* This is an update to previous dispatches on this list, including Palestinians “to rename settlements after Arafat and Yassin” (August 24, 2005) and A tale of two museums: (1) Arafat’s belongings (2) Arabs respecting the Holocaust (June 16, 2005)
CONTENTS
1. Chirac honored on Palestinian Authority stamps
2. An Islamic guide in Spain on how to beat your wife
3. New Orleans student takes up studies at Haifa University
4. New Zealand MP who said he was sick of the Holocaust is ousted
5. Arabs polled see Bush as a greater threat than Bin Laden
6. Omar Bakri Mohammad calls for Muslims to leave Europe
7. Hamas kidnap and murder Jerusalem resident
8. French dictionary contains anti-Semitic and racist definitions
9. “Synagogue to become Hamas museum” (Ynetnews, Sept. 21, 2005)
10. “French FM’s faux pas at Yad Vashem” (Ha’aretz, Sept. 19, 2005)
11. Dutch railways finally apologizes for deporting Jews during WWII
12. Wednesday’s massacre in Darfur by Arabs largely unreported by media
13. “Who Ruined Gaza?” (By Efraim Karsh, National Post, Sept. 16, 2005)
CHIRAC HONORED ON PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY STAMPS
Jacques Chirac and Yasser Arafat have been honored together on two Palestinian Authority Stamps an acknowledgement of the tireless support which Chirac gave Arafat on the international stage, as well as his friendship for other Arab dictators such as Saddam Hussein and Bashar Assad. These stamps can be viewed online at several websites, including www.france-echos.com/actualite.php?cle=6887.
AN ISLAMIC GUIDE ON HOW TO BEAT YOUR WIFE
The Spanish press report today that an imam who wrote a book on how to beat your wife without leaving marks on her body has been ordered by a judge to study the country’s constitution.
The judge in Spain told Mohamed Kamal Mustafa, imam of a mosque in the southern Spanish town of Fuengirola, to spend six months studying three articles of the constitution and the universal declaration of human rights.
In his book “Women in Islam,” Mustafa wrote “The blows to a disobedient wife should be concentrated on the hands and feet using a rod that is thin and light so that it does not leave scars or bruises on the body.”
According to La Vanguardia newspaper, Mustafa will have to study articles 10, 14 and 15 of the constitution. The first two address “the dignity of a person and inviolable rights” and states “all Spaniards are equal before the law.” The third one states “the moral and physical integrity of a person in no case can be submitted to torture nor inhuman or degrading punishments or treatment.”
NEW ORLEANS STUDENT TAKES UP STUDIES AT HAIFA UNIVERSITY
In the dispatch Al Qaeda, Kuwaitis & Iranians “congratulate” Hurricane Katrina, and thank Allah (September 7, 2005) it was reported that four Israeli universities were offering to help students affected by Hurricane Katrina.
Sasha Parsons Solomon was a student of Loyola University in New Orleans for just four days when she was ordered to evacuate before the hurricane hit. The University of Haifa will house Solomon for free in student dormitories and she will receive a year of tuition without fees.
The university’s spokespeople have re-emphasized that although Solomon is Jewish, the offer of free tuition is available to any New Orleans student regardless of religion or creed.
UPDATE ON NEW ZEALAND MP WHO SAID HE WAS SICK OF THE HOLOCAUST
In the dispatch titled New Zealand MP says he is sick of the Holocaust (& other items) (April 12, 2005), it was reported that John Tamihere, a Labor MP in New Zealand, said he was “sick and tired of hearing how many Jews got gassed”.
In the parliamentary elections recently held in New Zealand, Tamihere lost his seat in Tamaki Makaurau. Tamihere said after the elections that this may not be the end of politics for him but he has plenty of options including partnership in a law firm or the manager of an investment company.
ARABS SEE BUSH AS A GREATER THREAT THAN BIN LADEN
A congressionally mandated panel, the Advisory Committee on Cultural Diplomacy, concluded that President George Bush is regarded in the Arab world as a greater threat than Osama Bin Laden.
After a fact-finding mission in the Middle East the panel concluded that “America’s image and reputation abroad could hardly be worse.” It said that in much of the world the U.S. is viewed “less a beacon of hope than a dangerous force to be countered.”
OMAR BAKRI MOHAMMAD CALLS FOR MUSLIMS TO LEAVE EUROPE
Muslim cleric Omar Bakri Mohammad, who has been banned from Britain since August, called on all Muslims to leave Europe in an interview on France 3 on Monday.
Bakri, the head of Al Muhajirun, said “There must be two distinct camps and so all Muslims must leave Europe.” He called on European converts to Islam to join him in Beirut “to learn Arabic before returning to Europe.” He went on to declare that he was convinced “the Islamic flag will fly one day over Downing Street.”
In the interview he also said that the backgrounds of the London bombers confirmed that the message of Osama Bin Laden “has reached the moderate communities.”
HAMAS KIDNAP AND MURDER JERUSALEM JEWISH MAN
Hamas claimed responsibility for the kidnapping and killing of Sasson Nuriel, an Israeli Jew, earlier this week. The terrorist group released a videotape of Nuriel shortly before his murder, reminiscent of terrorist videotapes of hostages in Iraq.
On the video, Nuriel, who had his face blindfolded with a green Hamas cloth and his hands bound behind his back, urged the Israeli government in Arabic to release all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The video also shows Nuriel sitting in front of a green Hamas banner.
Hamas kidnapped 10 soldiers between 1989 and 1996, at which time it switched tactics to suicide bombings.
Nuriel’s family described him as “A family man, a working man, who worked with Arabs for years, and accepted them as he accepted all human beings.”
PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY FORENSIC REPORT CONFIRMS HAMAS RESPONSIBILITY FOR EXPLOSION AT MILITARY PARADE
In the last dispatch (1) Bibi-v-Arik showdown today (2) The media, Hamas, and Rita (September 26, 2005) there was a note on the Hamas military parade explosion that killed 19 Palestinians. As part of its policy of telling total lies and hoping sympathetic western reporters will broadcast them, Hamas claimed Israel was responsible.
A report by the Palestinian Interior Ministry’s explosive unit has now confirmed that Hamas itself was responsible for this explosion. Shrapnel in the bodies of people killed in the blast came from homemade Hamas rockets, according to the P.A.
The forensic report said the shrapnel resembled that used in Qassam rockets used by Hamas. Following the blast, Hamas fired over 25 rockets into Israel at Israeli civilians.
DESTROYED NETZARIM SYNAGOGUE TO BE HAMAS MUSEUM
Ynetnews reports that a synagogue in the former Jewish settlement of Netzarim will be converted into a Hamas museum. Hamas has promised that visitors will be able to see missiles and rockets as well as weapons used in suicide bombing attacks that killed Israelis.
This is another example of the glorification of death, murder, and martyrdom that became so prominent in Palestinian society since Yasser Arafat’s return to Gaza in 1994.
FRENCH FM IN FAUX PAS AT YAD VASHEM
The new French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, (he was appointed in June) has been involved in an embarrassing exchange at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
Douste-Blazy asked Yad Vashem officials why British Jewish communities had not been killed in the Holocaust. As a source close to the Foreign Minister says in the Ha’aretz article below, surely all Frenchman knew of Britain’s role during the Second World War since “General de Gaulle led the operations of the Resistance from exile in London.”
FRENCH DICTIONARY CONTAINS ANTI-SEMITIC AND RACIST DEFINITIONS
A French dictionary was recalled this week after a computer virus resulted in it containing anti-Semitic definitions. The 2005 edition of Le Petit Littre had reverted to an 1874 edition.
The 1874 edition contained racist and anti-Semitic definitions for the words, “yellow”, “Negro” and “Jew”. The publishers said the forthcoming 2006 edition would contain a foreword explaining the evolution of some of the offensive terms.
DUTCH RAILWAYS FINALLY APOLOGIZES FOR DEPORTING JEWS
After decades of campaigning by Jewish groups, Dutch railways today finally admitted its active role in the Holocaust and apologized for helping to round up Jews and transport them forcibly to Auschwitz and other death camps. Aad Veenman, chief executive of Nederlandse Spoorwegen, acknowledged today that his firm had helped the Nazis deport 107,000 Dutch Jews 70 percent of the country’s Jewish community to death camps in Germany and Poland.
“On behalf of the company and from the bottom of my heart, I sincerely apologize for what happened during the war,” Veenman said at a ceremony at Muiderpoort station in Amsterdam.
Contrary to widespread myth that the Dutch are tolerant, the Dutch were some of the most pro-active killers of Jews anywhere in Europe during World War Two.
DARFUR: THE KILLING CONTINUES
On Wednesday night, around 300 armed Arabs slaughtered Black African refugees in a UN refugee camp in the Darfur region of Sudan. As usual, this atrocity has barely been reported in the international media.
Since February 2003 more than 300,000 have died in Darfur, mostly Africans at the hands of the Arab gangs, and an estimated 2 million people have been driven from their homes.
PLEASE LET US GO TO GAZA
It is estimated that 100 Egyptian brides were smuggled into Gaza last week. Women from Egypt are much cheaper in terms of dowry payments than those in the Gaza Strip. A bride named Samira told the Jerusalem Post that “this was an opportunity that should not be missed.” She went on to say that “the economic situation in Egypt is not as good as in the Gaza Strip.” This view is not often reported on BBC and CNN.
The final article below is by Prof. Efraim Karsh (who is a long-time subscriber to this email list), and illustrates the changes Gaza has gone through under Egyptian, Israeli and Palestinian rule.
I attach three articles with summaries first.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARIES
DESTROYED SYNAGOGUE TO BECOME HAMAS MUSEUM
“Synagogue to become Hamas museum” (By Ali Waked, Ynetnews, September 21, 2005)
The destroyed synagogue in the evacuated Gaza settlement of Netzarim is expected to be converted into a temporary Hamas museum in the next few days.
On Saturday members of Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, plan to set up an exhibit of the terror group’s “military industry” in what used to be a synagogue
Hamas promises that visitors will be able to see all of the weapons, “from stones to instruments used in suicide attacks and the ‘tunnel war.’” Missiles and rockets will also be on display, the groups said.
The decision to use the synagogue for the display was not coincidental. Immediately following the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza senior Hamas members said, “The synagogues are not religious structures, as they were built illegally.”
... The exhibit is part of Hamas’ show of strength, which is aimed a celebrating the army’s pullout, raising the group’s profile ahead of the upcoming Palestinian elections and warning all those who are considering to disqualify Hamas from participating in the general elections in accordance with Israel’s demand...
FRENCH FM ASKS WHY NO BRITISH JEWS DIED IN HOLOCAUST
“Ha’aretz investigates French FM’s faux pas at Yad Vashem” (By Avirama Golan, Ha’aretz, September 19, 2005)
The French satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaine reported in its September 14th issue that during the visit of French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to the new Holocaust museum in Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem on September 8, he asked - while perusing maps of European sites where Jewish communities had been destroyed - whether British Jews were not also murdered. Needless to say, Douste-Blazy’s question was met by his hosts with amazement. “But Monsieur le minister,” Le Canard quoted the ensuing conversation, “England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II.”
The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which, according to the magazine, was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: “Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?”
... According to an investigation by Ha’aretz on Sunday, the event actually occurred as described, although no official source was willing to confirm it...
Philippe Douste-Blazy is considered a successful and prominent politician in France. A cardiologist by training, he served until a year ago as health minister. His visit to Israel was noted as an additional positive step in the warming of relations between Israel and France.
“CAN YOU IMAGINE YET ANOTHER NATION ON THE SHORES OF THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN?”
“Who Ruined Gaza?” (By Efraim Karsh, National Post, Canada, September 16, 2005)
...During their 19-year occupation of the Gaza Strip (1948-67), the Egyptians ruled the area with an iron fist, keeping the local population in squalid, harshly supervised camps, where they could serve as a rallying point for anti-Israel sentiment. Life expectancy was low, malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife, and the level of education was low. Palestinians were denied Egyptian citizenship and were subjected to severe restrictions on travel and work, with unemployment among refugees running above 80%. “The Palestinians are useful to the Arab states as they are,” Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser candidly responded to a Western reporter in 1956. “We will always see that they do not become too powerful. Can you imagine yet another nation on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean?”
The passing of Gaza (and the West Bank) into the hands of Israel led to dramatic improvements in the Palestinians’ quality of life, placing the population of the territories well ahead of most of their Arab neighbors. Unlike Nasser, the Israelis were not interested in keeping the Palestinians artificially subjugated as a prop to demonstrate Arab suffering. Schools, hospitals and other civic amenities were built, and the economy exploded...
Since the PA’s creation in May 1994, the international community has committed an estimated US$10-billion to the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. But donor states turned a blind eye to the systematic misuse of these funds through their diversion to racist incitement, weaponry and secret bank accounts. Extensive protection and racketeering networks run by PA officials sprang up, while the national budget was plundered at will by PLO veterans and Arafat’s cronies...
To make things worse, from the moment of his arrival in Gaza, Arafat set out to build an extensive terrorist infrastructure. He refused to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as required by the Oslo accords, and tacitly approved the murder of hundreds of Israelis. He also reconstructed the PLO’s own terrorist apparatus, mainly under the auspices of the tanzim, which is the military arm of Fatah (the PLO’s largest constituent organization and Arafat’s own alma mater)...
One can only wonder what Wolfensohn, who has contributed US$500,000 of his own money to the development of Gaza, thinks about the events that have transpired in the days since the Israeli withdrawal. Greenhouses purchased for Gazans have been looted and smashed. Former synagogues have been burnt. The Egyptian border is being used to smuggle weapons. (Thanks to the new glut, the price of AK-47 assault rifles has apparently fallen by 50% in the last week.) Meanwhile, Hamas and rogue elements from Fatah are openly challenging the Palestinian Authority. The territory seems to be dissolving into chaos. Some will no doubt blame Israel for this, as well: The fact there are no Jews left in Gaza will not impede those who insist on seeing all Palestinians as victims of the Jewish state.
In fact, it is Palestinians’ own leaders who bear the blame for the miserable state of Gaza, and of Palestinian society more generally. Only when these leaders, and the groups that challenge them, renounce violence as a political tool and embrace civilized values such as rule of law will Gaza flourish.
DESTROYED SYNAGOGUE TO BECOME HAMAS MUSEUM
Synagogue to become Hamas museum
Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, plans to set up exhibit of the terror group’s ‘military industry’ in synagogue of evacuated settlement of Netzarim. On display: Suicide attack apparatus, missiles stones used to ‘abolish the Gaza occupation’
By Ali Waked
Ynetnews
September 21, 2005
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3145170,00.html
The destroyed synagogue in the evacuated Gaza settlement of Netzarim is expected to be converted into a temporary Hamas museum in the next few days.
On Saturday members of Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, plan to set up an exhibit of the terror group’s “military industry” in what used to be a synagogue.
The exhibit is set to be on display for three days, and will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.
The group said in a statement that “all of the tools used by Izz el-Din al-Qassam Brigades to abolish the Gaza occupation will be on display.”
Hamas promises that visitors will be able to see all of the weapons, “from stones to instruments used in suicide attacks and the ‘tunnel war.’” Missiles and rockets will also be on display, the groups said.
The decision to use the synagogue for the display was not coincidental. Immediately following the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza senior Hamas members said, “The synagogues are not religious structures, as they were built illegally.”
Marching to West Bank settlements
The exhibit is part of Hamas’ show of strength, which is aimed a celebrating the army’s pullout, raising the group’s profile ahead of the upcoming Palestinian elections and warning all those who are considering to disqualify Hamas from participating in the general elections in accordance with Israel’s demand.
Palestinian Authority officials say Hamas is also trying to present itself as an alternative to the Authority with organized political and military branches.
Another military parade in celebration of the IDF’s withdrawal from the northern West Bank is set to take place in Jenin Wednesday. Organizers are planning a march from Jenin toward the nearby settlements of Ganim and Kadim, which were evacuated by the IDF on Tuesday.
Armed al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (Fatah’s military wing) members as well as representatives of other terror groups are expected to lead the march. School children are also scheduled to participate in the celebrations.
FRENCH FM ASKS WHY NO BRITISH JEWS DIED IN HOLOCAUST
Ha’aretz investigates French FM’s faux pas at Yad Vashem
By Avirama Golan
Ha’aretz
September 19, 2005
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/626303.html
The French satirical magazine Le Canard Enchaine reported in its September 14th issue that during the visit of French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to the new Holocaust museum in Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem on September 8, he asked - while perusing maps of European sites where Jewish communities had been destroyed - whether British Jews were not also murdered. Needless to say, Douste-Blazy’s question was met by his hosts with amazement. “But Monsieur le minister,” Le Canard quoted the ensuing conversation, “England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II.”
The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which, according to the magazine, was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: “Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?”
Douste-Blazy arrived in Israel earlier this month for a first visit, as the guest of his Israeli counterpart, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom.
According to an investigation by Ha’aretz on Sunday, the event actually occurred as described, although no official source was willing to confirm it. Douste-Blazy did visit Yad Vashem on September 8, at 11 A.M. He was in fact escorted by the curator of the museum, his entourage from the French foreign ministry and several French reporters.
One of the escorts confirmed on Sunday, on condition of anonymity, that the quotes in Le Canard were accurate, and that they caused great embarrassment. “It’s a bit difficult to understand,” the source said, “how an educated French person, who was serving in the French government during the huge celebrations of the Normandy landings, does not remember basic facts about the history of World War II, and especially Britain’s role, especially in light of the fact, that France’s great leader, General de Gaulle, led the operations of the Resistance from exile in London.”
The French embassy in Israel learned of the embarrassing incident from Le Canard.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Iris Rosenberg said in response that the French foreign minister had visited the Holocaust memorial site at the said date and time, and that she hoped his visit was “successful and enriching.”
Philippe Douste-Blazy is considered a successful and prominent politician in France. A cardiologist by training, he served until a year ago as health minister. His visit to Israel was noted as an additional positive step in the warming of relations between Israel and France.
WHO RUINED GAZA?
Who Ruined Gaza?
By Efraim Karsh
National Post (Canada)
September 16, 2005
No sooner had Israel completed its withdrawal of 8,000 Jewish citizens from the Gaza Strip than official Palestinian spokesmen proclaimed that this move would not end the occupation -- since Israel would continue to control the region’s coast and air space.
In fact, Israel’s occupation of the Strip ended not in August, 2005, but 11 years earlier. The declaration of principles signed on the White House lawn in 1993 by the PLO and the Israeli government provided for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip for a transitional period, during which Israel and the Palestinians would negotiate a permanent peace settlement. By May, 1994, Israel had completed its withdrawal from Gaza (apart from various Israeli settlements) and the Jericho area of the West Bank. On July 1, PLO chairman Yasser Arafat made his triumphant entry into Gaza, and shortly afterward both the Israeli civil administration and military government were dissolved.
From then on, Gaza’s Palestinian population no longer lived under Israeli occupation, but rather under the jurisdiction of the Arafat-led Palestinian Authority (PA). As the virulently anti-Israel tone of Palestinian media and school curricula shows, not to mention the territory’s extensive terrorist network, the Israeli presence during this period was virtually non-existent.
But Palestinians and their supporters were not about to give up the “occupation” charge. Since the Israeli conquest of Gaza and the West Bank during the 1967 Six Day war, the term has become the Palestinian trump propaganda card, allowing them not only to demonize Israel and justify terrorism, but also to extract substantial international aid. This week, as the Israeli army evacuated its last troops from Gaza, billions more dollars were set to flow in.
The Palestinians argue that such funds are necessary to repair the damage caused by Israelis. Upon his arrival in Gaza in 1994, Arafat lost no time in painting conditions there in the blackest possible shades. “You can’t imagine the poor shape in which we received Gaza,” he complained. “The infrastructure was totally ruined. The Israelis took everything before their departure: doors, windows, light bulbs, and taps ... There is no ill from which Gaza does not suffer.”
This claim was divorced from reality. During their 19-year occupation of the Gaza Strip (1948-67), the Egyptians ruled the area with an iron fist, keeping the local population in squalid, harshly supervised camps, where they could serve as a rallying point for anti-Israel sentiment. Life expectancy was low, malnutrition, infectious diseases, and child mortality were rife, and the level of education was low. Palestinians were denied Egyptian citizenship and were subjected to severe restrictions on travel and work, with unemployment among refugees running above 80%. “The Palestinians are useful to the Arab states as they are,” Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser candidly responded to a Western reporter in 1956. “We will always see that they do not become too powerful. Can you imagine yet another nation on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean?”
The passing of Gaza (and the West Bank) into the hands of Israel led to dramatic improvements in the Palestinians’ quality of life, placing the population of the territories well ahead of most of their Arab neighbors. Unlike Nasser, the Israelis were not interested in keeping the Palestinians artificially subjugated as a prop to demonstrate Arab suffering. Schools, hospitals and other civic amenities were built, and the economy exploded.
During the 1970’s, in fact, the West Bank and Gaza constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world -- ahead of Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself. Although GNP per capita grew somewhat more slowly thanks to the rapidly expanding Palestinian population, the rate was still high by international standards, with per-capita GNP expanding tenfold between 1968 and 1991 from US$165 to US$1,715 (compared with Jordan’s US$1,050, Egypt’s US$600, Turkey’s US$1,630, and Tunisia’s US$1,440).
Under Israeli rule, the Palestinians also made vast progress in social welfare. Life expectancy rose from 48 in 1967 to 72 in 2000 (compared with an average of 68 years for all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa). Israeli medical programs reduced the infant-mortality rate of 60 per 1,000 live births in 1968 to 15 per 1,000 in 2000. (In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, by comparison, the rate was 64, in Egypt 40, in Jordan 23, in Syria 22). And under a systematic program of inoculation, childhood diseases such as polio, whooping cough, tetanus and measles were eradicated.
No less remarkable were advances in the Palestinians’ standard of living. By 1986, 93% of the population in the West Bank and Gaza had electricity around the clock, as compared with 21% in 1967; 85% had running water in dwellings, as compared to 16% in 1967; 84% had electric or gas ranges for cooking, as compared to 4% in 1967; and so on for refrigerators, televisions and cars.
Finally, during the two decades preceding the intifada of the late 1980’s, the number of enrolled schoolchildren in the territories grew by 102%, though the population itself had grown by only 28%. Even more dramatic was the progress in higher education. At the onset of the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, not a single university existed in these territories. By the early 1990s, there were seven such institutions, boasting some 16,500 students, as compared with six in Israel itself. Illiteracy rates dropped to 14% of those over age 15, compared with 69% in Morocco, 61% in Egypt, 45% in Tunisia, and 44% in Syria.
But all of these economic and social achievements were steadily undone during the 1990s as the population of the territories came under the PA’s jurisdiction.
Since the PA’s creation in May 1994, the international community has committed an estimated US$10-billion to the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza. But donor states turned a blind eye to the systematic misuse of these funds through their diversion to racist incitement, weaponry and secret bank accounts. Extensive protection and racketeering networks run by PA officials sprang up, while the national budget was plundered at will by PLO veterans and Arafat’s cronies.
Their most notorious rackets derived from the monopoly rights for the production and sale of virtually all basic goods affecting the population’s daily life, from wheat, petrol, and cement, to wood, gravel, cigarettes, and cars. This has not only allowed the ruling elite to make large profits at the expense of ordinary Palestinians, but has also had a detrimental effect on the economy as a whole by preventing competition and discouraging entrepreneurship.
To make things worse, from the moment of his arrival in Gaza, Arafat set out to build an extensive terrorist infrastructure. He refused to disarm Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as required by the Oslo accords, and tacitly approved the murder of hundreds of Israelis. He also reconstructed the PLO’s own terrorist apparatus, mainly under the auspices of the tanzim, which is the military arm of Fatah (the PLO’s largest constituent organization and Arafat’s own alma mater).
Eventually, Arafat resorted to outright mass violence, first in September, 1996, to publicly discredit the newly-elected Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and then in September, 2000, with the launch of his all-out terror war (euphemistically called the al-Aqsa Intifada), this shortly after being offered by Netanyahu’s successor, Ehud Barak, the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and 92% of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.
This combination of corruption and terrorism proved catastrophic. When the declaration of principles was signed on the White House lawn in September, 1993, conditions in the territories were still better than those in most neighbouring Arab states -- despite the economic decline caused by the first intifada of 1987-93. But within six months of Arafat’s arrival in Gaza, the standard of living in the strip fell by 25%, and more than half of the area’s residents claimed to have been happier under Israel.
Things got much worse in 2000. War is by its nature a destructive endeavour, and Arafat’s terror war was no exception, inflicting great damage on Israel but also eradicating the fragile fabric of civil society that had been developing in the territories during the decades prior to his arrival. Unemployment increased from 10% to an average of 41% during 2002, and the proportion of the population that was poor rose from 20% to over 50%. Private investment and trade fell dramatically.
According to a recent World Bank report, “the precipitator of this economic crisis has been the “restriction on the movement of goods and people” imposed by Israel to protect its citizens. But this analysis substitutes cause for effect. For it is not the closure of Palestinian areas that has precipitated the Palestinian economic malaise but rather the tidal wave of suicide bombers that made this closure inevitable.
Shortly before the launch of the Palestinian war of terror, the then-President of the World Bank James Wolfensohn justified the high levels of international aid to the West Bank and Gaza by claiming that continued economic development was the key to peace. Wolfensohn is now the international special envoy for disengagement, and he continues to make this argument: “This is a moment of destiny,” he recently said. “Both sides need to understand the issue that the economic and social development of the West Bank and Gaza is part of Israel’s security.”
One can only wonder what Wolfensohn, who has contributed US$500,000 of his own money to the development of Gaza, thinks about the events that have transpired in the days since the Israeli withdrawal. Greenhouses purchased for Gazans have been looted and smashed. Former synagogues have been burnt. The Egyptian border is being used to smuggle weapons. (Thanks to the new glut, the price of AK-47 assault rifles has apparently fallen by 50% in the last week.) Meanwhile, Hamas and rogue elements from Fatah are openly challenging the Palestinian Authority. The territory seems to be dissolving into chaos. Some will no doubt blame Israel for this, as well: The fact there are no Jews left in Gaza will not impede those who insist on seeing all Palestinians as victims of the Jewish state.
In fact, it is Palestinians’ own leaders who bear the blame for the miserable state of Gaza, and of Palestinian society more generally. Only when these leaders, and the groups that challenge them, renounce violence as a political tool and embrace civilized values such as rule of law will Gaza flourish.
This dispatch, which has more short introductory notes than usual, explores the renewed Israeli-Palestinian violence of recent days, and the media’s reporting on it, and tonight’s crucial battle for control of Israel’s ruling Likud party between the present Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
CONTENTS
1. Sharon and Bibi in Likud leadership showdown
2. Palestinians fire missiles into Israel while Rita lashes Texas
3. Hamas explode missiles during military parade, killing 19 Palestinians
4. Believing Hamas on CNN International
5. Israel “to build $900m fence along Egyptian border”
6. Bahrain ends ban on Israeli goods
7. Afghanistan to recognize Israel?
8. Al Qaeda enters Gaza
9. Richard Jones, new U.S. ambassador to Israel, and his Saudi-named dog
10. Daniel Kurtzer: “Palestinian crybabies should be on Oprah”
11. Destroyed greenhouses
12. “Bahrain Ends Ban On Israeli Goods” (AP, Sept. 24, 2005)
13. “Israel sets international border with Gaza” (Reuters, Sept. 21, 2005)
14. “Palestinians Take Control of Gaza Border” (AP, Sept. 23, 2005)
15. “Sickening plunder of Gaza’s green gems” (New York Daily News, Sept. 22, 2005)
SHARON & BIBI IN LIKUD LEADERSHIP SHOWDOWN
In what is being widely billed as a crucial vote that will shape the future of Israeli politics, the 3,000-member Likud Central Committee will vote this evening on whether to hold a contest for leadership of the party in November. If the vote fails, Ariel Sharon will continue to lead the party until at least April.
If the vote passes, Binyamin Netanyahu hopes to gain from the strong dissatisfaction within the Likud over the disengagement from Gaza. Opinion polls suggest Netanyahu has a slight lead over Sharon within the Likud party.
Outside the Likud, Sharon’s standing in Israel and abroad has never been higher than it is now. If he loses the Likud leadership contest, aides to the Prime Minister have suggested to the Israeli press that he may form his own political party.
Israel’s next election is not due until November 2006, but may well be held earlier as a result of the political turmoil following the decision to withdraw from Gaza without any security guarantees in return by the Palestinian Authority.
PALESTINIANS FIRE MISSILES INTO ISRAEL WHILE RITA LASHES TEXAS
With Hurricane Rita feared to be worse than it actually was, it was not surprising that it dominated the headlines in recent days (“Houston you have a problem,” “Mass Texodus,” “New rain of fear in New Orleans,” etc).
Yet lost in the 24/7 coverage of the build up to Hurricane Rita, U.S. TV news networks (almost without exception) failed to report on the rockets fired from Gaza on Israeli civilians at dawn on Saturday.
Five Israeli civilians were wounded following the firing of more than 25 rockets toward the southern Israeli city of Sderot. Later in the weekend another 15 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza.
OPERATION FIRST RAIN
In response to Palestinian rockets, Israel launched “Operation First Rain” aimed at Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets in the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Air Force has been focusing on the cells that have been firing Qassam rockets into Israel. Most of the Israeli attacks were against empty buildings and roads used to transport missile launchers.
Early Sunday more than 200 terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad were arrested.
An Israeli Air Force Strike that killed two Hamas members was denounced as a “treacherous crime”. The Damascus based, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed this was a “massacre”.
HAMAS EXPLODE MISSILES DURING MILITARY PARADE, KILLING 19 PALESTINIANS
A truck filled with gunmen and packed with weapons accidentally exploded at a Hamas rally on Friday in the Jabalya refugee camp. The explosion killed 19 people and injured at least 120 people, including a large number of children that Hamas had invited to the parade. This was yet another rally claiming victory over Israel following Israel’s pullout from Gaza.
Hamas claimed Israeli aircraft were responsible for the explosion. Nazir Rayan, a Hamas leader said, “We will avenge the blood of our martyrs.” The Associated Press reported that even after the explosion “seven or eight gunmen stood in the back of another truck riding through Gaza, using their feet to stop a half-dozen rockets from bouncing around in the bed.”
Even though almost no one in Gaza took Hamas’ claim that Israel was responsible for the explosion seriously, and the Palestinian Authority denounced Hamas for carelessly parading around with weapons, and confirmed they had gone off accidentally, the international version of CNN muddied their reporting so that it appeared as if Israel might have been responsible for this accidental blast. And many other Arab media outlets reported as fact that Israel was responsible, even though Israel vehemently denied it.
A spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released the following statement. “The Fatah Central Committee holds the Hamas movement fully responsible for the victims of the military parade (that was held) among civilians.”
BELIEVING HAMAS ON CNN INTERNATIONAL
On CNN International, Jerusalem correspondent Guy Raz failed to tell viewers of the Palestinian Authority statement (above) in his on-air interviews and reports in the 24 hours after this report came out.
Thousands of Hamas supporters screamed for revenge on Israel at the funeral of the 19 people killed.
On Al-Jazeera, Israeli Major Eytan Arussi said it looked like the explosion had been caused by one of Hamas’s new Katyusha rockets and that Hamas had only itself to blame. The Hamas spokesman on the programme refused to reply to this claim and criticized Al-Jazeera for allowing a representative of the “Zionist enemy” on to the television station.
Whilst BBC world service was obsessed in Gaza over deaths that Israel wasn’t responsible for, it barely reported that over the weekend in Afghanistan 14 suspected Taliban fighters were killed by US-led forces.
ACCIDENTAL EXPLOSIONS IN GAZA NOT A NEW PHENOMENON
Recently terrorist “work accidents” have caused great loss of life and led to many injuries in Gaza. For example, a Hamas weapons warehouse exploded in Gaza City earlier this month, and during an Islamic Jihad rally at an abandoned Jewish settlement last week, a Palestinian gunman accidentally shot himself in the head. Many media add these to their overall tolls of Palestinians and Israelis who have died in the Intifada and suggest Israel was responsible.
SCHOOLS CLOSED IN SDEROT
High schools and kindergartens in the southern Israeli town of Sderot were suspended on Sunday due to the security situation, whilst the town’s market was also not fully open. Sderot residents were confined to their homes throughout the weekend. This follows the firing of over 40 Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel over the last three days.
BBC BIAS AS USUAL
BBC World made a specific point of mentioning that the Israeli Air Force had hit a Hamas-run elementary school in airstrikes on Saturday (which Israel waited to be empty before striking it) but no mention was made of the Sderot schools being closed having been targeted by Hamas with kids inside. In recent days all BBC international radio and television networks have led with Israeli strikes in Gaza, while all-but-ignoring the Qassam missiles on Israel, suggesting Israel was attacking Gaza with no pretext.
GROUND FORCES MOVED TO GAZA BORDER
Following the rocket barrage from Gaza, Israel ordered ground forces to the Gaza border. In the Cabinet meeting on Sunday morning, Ariel Sharon said, “there are no restrictions on the use of any measures in order to strike at the terrorists, their equipment and where they find shelter.”
Israeli officials made repeated warnings during the pullout from Gaza that any violence from the Strip would be harshly dealt with.
SHEIKH MUHAMMAD KHALIL AND THE DEATH OF ISRAELI CHILDREN
The Israeli Air Force killed a senior commander of Islamic Jihad in the southern Gaza Strip, Sheikh Muhammad Khalil. He was responsible for many attacks on Israelis including the murder of pregnant woman Tali Hatuel and her four daughters in Gush Katif in May 2004.
Khalil was also an explosives expert; his work was to improve the range and quality of mortars to be fired into Israel to ensure maximum loss of life of Israeli civilians.
GAZA WITHDRAWAL ALLOWS HEAVY WEAPONRY TO REACH WEST BANK
The head of the Israeli Shin Bet security force, Yuval Diskin, told reporters last week that many weapons have been smuggled across the Egyptian border into Gaza and from there into the West Bank since Israel left the area. According to Diskin, 3,000 rifles, 1.5 million bullets, 150-200 rocket propelled grenades and hundreds of kilograms of explosives have been smuggled in.
ISRAEL TO BUILD $900M FENCE ALONG EGYPTIAN BORDER?
Middle East Newsline, a generally reliable source, reports that Israel has been drawing up a plan to build a $900 million security system along the 200-kilometer border with Egypt. The security system will look to halt the infiltration of terrorists from the Sinai Peninsula into Israel.
BAHRAIN ENDS BAN ON ISRAELI GOODS
After the recent overtures towards Israel from Pakistan, Qatar and Indonesia, Bahrain is the latest country to seek to improve relations with Israel.
On Friday, Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa announced that the Gulf State has repealed the economic boycott of Israel, to comply with its free trade agreement with the U.S.
AFGHANISTAN TO RECOGNIZE ISRAEL?
The President of Afghanistan was reported to have expressed readiness to recognize Israel, according to the Italian newspaper Il Giornale. Hamid Karzai said “other Muslim states have relations with Israel, we are open to contact and we appreciate the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip: as soon as the Palestinian State is recognized, we will have no problem in resuming relations with Israel.”
EUROPEAN UNION GIVES MORE MONEY TO P.A.
The European Union has announced a fresh $612.5 million aid package to the Palestinian Authority. The money is intended to revitalize the Gaza Strip and improve the overall Palestinian economy. It comes on top of hundreds of millions of other European Union aid to the Palestinians, much of which was used to purchase weapons.
ISRAELI ARMY COMPLETES PULLOUT FROM WEST BANK SETTLEMENTS
Last week Israel completed it’s pullout from a corner of the northern West Bank by withdrawing from and destroying the settlements of Sanur and Homesh. Unlike the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers will continue to patrol this part of the West Bank.
AL QAEDA IN GAZA
Hamas head Mahmoud al-Zahar told the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera last week that there is an Al Qaeda presence in Gaza. He told the paper, “Yes it is true what they say. A couple of men from Al Qaeda infiltrated into Gaza.” Zahar also said that Palestinian terror groups had also been in touch with Al Qaeda by phone.
HAMAS TERROR MASTERMIND CONVICTED
Last week, Abbas al-Sayad was found guilty of 35 counts of murder including planning the 2002 suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya which killed 30 people. Al-Sayad was the head of Hamas’ military wing in Tulkarem. He will be sentenced in November.
The Park Hotel bombing on the eve of Passover is one of the most devastating terror attacks to hit Israel in recent years. The attack prompted the launch of Operation Defensive Shield shortly afterwards
At the time of his arrest Al-Sayad had already prepared two more suicide bombers’ explosive belts and a bottle of Cyanide to be used for a mass poison attack. The prosecution said Al-Sayad had been funded by Hamas’s Syrian leadership.
RICHARD JONES, NEW U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL, AND HIS SAUDI-NAMED DOG
Last week Richard Jones took up his position as the new U.S. ambassador to Israel. The Washington Post reported that Jones has “roots in the Arab world so deep, that his beloved greyhound is named Kisa for Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, his first posting in the Arab world.”
At his confirmation hearing Jones admitted that he is “a novice in dealing with Israel.” He also stated that he is “adamantly opposed to violence in all forms, especially extremist and terrorist violence.”
Jones has voiced support for Israel’s defensive measures in the last few days. He said “We all know that the terrorists are trying to provoke Israel at a very sensitive time, and we understand exactly what the government’s position is and the response it has taken.”
DANIEL KURTZER: “PALESTINIAN CRYBABIES SHOULD BE ON OPRAH”
In off-the-cuff (and unconfirmed) remarks reported in Yediot Ahronoth, outgoing U.S. ambassador to Tel Aviv said “The Palestinian Authority has to learn to stop blaming everyone else for their problems. They have become such big crybabies they should appear on Oprah.”
DESTROYED GREENHOUSES
I attach four articles below. The first is on the decision by Bahrain to repeal their economic boycott of Israel. The next two describe the situation on the Gaza-Israel border. The final article is from the New York Daily News on how the Palestinians have plundered the greenhouses left in Gaza to help the Palestinians sustain their own economy. Those greenhouses were donated at a cost of $14m. by American Jewish philanthropists last month and mostly destroyed by Palestinian mobs days later. Former world bank chief and now US envoy to Gaza, James Wolfensohn, demonstrated his naivety of the situation in the middle east by donating $500,000 of his own money to buy the soon to be pillaged greenhouses for the Palestinians and persuading other wealthy American Jews to do the same.
-- Tom Gross
BAHRAIN ENDS BAN ON ISRAELI GOODS
Bahrain Ends Ban On Israeli Goods
The Associated Press
September 24, 2005
Bahrain has repealed its economic boycott of Israel to comply with its free trade agreement with the United States, the Gulf state’s foreign minister was quoted as saying Friday.
The move makes Bahrain the first of the six Arab states of the Gulf to abolish its trade boycott of Israel, although others, such as Qatar and Oman, have taken limited steps in that direction.
The repeal coincides with signs of a thaw in relations between Israel and Arab and Muslim states following its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Earlier this month, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in New York, and the Israeli foreign minister held talks with his Qatari and Tunisian counterparts on the margins of the U.N. summit there.
Only three Arab states have full diplomatic relations with Israel at present: Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania.
“Bahrain took the decision to end the boycott of Israeli goods because this is one of the conditions of the free trade agreement” with the U.S., Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Mohammed bin Mubarak Al Khalifa, told the independent Arabic newspaper, Alwasat, in an interview in New York.
The minister did not say when the boycott was repealed. Foreign Ministry officials could not be reached Friday, the Muslim weekend in the island kingdom.
Bahrain, which hosts the base of the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, signed the free trade deal with the U.S. last year, becoming the first Gulf state to do so. Its parliament and king have endorsed the agreement, but it has not yet been ratified by the U.S. Congress.
The agreement calls for trade relations with all members of the World Trade Organization, which includes Israel.
Alwasat asked the foreign minister if Bahrain would forge diplomatic ties with Israel.
“That will depend on the general consensus of the Arab League,” Sheik Mohammed was quoted as replying. The League’s peace plan offers Israel full diplomatic relations in exchange for its withdrawal from all territories captured in the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, the establishment of a Palestinian state and a solution for Palestinian refugees.
The practical effects of the minister’s statement remain to be seen. Up to now, Bahrain has refused to admit Israeli goods. A consignment of Israeli-made fuel filters and automotive parts were confiscated and destroyed in 2003.
It is also unclear whether Israeli business executives would be allowed to enter the kingdom. Officially, Israeli passport holders cannot pass through immigration at the island’s airport.
Moreover, there have been many anti-Israeli demonstrations in Bahrain since its political system was liberalized in 2002.
The Arab embargo against Israel goes back to the 1960s when the Arab League declared a boycott of all Israeli companies and products. A blacklist was drawn up that featured Western companies which did business with Israel. However, the boycott was heavily eroded after Egypt in 1979 and Jordan in 1994 signed peace treaties with Israel.
ISRAEL DECLARES FRONTIER WITH GAZA AN INTERNATIONAL BORDER
Israel sets international border with Gaza
Reuters
September 21, 2005
Israel declared its frontier with the Gaza Strip an international border on Wednesday, formally setting part of a boundary for the first time with an eventual Palestinian state.
Israeli Interior Minister Ofer Pines-Paz called the measure, which he signed, “a first step to civilianise the passages and to turn them into borders” between Israel and Gaza after Israel completed a military pullout from the territory on September 12.
Sabine Haddad, a ministry spokeswoman, said Pines had turned four crossing points between Gaza and Israel into official border crossings. “For Israel this is now an international border,” he said.
Israelis and foreign nationals will now need a passport to move between Israel and all parts of Gaza, and will fill out border entry forms rather than military documents as they had before, Haddad said.
But she said the few Palestinians allowed into Israel for jobs or medical care would not need a passport to do so, and would still require security permits.
Palestinians, who dispute Israel’s efforts to retain control over Gaza’s key border crossings for now after declaring an end to 38 years of military rule there, dismissed the Israeli measure to set a border as premature.
“I don’t think we can classify it legally as an international border now because Gaza is not free of occupation,” chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
“I think international borders will be agreed once we finish permanent status negotiations on borders,” he said.
Palestinians are also unhappy that Israel, citing security needs, is keeping control over Gaza’s sea lanes and air space.
Israel has closed Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt for the next six months while discussions continue for possible international monitoring by a third party. Israel says it wants to prevent militants from smuggling weapons into the strip.
A U.S.-backed “road map” peace plan, endorsed by Israel and the Palestinians, calls for eventual Palestinian statehood in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. Some 1.4 million Palestinians live in Gaza and 2.4 million in the West Bank.
Israel says it will resume peace talks only if Palestinians disarm militant groups bent on its destruction. Palestinians accuse Israel of delaying tactics to strengthen its hold on Jewish settlements in the West Bank that Israel wants to keep.
PALESTINIANS TAKE CONTROL OF GAZA BORDER
Palestinians Take Control of Gaza Border
By Lara Sukhtian
The Associated Press
September 23, 2005
Palestinians took charge of a border for the first time ever on Friday, allowing thousands to cross between the Gaza Strip and Egypt in a temporary opening of the frontier.
Hours before Palestinians in Gaza began tentatively testing their border authority at the Rafah crossing, Israeli forces pursuing Islamic Jihad militants in the West Bank killed three gunmen.
Israel shut down Rafah, Gaza’s only gateway to the outside world through Egypt, just before it concluded its troop pullout from the coastal strip last week after 38 years of occupation. Israel wants Rafah to remain sealed for months for a technological upgrade and to test the Palestinians’ ability to take control in Gaza.
In the meantime, Palestinians are to use an alternative, Israeli-controlled crossing a few miles away at the junction of the Israeli, Egyptian and Gaza borders. That crossing is to be opened next week though Palestinians object to this option.
Under these circumstances, Israel in effect retains control over Gaza’s borders. But it did not object when the Palestinians earlier this week announced plans to open Rafah for two days starting Friday, for the most part to allow for the passage of people seeking medical treatment, or studying or residing abroad.
Several thousand travelers were at Rafah on Friday morning to take advantage of that window, which is to remain open continuously until early Sunday morning.
Palestinians turned over travel documents to Palestinian border police at the gates of the once heavily guarded crossing, waiting for border officials to call them to board buses that would take them to the Rafah terminal, and from there, to Egypt. Some sat on suitcases napping as border officials called out names from the windows of the shuttle buses. Luggage was passed from hand to hand as the travelers and their bags started moving.
Inside the gate, new X-ray equipment was in place, and plastic still covered the new chairs in the air-conditioned waiting area.
Manal Hatem, 36, arrived at Rafah at 3 a.m. with her 11-month-old baby and a sister-in-law, en route to a religious pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
“This is the first time we cross without the Israelis standing over our heads, and that indeed is a blessing,” Hatem said.
Aeronautical engineer Sufyan Al Ali, 28, an employee of the long-grounded Palestinian Airlines, was on his way to Jordan for a 10-day refresher course. More than two hours after arriving at the crossing, he still hadn’t boarded a bus.
“This place wouldn’t be so chaotic if they gave us more than two days,” he said. “But at least there are no Israelis, and two days are better than nothing, for now.”
Thousands of Palestinians busted through the Gaza-Egypt border last week after the last of the Israeli troops withdrew, and weapons and other contraband were smuggled into Gaza. The frontier was later sealed to stop the chaos, reinforcing Palestinians’ perceptions that they are still occupied by Israel.
Rafah, an internationally recognized border crossing, is key to the economic recovery of Gaza, which was devastated by nearly five years of Israeli-Palestinian fighting. Stable border arrangements there would encourage foreign investment in Gaza, and ensure the free flow of people, long cooped up under Israeli travel restrictions.
On Thursday, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz indicated Israel would speed up its plans to reopen the crucial crossing. Israel had originally said the crossing would be closed for six months to allow for new security and customs arrangements.
But Mofaz told military officers he intends to reopen it in January.
From next week, Palestinians will be able to use the new Kerem Shalom facility at the junction of the Israeli, Egyptian and Gaza borders, defense officials said. But Palestinians insist on free access in and out of Gaza through Rafah, with no Israeli presence, and object to the Kerem Shalom option.
Earlier Friday, Israeli forces killed three Palestinian gunmen in a West Bank raid.
Israeli forces went into the village of Ilar near Tulkarem after midnight, and surrounded a building to arrest senior Islamic Jihad militants holed up inside, the military said. Three gunmen fled in two separate directions, and were shot dead after opening fire on Israeli troops who pursued them, the military said.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Israeli incursion into Tulkarem, and the assassination of three Palestinians,” Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
Despite a cease-fire declared in February that has drastically reduced violence after five years of conflict, Israel continues to target Islamic Jihad cells. Shortly after the truce was declared, Islamic Jihad carried out a suicide bombing attack in Tel Aviv that killed five Israelis.
PA POWERLESS TO STOP SICKENING PLUNDER OF GAZA’S GREEN GEMS
Sickening plunder of Gaza’s green gems
By Corky Siemaszko
New York Daily News
September 22, 2005
A week after they descended like locusts on the greenhouses that Jewish settlers nurtured in Gaza, looters continue to pillage what should be a prize asset for a fledgling Palestinian state.
And the Palestinian Authority, which took over Gaza after the Israelis evacuated the territory, appears powerless to stop them.
When a Daily News correspondent visited abandoned Jewish settlements in Gaza, he found brazen vandals dismantling farms that once produced some of the world’s finest tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.
The now-gutted greenhouses were gifts to the Palestinian people from U.S. philanthropists, who raised $14 million to buy them from departing settlers.
“It was our work for a long time and it was supposed to help even more people now,” said heartbroken Zaki Karim, 51, a Palestinian who worked at greenhouses in what was the Gadid settlement. “But it’s a mess.”
Palestinian Interior Ministry spokesman Tawfiq Abu Qusa insisted the damage was limited to 30% of the 4,000 or so greenhouses - and blamed most of the vandalism on spiteful Jewish settlers. “The Palestinians damaged so little you can’t even count it,” he said.
One of the philanthropists, Daily News Chairman and Publisher Mortimer B. Zuckerman, called that assertion “ridiculous.”
“We thought it was a chance to show the Palestinians that there were more benefits from cooperation than confrontation,” Zuckerman said. “I’m just sad that they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces. ... It’s almost inexplicable.”
The World Bank reported 90% of the greenhouses were intact when the Israelis left. Facts on the ground reveal that much of that bounty is now gone.
“All over Gush Katif the greenhouses have been damaged and a lot was stolen from them,” Karim said, referring to former Jewish settlements in southwest Gaza. In Gadid, much of the expensive equipment used to tend the crops was stolen. So were the water pumps, irrigation lines and all the fuse boxes.
At the former Katif settlement, a Palestinian soldier, Pvt. Mohamed Cidawi, said looters made off with most of the metal support beams and even stole the plastic and canvas coverings that protected the vegetables from the hot sun.
“Go away,” Cidawi shouted when he spied a boy with a sledge hammer preparing to smash a fuse box. “If I see you here another time, I’ll kick your ass!”
In the nearby Neveh Dekalim settlement, there were no soldiers to stop 29-year-old Samir Al-Najar and his eight-man crew from demolishing a half-acre greenhouse. Al-Najar insisted the land was his family’s before Israel occupied it in 1967 and that he was reclaiming it.
“I want to reorganize the land so we’re clearing it out for now,” Al-Najar said as two workers carried off a stack of tall metal support beams. Asked whether he intended to sell the materials, Al-Najar shook his head. “We’ll probably rebuild with them, but I want the greenhouses to be our own, not Jewish ones,” he said.
This dispatch is unconnected with the Middle East. The British newspaper, The Guardian, despite my regularly criticizing them for their Mideast coverage, asked me to write an obituary of my friend, Milena Hubschmannova.
Hubschmannova was one of the most brilliant and admirable people I have had the privilege to know.
This is a slightly longer version of the published obit.
-- Tom Gross
Obituary
Milena Hubschmannova
Czech champion of the Roma, their language and culture
By Tom Gross
The Guardian
September 19, 2005
www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,3604,1573093,00.html
Milena Hubschmannova, who has died in a car accident aged 72 while on a visit to South Africa, was professor of Romany studies at Prague’s Charles University, and one of the leading experts of her generation, if not of all time, on Roma (Gypsy) culture and language.
Although not of Roma origin herself, Hubschmannova spent most of her life studying and helping the Roma, winning their respect and intense affection through her warmth and sensitivity. “She helped us to find dignity in ourselves, our culture and our history,” said Jana Hejkrlikova, a Roma activist.
Roma are a distinct people who have preserved their language and culture since migrating to Europe from India in the 10th century; and, contrary to legend, the vast majority of Europe’s six to eight million Roma have not lived a nomadic lifestyle for centuries.
In the former Czechoslovakia, where Hubschmannova lived and worked, hostility towards the 750,000 Roma remains acute. During communist times, when the authorities broke up Roma communities, tried to ban the Romani language, and even forcibly sterilised some Roma women, Hubschmannova was one of a tiny number of non-Roma who tried to keep Roma culture alive.
Born into a middle class family in Prague in 1933, she first became interested in the Romani language after she had graduated from Charles University, where she studied Urdu, Hindi and Bengali.
When the communist authorities sent her on students’ working brigades in Moravia, she came into contact with Roma communities and to her surprise, found that she could understand much of their language. “I was astonished that I was able to recognise words extremely similar to Hindi,” she said.
“I had studied Hindi but the communist regime made it difficult to travel to India, so instead I discovered India here in Czechoslovakia.”
Hubschmannova began a lifelong quest to learn about the Roma and to help them promote a better understanding of their culture in the outside world. Since it was forbidden to learn Romani in those times, she mastered it through conversations with native speakers with whom she became close friends.
She spent long periods living in impoverished communities in eastern Slovakia and northern Bohemia, recording Romani speech, songs, proverbs, folklore and tales, in notebooks and on hundreds of tapes. She mastered many dialects of Romani, not only Czech and Slovak, reaching a point where she could speak in their own language to Roma friends from as far a field as Albania, Spain and Argentina.
In the more liberal atmosphere resulting from the Prague spring, she helped establish the Union of Gypsy-Roma in 1968, and (until it was banned by the communists in 1973) co-edited their Romani language journal a rarity for a people who until then had been largely illiterate.
Following the fall of communism in 1989, there was a flowering of Roma culture and of expressions of Roma identity throughout much of eastern Europe. Hubschmannova played an important role in encouraging these developments.
She was the driving force behind the opening in 1991 of a Romany Studies department at Charles University, which she chaired until her death. The department offered the first undergraduate university course specifically devoted to Romany studies anywhere in the world.
Taking place as it did in a society that had done so much to repress Roma identity, and that even today continues to portray Roma in a negative light, this was an extraordinary initiative.
Hubschmannova invited ordinary Roma who had been unable to enter university because of discrimination in the Czech school system to take part in her classes, in order to learn about their own history and share their experiences and stories.
She fought to overcome the prejudice which is still widespread even among supposedly liberal fellow academics. “Be careful, they’re quick with their knives,” one humanities professor warned her.
She published extensively, writing essays, contributing to many books, and helping to compile the first Czech-Romani dictionary. She also spent a great deal of time encouraging Roma to publish their own works.
Hubschmannova was an exceptionally good-natured woman, generous, modest, energetic, loving and much loved. She is survived by her daughter.
Milena Hubschmannova, linguist, Romologist and folklorist, born July 10, 1933; died September 8, 2005
* Musharraf on why he won’t yet establish relations with Israel: “57 years of bitterness, hatred and animosity cannot be undone so fast We have to be a little patient I need more support in my endeavors to be able to take the Pakistani people along with me. The people of Pakistan are too involved with the Palestinians and the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.”
* Musharraf on Islamic societies: “Many of us have remained trapped in a time warp, still struggling to reconstruct our political, social and economic systems to respond to the challenges of our times.”
* Musharraf on terrorism: “It cannot be condoned for any reason or cause.”
* Musharraf on Islam: “A religion of tolerance, compassion and peace.”
CONTENTS
1. Musharraf: Pakistan has “no direct conflict or dispute with Israel”
2. Plenty of motives for Pakistan to warm up to Israel
3. Pakistani opposition to relations with Israel
4. Palestinians reject Islamic countries normalizing ties with Israel
5. Arab opposition to “check this sweeping ominous tide”
6. “Pakistan leader urges U.S. Jews to help make peace” (Reuters, Sept. 18, 2005)
7. “Musharraf: Israel must leave W. Bank” (Jerusalem Post, Sept. 18, 2005)
8. “Recognizing Israel” (Dawn - Pakistan’s leading English-language daily)
9. “Musharraf Talks to Jewish Leaders” (Arab News, Saudi Arabia, Sept. 19, 2005)
MUSHARRAF: “PAKISTAN HAS NO DIRECT CONFLICT OR DISPUTE WITH ISRAEL”
In a speech to the American Jewish Congress last Saturday night (September 17, 2005), Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf opened the door to full diplomatic relations between Israel and Pakistan.
The groundbreaking dinner opened with the sharing of bread and Koranic prayers. In his speech, Musharraf commented on the Holocaust, claimed to have watched and been influenced by Schindler’s List, and also spoke of preventing anti-Islamic prejudice in the West after 9/11.
This is the first time a leader of a Muslim nation that has no diplomatic ties with Israel has held a public dialogue with Jewish leaders. Pakistan is the second most populous Moslem country in the world, after Indonesia.
The dinner was attended by several long-time subscribers to this email list, including David Horovitz (the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post), David Makovsky (formerly of Ha’aretz and now of the Washington Institute), and by myself. The event and diplomatic initiative with Pakistan was organized and chaired by Jack Rosen, also a long-time subscriber to this email list.
Almost half the guests at the dinner were prominent Pakistanis and Pakistani-Americans.
In his speech, Musharraf also singled out individual Jews for praise. In particular, he cited “the American Jewish philanthropist George Soros,” whom he said had been the single biggest donor to help Bosnian Moslems, more than any Moslem donor had.
Musharraf’s speech follows talks between the Israeli and Pakistan foreign ministers in Turkey on September 1, 2005 and Musharraf’s handshake with Ariel Sharon at the United Nations last week.
Pakistan’s role since 9/11 has been problematic. Daniel Pearl, a Jewish reporter for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped and decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan. Pakistan’s network of religious schools has been accused of spreading a radically violent version of Islam. Two of the 7/7 London bombers visited Pakistan in the months leading up to the London terror attacks.
PALESTINIAN STATE WILL GIVE ISRAEL FULL RELATIONS WITH PAKISTAN
Musharraf said a Palestinian state would help stop Islamic terrorism and facilitate full diplomatic relations between Israel and Pakistan.
In his speech, Musharraf urged Israel to pull out of the West Bank and agree a solution in Jerusalem in line with the city’s “international character”.
Even though Musharraf said he will not yet officially recognize Israel, and he made quite a number of strongly pro-Palestinian remarks, he was given (by my count) six standing ovations during the course of the evening.
PLENTY OF MOTIVES FOR PAKISTAN
It is widely assumed that Pakistan seeks better relations with Israel to boost its own national security, which it feels might be threatened by growing ties between Israel and India, and most of all to improve ties with the US.
On his arrival back in Pakistan yesterday, Musharraf cited the “influential” US Jewish community that could be used to pressurize the American administration “if and when needed”. Whilst he also cited the advancement of Israeli technology that Islamabad could benefit from.
Pakistan’s foreign minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said in his meeting with Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom at the beginning of September that relations with Israel would help Pakistanis all over the world. “There are 80 million Pakistanis living abroad and after the incidents of 9/11 and 7/7, the lives of ordinary Pakistanis abroad became too difficult. We want to address this. We want to portray the soft image of Pakistan.”
PAKISTANI OPPOSITION TO RELATIONS WITH ISRAEL
In January, Shimon Peres was interviewed by “Jang,” a leading Pakistani paper. Peres was quoted as saying that Israel and Pakistan should have “direct, personal contact, publicly, without being ashamed about it.” Following Peres’s interview, armed men ransacked the newspaper’s office in Karachi chanting “Allah Akbar” (God is great).
Following the meeting of the foreign ministers earlier this month, the opposition party Muttahida Majlise Amal (MMA) held demonstrations in major Pakistani cities and staged a walkout from Parliament. The leader of the MMA described the move as “against Pakistan’s national interest as well as state policy.” But the biggest demonstration held in Peshawer featured only 200 people.
PALESTINIANS REJECT ISLAMIC COUNTRIES NORMALIZING TIES WITH ISRAEL
The Palestinian National Anti-Normalization Committee warned on Sunday that the Palestinians are against any Arab or Islamic countries normalizing ties with Israel. The Committee’s chief, Omar Shallah, has announced that the committee plan to hold a conference against normalizing relations with Israel in October.
At the same time, the Palestinian Authority seemed unconcerned that more than 10,000 Hamas members marched on Sunday vowing to continue to fight Israel until it is destroyed.
ARAB OPPOSITION TO “CHECK THIS SWEEPING OMINOUS TIDE”
Israel currently has full diplomatic relations with three Arab states Mauritania, Egypt and Jordan as well as Turkey, which has a Muslim majority.
Since the withdrawal from Gaza, Israel has also held high-level public meetings with Qatar, Indonesia and Tunisia. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Salim Hoss called for an Arab League meeting to take measures to “check this sweeping, ominous tide. I wonder how they can undertake such a step, forgetting a cause they espoused for more than half a century... under the pretext of rewarding the Zionist enemy for withdrawing from Gaza.”
ISRAEL FOURTH ON US ALLY LIST
According to a poll carried out by the Harris organization, Israel is considered the fourth ally in the minds of U.S citizens. Israel came after the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia as “most reliable ally” for the second year in succession.
I attach four articles. The first two concern the speech made by President Musharraf to the American Jewish Congress. The third article from “Dawn,” Pakistan’s leading English-language daily, illustrates the dilemmas felt in Pakistan about establishing full relations with Israel it is an interesting article which I recommend reading in full for those who have time. The fourth piece is an analysis from the Saudi Arabian English-language daily, “Arab News.”
-- Tom Gross
PRESIDENT MUSHARRAF URGES US JEWISH LEADERS TO HELP MAKE PEACE
Pakistan leader urges U.S. Jews to help make peace
By Paul Eckert
Reuters
September 18, 2005
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told U.S. Jewish leaders on Saturday that granting the Palestinians statehood would help stop Islamic terrorism and lead to full diplomatic ties between Pakistan and Israel.
Speaking to the American Jewish Congress at a groundbreaking dinner that opened with the sharing of bread and Koranic prayers, Musharraf said his Muslim country had “no direct conflict or dispute with Israel” but that Pakistanis had deep sympathy for Palestinian aspirations for a separate state.
“Israel must come to terms with geopolitical realities and allow justice to prevail for the Palestinians,” he said, describing a Palestinian settlement as the key to security for Israel and an end to Middle East terrorism.
“As the peace process progresses toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, we will take further steps toward normalization and cooperation, looking to full diplomatic relations,” Musharraf said to lengthy applause.
His outreach to the influential Jewish group followed his handshake with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday at the United Nations and groundbreaking talks on September 1 between the Israeli and Pakistani foreign ministers in Istanbul.
In conciliatory comments that Pakistani analysts called strikingly candid in the Muslim world, Musharraf recalled the tragedy of the Holocaust and acknowledged compassion shown by Jewish groups in helping stop ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and in combating anti-Islamic prejudice after the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Pakistan has been one of Israel’s harshest critics in the Muslim world. But Musharraf said the strife since the creation of Israel in 1948 was an “aberration in the long history of Muslim-Jewish cooperation and coexistence.”
Islam, Judaism and Christianity shared prophets and spiritual practices, but were now needlessly “pitted against each other” -- a situation it would take courage to reverse, he said. His remarks received several standing ovations from the audience of about 350 people.
Musharraf said suggestions that Islam rejected tolerance and promoted terrorism amounted to a “hate campaign” against the faith. But he acknowledged that most people involved in terrorism, and most who suffered from it, were Muslims.
“Obviously there is a deep disturbance and malaise within Islamic societies, which has become especially acute in recent years,” he said. Troubles in Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq caused “anger, desperation and humiliation,” he added.
The blunt-speaking army general said many Islamic societies had failed to embrace modernity and good governance.
“Many of us have remained trapped in a time warp, still struggling to reconstruct our political, social and economic systems to respond the challenges of our times,” he said.
MUSHARRAF: “SHOW COURAGE, AND SOLVE THE PALESTINIAN DISPUTE ONCE AND FOR ALL”
Musharraf: Israel must leave W. Bank
By David Horovitz
The Jerusalem Post
September 18, 2005
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1127010246579
In a landmark, unprecedented address to American Jewish leaders late on Saturday night, just days after he had shaken hands with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the UN General Assembly, Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf urged Israel to show its “courage,” and the Jewish community to use its influence, to solve the “Palestinian dispute once and for all.”
He said this required Israel to pull out of the West Bank and agree a solution in Jerusalem that respected the city’s “international character.”
Resolution of the conflict, which Gen. Musharraf asserted lay “at the heart of terrorism in the Middle East and beyond,” would “usher in a period of peace and tranquility in the Middle East and perhaps the whole world.”
Among other things, it would certainly enable Pakistan to formalize full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state, he indicated.
Speaking briefly to The Jerusalem Post shortly before making his address, Musharraf said he had no timetable for such ties. “We need to sit down and talk more [with the Israelis],” he told The Post, “and see how to move forward. We ought to be taking more steps.”
While unanimously praising Musharraf for addressing the gathering, arranged after two years of preparations that coincided with the formal opening of contacts between Pakistan and Israel, some Israeli and American Jewish participants expressed discomfort with some of the president’s comments, and especially his intimation that Israel’s presence on land it captured in the 1967 war constituted the root cause of Islamic terrorism.
Dan Gillerman, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, told The Post that he considered this assertion to be “very problematic.” Still, Gillerman said, at least there was now finally an opportunity to pursue a dialogue on this and other issues directly with the Pakistanis.
Gillerman added that he wished Musharraf had “gone further” of late and agreed to full ties with Israel. Again, though, now that direct contacts had been initiated, Israel could and would try to “push him along a little faster.”
The Pakistani leader described the groundbreaking dinner meeting, attended by a large cast of Jewish leaders and dignitaries assembled by the American Jewish Congress, as “a historic occasion.” Also present were Pakistani ministers, officials, dignitaries and journalists, Americans of Pakistani origin and a smattering of international diplomats.
He used the event to pledge that Pakistan ultimately intended to cement full diplomatic relations with Israel, and spoke warmly and at length about the need for a return to the centuries of positive interaction between the Islamic and Jewish communities and to end the past six decades’ “aberration” in that record of cooperation and co-existence. He vowed personally to help educate his people about the strong history of warm Jewish-Islamic ties.
At the same time, however, his recipe for healing placed the overwhelming onus on Israel.
He stressed that terrorism “cannot be condoned for any reason or cause” and that both Israelis and Palestinians “must shun confrontation and pursue peace and reconciliation.”
But he then went on to say that Israel’s rightful desire for security would remain “incomplete, until the creation of an independent and viable Palestinian state is assured.” Israel, he said, “must come to terms with geopolitical realities and allow justice to prevail for the Palestinians They want their own independent state and they must get it.”
Specifically, he continued, the welcome Israeli decision to pull out of Gaza should be followed “soon” by an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. And later, for the sake of “durable peace and harmony between Israelis and Palestinians indeed between Israel and the Muslim world,” there would have to be a final settlement on the status of Jerusalem that would “respect the international character”of the city.
Over 1,400 years ago, he said, Caliph Omar annulled the 500-year exile of the Jewish people and invited them to return and build their homes in the Holy City. This kind of “gesture of reconciliation and realism” was now “required of Israel.”
In a short question and answer session after his speech, when asked why he was not prepared to follow the lead of a country like Turkey, which enjoyed full ties with Israel while simultaneously highlighting its support for Palestinian statehood, the general said that “57 years of bitterness hatred and animosity cannot be undone so fast.”
To try to sprint when barely walking risked “derailing the whole process,” he said. “We have to be a little patient I need more support in my endeavors to be able to take the Pakistani people along with me. The people of Pakistan are too involved with the Palestinians and the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.”
They had, he said, already “come a long way” in accepting Israel’s right to exist. But as Israel moved toward enabling the establishment of a Palestinian state “side by side with a secure Israel,” this would “allow us the flexibility” to fully normalize ties.
Asked whether he felt able to publicly champion Israel’s legitimacy in his contacts with the rest of the Muslim world, and to convey the message that Israeli territorial concessions would have to be met with a curtailing by the Palestinians of the demand for a “right of return” for refugees to Israel, Musharraf gave a vague response. He said all “the modalities” would now have to be considered, but that he hadn’t really given much thought to these kinds of specifics.
One of the most telling sentences in his speech came near the beginning, when he expressed pleasure at speaking “to so many members of what is probably the most distinguished and influential community in the United States.” Officials traveling with Musharraf privately confirmed that the president regards the support of US Jewry as an immensely valuable factor as he seeks to solidify his ties with the US administration.
One senior Pakistani official also cited, as central factors in the warming of ties, Musharraf’s recognition of common interests with Israel in the war on terror, a desire for a Pakistani role in peacemaking and a belief in inter-faith dialogue.
In a conversation with The Post, one of the president’s most trusted ministers, Dr. Nasim Ashraf, the minister of state for human development, said Pakistan also hoped it might now begin to build the kind of military partnership with Israel enjoyed by India. It would be excellent, Ashraf said, “If Israel could open up its military relationship” to Pakistan.
Musharraf devoted much of his address to the potential for Judaism, Christianity and Islam to serve as “a source of hope, tolerance and peace,” rather than being “pitted against each other.”
He bitterly rejected talk of a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West, and also rejected “attempts to associate Islam with terrorism.” Islam, he said, was a “religion of tolerance, compassion and peace” and those who denied this were engaged in “a hate campaign.”
Nonetheless, he acknowledged that “most of those involved in terrorist acts, as well as most of those who suffer the consequences of these acts, are Muslims. Obviously there is a deep disturbance and malaise within Islamic societies.”
This, he said, stemmed from “festering” problems such as those in Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan and Iraq, which had “given rise to a deep sense of anger, desperation and humiliation in the Arab and Muslim populations.”
The consequent terrorism and extremism, he said, had to be addressed separately. “Terrorism has to met head on with all the force required to suppress and eradicate it.” In the case of extremism, on the other hand, “the battle has to be won in the hearts and minds of the people.”
He said that the “misuse of religion to spread militancy, hatred and violence has to be suppressed.” But at the same time, political disputes exploited by terrorists “to justify their criminal actions” had to be resolved. And among those ripe for resolution, he said, were the Palestinian and Kashmir disputes.
He did not have “an iota of doubt” that the Israeli-Palestinian problem “lies at the heart of terrorism in the Middle East and beyond.” Peace in Palestine would revive the historical ties between Judaism and Islam, he insisted, and “extinguish the anger and frustration that motivates resort to violence and extremism.”
A VIEW FROM PAKISTAN
Recognizing Israel
By Anwer Mooraj
Dawn (Pakistan’s leading English-language daily)
www.dawn.com/2005/09/19/op.htm
By now the thinking man in the land of the pure has probably fully recovered from the headlines which etched the friendly overtures made to the Jewish state by a country that has for 57 years carried on as if the Hebrew republic just did not exist.
Predictably, the Istanbul meeting, in which Mr Kasuri gave a friendly nod to the Israeli foreign minister, Mr Shalom, has stirred up a lively debate in the media in this country where readers look forward to a healthy controversy.
After glossing over the letters that have popped up in various sections of the press on a regular basis since that fateful day, it does appear that the Cavaliers have won the first round against the Roundheads, though some did point out that the Pakistan president had been unnecessarily secretive about the move, and should have taken the assemblies into confidence rather than the King of Saudi Arabia. Had he done so, chances are that the ARD parties might have supported the government and their allies, and the home office would eventually have had to go into overdrive producing rubber stamps to reverse that offensive passage in the Pakistan passport.
However, one cannot ignore the lobby, which includes a couple of former ambassadors, that has sharply reacted to the move and the many arguments that have been advanced why Pakistan should not in any event recognize Israel. The spontaneous reaction of Qazi Hussain Ahmed, chief of the Jamaat-i-Islami, who heads the thumbs-down faction and whose pronouncement was, in a sense, a distillation of the chorus of negative vibes that emanate from the political right, was that the move was ‘against the ideology of Pakistan’.
Unfortunately he did not specify what the ideology of Pakistan actually is, and how recognizing the Jewish state would undermine the principles and beliefs of the people of Pakistan. Nor did he elucidate just how an essentially political decision motivated by national self interest, like establishing contact with another state, would adversely affect and undermine the firm resolve of the faithful in this country.
The opposition to the move has little to do with ideology and is actually a reaction to the excessively brutal treatment meted out to the Palestinians by a string of Israeli prime ministers in which Mr Sharon has been singled out as something of a monster. They have been accused of doing to the Palestinians what the Nazis did to the Jews treating them like Untermenschen. The anti-recognition lobby has put forward other arguments which while they don’t touch on religious tenets are nevertheless compelling. They go something like this: the eventual establishment of diplomatic relations is a one-time event, and Pakistan would lose leverage once it takes the plunge. Recognition will be seen as some kind of appeasement, where Pakistan is taking on the oleaginous heartiness of the small businessman trying to clinch a deal with a bigger one, and once full diplomatic relations are established Israel will improve its intelligence gathering network, making the assets of the only Muslim nuclear power even more vulnerable. An Israeli embassy in the capital with the Star of David fluttering in the Islamabad breeze will be the obvious target of terrorist attacks and will increase militancy in this country.
Recognition, for this lobby, implies condoning the continual occupation of Palestine and the fact that while Mr Sharon knocks down Jewish settlements in one occupied area he builds fresh settlements in another. And lastly, as Israel has paid no heed to the counsels of the United States, Russia and the European Union about settling the Palestine issue, why should they listen to Pakistan which poses no military threat to the Jewish state?
The pro-recognition lobby is currently much stronger and has put forward some compelling and seductive arguments, which appear to be tilting the scales in the establishment’s favour. The main thrust of the rhetoric is that it is time Pakistan started to think of its own national interest instead of always adopting a moralizing tone and behaving like a super Islamic sergeant-at-arms.
According to this group which has given the thumbs up signal, the eventual recognition of Israel would blunt some of the hostility felt by the American Jewish lobby against Pakistan and might influence a paradigm shift in US policy in South Asia. Pakistan will certainly benefit from Israeli technology and might even discover a new supplier of sophisticated weaponry.
There is also the old conflict theory if Pakistan can recognize India with whom it has fought three wars, why can’t it recognize a country with which it has fought no wars and had no official contact whatsoever? If four Muslim countries have recognized Israel and another clutch of Muslim powers have established trade relations, in spite of the repressive policies the country has inflicted on the Palestinians, why shouldn’t Pakistan follow suit, especially when Pakistanis are not Arabs?
There’s also the moral argument. If Pakistan feels it has a moral right to oppose any country which has inflicted suffering on fellow Muslims, why does it continue to enjoy diplomatic relations with former colonial powers like France and Holland whose soldiers committed unspeakable atrocities in Algeria and Indonesia? The spokesmen for this lobby add that it would be in extremely bad taste if Pakistan suddenly went back on its gesture now that it has made its intention clear to the international community.
When the flack started to fly back home Mr Kasuri was quick to retort that Pakistan had only made a gesture of friendship and had not gone the whole distance and that full recognition would be made only when the Israeli occupation had ended and the Palestinian state had been fully established.
Mr Kasuri appears to have gotten away with it, but it does remind one of that delightful verbal exchange from Beyond the Fringe, the revue that took London by storm in the early 1970s, when Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller and Dudley Moore fuelled themselves on the iconoclasm of the time and targeted among others unctuous white clergymen, black members of parliament, landladies and foreign ministers.
After a little light-hearted banter involving social stratification and class consciousness, one of the quartet in a rare anti-Semitic jibe said he’d rather be working class than a Jew. There was a hush in the auditorium as dense as the forest. Suddenly Jonathan Miller, the only Semite in the group, said he wasn’t really a Jew, just Jewish you know, not the whole hog. That is probably what Mr Kasuri was trying to say. He wasn’t going the whole hog at least, not for the present.
If one digs a little deeper beneath the surface one would realize that Pakistan and Israel really have a lot in common. Both countries were created around the same time on the basis of religion. Both countries have embryonic infrastructures, economies based largely on agriculture and light industry and long virtually indefensible borders. Both countries have fierce nationalists, large swathes of ordinary nice people who are sick of war, hate politicians and want peace, and pockets of orthodoxy that provide focal points for extremism.
Both countries have been victims of some form of oppression-in the case of Pakistan it was colonization by a European power and the degradation that lies in its wake. In the case of Israel it was centuries of targeted persecution of the most humiliating kind followed eventually by intense wide spread ethnic cleansing.
Both countries have had hostile neighbours and faced military threats from an enemy that was many times larger. In Pakistan at the time of the 1965 war with India the population ratio was five to one, whereas in Israel at its very inception, when the country was invaded by the armies of seven countries, the combined populations of the invaders outnumbered that of Israel by a hundred to one!
But in spite of the fact that there is still widespread dislike of Zionism and accusations of racism practised by the Ashkenazi minority, the Israelis have managed to retain their sense of humour and make fun of everything and everybody, including Moses who one wit in a Haifa night club said made them suffer for 40 years in a desert and then selected as a home for the Jews the only spot in the Middle East which didn’t have any oil.
Perhaps the British politician had a point when he said that a race that can produce people like Emmanuel Lasker, Akiba Rubinstein and Aaron Nimzovitsch, Yehudi Menuhin, Jascha Heifetz and Mischa Elman, and decided to finally stage Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde can’t be all that bad. All that remains is for Mr Sharon to complete Mr Bush’s roadmap.
A VIEW FROM THE SAUDIS
Musharraf Talks to Jewish Leaders
Barbara Ferguson,
Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
September 19, 2005
arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=70295&d=19&m=9&y=2005
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has become the first leader of a Muslim nation that has no diplomatic ties with Israel to hold a public dialogue with Jewish leaders, many of whom are already calling it an unprecedented event.
Musharraf told members during a dinner meeting with members of the American Jewish Congress on Saturday night that his country would take steps to build ties with Israel as the Middle East peace process progresses.
Musharraf’s historic address in New York began with bread being broken and prayers from the Qur’an recited before the Jewish audience.
He was given a standing ovation as he arrived for the meeting in which he called for the establishment of a Palestinian state to end violence in the Middle East and bring security to Israel.
“Israel must come to terms with geopolitical realities and allow justice to prevail for the Palestinians,” he said.
“I am convinced that peace in Palestine that does justice to both the Israelis and the Palestinians will bring to a close the sad chapter in the history of the Middle East (and) will revive the historical ties between Islam and Judaism.”
He also criticized Islamic societies for failing to embrace modernity. “Many of us remain wrapped in a time warp, still struggling to reconstruct our political, social and economic systems to respond to the challenges of our times,” he said.
“He was incredibly well received, and all the leadership of American Jewry was there it was a very impressive gathering of American Jewish leadership,” said David Twersky, director of the AJC Council for World Jewry, the sponsor for the event.
“American Jews are hungry for acceptance and normalcy in their relationship with Muslims and Arabs, and this represented a gigantic step in that direction. It is an extremely positive development,” said Twersky.
The meeting comes three days after President Musharraf shook hands with Israel’s prime minister at the United Nations.
Both countries are said to have held two years of secret talks, which culminated in a meeting of their two foreign ministers in Turkey, two weeks ago. After the Istanbul talks Pakistan’s foreign minister said that his country had decided to “engage” with Israel after Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.
Musharraf said he wants this relationship with “the most distinguished and influential community in America, which is the flip side of the anti-Semitic canard of an evil conspiracy by Jewish organizations that controls Bush, or whatever, to the detriment of Muslims,” said Twersky.
“And here comes a person of Musharraf’s stature who said he’s honored to speak with us, its almost a paradigm shift.”
In conciliatory comments that Pakistani analysts called strikingly candid in the Muslim world, Musharraf recalled the tragedy of the Holocaust and acknowledged compassion shown by Jewish groups in helping stop ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and in combating anti-Islamic prejudice after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Pakistan has been one of Israel’s harshest critics in the Muslim world. But Musharraf said the strife since the creation of Israel in 1948 was an “aberration in the long history of Muslim-Jewish cooperation and coexistence.” Islam, Judaism and Christianity shared prophets and spiritual practices but were now needlessly “pitted against each other” a situation it would take courage to reverse, he said. His remarks received several standing ovations from the audience of about 350 people.
Pakistan has never recognized the state of Israel, and his speech yesterday irked some American Muslim leaders.
“I strongly believe that there should be no relations with the state of Israel before a comprehensive peace settlement is established, which is satisfactory to Palestinians and after Israel adheres to all United Nations resolutions and international law,” said Nihad Awad, executive director to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Otherwise any effort to move toward establishing relationship with Israel will undermine the Muslim world consensus on this very important and sensitive issue, ” Awad said.
Asked if he thought the Bush administration had pushed Musharraf to a rapprochement with Israel, Awad said: “I don’t know who’s pushing who, but I strongly believe Pakistan is a major world player, and we have to keep this in consideration regarding the need to unify the Muslim world. I agree with Musharraf that Muslims don’t have anything against Jews per say, but does have issues with the state of Israel.”
[Note by Tom Gross]
A number of people did not receive the dispatch prepared on August 31, and sent late that night, so I attach it again below. Since then, the following have been published:
SEPTEMBER UPDATES
1. COMMENTARY
The leading American monthly journal of idea and comment, Commentary, has published an extensive article on the subject in their September issue, well worth reading at www.commentarymagazine.com/article.asp?aid=12002025_1 (The senior editors of Commentary are long-time subscribers to this email list.)
2. THE LOS ANGELES TIMES
The Los Angeles Times published an article on September 9, 2005 by David Gelernter which is analysis of the Al Dura affair and specifically on the Commentary article. The title and sub-title of the LA Times article are: “When pictures lie: A TV report that helped fuel the deadly Palestinian intifada appears to be false. So how is truth supposed to compete with a video fraud?” The author writes: “Charles Enderlin, France 2 and the larger media establishment have an obligation to tell us [the truth]. Because lies can kill. Lies do kill.”
I attach the Los Angeles Times in full at the *end* of this email
3. THE BOSTON GLOBE
On September 6, 2005, the Boston Globe prominently featured Mohammad Al Dura’s family in an article titled “Some shunning the Palestinian hard stance” by Thanassis Cambanis.
The article speaks of Jamal Al Dura, Mohammad’s father “standing as a symbol of perceived Israeli brutality and growing wealthy from the largesse showered upon him.” The article goes on to say that a Gulf Sheik gave Dura $100,000 to build a new house in Gaza.
The article does provide some balance by recognizing that there is dispute over the Dura case, suggesting it may be an example of “Pallywood” theatrical Palestinian propaganda. Nevertheless, nearly five years later the image of Mohammad Al Dura is still makes frequent appearances in the mainstream press media, as noted in the dispatch below.
4. PALLYWOOD
A new website (www.seconddraft.org) has been launched this week which claims “to present evidence of Pallywood extensive fraud among Palestinian cameramen working for western mainstream media.” It also explores the al Dura affair.
PREVIOUS DISPATCH
From: “Tom Gross”
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 00:49 AM
Subject: Faked atrocity on French television?
* This is a follow-up to dispatches on this list in recent years on Mohammed Al-Dura. Al Dura was the young Palestinian boy who French TV reported was shot by Israeli troops in September 2000. French TV’s inflammatory film, distributed worldwide by France 2, the French government-owned TV network, is widely credited with helping to launch the Intifada.
* The authenticity of France 2’s film has repeatedly been questioned by senior figures in the Israeli military and by some prominent publications such as the Atlantic Monthly. They have asked, for example, why France 2 continue to refuse to release the full film rather than its carefully edited version. Why al-Dura clasps a hand over his eyes after he is supposedly dead? Why no western journalist other than Charles Enderlin, a known anti-Zionist activist, can authenticate the incident. Why the doctors in Gaza have no record of a body being brought to the hospital at the time Enderlin said al-Dura arrived there. And so on. Now for the first time, a left-leaning European publication is also questioning the film’s authenticity.
* Meanwhile, the film remains very much in the public eye. For example, on September 27, 2005, a special program will be broadcast on ITV (Britain’s most popular television channel) where viewers will vote “for the most significant shot” in the last 50 years of news, and the footage of Al Dura is among the front-runners.
CONTENTS
1. The shot that shook the world
2. Suicide bombs and 14-year-old boys carrying bombs
3. Mohammed Al-Dura on Palestinian Authority TV tens of times a day
4. A story about media and ethics
5. “Manufacturing Consent; or, the anatomy of an image” (Jewish Quarterly, summer 2005)
UPDATE: KEN LIVINGSTONE
On several occasions earlier this year, this email list and others urged the UK authorities to take action against London Mayor Ken Livingstone for statements blood libeling both Israelis specifically and Jews in general.
Among other remarks, Livingstone compared a British Jewish journalist working for the (London) Evening Standard to a Nazi concentration camp guard. Livingstone made the comparison when the journalist asked him a question about an unrelated matter to do with the governing of London.
Yesterday, the Standards Board of England, the official body that administers local government, finally announced that Livingstone will face a disciplinary hearing for “conduct unbecoming to a public official.” The hearing will be held within 15 weeks.
Livingstone has refused to apologize for these comments and other slanders he has made against the state of Israel and against Ariel Sharon in particular. In refusing to apologize, Livingstone, a politician best described as belonging to the Fascist Left, is probably calculating that it will help shore up support among his core left-wing and Moslem support bases in the run-up for his bid to be re-elected as mayor of London.
UPDATE: RENAMING SETTLEMENTS
Following the dispatch on this list titled Palestinians “to rename settlements after Arafat and Yassin” (August 24, 2005), several news outlets in America and in Europe contacted Palestinian Authority spokespersons who confirmed that the PA was indeed considering renaming former Israeli settlements after Arafat and Yassin. The story was reported in the mainstream press on August 26, 2005, two days after appearing on this list.
MOHAMMED AL-DURA
As the “the first child martyr of the Intifada,” the image of Mohammed Al-Dura crouching next to his father on September 30, 2000, was for many the defining image of the last five years in the Israel Palestinian conflict.
Many Arab states have issued postage stamps with a picture of the terrified boy. One of Baghdad’s main streets was renamed The Martyr Mohammed al-Dura Street and Morocco has an al-Dura Park.
THE SHOT THAT SHOOK THE WORLD
On September 27, 2005 a special program will be held on ITV (Britain’s most popular television channel) where viewers will vote “for the most significant [television] shot from 50 years of News on ITV.”
In the Global Conflict category one of the leading nominations is for the shooting of Mohammed Al-Dura. This incident is placed alongside 9/11, Vietnam, the London terror attacks, Beslan, Lockerbie and the Iranian embassy siege. The website for this vote is www.itv.com/theshot.
Following behind the scenes pressure on ITV from some prominent recipients of this email list the caption next to the option to vote on ITV’s website was last week changed from “Mohammed al-Durra who was the boy allegedly shot by Israeli soldiers whilst cowering behind his father.” To “Muhammad al-Durra is shot dead and his father wounded in cross-fire between Israeli and Palestinian forces.”
14-YEAR OLD BOYS CARRYING BOMBS
On Monday, in an incident barely reported in the North American and European media, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy carrying three bombs was arrested by the Israeli army at a checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus.
Hussain Abu Kalifeh, 14, was detained during a routine security check at the Hawara checkpoint. His 16-year-old brother was previously arrested at the same checkpoint also attempting to smuggle bombs.
A day earlier, on Sunday, a Palestinian suicide bomber blew himself up during the rush hour at a bus station in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba. The alertness of two security guards both of whom were critically wounded in the blast - prevented the suicide bomber boarding the commuter bus. Over 50 people sustained light injuries when the bomber blew himself up at the entrance to the bus.
The suicide bomber had previously asked a bus driver for the direction to Beersheba’s Soroka hospital. On June 20th this year, Israeli security caught another potential suicide bomber, Wafa al-Bas, with explosives; she said she had also planned to explode her bomb at the same hospital.
MOHAMMED AL-DURA ON PA TV TENS OF TIMES A DAY
Many Palestinian suicide bombers find their motivation from Mohammed Al-Dura. Itamar Marcus of Palestinian Media Watch says that a film on Palestinian Authority television “openly and explicitly tells the children to seek death by portraying the most famous child ‘Martyr,’ Muhammad al-Dura, calling to other children to join him, in his idyllic afterlife.”
According to Marcus “the child’s death and funeral have been broadcast thousands of times on PA TV, usually tens of times a day.”
A STORY ABOUT MEDIA AND ETHICS
The article attached below is the first on al-Dura to appear in a decidedly left-leaning publication (the Jewish Quarterly), illustrating that this story is not about a side of the political spectrum but rather a story about media and ethics.
The author of the article, Natasha Lehrer, is Deputy Editor of the Jewish Quarterly, a cultural magazine with a wide following amongst Jewish and other intellectuals. The magazine is published in London and co-edited in Paris and London.
Appearing as it does in a left-leaning publication, I know from private sources, that over the summer the article has been circulated and read at the BBC and other British news organizations.
As an update to the article, Marc Tessier, cited in the piece as the current head of France Television, did not have his five-year contract renewed and leaves his post in September. Arlette Chabot has been promoted to head of news for the whole of France Television.
I attach the article with a summary first, although I recommend reading the article in full if you have time.
-- Tom Gross
SUMMARY
“ONE OF THE TRIGGERS THAT HELPED TO IGNITE THE SECOND INTIFADA”
“Manufacturing Consent; or, the anatomy of an image” (By Natasha Lehrer, Jewish Quarterly, Summer 2005 issue)
All through the 20th century, photographs of agonised children have taken on iconic status as images of modern warfare. Think of the picture of the small child with his hands raised leaving the Warsaw Ghetto, his innocent gaze directly captured by the camera. Or the shot of a naked young girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam in 1972, her body burned, her face contorted with pain and terror. Or the image of Mohammed Al-Dura, cowering with fear as his father tries in vain to shield him against a wall before he is shot dead by an Israeli soldier...
A truly iconic image can have a greater power than simply influencing public opinion around the world. The image of a terrified Jamal and Mohammed al-Dura cringing from a barrage of gunfire as they tried to protect themselves from behind a concrete barrel - a still taken from a videotape - was one of the triggers that helped to ignite the second Intifada (it took place on September 30th 2000, just 2 days after Sharon’s infamous walk on the Temple Mount). With his death Mohammed became ‘the first child martyr of the Intifada’. Less than a fortnight after his murder two Israeli soldiers were lynched in Ramallah in revenge. When the murder of Daniel Pearl was filmed in January 2002, little Mohammed’s face could be seen on a poster on a wall behind the American journalist, suggesting that his kidnapping and murder were partly to avenge the killing of the Palestinian child.
I remember my horror when I saw the death of the boy caught on camera. Those days were grim; every day the situation in Jerusalem and the occupied territories gained a terrible momentum, which came to an unprecedented head at the Neztarim junction in Gaza the day Mohammed al-Durra, unable to run and hide, was picked out by the sights of an Israeli machine gun. Charles Enderlin, the Jerusalem Correspondent of French state-owned television station France 2, who was not actually in Gaza that day, edited a piece from raw footage filmed by Talal Abu Rahma, a Palestinian cameraman and longstanding contributor to France 2, into a 55 second piece with his own commentary: ‘The shooting comes from the Israeli position. One more volley and the kid will be dead’. The footage was beamed around the world that night thanks to the righteous refusal of France 2 to take money for syndicating the piece, not wanting to profit from the death of a child...
Doubts accumulated. In 2002 Esther Schapira, a journalist with close connections to Tsahal, made a documentary for German television investigating the shooting; she concluded that it was far from clear who had shot the child. The following year James Fallows went further in an article in the Atlantic Monthly. He discusses the reasons that investigators at the MENA, including physicist Nahum Shahaf, have concluded that the shooting was staged:
‘The reasons to doubt that the al-Duras, the cameramen, and hundreds of onlookers were part of a coordinated fraud are obvious. Shahaf’s evidence for this conclusion, based on his videos, is essentially an accumulation of oddities and unanswered questions about the chaotic events of the day. Why is there no footage of the boy after he was shot? Why does he appear to move in his father’s lap, and to clasp a hand over his eyes after he is supposedly dead?
Why is one Palestinian policeman wearing a Secret Service-style earpiece in one ear? Why is another Palestinian man shown waving his arms and yelling at others, as if ‘directing’ a dramatic scene? Why does the funeral appear - based on the length of shadows - to have occurred before the apparent time of the shooting? Why is there no blood on the father’s shirt just after they are shot? Why did a voice that seems to be that of the France 2 cameraman yell, in Arabic, ‘The boy is dead’ before he had been hit? Why do ambulances appear instantly for seemingly everyone else and not for al-Dura?’
French psychoanalyst Gerard Huber wrote a book exploring this thesis, Contre-expertise d’une mise en scene (Editions Raphael, 2003), in which he points out several other disturbing elements which contradict Enderlin’s report including the fact that the two doctors who received the body of Mohammed at the Shifa Hospital in Gaza have testified that the body was brought to the hospital before 1pm on September 30th. Yet Enderlin’s voiceover declares that the shooting took place at 3pm, and the shadows in the film would confirm that.
... It is unlikely that there will ever be a definitive answer as to what happened that day at the Netzarim junction. But it has raised serious questions as to the responsibility of the media in shaping and manipulating not only our understanding of conflicts but also the events themselves, for no one can deny the fury stoked in the Arab world by these few seconds of film, and the acts of violence that were subsequently perpetrated in the name of little Mohammed. L’Affaire Enderlin raises uncomfortable questions regarding the ethical standards and transparency and self-regulation of France 2 in particular and the French media in general, which has generally showed little interest in the details of the affair.
... Tom Gross, a leading media commentator, says he doesn’t believe the British press has touched on this subject at all, even though there has been a fair amount of media coverage elsewhere around the world. Thus the British media have become collaborators in what may be one of the most damning indictments of journalistic integrity ever witnessed in our televisual age. Perhaps for the editors of the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph and other newspapers and periodicals which take their news reporting of the Middle East - and France - seriously, Enderlin’s statement is what counts: ‘the image corresponded to the reality of the situation’. In other words it fulfilled the world’s expectations of the bestial inhumanity of the Israeli occupation. The possible truth of what happened - that the child was killed in a terrible martyrdom operation staged by his fellow Palestinians as a propaganda exercise, or even that he wasn’t killed at all - is simply not part of Enderlin’s - or the British media’s - version of a possible ‘reality’.
“ONE OF THE TRIGGERS THAT HELPED TO IGNITE THE SECOND INTIFADA”
Manufacturing Consent; or, the anatomy of an image
By Natasha Lehrer
Jewish Quarterly
Summer 2005 issue
All through the 20th century, photographs of agonised children have taken on iconic status as images of modern warfare. Think of the picture of the small child with his hands raised leaving the Warsaw Ghetto, his innocent gaze directly captured by the camera. Or the shot of a naked young girl, Kim Phuc, fleeing a napalm attack in Vietnam in 1972, her body burned, her face contorted with pain and terror. Or the image of Mohammed Al-Dura, cowering with fear as his father tries in vain to shield him against a wall before he is shot dead by an Israeli soldier.
Because these images are of children, the innocent victims of the terrible wars waged by adults, they seem to encapsulate all the futility and evil of armed conflict and oppression. As Libby Brooks wrote in the Guardian (April 26th, 2003):
‘A child in pain and distress personifies innocence abused. As yet untainted by the complexities that attend the colour of their skin or the affiliations of their parents, they bring moral clarity to a world of seemingly amoral confusion. They offer the opportunity to tell a story . . . in a context where no straight narrative exists.’
Susan Sontag, in an essay in the New Yorker in 2002 (that later became a book, Regarding the Pain of Others, 2003), describes war photography as helping to construct ‘a grammar .and an ethics of seeing’. She points out how images such as those from the Vietnam War
‘became important in bolstering indignation at this war which had been far from inevitable, far from intractable; and could have been stopped much sooner. Therefore one could feel an obligation to look at these pictures, gruesome as they were, because there was something to be done, right now, about what they depicted.’
A truly iconic image can have a greater power than simply influencing public opinion around the world. The image of a terrified Jamal and Mohammed al-Dura cringing from a barrage of gunfire as they tried to protect themselves from behind a concrete barrel - a still taken from a videotape - was one of the triggers that helped to ignite the second Intifada (it took place on September 30th 2000, just 2 days after Sharon’s infamous walk on the Temple Mount). With his