reuters’ chief,” the official said.
‘They thought video was hilarious’
The party included guests from the BBC, ITN, the Independent newspaper, and French journalists.
“They all thought the video was hilarious,” the official said. He added that only a few individuals did not seem amused during the screening.
“They were laughing; they thought it was very funny, he said.”
Reuters spokeswoman Susan Allsopp said in a statement to Ynetnews that the film “was a spoof video put together for a departing member of staff by a few of his colleagues in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It was shown at a private farewell party and was meant to be humorous.
“As soon as editorial management in Jerusalem became aware of the video they told the staff involved that Reuters found it to be inappropriate and in poor taste,” the statement said. “The member of staff for whom the party had been held has never met Mr. Zubeidi. Reuters would like to make it clear that it is not associated with any group or faction in any conflict.”
THE CURSE OF THE LANGUAGE CORRUPTERS
The curse of the language corrupters
By Michelle Malkin
July 16, 2005
Across the pond, the British Broadcasting Corp. is taking well-deserved lumps for whitewashing the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. Editors have reportedly expunged the word “terrorist” from the BBC Web site and substituted the sanitized “bomber” to describe the killers.
Next: “Burglars” will be “takers.” “Child molesters” will be “ticklers.” “Rapists” will be “unplanned lovers.”
High-minded BBC guidelines admonish employees against using words like “terrorist” that “carry emotional or value judgments.” Yet, employing a reporter, Barbara Plett, who told viewers she bawled her eyes out when an ailing Yasser Arafat was whisked off to France last November, is model objectivity.
But bashing the terror-coddling BBC is too easy. Let us turn to our own language corrupters.
Nearly four years after the September 11 attacks, the White House and the press still use the empty phrase “War on Terror” to describe the global battle against radical Islamist throat-slitters, suicide bombers and hijackers who incinerate children on their way to Disneyland. And in the wake of the London terrorist attacks, we Americans continue to bow to an unwritten editorial policy of invoking sanitized phrases and bloodless bluster as a substitute for concrete action.
How many times have you heard some cable TV talking head or political hack urging us to be on “heightened alert” - without having the courage to spell out exactly what that means?
How many times has this been followed by a furrowed-brow precaution from some civil rights lawyer or human rights activist urging us to avoid an “anti-Muslim backlash”?
I’d have an easier time cheering the “We will not yield” and “We are not afraid” sloganeering if just one of our tough talkers in Washington would get brutally specific about how they will show vigilance, courage, alertness and refusal to yield to radical Islamic terror. Allow me:
* A true state of “heightened alert” would mean barring any new religious visas for Muslim clerics and ending all visa-free travel, which means scrapping the anachronistic and insecure Transit Without a Visa program and the dangerously lax Visa Waiver Program.
* A true state of “heightened alert” would mean a targeted visa moratorium for terror-sponsoring and terror-friendly nations. The Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 placed such a ban on temporary visitor visas for individuals from the seven official state sponsors of terrorism. The list should be expanded and revisited if and when intelligence points to new al Qaeda breeding grounds. And yes, that means tourists from Egypt, Yemen, Syria and the Philippines might be denied a Grand Canyon vacation the next five years. Tough noogies.
At this point, despite all the grand rhetoric from both political parties about increased information-sharing and cooperation, I have limited confidence that our consular offices abroad are capable of stopping the next Mohamed Atta or Hani Hanjour from getting a temporary visa. The fewer applications from danger spots they have to deal with, the better.
* A true state of “heightened alert” would mean killing off the idiotic Diversity Visa Lottery Program once and for all and scouring the H1-B visa program for Islamist exploitation.
* A true state of “heightened alert” would mean unapologetic government monitoring of Arab and Muslim foreign students on temporary visas, Muslim chaplains and soldiers serving in the military and in prisons, and Arab and Muslim pilots and flight students.
* A true state of “heightened alert” would mean immediate deportation of illegal aliens from terror-sponsoring and terror-supporting nations, increased National Guard dispatches on both the northern and southern borders, aggressive police-federal cooperation to catch illegal border crossers and overstayers in the interior, and vigorous encouragement of volunteer border security efforts like the Minuteman Project.
It’s precisely these kinds of national security profiling and targeted immigration enforcement measures that obstructionists characterize as an “anti-Muslim backlash,” which is why no one will talk about them despite all the “heightened alert” posturing.
In London, “terrorists” are “bombers.” In the U.S., citizen watchdogs are “vigilantes.”
The Ministry of Truth would be pleased.